Fortunately the declaration of suzerainty was not abrogated in set terms, and, of course, until that was done the British authority under which the first Convention was signed and sealed and the second Convention created remained the same. Moreover, the terms of the preamble to the second agreement simply stated that "the following _Articles_ of the new Convention ... shall be _substituted for the Articles_ embodied in the Convention of August 3, 1881," so that there was no direct substitution of authority. However, the new arrangement, through not definitely reasserting the suzerainty, gave President Kruger the opening he desired for some future period when he might claim that there was no longer any such authority; and in making possible this technical and vague claim the indifferent Lord Derby laid one of the foundation stones of great future trouble. The Transvaal State now became the South African Republic, and its Delegates negotiated treaties in Berlin, Paris and Lisbon. Gold soon began to be produced in great quantities, the revenues swelled into millions of pounds sterling, salaries of officials grew apace, President Kruger became one of the wealthy men of the world, alien settlers were treated like native inferiors, the oppressed Uitlander came into prominence, and presently the British Empire found itself face to face with an organized, compact, wealthy and powerful enemy. CHAPTER XI. Natal and the Zulu Wars. [Sidenote: Population, Climate, Resources, etc.] During these varied ups and downs of racial life and rivalry the progress of Natal had not been very great. Like Zululand, to the east, it lies on the sea-slope of a mountainous range and is undulating in surface with an alternation of hills and valleys. The latter have numerous and permanent streams, grass is plentiful, and in the coast region there is abundance of wood. It is much more favoured by nature than Cape Colony and, as a whole, its soil may be described as rich, its appearance as charming and its climate as temperate. Yet, at the end of the century, Natal has not more than 50,000 white residents within its bounds, although before the War of 1899 commenced it was making new and vigorous progress. Durban has become a beautiful, well managed and growing town of 30,000 people--half natives and coolies from India--while Pietermaritzburg is a small but pleasant capital with a cultivated society and agreeable natural surroundings. The population of the Colony includes nearly half a million Zulus, who are increasing in number by leaps and bounds; 50,000 immigrants from India of the coolie and artisan type, with an intermixture of Mohammedan traders from Bombay or Zanzibar who conduct a prosperous retail business with the natives; and about the same number of whites, of whom some nine or ten thousand are Dutch. [Sidenote: Progress of Natal]