Meanwhile, Cape Colony was making considerable material and general progress. It was largely an English development, as the Dutch population still adhered to the slow-going ways of its ancestors, and cattle and sheep remained the chief support of the farmers under British rule as they did of those beyond the Orange or the Vaal. At the beginning of the century, when the Colony finally came under the control of Great Britain, its products had been limited to grain, cattle and wine--the total exports being under half a million of dollars in value. At present they include aloes, coffee, copper ore, ostrich feathers, dried fruits, guano, angora hair, hides, horns, skins, tobacco, wine, wool and diamonds. In 1875 the vines of the Colony yielded four and a half million gallons of brandy. In the same year three million pounds of tobacco were produced; while the Colony, as a whole, possessed eleven million sheep, twenty-two thousand ostriches, over three million goats and a million horned cattle. The trade of the country has always been chiefly with Great Britain and carried in British vessels. [Sidenote: Facts and Figures] Between 1861 and 1886 the imports doubled and the exports trebled. From 1872 to 1897 they rose by leaps and bounds--the imports increasing by $67,000,000 and the exports by $66,000,000. Since English agricultural settlement and work has increased the growth of grain in some of the richer regions has been considerable. Wheat, maize, oats, barley and millet are common crops, while rice and cotton are grown in certain localities--the latter being still an experimental production. Merino sheep have largely taken the place of the big-tailed sheep of the early Dutch settlers. The following table,[2] beginning with 1854 and including 1872, as the years marked by important constitutional changes, will illustrate the general progress in this connection: 1854 1872 1897 Receipts, $1,479,010 $ 5,770,205 $ 36,949,830 Expenditures, 1,562,605 4,612,840 34,261,930 Public Debt, none 7,755,470 136,412,025 Shipping, tons (inwards), 1,202,715 2,412,780 32,101,005 " (outwards), 1,197,975 2,353,455 32,166,020 Imports, 7,740,185 21,943,640 89,659,390 Exports, 3,822,305 30,347,645 97,181,520 [2] Condensed from official figures in the _Statistical Register_. Colony of the Cape of Good Hope. 1897.