It is more than possible that if we went there now we should not find all we have dreamed of. Elephants are scarce; Selous says he has killed the last white rhinoceros; if we met a lion he might eat us; the hippopotami will soon be driven away from the Victoria Falls; the ruins may not be three thousand years old; boredom and Sunday afternoons may exist there as elsewhere, and the gold may need much washing from the sand; but it is certain that in these auriferous regions will ultimately spring up dense populations. It is from the territories north of the Vaal and south of the Zambesi, in this moister climate, with its more navigable rivers, that civilization in its coarser proportions will first unroll itself. More Southern Africa may produce better men; our greatest poet may yet be born in the Karoo; our great artist in the valley of the Paarl; our great thinker among the keen airs of Basutoland; neither wealth nor dense population have a tendency to produce the finest individuals; but it is in the north-east of Southern Africa that mineral wealth and vast populations with all that they signify for good and evil will probably first arise. To understand the view taken in South Africa of the opening up of these lands, it is necessary to turn back from the present day to the Europe of the sixteenth century, when the hearts and eyes of men were turned to the new world, and each man who crossed the seas carried with him the hearts and thoughts of the thousands who remained. There is no explanation to be given of these sudden movements of entire peoples in a given direction. Their scientific causes are as subtle as those which govern the migrations of the lemmings. Some lead and the rest follow. If we leave these territories we shall find to the south-east a territory known as the Kalahari Desert; a vast tract where little rain falls and springs are rare, and there are no running streams; but it is less accurately called a desert than many parts of South Africa that are never so called. There are trees and low shrubs in many places; such antelopes as can exist without much water are found, and a few wandering natives, who know by long experience where water may be had, by sucking through the sand. In forty years there will probably be a railway across it; now it is practically uninhabited. West of the Kalahari and bordering the Atlantic, up and down the coast runs a vast territory rich in copper and other metals, but in parts drier than the Kalahari itself. Instead of karoo it is covered over a large extent by a coarse, thick tuft grass, which has the curious power of resisting drought for two or even three years; it still stands upright and affords food for the cattle and wild antelopes. Such wandering Bushman and Hottentot tribes as still exist are found mainly in this part, and, except a few missionaries and traders, the country is not inhabited largely by white men.