Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/188

 being limited to the production of the most ordinary objects of daily use. But such is no longer the case. The colony is learning to dispense with the manufactured wares of Great Britain, and has even begun to impose prohibitory charges on these imports for the purpose of fostering the rising industries of South Africa. The Cape now boasts of its distilleries, its breweries, its flour-mills, tanneries, sawing and soup works, and even factories for manufacturing furniture, carriages, and machinery. Its artisans are already trying their hands at wool-spinning and cloth-weaving, and have begun to supply England with tinned meats and all

kinds of jams and preserves, the preparation of which had hitherto been the secret of the Dutch housewives.

The Cape is also developing a mining industry, and amongst the immigrants who come to seek their fortune in the colony are many Cornish miners, driven from the mother country by the gradual exhaustion of the English mineral ores. At present the chief colonial mining operations are centred about the rich copper deposits of Little Namaqualand and the coalfields of the Storm-berg highlands. Guano is also methodically worked in the islands along the west coast, and salt in the upheaved inlets of the seaboard and in the depressions of the Karroos and of the Orange basin. The Cape salt, excellent for pickling and curing, is used in some fishing-grounds which cure for the local consumption and even for the English market.