Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/195

 GRIQUALAND WEST. 147 religious world, distributing the faithful in separate congregations according to their complexions, have been extended also to the educational system, and legislation has taken care to keep the children of the dominant races entirely aloof from those of the Malays and Hottentots. The public schools in the towns and villages attended by European children are administered by local commissioners ; those intended for half-eaten in the urban and industrial districts are placed under the superintendence of the religious communities ; lastly, the schools opened for the use of the aborigines have remained in charge of the missionary societies, by whom they were originally founded. These are, for the most part, technical institutions, where are taught especially such crafts as carpentry, cartwright's work, joinery, bookbinding, and printing. For these establishments a large number of teachers are drawn from the native population itself. The colony also possesses high schools or colleges which prepare young men for the liberal professions. These are under the control of the University, which was incorporated in 1873, and which is an examining body empowered to grant degrees, without any machinery for imparting instruction. There are altogether five colleges aided by Government grants under the Higher Education Act, each with full staff of professors and lecturers in classics, muthamatics, and the physical sciences. But despite all the facilities offered for public instruction, the proportion of attendance is far below the average amongst the civilised peoples of Europe, the rate being scarcely more than one in thirty of the population. The Colonial Government has already its public debt, which about equals six years of revenue. The latter is derived for the most part from customs, excise, stamps, and legacy dues. The rest is made up from the profits on the railways post-office, telegraph service, tolls, and rent or side of public lands and mines. The colony is divided for administrative purposes into seven provinces with sixty-six fiscal divisions and sixty-nine judicial districts, which will be found tabulated in the Appendix.

The province, which was definitely annexed to Cape Colony in 1877, and which became an integral part of the same political system in 1880, would pmbably have been still left to its aboriginal populations and to the squatters of Boer or mixed descent, had not the discovery of the diamond fields made it a valuable uccpiisition for the Colonial Government. In 1871, that is one year after the report of the won- derful finds had been spread abroad, the Cape authorities invited the chief of the Griquas, a Bushman named Waterboer, to accept the British suzerainty, and then hastened to comply with the wish which he was stated to have expressed on the subject. The conduct of the Colonial Government in connection with this affair was certainly somewhat high-handed, although it could scarcely be expected that much regard could be paid to the fact that the miners attracted to the district had already set up the independent republic of Adamanta. The Orange Free State also put in a claim for the possession of this territory ; but the right of the