Page:The empire and the century.djvu/630

 LIONEL PHILLIPS

is very capricious in the distribution of her favours. In some lands she has been bountiful in concealing treasures beneath the earth, as well as in so arranging the climatic conditions and the composition of the soil that the surface is a means of producing boundless wealth. In California, for instance, the fruits of the earth more than compensated for a declining mineral production. The virgin lands of Canada are so favourable to wheat-growing that they offer attractions to agricultural settlers without any of the speculative allurements which precious stones or precious metals dazzle before the eyes of the emigrant. Certain sections of the globe would assuredly have reason to complain at the way they have been treated if they had the power of making representations, notably some of the deserts and the icefields. There appears to have been as great a disparity in the endowment of the inanimate as of the animate world.

South Africa, for instance, in regard to whose mineral wealth the following observations are made, had not, up to the discovery of diamonds, offered any great attraction to the surplus people of the overcrowded communities of Europe. In 1868 the imports and exports of Cape Colony and Natal combined were, respectively, £2,278,566 and £2,578,647. At that time very little trade was done with any other South African ports. It 587