SOUTH AFRICA.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 12, 1 September 1900, Page 962

SOUTH AFRICA.

Wow that the war news is becoming less

abating, the question of the colonization of South Africa forces itself on the attention of the public. Although large tracts of country are. totally unfitted for close settlement, there remain very considerable areas capable, if properly cultivated and irrigated, of sustaining a very large population. State-aided military settlement will doubtless be the course adopted. The settlement of new country by retired military men is not always an immediate success. A soldier's life does not, as a rule, make a man the energetic, hard-working settler that is required to break in a new country. But if he does not make a good settler himself his sons often do. In the case of South Africa, however, a large proportion of the men likely to remain as military settlers would be young, active men, who volunteered with this particular end in view. It is astonishing with what tenacity the Boers are persisting against great odds in postponing the inevitable conclusion of the war. The last news to hand at tim^ of writing is to the effect that they intend concentrating their forces in the bush country in the northern portion of the Transvaal. It will not, however, be the fault of the generals now in command of our forces if they succeed in their intention.