toria, the administrative capital, which is
only an hour's journey from Johannesburg. Here you still see the old
house where Kruger lived. It was the throne of a copper-riveted
autocracy. No modern head of a country ever wielded such a despotic rule
as this psalm-singing old Boer whose favorite hour for receiving
visitors was at five o'clock in the morning, when he had his first cup
of strong coffee, a beverage which he continued to consume throughout
the day.

The most striking feature of the country around Pretoria is the Premier
diamond mine, twenty-five miles east of the town and the world's
greatest single treasure-trove. The mines at Kimberley together
constitute the largest of all diamond fields but the Premier Mine is the
biggest single mine anywhere. It produces as much as the four largest
Kimberley mines combined, and contributes eighteen per cent of the
yearly output allotted to the Diamond Syndicate.

It was discovered by Thomas M. Cullinan, who bought the site from a Boer
farmer for $250,000. The land originally cost this farmer $2,500. The
mine has already produced more than five hundred times what Cullinan
paid for it and the surface has scarcely been scraped. You can see the
natives working in its two huge holes which are not more than six
hundred feet deep. It is still an open mine. In the Premier Mine was
found the Cullinan diamond, the largest ever discovered and which made
the Koh-i-noor and all other fabled gems look like small pebbles. It
weighed 3,200 karats and was insured for $2,500,000 when it was sent to
England to be presented to King Edward. The Koh-i-noor, by the way,
which was found in India only weighs 186 karats.

[Illustration: _Photograph Copyright by South African Railways_

THE PREMIER DIAMOND MINE]

V

No attempt at an analysis of South Africa would be complete without some
reference to the native problem, the one discordant note in the economic
and productive scheme. The race question, as the Smuts dilemma showed,
lies at the root of all South African trouble. But the racial conflict
between Briton and Boer is almost entirely political and in no way
threatens the commercial integrity. Both the Dutchman and the Englishman
agree on the whole larger proposition and the necessity of settling once
and for all a trouble that carries with it the danger of sporadic
outbreak or worse. Now we come to the whole irritating labor trouble
which has neither color, caste, nor creed, or ge