"What are the principal countries outside South Africa from which such
settlers could be drawn?"
"There are plenty of people in Australia, for instance, who would be
very glad of the opportunity to settle in nice places in Rhodesia if
they were tempted to do so. You must show that Rhodesia is better than
Australia, where you have the fringes of the coast and the best parts of
the interior already taken up. You have only to go to Melbourne,
Sydney, and other large Australian towns, to find that they have a very
large population who do not know what to do with themselves or where to
go, who would be valuable to a new country like Rhodesia. Take, for
example, the people who went from Australia to Paraguay. These would be
far better in Rhodesia amongst Englishmen than in Paraguay surrounded by
Spanish Americans, whose ideas and modes of life are so entirely
different. When I was in Melbourne I had an offer from fifteen hundred
Australians to settle in East Africa. I advised them not to do so until
the railway was built. They wanted to start ranches and raise cattle
there, but I said their stock would die before they could reach the
pastures. In Rhodesia to-day, however, you have a country, to which
such people would be very advantageous. Cape Colony has an enormous
area that requires to be populated, and so has Natal. How are you to
reach the class of people required for this? What are you to offer
them? It must be something better than where they are now."
"In your opinion Rhodesia is well adapted for cattle raising?"
"Yes; the Matabele found it so, and there are still many cattle there
despite the rinderpest. New cattle will do well enough, I think, if you
take them rapidly by railway across the malarial belt."
"And seeing that the Cape is so much nearer to England than Australia,
there is no reason why an export trade should not be developed in time?"