BRITAIN’S NEWEST COLONY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1426, 20 July 1915, Page 4

BRITAIN’S NEWEST COLONY.

The colony which General Botha’s brilliant campaign has brought under the British flag is an immense stretch of country, measuring 322,000 square miles. Descriptions of the military operations have dwelt on the desert areas, because it was in the desert that the troops were suffering hardships, but all accounts agree that under a reasonable and flexible administration South West Africa might and should support a considerable white population. In recent years it is the mineral wealth of the colony that has received most attention, the diamond fields producing gems valued at over seven million sterling in the course of live years, but the agricultural and pastoral country would doubtless attract the British colonist. The structure of the country is simple. A bell of sandy desert stretches along the coast, rising gradually towards a central plateau, which is broken at intervals by mountains, and east of the plateau again is another sandy belt, falling to the level of the Kalahari Desert. The uplands have an average height of about 5000 feet, the climate is healthy, the soil generally fertile and water fairly abundant. The northern area is sub-tropical and is within the malaria region. The diamonds fields occupy a stretch ol the sandy belt, probably 250 miles long, but ol course the diamond!ferous country is not continuous. Rich and extensive copper deposits are being opened up and worked in the Otavi and Tsumeh districts, at the terminus of the northern railway, where, by the way, General Botha the other day accepted the surrender of the German forces. Deposits of tin, lead, iron and coal are known to exist, but the prospecting has not yet been thorough, and the possibilities of the country in the matter of minerals can only be guessed. As for the pastoral country, Herr Dernberg, who visited the colony when he was Colonial Minister, declared that it would carry three million cattle and ten million sheep. An estimate of the stock carried prior to the war gave 200,000 cattle, 500,000 goats, 500,000 sheep and 30.000 horses and mules, but these figures are admitted to be far below the carrying capacity of the un* scratched pasture, and where irrigation has been attempted even on a modest scale that capacity has been immediately and enormously increased. There are well defined areas of magnificent cattle country. Out of 33,000,000 acres of allotted agricultural country only some 13.000 acres are under cultivation, and it is probable that the low rainfall and high evaporation will always handicap the agriculturist, though in 1913, when a drought caused the general failure ol the crops, the irrigated land scored a notable triumph, and the possibilities of irrigation are known to be extensive. Broadly, however, the travellers who have visited the country describe it as containing a vast area of good pastoral land, and lor the rest they regard the mineral wealth as being the principal element in the future prosperity.