to be raised. I may say that the Colonial Government is fully aware
of the importance of following out such lines of work, and steps
are being taken to give effect to such exploration. Vegetation,
however, by its radiating power, must always be one of the chief
aids to improved water supply. In the matter of mineral wealth,
Cape Colony is not so rich as some adjacent lands. It contains
coal, but the individual beds of coal are thin, and owing to this
thinness the coal necessarily alternates with shale, which is more
conspicuous than in the coal fields of Britain. I remember that
Professor Sedgwick, my old master in geology, told me that in his
youth seams of coal only some four to six inches thick were worked
on the sides of hills in Yorkshire, and that the coal was carried
on horseback over the country to supply the wants of the mountain
population. Cape Colony is in a far better state than that. In the
Eastern Province the beds of coal are frequently a foot or two or
more in thickness. They crop out on the surface with a slight dip
near to the railway, and although only worked at present in a few
pits (as at Cyphergat, Fairview, Molteno--I did not visit the
Indwe)--the coal-bearing rocks certainly extend over a much wider
area of country than that which has been explored. One of the happy
results at which I arrived in my short visit to this district was
to find that there are certain extinct forms of reptilian life
associated with these coal beds, by means of which the geological
horizon upon which the coal occurs may be traced through the
country; so that there is a prospect of this mineral being followed
along its outcrop in the Eastern Province with comparative ease by
this means. It is desirable on all accounts that coal should be
burned rather than timber, since the destruction of wood is harmful
to the supply of water. With regard to the gold of Cape Colony, I
have not the requisite knowledge to speak with the same confidence.