Australians Available.

“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?”