Diamond Mines: Pioneer Advance Page 126



	THE PIONEER ADVANCE	89

	tines, who were cumbering the ground that might be occupied by God's favored people.¹ But the settlers were phlegmatic and peaceful by nature, content with their bare living, and with no ardor for extending their bounds by conquest. An extraordinary impulse was needed to convert them into adventurers and wanderers in the desert. This impulse was given by the capture of the Cape, the influx of jostling immigrants from Great Britain, new and vexing legislation, and disasters to crops which exalted the comparative value of pasturage lands.'² At the opening of the administration of Lord Charles Somerset there was a marked effort on the part of the Home Government to promote the growth of the Colony. A regular mail packet service was established between England and the Cape, and ^50,000 were voted by Parliament in 1819 to be disbursed in aid of emigration to South Africa. This contribution was a powerful stimulus, and it is estimated that nearly 5,000 new settlers of British birth were added to the population of Cape Colony from March, 1820, to May, 1821. Unfortunately the South African climate in 1820 and the years immediately following was peculiarly aggravating. In 1819 there had been a heavy wheat crop and the consequent temptation to farmers to extend their wheat growing. So they did, but the crop of 1820 throughout South Africa was fatally blighted. The next year's crop fared no better, and thousands of farmers were ruined and brought even to the verge of starvation. Rations were distributed by the Colonial Government in the fall of 1821 to those who had no means to buy food, but the unrelieved suffering was widespread. Following hard on this scourge of blight came the prodigious floods of October, 1823, when it seemed to the colonists in the eastern districts as if the heavens were open for another deluge. Rain fell in torrents for days without ceasing, and overflowing rivers ran foaming to the sea, carrying millions of tons of earth in their turbid floods as well as the shattered houses of settlers who had barely time to fly for ¹ " Impressions of South Africa," James Bryce. "South Africa," Theal. ² " Annals of Natal," John Bird, p. 505.