THE PIONEER ADVANCE                        113 of Cape Colony itself was little more promising. In Great Britain the whole dependency was so lightly esteemed that it was determined in 1849 to utilize it as a dumping ground for convicts, after Australia had resentfully thrown off this burden. The convict ship Neptune was actually sent out, but the indigna­tion of the colonists was so demonstrative that no convicts were landed, and the ship with its load was held for five months in Simon's Bay, the present Naval Station, a little south of Cape Town, until the recalling order was received, February 13, 1850. The colony had not sunk so low as to submit to this mark of contempt, but it was undoubtedly drooping in hopes and enter­prise, and the progress of its industrial development was pain­fully slow. There had been a pronounced diversion from agriculture to cattle and sheep raising for reasons before noted, and wool had become the chief and almost the only export of consequence. Still the peculiar condition and vagaries of the South African climate and seasons were hard to provide for or overcome, and there were prevalent diseases that attacked horses, cattle, and sheep, and greatly checked the rise of the pastoral industry. Communication from one part of the colony to another was very slowly improved. The roads were few and bad, and in 1867 the only stretch of railway in all South Africa was a bare forty miles from Cape Town to Wellington. The total annual export of the Colony was a trifle over ^2,000,000 in value, and there was no diversification of industries and no manufactures of any considerable extent.1 This was the situation when the gloom was suddenly dispelled and the whole face of South Africa changed by the discovery of the Diamond Fields.