Yet in the main their policy was a wise one, and they saw farther ahead than the men who worked the political machine at Cape Town.

Froude was too sanguine when he wrote, "A Confederate South African Dominion, embracing all the States, both English and Dutch, under a common flag, may be expected as likely to follow, and perhaps at no very distant period." But he added that it would have to come by the deliberate action of the South African communities themselves.

That was not the only discovery he had made in South Africa.

He had found that the Transavll, reputed then and long afterwards in England to be worthless, was rich in minerals, including gold.

He warned the Colonial Office that Cetewayo, with forty thousand armed men, was a serious danger to Natal.