subsistence. Where possible, especially among the Xhosa and the Basotho,
innovative families were seizing the opportunity to produce a surplus for
the market in such towns as Kimberley and Johannesburg, but they were
experiencing increasing constraints by the end of the century.
The experience ofthe Sotho illustrates this process. Eversincethe 1830s,
when Afrikaner stock farmers began to settle 'on the highveld, the Sotho
had been their major suppliers of grain, and during the 1870S the Sotho
responded vigorously to the new market opportunities in Kimberley, but
the tide began to turn in the 1890S.The burgeoning population of Basuto-
land was beginning to bear heavily on the arable land left to it within the
boundaries set in 1870. The arrival of the railroad from the ports to Bloem-
fontein, Kimberley,and Johannesburg led to the importation of grain from
the United "States, Argentina, and Australia, which could be marketed
more cheaply than grain could be transported by ox wagon from the farms.
At the same time, white landowners in the Orange Free State were turning
increasingly from pastoralism to crop production, the republican govern-
ment was imposing a tariff against Basotho grain, and the diamond- and
gold-mining industries were vigorously recruiting Sotho labor. By 1900,