and though one meets many Scotchmen among the bankers and merchants, the Scottish element seems smaller than in Ontario or most of the Australasian colonies. Many settlers have come from Germany, but these have now become blended with the English. There are no better colonists than the Germans; and indeed the Europeans whom the last ninety years have brought have been mostly of excellent stocks, superior to the mid-European races that have lately inundated the United States.

The

Though the English and the Dutch form distinct social elements which are not yet fused, and though these elements are now politically opposed, there is no social antagonism between the races. Englishman will deride the slowness of the Dutchman, the Dutchman may distrust the adroitness or fear the activity of the Englishman, but neither dislikes nor avoids the other. Neither enjoys, or even pretends to, any social superiority, and hence neither objects to marry his son or his daughter to a member of the other race. Both are, as a rule, in fairly easy circumstances; that is to say, nearly everybody has enough, and till lately hardly any one had more than enough. Within the last few years, however, two changes have come. The diamond-mines and the gold-mines have given vast riches to a small number of persons, some halfdozen or less of whom continue to live in the colony, while the others have returned to Europe. These great fortunes are a disturbing element, giving an undue influence to their possessors, and

exciting the envy or emulation of the multitude. The other change is the growth of a class of people resembling the "mean whites" of the Southern States of America, loafers and other lazy or shiftless fellows who hang about and will not take to any regular work. I heard them described and deplored as a new phenomenon, but gather that they are not yet numerous. Their appearance, it is to be feared, is the natural result of that contempt for hard, unskilled labour which the existence of slavery inspired in the whites: and they may hereafter constitute, as they now do in the Southern States of America, the section of the population specially hostile to the negro, and therefore dangerous to the whole community.

To an Englishman or American who knows how rapidly his language has become the language of commerce over the world; how it has almost extinguished the ancient Celtic tongues in Scotland and Ireland; how quickly in the United States it has driven Spanish out of the South West, and has come to be spoken by the German, Scandinavian, and Slavonic immigrants whom that country receives, it is surprising to find that Dutch holds its ground stubbornly in South Africa. It is still the ordinary language of probably one-half of the people of Cape Colony (although most of these can speak some English) and of three-fourths of those in the Orange Free State, though of a minority in Natal. Englishmen settling in the interior usually learn it for the sake of talking to their Dutch neighbours,

who are slow to learn English; and English children learn it from the coloured people, for the coloured people talk it far more generally than they do English; in fact, when a native (except in one of the coast towns) speaks a European tongue, that tongue is sure to be Dutch. Good observers told me that although an increasing number of the Africanders (ie., colonists born in Africa) of Dutch origin now understand English, the hold of Dutch is so strong that it will probably continue to be spoken in the Colony for two generations at least. Though one must call it Dutch, it differs widely from the cultivated Dutch of Holland, having not only preserved some features of that language as spoken two centuries ago, but having adopted many Kafir or Hottentot words, and having become vulgarised into a dialect-called the Taal-which is almost incapable of expressing abstract thought or being a vehicle for any ideas beyond those of daily life. In fact, many of the Boers, especially in the Transvaal, cannot understand a modern Dutch book, hardly even a newspaper. This defect might give English a great advantage if the Boers wished to express abstract ideas. But they have not this wish, for they have no abstract ideas to express. They are a people who live in the

concrete.

The rise of great fortunes, which I have noted, has been too recent and too exceptional a phenomenon to have affected the generally tranquil and even tenor of South African social life. Among

both Dutch and English months and years flow smoothly on. Few new immigrants enter the rural districts or the smaller towns; few new enterprises are started; few ambitions or excitements stir the minds of the people. The Witwatersrand goldfield is, of course, a startling exception, but it is an exception which tends to perpetuate the rule, for, by drawing off the more eager and restless spirits, it has left the older parts of both the colonies more placid than ever. The general equality of conditions has produced a freedom from assumption on the one hand, and from servility on the other, and indeed, a general absence of snobbishness, which is quite refreshing to the European visitor. Manners are simple, and being simple, they are good. If there is less polish than in some countries, there is an unaffected heartiness and kindliness. The Dutch have a sense of personal dignity which respects the dignity of their fellows, and which expresses itself in direct and natural forms of address. An experienced observer dilated to me on the high level of decorum maintained in the Cape Parliament, where scenes of disorder are, I believe, unknown, and violent language is rare. One expects to find in all colonies a sense of equality and an element of sans gêne in social intercourse. But one usually finds also more roughness and more of an offhand, impatient way of treating strangers than is visible in South Africa. This may be partly due to the fact that people are not in such a hurry as they are in most new countries. They have plenty of time for everything.

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The climate disinclines them to active exertion. There is little immigration. Trade, except in the four seaports,' is not brisk, and even there it is not brisk in the American sense of the word. The slackness of the black population, which has to be employed for the harder kinds of work, reacts upon the white employer. I have visited no new Englishspeaking country where one so little felt the strain and stress of modern life. This feature of South

implies a slow material

African society, though it development, is very agreeable to the visitor, and I doubt if it be really an injury to the ultimate progress of the country. In most parts of North America, possibly in Australia also, industrial development has been too rapid, and has induced a nervous. excitability and eager restlessness of temper from which South Africa is free. Of course, in saying this, I except always the mining districts, and especially the Witwatersrand, which is to the full as restless and as active as San Francisco or Melbourne.

The comparative ease of life disposes the English part of the population to athletic sports, which are pursued with almost as much avidity as in Australia. Even one who thinks that in England the passion for them has gone beyond all reasonable limits, and has become a serious injury to education and to the taste for intellectual pleasures, may find in the character of the climate a justification for the devotion to cricket, in particular, which strikes him in South Africa. Now that the wild animals have

Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London and Durban.