It is needful that a country should have a Capital, and therefore the Orange Free State has Bloemfontein. I was told that some original Boer named Bloem first settled there by the side of the stream in which water runs when there has been rain, and that hence has come the name. But the little town has thriven with a success peculiarly its own. Though it would seem to have no raison d'être just there where it stands, though it has been encouraged and fostered by no peculiar fertility, adorned with no scenic beauty, enriched by no special gifts of water or of metals, even though the population has not grown beyond that of the suburb of some European town, still it carries its metropolitan honours with a good air, and shocks no one by meanness, dirt, or poverty. It certainly is not very grand, but it is grand enough. If there be no luxury, everything is decent. The members of the Volksraad are not carried about in gorgeous equipages, but when they have walked slowly to their Chamber they behave themselves there with decorum. There is nothing pretentious in Bloemfontein,nothing to raise a laugh at the idea that a town with so small a population should call itself a capital.

It is a town, white and red, built with plastered walls or of brick, with a large oblong square in the centre; with four main streets running parallel to each other and with perhaps double that number of cross streets. The houses are generally but one storey high, though this is not so invariably the case as at Kimberley. I do not remember, however, that I was ever required to go upstairs, except at the schools. The supply of water is I

am assured never-failing, though in dry weather it has to be drawn from tanks. A long drought had prevailed when I reached the place, and the bed of the riverlet had been dry for many days; but the supply of water

seemed to be sufficient. Fuel is very scarce and consequently dear. This is of the less importance as but little is wanted except for the purpose of cooking.

At one extreme end of the town are the public buildings in which the Volksraad is held and the judges sit. Here also are the offices of the President and the Secre- . tary. Indeed all public business is here carried on. The edifice has but the ground floor with a clock tower rising from the centre. It is long and roomy and to my eye handsome in its white neatness. I have heard it laughed at and described as being like a railway station. It seems to be exactly that which such a Capital and such a Republic would require. The Volksraad was not sitting when I was there and I therefore could only see the beautiful arm-chairs which have lately been imported at a considerable expense for the use of the Members;£13 10s. a chair I think I was told! It is impossible to conceive that gentlemen who have been accommodated with such chairs should wilfully abandon any of the dignity attached to them. For a central parliament the chairs may be fitting, but would be altogether out of place in a small provincial congress. Except the churches and the schools there are not any public buildings of much note in Bloemfontein, unless the comfortable residence of the President may be so called. This belongs to the State but is not attached to the House of Parliament.

My residence when I was at Bloemfontein was at the Free State Hotel, and I do not know that I was ever put up much better. Two circumstances militated against my own particular comfort, but they were circumstances which might probably recommend the house to the world at large. I was forced to take my meals in public at

stated hours;—and I had a great deal too much put before me to eat. I am bound, however, to say that all I had given to me was good, though at that time it must have been very difficult to supply such luxuries. The butter had to be bought at 5s. 6d. a pound, but was as plentiful as though the price had been only a shilling,and it was good which I had not found to be the case elsewhere in South Africa. What was paid for the peas and beans and cauliflowers I don't know; but I did know that the earth around was dry and parched and barren everywhere, so that I was almost ashamed to eat them. These details may be of interest to some readers of my pages, as the place of which I am speaking is becoming at present the sanitorium to which many an English consumptive patient is sent. Such persons, at any rate when first reaching Bloemfontein, are obliged to find a home in an hotel, and will certainly find one well provided at the Free State. It commended itself to me especially because I found no difficulty in that very serious and often troublesome matter of a morning tub.

Bloemfontein is becoming another Madeira, another Algiers, another Egypt in regard to English sufferers with weak chests and imperfect lungs. It seems to the ignorant as though the doctors were ever seeking in increased distance that relief for their patients which they cannot find in increased skill. But a dry climate is now supposed to be necessary and one that shall be temperate without great heat. This certainly will be found at Bloemfontein, and perhaps more equably so through the entire year than at any other known place. The objection to it is the expense arising from the distance and the great fatigue to patients from the long overland journey. Taking the easiest mode of reaching the capital of the Free State the traveller must be kept going six weary days in

a Cobb's coach, being an average of about thirteen hours a day upon the road. This is gradually and very slowly becoming lightened by the opening of bits of the railway from Fort Elizabeth; but it will be some years probably before the coaching work can be done in less than five days. The road is very rough through the Catberg and Stromberg mountains, so that he who has made the journey is apt to think that he has done something considerable. All this is so much against an invalid that I doubt whether they who are feeble should be sent here. There can I imagine be no doubt that the air of the place when reached is in the highest degree fit for weak lungs.

There is at present a difficulty felt by those who arrive suddenly at Bloemfontein in finding the accommodation they desire. The hotel, as I have said above, is very good; but an hotel must of its nature be expensive and can hardly afford the quiet which is necessary for an invalid. Nor during my sojourn there did I once see a lady sitting at table. There is no reason why she should not do so, but the practice did not seem as yet to have become common. I am led by this to imagine that a house comfortably kept for the use of patients would well repay a medical speculator at Bloemfontein. It should not be called a sanitorium, and should if possible have the name of the doctor's wife on the brass plate on the door rather than that of the doctor. And the kitchen should be made to do more than the dispensary,—which should be kept a little out of sight. And there should be fiddles and novels and plenty of ribbons. If possible three or four particularly healthy guests should be obtained to diminish the aspect of sickness which might otherwise make the place gloomy. If this could be done, and the coach journey somewhat lightened, then I think

that the dry air of Bloemfontein might be made very useful to English sufferers.

In reference to the fatigue, tedium, and expense of the coach journey,-a seat to Bloemfontein from the Fort Elizabeth railway costs £18, and half a crown a pound extra is charged for all luggage beyond a small bag,—it may be as well to say that in the treaty by which £90,000 have been given by Great Britain to the Free State to cover any damage she may have received as to the Diamond Fields, it is agreed that an extra sum of £15,000 shall be paid to the Free State if she shall have commenced a railway with the view of meeting the Colonial railway within a certain period. As no Dutchman will throw over a pecuniary advantage if it can be honestly obtained, a great effort will no doubt be made to secure this sum. It may be difficult to decide, when the time comes, what constitutes the commencement of a railway. It appears impossible that any portion of a line shall be opened in the Free State till the entire line shall have been completed from the sea to the borders of the State, as every thing necessary for the construction of a line, including wooden sleepers, must be conveyed overland. As the bulk so to be conveyed will necessarily be enormous it can only be carried up by the rail as the

rail itself progresses. And there must be difficulty even in surveying the proposed line till it be known actually at what point the colonial line will pass the Orange River or which of the colonial lines will first reach it. Nevertheless I feel assured that the Dutchman will get his £15,000. When an Englishman has once talked of paying and a Dutchman has been encouraged to think of receiving, the money will probably pass hands.

A railway completed to Bloemfontein would double the value of all property there and would very soon