honourable position and one which cannot be tarnished by any incapability for ruling which he may have shown. But were he to live after that as a pensioner on English bounty, the bounty of the country which had annihilated his own, then I think that he had better at least live far away from the Transvaal, and from the hearing of the sound of a Dutchman's voice.

And why should we pay such a pension? Is it necessary that we should silence Mr. Burgers? Have we done him an injustice that we should pay him a compensation for the loss of his office? It is said that we pay dethroned Indian Princes. But we take the revenues of dethroned Indian Princes,-revenues which have become their own by hereditary descent. Mr. Burgers had a month or two more of his Presidency to enjoy, with but little chance of re-election to an office the stipend of which could not have been paid for want of means. But this argument ought not to be required. An expensive and disagreeable duty was forced upon us by a country which could not rule itself, and certainly we should not convict ourselves of an injustice by giving a pension to the man whose incompetence imposed upon us the task. I trust that the rumour though very general has been untrue.

CHAPTER IV.

The Transvaal.-Pretoria.

PRETORIA itself, the capital of our new country, is a little town, lying in a basin on a plateau 4,500 feet above the level of the sea,-lat. 25° 45', S., long. 28° 49′, E. From its latitude it would be considered to be semitropical, but its altitude above the sea is so great as to make the climate temperate. In regard to heat and cold it is very peculiar,—the changes being more rapid and

violent than I have experienced in any other place. I was there during the last days of September, which would answer to the last days of March on our side of the equator. The mornings were very fine, but somewhat chilly,—not so as to make a fire desirable but just to give a little sting to the water. The noon-day was hot,— not too hot for exercise; but the heat seemed to increase towards the afternoon, the level rays of the sun being almost oppressive. Then suddenly there would come an air so cold that the stranger who had not expected the change and who was wearing perhaps his lightest clothes would find that he wanted a great coat and a warm cravat round his neck. It was not till I was about to leave the place that I became alive to its peculiarities. I caught a cold every evening in consequence of my ignorance, becoming quite hoarse and thinking of hot water externally and internally as I went to bed;-but in the morning I was always quite well again. I was assured, however, that the climate of Pretoria was one which required great care from its inhabitants. It is subject to very violent storms, and deaths from lightning are not uncommon. The hail-storms, when they come, are very violent, the stones being so large as not unfrequently to batter the cattle to death. I was glad to find that they were unfrequent, and that my good fortune saved me from experiencing their effects. "What does a man do if he be out in the veld?" I asked when I heard these frightful stories. "Put his saddle over his head," was the answer, showing much as to the custom of a people who seldom walk to any distance always having horses at command. "But if he have not a saddle?" "Ah, then indeed, he would be badly off." My informants, for I was told of the hail-storms and the necessary saddles more than once, seemed to think that in such a dilemma there South Africa. II.

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would be no hope for a man who, without a saddle, might chance to be beyond the reach of a roof. I could not, however, learn that people were often killed. I therefore accepted the Pretorian hailstones with a grain of salt.

The first President of the Colony was named Pretorius and hence the name of the town, which became the capital in the time of his son who was the second President. The old man was one of the pioneer farmers who first entered in upon the country under circumstances already described, and the family now is very numerous in the Transvaal, occupying many farms. Potchefstroom, —a hundred miles to the southwest of Pretoria,—was the first capital and is still the bigger town; but President Pretorius the second thought it well to move the seat of Government more to the centre of the large district which the Republic was then claiming, and called the little city Pretoria, after the name of his father.

I am quite unable to say what is the population of the capital, as those of whom I inquired could only guess at it from their own point of view. I should think it might amount to two thousand exclusive of the military. At the time I was there it was of a very shifting nature, and will be so for some months. It has lately become the seat of a British Government, and people have flocked into it knowing that money will be flying about. Money has flown about very readily, and there are hands of course to receive it. Six hundred British soldiers are stationed there under tents, and soldiers, though their pay is low, are great consumers. A single British soldier will consume as much purchased provender as a whole Boer family. But as people are going in, so are they going out. The place therefore in its present condition is like a caravansary rather than an established town. All menial services are done by a Kafir population,-not

permanently resident Kafirs who can be counted, but by a migratory imported set who are caught and used as each master or mistress of a family may find it possible to catch and use them. "They always go when you have taught them anything," one poor lady said to me. Another assured me that two months of continuous service was considered a great comfort. And yet they have their domestic jealousies. I dined at a house at which one of our British soldiers waited at table, an officer who dined there having kindly brought the much-needed assistance. with him. The dinner was cooked by a Kafir who, as the lady of the house told me, was very angry because the soldier was allowed to interfere with the gala arrangements of the day. He did not see why he should not be allowed to show himself among the company after having undergone the heat of the fray. These Kafirs at Pretoria, and through all those parts of the Transvaal which I visited, are an imported population,—the Dutch having made the land too hot to hold them as residents. The Dutch hated them, and they certainly have learned to hate the Dutch in return. Now they will come and settle themselves in Pretoria for a short time and be good-humoured and occasionally serviceable. But till they settle themselves there permanently it is impossible to count them as a resident population.

Down many of the streets of the town,-down all of them that are on the slope of the descent,-little rivulets flow, adding much to the fertility of the gardens and to the feeling of salubrity. Nothing seems to add so much to the prettiness and comfort of a town as open running water, though I doubt whether it be in truth the most healthy mode of providing for man the first necessary of life. Let a traveller, however, live for a few days but a quarter of a mile from his water supply and he will learn

what is the comfort of a rivulet just at his door-step. Men who have roughed it in the wilderness, as many of our Colonists have had to do, before they have settled themselves into townships, have learned this lesson so perfectly that they are inclined, perhaps, to be too fond of a deluge. For purposes of gardening in such a place as Pretoria there can be no doubt about the water. The town gardens are large, fertile, and productive, whereas nothing would grow without irrigation.

The streets are broad and well laid out, with a fine square in the centre, and the one fact that they have no houses in them is the only strong argument against them. To those who know the first struggling efforts of a colonial town,-who are familiar with the appearance of a spot on which men have decided to begin a city but have not as yet progressed far, the place with all its attributes and drawbacks will be manifest enough. Το those who have never seen a city thus struggling into birth it is difficult to make it intelligible. The old faults of old towns have been well understood and thoroughly avoided. The old town began with a simple cluster of houses in close contiguity, because no more than that was wanted. As the traffic of the day was small, no provision was made for broad spaces. If a man could pass a man, or a horse a horse, or at most a cart a cart,- -no more was needed. Of sanitary laws nothing was known. Air and water were taken for granted. Then as people added themselves to people, as the grocer came to supply the earlier tanner, the butcher the grocer, the merchant tailor his three forerunners, and as a schoolmaster added himself to them to teach their children, house was adjoined to house and lane to lane, till a town built itself after its own devise, and such a London and such a Paris grew into existence as we who are old have