to give Rhode Island as many Senators as New York before she would consent to Federation. There remains the Transvaal, which we have just annexed with its 40,000 Dutchmen and its quarter of a million of native population,-a number which can only be taken as a rough average and one which will certainly be greatly exceeded as our borders stretch themselves in their accustomed fashion. Here again we have for the moment a Crown Colony, and one which can hardly get itself into working order for Confederation within the period allowed by the Permissive Bill of last Session. The other day there was a Dutch Parliament,—or Volksraad, in which the Dutchman had protected himself altogether from any voting interference on the part of the native. Downing Street can make the Transvaal confederate if she so please, but can hardly do so without causing Dutch members to be sent up to the general Parliament. Now these Dutchmen do not talk English, and are supposed to be unwilling to mix with Englishmen. I fear that many years must pass by before the Transvaal can become an operative part of an AngloSouth African Confederation. I have here simply endeavoured to point at the condition of things as they may affect the question of Confederation; not as intending to express an opinion. against Confederation generally. I am in doubt whether a Confederation of the South African States can be carried in the manner proposed by the Bill. that if such a measure be carried the view should be the amelioration of the and that that object cannot be effected by inviting the coloured races to come to the polls. Voting under a low suffrage would be quite as appropriate to the people of But I feel sure chief object in coloured races, the Indian Provinces and of Ceylon as it is at the present moment to the people of South Africa. The same evil arose in Jamaica and we know what came from it there. CHAPTER V. Capetown; the Capital. I HAD always heard that the entrance into Capetown, which is the capital of the Cape Colony, was one of the most picturesque things to be seen on the face of the earth. It is a town lying close down on the seashore, within the circumference of Table Bay so that it has the advantage of an opposite shore which is always necessary to the beauty of a seashore town; and it is backed by the Table Mountain with its grand upright cliffs and the Lion with its head and rump, as a certain hill is called which runs from the Table Mountain round with a semicircular curve back towards the sea. The "Lion" cer tainly put me in mind of Landseer's lions, only that Landseer's lions lie straight. All this has given to Capetown a character for landscape beauty, which I had been told was to be seen at its best as you enter the harbour. But as we entered it early on one Sunday morning neither could the Table Mountain nor the Lion be seen because of the mist, and the opposite shore, with its hills towards The Paarl and Stellenbosch, was equally invisible. Seen as I first saw it Capetown was not an attractive port, and when I found myself standing at the gate of the dockyard for an hour and a quarter waiting for a Custom House officer to tell me that my things did not need examination,-waiting because it was Sunday morning, I began to think that it was a very disagreeable place indeed. Twelve days afterwards I steamed out of the docks on my way eastward on a clear day, |