devote their holydays to visiting the land, unless they have become very tired indeed of their usual resorts.
The farmer in the Orange Free State is generally a Dutch Boer,—but by no means always so. During my very short visit I came across various Englishmen who were holding or who had held land there,—Africanders perhaps, persons who had been born from British parents in the Gape Colony,—but altogether British as distinguished from Dutch. In the towns the shopkeepers are I think as generally English as the farmers are Dutch in the country. We hear of the Republic as an essentially Dutch country;—but I think that if a man about to live there had to choose the possession of but one of the two languages, English would be more serviceable to him of the two. In another twenty years it certainly will be so.
I travelled from the Diamond Fields to Bloemfontein and thence through Smithfield to the Orange River at Aliwal North. I also made a short excursion from Bloemfontein. In this way I did not see the best district of the country which is that which was taken from the Basutos,—where the town of Ladybrand now is,—which is good agricultural land, capable of being sown and reaped without artificial irrigation. The normal Dutch farmer of the Republic, such as I saw him, depends chiefly upon his flocks which are very small as compared with those in Australia,—three or four thousand sheep being a respectable pastoral undertaking for one man. He deals in agriculture also, not largely, but much more generally than his Australian brother. In Australia the squatter usually despises agriculture, looking
