They have come victoriously out of a dreadful trial. Is it to be wondered at that now they cry aloud to England, saying, "Do not rob us of the freedom we have won through so much trial and agony?"

Amongst the influences which have been most potent in restraining the Dutch South Africans from being corrupted by the barbarism with which they were in almost continual contact, the chief was that of their wives. These devoted females have ever been more patriotic and more determined to be free than even their lords and masters. When the great "trek" commenced from the Cape Colony, the women took as prominent a part in the emigration as did the men. Families moved off together, old and young, male and female, with their waggons, horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and some little furniture. Thus a domestic character was given to the movement from its very initiation, which made it differ, in an immeasurable degree, from the pouring forth of hordes of young unmarried men that we witness nowadays. The proportions between the sexes maintained themselves throughout the whole of the journeyings of these people. Children grew up and were married, new families were formed, other children were born and grew up in their turn to be fathers, before the final settlement and consolidation of the Transvaal took place in 1858. Throughout the whole of this period as girls, as mothers, and as grandmothers-the softer sex accompanied and shared in the perils, the labours, and the privations of the men. In Natal, in the earlier days, many of them performed acts of heroic courage-carrying the bullet-bags, replenishing the powder-flasks, removing the wounded, bringing water to the thirsty and food to the hungry, in many desperate and fatal engagements. True as wives, tender as nurses, earnest in prayer, and wise in council, these women not unnaturally gained a lofty influence amongst the migrating people. They have ever been, and still remain, entirely anti-English. Major Charters, R.A., speaking of them as he saw them in 1841, says::

"The spirit of dislike to English sway was remarkably dominant amongst the women. Many of these who formerly had lived in affluence, but were now in comparative want, and subject to all the inconveniences

GRACEFUL HOSPITALITY.

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accompanying the insecure state in which they were existing,-having lost, moreover, their husbands and brothers by the savages,-still rejected with scorn the idea of returning to the Colony. If any of the men began to droop or lose courage, they urged them on to fresh exertions, and kept alive the spirit of resistance within them."

This feeling in favour of independence is as vivid to-day, and as truly a part of the character of the female Boer, as it ever has been. These women are thoroughly and entirely attached to their families-are strictly conservative, and would urge, and are prepared now to urge, that every sacrifice, including life and property, should be made for the furtherance of the desire of their people to be free from the original allegiance that was forced on them by the cession of the Cape Colony in 1806. I have heard them say that, "if the mothers and wives of England could be made aware of their losses, trials, and sorrows, and of their determination to expose themselves to fresh miseries and still greater evils rather than submit to a rule they detest, the sons and husbands of English homes would never have been sent to destroy theirs."

This feeling has, I am sorry to say, been recently added to and strengthened by a most uncalled-for and reckless attack upon the Dutch South African women, which appeared in the 'Nineteenth Century,' and is ascribed to an inexperienced attaché of Sir Theophilus Shepstone-one who knows about as little of the women he defamed as a Patagonian savage might.

This aversion to English rule must not, however, be supposed to include any personal hostility or want of hospitality to Englishmen. Captain Patterson, who was recently travelling with Mr Sargeaunt, junior, a son of William C. Sargeaunt, C.M.G., Crown Agent for the Colonies, and others for hunting purposes, through the northeastern districts of the Transvaal, has repeatedly and publicly stated the extreme gratification he and his party felt at the kindness with which they were everywhere treated. A Scotch store-keeper also, who attempted to journey from Upper Caledon to Durban, with a trap and two horses, told me "that he was not only most kindly welcomed and made comfortable all along his road, but that he could not prevail upon his Boer entertainers to accept payment, even for the feeds supplied to his horses."

Of course, along the main routes of traffic, travellers cannot expect to meet with such liberality from the farmers whose houses are continually invaded by wanderers chiefly poor Englishmen and other Europeans-who resemble in many important peculiarities the ubiquitous British tramp, so well known in casual wards and county prisons. The Boers have acquired a horror of this sort of representative of England's greatness. The fellows have been known, at lonely farmhouses, to force their unwelcome presence on the inhabitants with threats; and their appearance throughout the country has become a source of continual complainings and heart-burnings by reason of their depredations and levying of black-mail. But very different from the reception given to these vagrants is that accorded to people of any nation, travelling with decent equipages or on horseback. These, if they are commonly polite, and fall in with any degree of grace with the customs of the country, are invariably well treated, being admitted to the house, and freely offered what food and accommodation it can afford. I may here note one of the charges most frequently made against the Boers, that they are unneighbourly, cannot live at peace. with English farmers, and are always striving to shake themselves free from the ways and surroundings of civilisation whenever it approaches them. That this is not unnatural a glance at their cattle-farming arrangements will easily show. An Englishman has to live beside a Boer farm, instantly a danger arises that disease will be brought amongst the cattle. The Englishman swaps (chops) and exchanges, engages in transport-riding, obtains cattle he cares little how or where, and may at any moment be the cause of great loss to his neighbours by contaminating their herds with lung sickness and worse diseases. Disputes, therefore, constantly arise about boundaries, which would be of little or no importance if only Boers were neighbours to Boers, because the Dutch South African farmer's stock is always of his own, or of other clean and well-known raising. So fond, indeed, are the Boers of keeping the same stock in a family, that at their auctions, which invariably take place on the occurrence of a death, members of the deceased's

family will bid double the market value for the animals put up for sale rather than allow a clean herd to be broken up and scattered away from the original proprietary. Disputes about boundaries are quickly followed by the impounding of cattle-a source of grave irritation. I am sorry to say that English settlers have been known in a poor neighbourbood to live almost entirely from pound-fees and mileage, earned by continual and often very unnecessary intermeddling with their neighbours' herds.

This, with the insolent contempt for his neighbour's ways and habits too often manifested by the stranger, is the cause of many feuds and removals. The foreigner comes into a country which has been conquered by the energy and at the risk of other men. For a few pounds he finds ready to his hand a place cleared equally of wild beasts and fierce barbarians. He has no sympathy with the people amongst whom he comes to plant himself—no share in their sorrows, and no interest in their history. Is it to be wondered at that a mutual repulsion should exist between such opposites? There are often also to be found amongst our colonists men capable of any meanness, and who are only restrained from open robbery by fear of the law.

A circumstance which took place some years ago, and by which the English name was brought into great contempt amongst even a Kafir race, may not here be out of place.

A Basuto chief wanted a cannon, and had repeatedly asked an English trader located at his kraal whether one could not be made if he provided the materials. The trader knew nothing about cannon-founding, but having been a puddler, or some such thing, in his youth, he calculated how he could best outwit the man under whose protection and at whose place he was living. He told the chief that a brass cannon could be made; and to that end induced him to purchase no less than 12,000 lb. weight of expensive brass and copper wire, promising that by the time all the material would be collected, a brother of his from the Royal Arsenal in England would arrive to make the gun. The difficulty now was about the brother. One night, however, a half-starved vagrant crept up to the trader's hut, having slipped into Basutoland to be out of the way of the police. The instant

he hove in sight our friend rushed forward eagerly, exclaiming in English, "Don't speak for your life! throw your arms round my neck and pretend you are my long-lost brother." The warm greeting requested was instantly exchanged between the two rascals, and the new-comer was speedily hurried into the house, out of sight, where he was washed, dressed, and instructed in the part he had to play. The next day the chief, who of course had heard of the arrival, came down to inquire if this was not the cannonfounder? and was gratified by hearing that it was. An attempt was now made to commence the work. A large quantity of metal was actually fused, and a coarse casting made of what might, by a stretch of the imagination, be conceived to represent the rudimentary form of a cannon. With this success the Basutos were, of course, delighted.

The next part in the play was to get a last haul out of the chief before the confederates would decamp. He was sent for and told that a lathe with a bore of enormous size, some valuable finishing tools, and other things, were required to complete the work. These goods could be obtained in Natal, but only by white men, as an inquiry for them by Kafirs might arouse suspicion. The unsuspecting chief gave sixteen horses for this purchase. The thieves then pretended to remember that a portion of the breech-that containing the touch-hole-should have let into it a mass of solid silver to prevent its burning away too readily. Accordingly a collection of half-crowns and shillings was made, with which and the horses the confederates bolted, leaving their brass casting as a standing monument and perpetual reminder of their rascality. Other blackguardisms are often practised not only against Kafirs but against farmers. There are everywhere to be found men whose thefts, frauds, and daring robberies have rendered them almost universally known throughout South Africa.

Those who read newspaper "daily" reports will not find it difficult to guess who are pre-eminent in brutality. As I was travelling in June by post-cart from Pretoria, I heard from a fellow-passenger, Mr Jennings, a story of revolting cruelty, that has evoked, for hundreds of miles throughout Boerland, deep and widespread contempt for a people who