Africa like best, and has not been disturbed and excited by the influx of restless Europeans. Few places are more pleasant and more healthy to live in than the numerous up-country towns and villages of the Free State, especially along the northern and eastern borders. The Freestaters, from some reason or other, have settled down to their independent life far more peaceably than the Boers of the Transvaal. We do not hear of such continual treks from the former as from the latter state. No matter what the form of government is, whether elected by their own choice or imposed upon them by others, the Transvaalers cannot shake off that strange migratory instinct that sends them far afield to the north. The solution of a religious motive prompting them to move their tents and wander still further in search of a promised land cannot be accepted. It would appear to be the spirit of complete lawlessness, which has become inveterate after their wanderings in past times, far from all control.

(17) The citizens of the Free State, unlike their brethren of the Transvaal, are not troubled with a native question. In fact, they have scarcely enough natives to fill their labour markets. They have passed strict laws with regard to them, and natives travelling through the State are required to hold a pass, bearing a shilling stamp. There is a law also which restricts the number of native huts upon each farm. The wages of native farm servants average about 20s. a month with food, town servants 15s. to 18s. a week without food. The Free State derives revenue from its native population. It levies a hut-tax of 10s., and a poll-tax of 10s., and gathers from these sources a sum of £8,000-£10,000 a year. The natives are under the rule of a Commandant, whose yearly salary is £300 per annum. This is the only direct payment made by the Free State to the expenses

of their native department. The natives are not allowed to acquire landed property, except under very vexatious restrictions. They have no part or share in the government of the country.

(18) The form of a Boer Government, both in the Free State and the Transvaal, is simple in itself. The Volksraad, or assembly of the people, is the supreme power, and all 'white' persons, either born in the State, or who have resided any time in it, or have fixed property or leases of fixed property, are burghers and qualified to vote for the election of members of the Volksraad and for the State President. The President's term of office lasts five years, and he, with the advice and consent of the Executive, can proclaim martial law, declare war, conclude peace, and is, together with the Executive Council, responsible to the Volksraad. The Executive Council consists of the State President as chairman, the Government Secretary and the Landdrost of the capital, and three unofficial members, who are elected by the Volksraad, one every year, for the term of three years. The members of the Volksraad are chosen for four years from every district, town, and ward, or field cornetcy in the country districts. The yearly revenue is raised by quit-rents on farms, stamp duties, various licenses, and hut-tax1.

(19) The remarkable feature of a Boer Republic is its military organisation. Every burgher or colonist between eighteen and sixty years of age can be called upon to serve on a commando. The whole country being divided into districts, and these districts being subdivided into wards, each of these wards elects a field-cornet, who has military duties when a commando is called out. The commandant is the officer who takes the chief command of the field-cornets. Such an arrangement was, in the Appendix XXVIII. Boer Government.

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first instance, rendered necessary by the presence of the natives. Another peculiarity about the Dutch Republics has been, and still to a great extent is, their intensely Protestant character. In the old republican Grondwet of the Transvaal the qualifications of membership of the Volksraad were (1) burghership for three years; (2) possession of fixed property; (3) membership of the Protestant Church.

(20) The Government of the Boer Republics differs in many respects from that of the Cape Colony, with its bold assertion of abstract rights for black and white alike, with its pushing commercial element, and generally more advanced civilisation. The question is, how long will they remain unaffected by the quickened pulsation of a more complicated political life close to their borders? Railways and telegraphs have done much already to destroy the archaisms of the veldt, and must do a great deal more. There will, however, be no struggle over democratic principles among the white people themselves; there may be a dispute about the advisability of lavishing the franchise upon the native. It is the question of the native vote which may prevent any speedy assimilation of the two kinds of government.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE NATIVE STATES AND PROTECTORATES.

(1) The indigenous population of South Africa may be divided generally into two large classes: (1) The Bushmen, Hottentots, Korannas, Griquas or Bastards.

(2) The Bantu or Kaffir tribes. The former are the true aborigines of the country, and it was roving bands of Hottentots and Bushmen, mixed together, that the first Dutch colonists met in the vicinity of Table Bay. Those who lived near the sea-coast would appear to have been most degraded, as they are to this day in Great Namaqualand on the west coast1. The Hottentots generally may be said to bear the same relation to the inland tribes as the Celts in West Europe bear to the Teutons. Everywhere they were pressed to the desert countries or to the most inaccessible places. The Hottentots and their congeners were found principally on the west of the continent, the Bantû or Kaffir races on the east, and in Damaraland and Ovampoland on the north. The Swedish traveller Sparrman, who wrote about 17751776, found the dividing line between the two races some distance to the west of the Fish River Valley. In appearance, custom, manners, and character, they were very different. From the remarks already made on their language it may be seen that the Bushmen were always a very degraded type, living almost entirely by hunting, and never getting beyond the purely nomadic life. The term Hottentot, or Hüttentüt, a word meaning stutterers or stammerers, was a name given to this race by the early Dutch explorers on account of the curious clicks or sounds in their language. The Hottentots, from time immemorial, pastured large herds and flocks, and had frequent intercourse with the first South African settlers, bartering their stock for European goods. They called themselves 'Khoi-Khoi,' a term meaning men of men; but termed the Bushmen Sän,' and reckoned them lower than dogs. Originally the Khoi-khoi and the Sän were possibly of one race and probably spoke one 1 Theal's 'Compendium of South African History,' p. 48. 2 Notice of Dr. Hahn's work, 'Cape Quarterly Review,' April, 1882.

language, but while the former led a pastoral and agricultural life, the latter always remained hunters.

(2) The Hottentots have merged with the Europeans, and are a very useful class1. In the 1891 census summaries they represented just one sixth part of the 301,385 credited to 'All other coloured persons,' being more numerous than Malays or Indians. But there were only 5,296 Bushmen left in the Cape Colony in 1891, and they lived a separate existence far to the northwest of the Cape Colony and on the borders of the Kalahari Desert. Like the Australian aborigines, they seem destined to become extinct. Their language, myths, cavepaintings, and modes of life, representing as they do the lowest type of mankind, are interesting chiefly to philosophers. They possess most wonderful powers of vision, and can track animals over the hard surface of the veldt with unerring skill. They have an intimate knowledge of the plants and herbs of the field, and tip their arrows with the deadliest poison extracted from them. But there has never been a single instance of a civilised Bushman. As children of the desert they will live and die. The frontier farmer, armed with better weapons, has hastened their extinction, and in a few years this strange diminutive race, with its quaint inarticulate language resembling Herodotus' description of the Troglodytes, who 'jabbered like bats,' will disappear.

(3) The great Kaffir, or Bantû race, are a very different people. Alone amongst the savages of the world they refuse to die out before the advance of the white man. They are of a higher type than the Red Indians of North America, the Australian aborigines, and even the New Zealand Maories. By some they have been reckoned superior to the Hindoo and Malay races. As it has been one of the past difficulties of England to conquer them, 1 Appendix XXIX.