their ships. The life of
the sailor he considered strange and unnatural, but that of the clerk he
could not comprehend. Long and patiently he thought over what he had
seen during his visit to Cape Town, for that locality was to him the
most advanced civilisation he had seen; but he could come to no other
conclusion than that a mistake had been made by those who selected this
life. A conversation which took place on this subject between Victor
and Hans some time after his return to his own people may well explain
his view of the subject, and though anticipating the future slightly, we
will venture to insert it here.

"What is Cape Town like?" inquired Victor. "Is it much bigger than
Graham's Town?"

"Yes, much bigger. There are many houses, and these are large, whilst
the shops are supplied with every thing."

"Do the people there want much more, then, than we do in the country,
that the shops are so well supplied?"

"Yes, Victor, that is so. We here are accounted rich if we have plenty
of horses and cattle, a waggon, or perhaps two, two good guns, a house
that keeps out the rain, and just clothes enough to change about. It is
not so in the great towns. Your house must be very large. A man is
poor who is not able to eat his breakfast in one room, his dinner in a
second, and to drink his tea in a third. You may not sit in a room
whilst your servant places the dinner plates on a table: that would show
you were poor. You must not eat your dinner either in the same clothes
that you would wear at breakfast: that would show you were a poor
fellow. There are regular clothes for eating dinner in; and, Victor,
the young frauleins come to their dinner with scarcely any clothes on."

"Is this true, Hans?"

"It is, Victor. We turn up our sleeves when we skin an eland, and we
take off our coats and turn down our collars when we are too hot. The
frauleins in the towns turn down their dresses far lower than we do, and
their sleeves are turned up higher than we turn ours."

"Cess, this is strange. And you saw all this, Hans?"

"I did, Victor, and much more."

"What more did you see, Hans?"

"I will tell you. I saw a Roebargie officer come into a room where
there were many of these frauleins. He had never seen one of them
before, but looking at one, he asked a man near to take him to her. He
went up, Victor, bent his head very slowly, then--I tell you truth--he
seized the fraulein round the waist, and as so