e watering-places and hydros of Europe, endure the
snows of Davos, and the winter of the Engadine, might be tempted to try
the Karroo of the Colony. They did not interfere with John D. Logan
when he bought 100,000 acres of the Karroo at Matjesfontein and
proceeded to turn it to remunerative account. They do not object to
private companies or individuals making irrigation works, or planting
groves, which thrive so wonderfully; and as Cape Colony has been British
for over ninety years, it is rather hard that the Boers should bear all
the blame.

Now the Cape Government may well plead guilty to having left many things
undone which they ought to have done. I sincerely believe that the time
will come when the climate, which has the quality of making old men
young, and the consumptive strong, will become universally known and
appreciated; but to attract invalids from the crowded Riviera and
Switzerland, visitors must not be lodged in third-rate hotels, near
noisy tram-lines, and fed on tinned meats.

I was about concluding this preface, when a South African appeared at my
house and drew my attention to the Scriptural quotation in my
Johannesburg letter--"It is expedient that one man should die for many,"
and begged me to make my meaning clear. I read the paragraph over
again, and as I see that to a wilfully contentious mind it might be
construed into a meaning very different to what I intended, I will try
to make it clearer.

Certain Johannesburgers at the Club had related to us the story of the
various efforts they had made to obtain their political rights, and the
reforms which were needed to work their mines profitably; and after they
had finished, I replied that everyone was well aware of the
demonstrations, mass-meetings, speeches, petitions to Kruger, menaces,
Jameson's Raid, and so on, and they themselves had just informed me how
often they had yielded to bribery of officials, and yet withal they
confessed they were not a whit further advanced. Their position had not
been bettered, but was somewhat worse. "The corrective of it all," I
said, "seems to me to lie in the Scriptural verse, `it is expedient that
one man should die for many.' There is a vast mass of sympathy in
England with you, but it is inert and inactive. To make that sympathy a
living force in your behalf, it must be proved that you are in earnest,
that nothing sordid lies behind this dissatisfaction. You must prove
that you have a cause for w