y from the latter town. It is what the Germans call a
"freundliches Staedtchen," a bright and cheerful little place with 3,300
white and 2,500 black inhabitants, nestling under a rocky kopje, and
looking out over illimitable plains to the east and south. The air is
dry and bracing, and said to be especially beneficial to persons
threatened with pulmonary disease. As it is one of the smallest, so it
is one of the neatest and, in a modest way, best appointed capitals in
the world. It has a little fort, originally built by the British
government, with two Maxim guns in the Arsenal, a Protestant Episcopal
and a Roman Catholic cathedral as well as Dutch Reformed churches, all
kinds of public institutions, a spacious market square, with a good club
and an excellent hotel, wide and well-kept streets, gardens planted with
trees that are now so tall as to make the whole place seem to swim in
green, a national museum, and a very handsome building for the
legislature, whose principal apartment is as tasteful, well-lighted, and
well-arranged as any I have seen in any British Colony or American
State. The place is extremely quiet, and people live very simply, though
not cheaply, for prices are high, and domestic service so dear and
scarce as to be almost unprocurable. Every one is above poverty, but
still further removed from wealth. It looks, and one is told that it is,
the most idyllic community in Africa, worthy to be the capital of this
contented and happy State. No great industries have come into the Free
State to raise economic strife. No capitalists tempt the virtue of
legislators, or are forced to buy off the attacks of blackmailers. No
religious animosities divide Christians, for there is perfect religious
freedom. No difficulties as to British suzerainty exist, for the
Republic is absolutely independent. No native troubles have arisen. No
prize is offered to ambition. No political parties have sprung up.
Taxation is low, and there is no public debt. The arms of the State are
a lion and a lamb standing on opposite sides of an orange-tree, with the
motto, "Freedom, Immigration, Patience, Courage", and though the lion
has, since 1871, ceased to range over the plains, his pacific attitude
beside the lamb on this device happily typifies the harmony which has
existed between the British and Dutch elements, and the spirit of
concord which the late President Brand so well infused into the public
life of his Republic. In the Orange F