ion to field labour, the contempt for the blacks, the tendency to
prefer large pastoral farms to agriculture, and, in some districts, a
rather sleepy and easy-going temperament. Even in Mashonaland I was told
that the English ranchmen were apt to fall into the habits of their
Boer neighbours. They form the large majority of the town population,
for not only the seaports, but also such inland places as Graham's Town,
King William's Town, and Kimberley are quite English, and nearly all the
commerce and finance of the country are in their hands. They have more
enterprise than the Dutch, and are much less antiquated in their ideas,
so it is to them that the profits of the new mining ventures have
chiefly fallen, so far as these have not been appropriated by keener and
more ingenious adventurers from Europe, mostly of Semitic stock.

There has been hardly any Irish immigration; and though one meets many
Scotchmen among the bankers and merchants, the Scottish element seems
smaller than in Ontario or most of the Australasian Colonies. Many
settlers have come from Germany, but these have now become blended with
the English. There are no better colonists than the Germans; and indeed
the Europeans whom the last ninety years have brought have been mostly
of excellent stocks, superior to the mid-European races that have lately
inundated the United States.

Though the English and the Dutch form distinct social elements which are
not yet fused, and though these elements are now politically opposed,
there is no social antagonism between the races. The Englishman will
deride the slowness of the Dutchman, the Dutchman may distrust the
adroitness or fear the activity of the Englishman, but neither dislikes
nor avoids the other. Neither enjoys, or even pretends to, any social
superiority, and hence neither objects to marry his son or his daughter
to a member of the other race. Both are, as a rule, in fairly easy
circumstances; that is to say, nearly everybody has enough, and till
lately hardly anybody had more than enough. Within the last few years,
however, two changes have come. The diamond mines and the gold-mines
have given vast riches to a small number of persons, some half-dozen or
less of whom continue to live in the Colony, while the others have
returned to Europe. These great fortunes are a disturbing element,
giving an undue influence to their possessors, and exciting the envy or
emulation of the multitude. The other change is t