he growth of a class of
people resembling the "mean whites" of the Southern States of America,
loafers and other lazy or shiftless fellows who hang about and will not
take to any regular work. I heard them described and deplored as a new
phenomenon, but gather that they are not yet numerous. Their appearance,
it is to be feared, is the natural result of that contempt for hard
unskilled labour which the existence of slavery inspired in the whites;
and they may hereafter constitute, as they now do in the Southern States
of America, the section of the population specially hostile to the
negro, and therefore dangerous to the whole community.

To an Englishman or American who knows how rapidly his language has
become the language of commerce over the world; how it has almost
extinguished the ancient Celtic tongues in Scotland and Ireland; how
quickly in the United States it has driven Spanish out of the South
West, and has come to be spoken by the German, Scandinavian, and
Slavonic immigrants whom that country receives, it is surprising to find
that Dutch holds its ground stubbornly in South Africa. It is still the
ordinary language of probably one-half of the people of Cape Colony
(although most of these can speak some English) and of three-fourths of
those in the Orange Free State, though of a minority in Natal.
Englishmen settling in the interior usually learn it for the sake of
talking to their Dutch neighbours, who are slow to learn English; and
English children learn it from the coloured people, for the coloured
people talk it far more generally than they do English; in fact, when a
native (except in one of the coast towns) speaks a European tongue, that
tongue is sure to be Dutch. Good observers told me that although an
increasing number of the Africanders (_i.e._, colonists born in Africa)
of Dutch origin now understand English, the hold of Dutch is so strong
that it will probably continue to be spoken in the Colony for two
generations at least. Though one must call it Dutch, it differs widely
from the cultivated Dutch of Holland, having not only preserved some
features of that language as spoken two centuries ago, but having
adopted many Kafir or Hottentot words, and having become vulgarized into
a dialect called the Taal, which is almost incapable of expressing
abstract thought or being a vehicle for any ideas beyond those of daily
life. In fact, many of the Boers, especially in the Transvaal, cannot
understand a m