if it ever rained." I
told him it did both, the latter pretty often. "Then," said he, "that
big place that you have spoken to me about cannot exist; it could not be
built so strong as to stand more than a week; it would be blown down or
washed away. You see that the Deutch mensch (Dutchmen) cannot be
humbugged so easily as you thought." Perfectly satisfied at his
flattering discovery, he walked out of the room and took his place for
the night in his waggon, and I have no doubt communicated to his
admiring Hottentot driver how he had shown the Englishman that he was a
clever fellow.

I have generally found that the most reasonable men are the purely
uncultivated and the most highly educated; the intermediate states
appear to carry out the saying, that "a little knowledge is a dangerous
thing." A very short time ago I met a gentleman who erred much in the
same manner as the Boer. I happened to mention the daring and
perseverance of a celebrated African hunter, and that his sporting
accounts were very interesting, when the gentleman to whom I refer told
me that he had no patience with this hunter. His words were to the
following effect: "I am no sportsman, as I never fired off a gun in my
life, and therefore I cannot judge of his shooting. But I have read his
book, and that story about pulling out the rock-snake carried such an
air of untruth about the whole thing that I never wish to hear more
about him." I asked why a man should not catch hold of a rock-snake if
he liked, and in what was the air of untruth. "Why," he sapiently
remarked, "it would have stung him to death at once." I immediately
withdrew from the argument, but could not help thinking that this
gentleman ought never again to be able to look a rock-snake, or any
other of the boa species, in the face. The boa has many faults, but to
accuse him of possessing poison, which I presume the gentleman meant
when he said "sting," is really too bad. Had this snake's ghost known
of the accusation that was brought against his whole species, and
possessed one-half the wisdom that is attributed to the serpent, he
would have risen, and hissed an angry hiss against so barefaced a libel.
A man who enacts the part of a critic ought at least to know something
of the subject on which he was speaking, and in this case should
certainly have been aware that snakes are not rigged with a sting in
their tails, like wasps, that none of the rock-snakes or
boa-constrictors