aramount in this
region whenever Her Majesty's government chooses to exert it, the name
of the Orange River Sovereignty has been given to the whole territory.

The portion of this territory which is properly a British
settlement--or, in other words, which is inhabited by Dutch and
English colonists, is in extent about two-thirds of the whole. It is
subdivided into four districts, for each of which a stipendiary
magistrate has been appointed. These magistrates, with eight
unofficial members of council--who are all respectable
landowners--form, in conjunction with the 'British resident,' the
legislature of the colony. The title of the Resident is borrowed from
the official system of India, and was originally given to him when
acting as a government commissioner for the protection of the native
tribes; but his office is at present simply that of a colonial
governor.

The extensive country which is thus governed, cannot be better
described than in the words of Sir Harry Smith, who, in a dispatch
written in January 1848, gives the following account of the whole
region, which he had just traversed, on his way from the Cape to
Natal. He describes it as 'a country well fitted for the pasturage of
cattle, and covered in every direction with large game. It is,' he
adds, 'strongly undulating; and although badly watered, well adapted
for the construction of dams; and, the soil being generally rich, it
is capable, if irrigated, of producing every species of grain. It is
miserably destitute of trees, frequently even of bush, and is thickly
studded with abrupt and isolated hills, whose height frequently
approaches that of mountains. Over the greater part of this tract of
country, not a single native is to be seen; nor for many years, if
ever, has it been inhabited by one. The gardens of the emigrants
(boers) are in many places very good; their houses miserable, as they
have been deterred from exhausting their little remaining capital by
building on a doubtful and precarious tenure. That objection to the
increase of their comfort, if the word be applicable, will now, I
trust, be happily removed.' The absence of trees, of which Sir Harry
speaks, is believed to have originated from the same cause which
occasions a similar want in the prairies of America--that is, the
native custom of burning down the grass every winter, to fertilise the
soil. Where trees have been planted recently, they have grown well.
The apple, pear, peach, and oth