in a drought, as I did, he certainly did not look upon a lovely country. But it is a country in which men may earn easy bread by pastoral and agricultural pursuits; in which with a certain amount of care,—which has to show itself mainly in irrigation,—the choicest fruits of the earth can be plenteously produced; in which the earth never refuses her increase if she be asked for it with many tears. A howling wilderness certainly it is not. But Sir George Clerk when he described the country was anxious to excuse the conduct of Great Britain in getting rid of it, while Sir George Grey was probably desirous of showing how wrong Great Britain had been on the occasion.
I do not know that I ever travelled across a less attractive country than the Orange Free State, or one in which there is less to gratify the visitor who goes to see things and not to see men and women. And the men and women are far between; for over an area presumed to include 70,000 square miles, a solid block of territory about 300 miles long by 120 miles broad, there are probably not more than 30,000 white people, and half that number of coloured people. The numbers I know are computed to be greater by the officials of the Free State itself,—but no census has been taken, and with customary patriotism they are perhaps disposed to overestimate their own strength. They, however, do not give much above half an inhabitant to every square mile. It must be remembered that in the Free State the land is all occupied;—but that it is occupied at the rate I have described. I altogether deny that the Free State is a howling wilderness, but I do not recommend English autumn tourists to
