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Q'RELL (otherwise PAUL BLOUET, the genial French critic of the British school- boy) gives some account of the Transvaal, its cities, president, and settlers. Like other travellers he has formed a high opinion of the resources, mineral and agricultural, of South Africa, and especially of the Trans- vaal, and he fully endorses the testimony of Lord RANDOLPH CHURCHILL that the Boers will never develop these resources. Though it is now well known that the coun- try is underlaid with gold, it is equally certain the Boers will never dig for it. They will continue to scratch the surface, but they will not find the energy to dig far below it. They occupy,' says MAX O'RELL, "immense tracts of land "which they do not cultivate, and in their "hands the country makes no progress.
I "have seen farmers whose farms were as large as Devonshire, and who contented themselves with pasturing cattle on a few hundred acres. They are ignorant, behind "the times, stubborn and lazy. They refuse to till the earth (with modern implements. "They do the kind of farming that was done in the time of ABRAHAM, ISAAC, and JACOB. Their houses are often like pigsties. "Before going to bed, they take off their
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found growing wild within five hundred "miles Johannesburg has a very promising park and beautiful private gardens. And please to remember that the railway was only brought to Johannesburg a year ago, so that each stone, each plank, each nail "that served to raise this city in the desert, by enchantment so to speak, must have "been brought there in heavy carts drawn by oxen, at the rate of about a mile and a "half an hour." The Boers, he adds, have contributed neither to its birth nor its growth. | The streets are wide und straight, and the town now possesses irrigation works and reservoirs, the want of water having at first been its greatest drawback. The population is most cosmopolitan, but the great bulk of the settlers are of British origin. All the luxuries of civilisation are obtainable, though they are expensive, but money is easily carned and is freely spent. MAX O'RELL sums up his impressions of the great gold city as follows:-"Johannesburg will absorb the Transvaal; the apathy of the Boers will be bound to give way to the ever 'increasing activity of the English; but the prestige of England will profit nothing The Transvaal is destined to by this. become an Anglo Saxon_republic, which will one day form part of the United States | of South Africa. With me this is not a all that is dirtiest, bravest, most old simple impression, but a firm conviction." fashioned and most obstinate in a Breton, The reason he gives for this conviction is all that is most suspicious, sly, and mean
the belief that the English settlers there in a Norman, all that is shrewdest, most have never forgiven the old country the hospitable, and most puritan and bigoted humiliation forced on them by Mr. GLAD "in a Scot, mix well, stir and serve, and you
STONE after the reverse at Majuba Hill, by “have a Boer, or, if you will-a boor." submitting to that defeat and rendering them The lively French critic rightly adds that ridiculous in the eyes of all the Dutch popu- the world goes round too quickly to long lation in South Africa. Our friendly critic allow the Boer to stand still; "he will have may prove a true prophet, but we are doubt- to mend or end." For a long time, he ful on that point. Federation will yet, we says, the Boers refused to have railways think, precede separation in South Africa, in the Transvaal because they are not but a great deal will probably depend upon mentioned in the Bible, and only the course steered in the present exceedingly sanétioned them under the title of "steam awkward position in which the Secretary of tramways." The Raad for Parliament) State for the Colonies has been placed
or bluuders, also refused to have the Government by the indiscretions, Buildings insured against fire because "if “it be God's will that they shall burn, there "is no going against it." Our author specially notes the fact that the Boers are all dead shots. Their army consists of only a com- pany or two of regular soldiers, but they can count some twenty thousand riflemen, and reckon upon their ability as marksmen to preserve the independence of the country. They gave us a taste of their quality at Majuba Hill, but the soldiers then opposed to them were raw boys, who had not learned to shoot. How they would fare at the hands of such a force as the Cape Mounted Rifles or the Bechuanaland Police is quite another question:
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What MAX O'RELL has to say about Johannesburg is still more interesting. Pre- toria, the official capital of the republic, is a small town of a few thousand inhabitants, verdant and pretty, with a fine Government Building, the most imposing edifice in South Africa, which cost upwards of £200,000. But Johannesburg is described as the most marvellous monument "of British energy "and perseverance," clearly at once the centre and focus of business and industry in the Transvaal, and, in MAX O'RELL'S opinion, the most important town in South Africa. We will, however, let him speak for himself; he wrote in December, 1893 :-
Johannesburg, which is seven years old "and no more, is to-day a town of 60,000 inhabitants, well built, possessing first "class hotels, shops as important as those "of the large European towns, elegant 'suburbs, dotted over with charming villas; "and although there is not a tree to be
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follies, of Mr. RHODES and Dr JAMESON, | It will tax the ingenuity of the greatest statesman to avoid on the one hand the Scylla of Boer implacability and obstinacy and the Charybdis of British pride and passion on Happily for all parties Mr. the other.
CHAMBERLAIN is not likely to lose his head or to forget what is due to justice on the one side and his country's honour on the other side. But it is truly unfortunate that, at the very moment he was contemplating the promotion of Lord CARNARVON's pet pro- ject, the federation of the South African states, the torch of civil strife should have been thus recklessly ignited.
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Concerning the two great figures in South African politics, MAX O'RELL has a good deal to say. He has considerable admiration for both CECIL RHODES and PAUL KRUGER, and gives us brief but graphic sketches of these remarkable personages. He speaks, moreover, from personal knowledge and ob- servation. CECIL RHODES he regards as the impelling force of the South African chariot; "OON PAUL" as the drag on its wheels. Max describes the ex-Premier of Cape "Mr. RHODES is six feet Colony as follows:- "high. His head is large and powerful "looking, his eye dreamy but observant. "He has the quizzical look of the cynic, and "the large forehead of an enthusiast. When he laughs, which is not often, the left "cheek shows a dimple that you would think charming in a child or a young woman. The face is placid; it is that of a diploma- "tist who knows how to wait and see what you are going to say or do. All suddenly "this face lights up, and the gaze becomes
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turn it to account." The writer to express the belief that Mr. RHODES ambition is to acquire for the mot try the whole of South Africa up to the Zambesi, and if John Bull gives him a free hand this will be realised, whereas if he is hampered by the Colonial Office he may one day become President of an independent African confederation with Mr. HoPMEYR for Vice-President. President KRUGER is tersely described by MAX O'RELL as a thickset man, rather below the middle height, who carries his seventy odd years lightly. His forehead is narrow, his nose and mouth large and wide, his eyes small and blinking, like those of a forest animal; his voice so gruf and sonorous that his ya is almost a roar. how to write,- and He barely knows speaks in the Dutch patois used by the Afrikander farmers. The President's mode of life is primitive. He rises at five every morning, and lives on simple fare. His habits are not over refined, as might be ex pected. When MAX had an interview with him in his drawing room he smoked an the enormous pipe and expectorated on carpet in the most unceremonious manner. year salary of £8,000 a... Enjoying a and £500 for public expenses, he lives. comfortably
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on the latter sum and saves the former. He must therefore be wealthy. He not infrequently preaches the the sermon in the Church at Pretoria, which stands opposite to the Presidential Bun galow. In the course of the interview he accorded to the traveller, President KRUGER said the English were welcome to Johan- nesburg; they helped to develop the re sources of the Trausvaal and in nowise threatened the independence of the country. In reply to a suggestion from Mix that the Transvaal was being hemmed in, “OON 'PAUL" remarked:- "I can count upon "eighteen thousand men, sir, who will die i "to the last man to defend the independence
of their country."
There has come a collision between the driver and the drag, it would seem. Mr. RHODES, who is little over forty, has been a young man in a hurry, and either by his own instrumentality or that of his agents has put back the clock of South African progress.
Had he been content to let inatters alone, the end he hoped for and was working for might have been peacefully attained. Time is fighting for the Anglo- Saxon. The English language is steadily obliterating Dutch throughout South Africa. MAX O'RELL says that in the free library. at Burghersdorp, one of the most Dutch towns of the Cape, he found 2,000 English volumes and about 40 Dutch books. The ... · Dutch boys at the Cape play football and cricket and get Anglicised at school. At Johannesburg, too, he tells us when at the end of a concert the orchestra plays the national hymn of the Transvaal no one pays. any attention, and the audience talks ande remains seated; but the moment the first notes of " God Save the Queen" are struck, every one rises and all the men's heads, are... uncovered. This last fact hardly bears out the pet conviction of our cheery French friend about the Transvaal becoming an Anglo-Saxon republic, but rather helps to confirm a striking observation made by him in another part of his most entertaining work. It is in reference to his description of Cape Colony. He says: "Now one offi "John Bull's mottoes is that of the late "Marshal MCMAHON, Tysis, yre "Here I am, and here I stay. He was in "the Cape, and he stayed there. "would more easily withdraw a lump
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