most Dutch of them all. As good Americans when dead go to Paris, so do good Dutchmen while still alive go to Stellenbosch,—and more especially good Dutchwomen, for it is a place much affected by widows. The whole of this country is so completely Dutch that an Englishman finds himself to be altogether a foreigner. The coloured people of all shades talk Dutch as their native language. It is hard at first to get over the feeling that a man or woman must be very ignorant who in an English Colony cannot speak English, but the truth is that many of the people are much less ignorant than they are at home with us, as they speak in some fashion both English and Dutch. In the Eastern Province of the Colony, as in the other Colonies and divisions of South Africa, the native speaks some native language,—the Kafir, Zulu, or Bechuana language as the case may be; but in the part of the Western Province of which I am speaking,—that part which the Dutch have long inhabited,—there is no native language left among the coloured people. Dutch has become their language. The South African language from the mouths of Kafirs and Zulus does not strike a stranger as being odd;—but Dutch volubility from Hottentot lips does do so.
I must not finish this short record of my journeys in the Western Province of the Cape Colony without repeating the expression of my opinion as to the beauty of the scenery and the special charms of the small towns which I had visited.
