purposes. But they would there be, if not free from British rule,—for the Republics were not yet established,—far at any rate from British interference. If any people ever fought and bled for a land, they had fought and bled for Natal. But when they found they could not do what they liked with it, they "trekked" back and left it. And yet this people have shewn themselves to be generally ill-adapted for self government,—as I shall endeavour to shew when I come to speak of the Transvaal Republic,—and altogether in want of some external force to manage for them their public affairs. Nothing perhaps is harder than to set a new Government successfully afloat, and the Dutch certainly have shewn no aptitude for the task either in Natal or in the Transvaal.
It is not to be supposed that all the Dutch went, or that they went all at once. In some parts of the Colony they are still to be found prospering on their lands,—and some of the old names remain. But the country strikes the stranger as being peculiarly English, in opposition to much of the Cape Colony which is peculiarly Dutch. In one district of Natal I came across a congregation of Germans, with a German minister and a German church service, and German farmers around, an emigration from Hanover having been made to the spot. But I heard of no exclusively Dutch district. The traveller feels certain that he will not require the Dutch language as he moves about, and he recognises the Dutchman as a foreigner in the land when he encounters him. In the Transvaal, in the Orange Free State, and in many parts of the Western districts of the Cape Colony,—*
