and a small but no doubt increasing Kafir element. But all this is leavened and brought into some agreement with European modes of action and thought by the preponderating influence of Dutch blood. So that the people, though idle, are not apathetic as savages, nor quite so indifferent as Orientals. But yet there is so much of the savage and so much of the oriental that the ordinary Englishman does not come out and work among them. Wages are high and living, though the prices of provisions are apt to vary, is not costly. Nor is the climate averse to European labourers, who can generally work without detriment in regions outside the tropics. But forty years ago slave labour was the labour of the country, and the stains, the apathy, the unprofitableness of slave labour still remain. It had a curse about it which fifty years have not been able to remove.
The most striking building in Capetown is the Castle, which lies down close to the sea and which was built by the Dutch,—in mud when they first landed, and in stone afterwards, though not probably as we see it now. It is a low edifice, surrounded by a wall and a ditch, and divided within into two courts in which are kept a small number of British troops. The barracks are without, at a small distance from the walls. In architecture it has nothing to be remarked, and as a defence would be now of no avail whatever. It belongs to the imperial Government, who thus still keep a foot on the soil as though to show that as long as British troops are sent to the Cape whether for colonial or imperial purposes, the place is not to be considered free from imperial
