CHAPTER XII.
BLOEMFONTEIN.
Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Republic, is a
pleasant little town in the very centre of the country which
we speak of as South Africa, about a hundred miles north of
the Orange River, four hundred north of Port Elizabeth
whence it draws the chief part of its supplies, and six
hundred and eighty north east of Capetown. It is something
above a hundred miles from Kimberley which is its
nearest neighbour of any importance in point of size. It is
about the same distance from Durban, the seaport of Natal,
as it is from Port Elizabeth;—and again about the same
distance from Pretoria the capital of the Transvaal. It may
therefore be said to be a remote town offering but little
temptations to its inhabitants to gad about to other markets.
The smaller towns within the borders of the Republic are
but villages containing at most not more than a few hundred
inhabitants. I am told that Bloemfontein has three thousand;
but no census has as yet been taken, and I do not
know whether the number stated is intended to include or
exclude the coloured population,—who as a rule do not live
in Bloemfontein but at a neighbouring hamlet, devoted to
the use of the natives, called Wray Hook. I found Bloem-
