- fontein a pleasant place when I was there, but one requiring
much labour and trouble both in reaching and leaving. For a hundred miles on one side and a hundred on the other I saw hardly a blade of grass or a tree. It stands isolated in the plain,—without any suburb except the native location which I have named,—with as clearly defined a boundary on each side as might be a town built with a pack of cards, or one of those fortified citadels with barred gates and portcullises which we used to see in picture books. After travelling through a country ugly, dusty and treeless for many weary hours the traveller at last reaches Bloemfontein and finds himself at rest from his joltings, with his bones not quite dislocated, in the quiet little Dutch capital, wondering at the fate which has led him to a spot on the world's surface, so far away, apparently so purposeless, and so unlike the cities which he has known.
I heard of no special industry at Bloemfontein. As far as I am aware nothing special is there manufactured. It is needful that a country should have a Capital, and therefore the Orange Free State has Bloemfontein. I was told that some original Boer named Bloem first settled there by the side of the stream in which water runs when there has been rain, and that hence has come the name. But the little town has thriven with a success peculiarly its own. Though it would seem to have no raison d'etre just there where it stands,—though it has been encouraged and fostered by no peculiar fertility, adorned with no scenic beauty, enriched by no special gifts of water or of metals, even though the population has not grown beyond that of the suburb of some
