CHAPTER XVII.
CONCLUSION.
I have now finished my task and am writing my last chapter
as I make my way home across the Bay of Biscay. It has
been laborious enough but has been made very pleasant by
the unvarying kindness of every one with whom I have come
in contact. My thanks are specially due to those who have
travelled with me or allowed me to travel with them. I
have had the good fortune never to have been alone on the
road,—and thus that which would otherwise have been inexpressibly
tedious has been made pleasant. I must take this
last opportunity of repeating here, what I have said more
than once before, that my thanks in this respect are due to
the Dutch as warmly as to the English. I am disposed to
think that a wrong impression as to the so-called Dutch
Boer of South Africa has become common at home. It has
been imagined by some people,—I must acknowledge to have
received such an impression myself,—that the Boer was a
European who had retrograded from civilization, and had
become savage, barbarous, and unkindly. There can be no
greater mistake. The courtesies of life are as dear to him as
to any European. The circumstances of his secluded life
have made him unprogressive. It may, however, be that the
