schools as to which I could obtain no trustworthy information; but the pupils educated at them are few in number.
The average Boer is generally satisfied in regard to education if his children can be made to read the Bible. To this must be added such a knowledge of the ritual of the religion of the Dutch Reformed Church as will enable the children to pass the examination necessary for confirmation. Until this ceremony has been completed they cannot marry. So much, by hook or by crook, is attained, and thus the outermost darkness of ignorance is avoided. But the present law as to education does not provide for even this moderate amount of religious instruction, and is therefore, and has been, most unpopular with the Boers. It must be understood that on all religious matters the late Government was at loggerheads with the bulk of the population, the President being an advocate of free-thinking and absolute secularism,—of an education from which religion should be as far as possible removed; whereas the Boer is as fanatic, as conservative, and as firmly wedded to the creed of his fathers as an Irish Roman Catholic Coadjutor. It may, on this account, be the easier for the Colonial Government to reconcile the population to some change in the law.
A few of the better class of farmers, in the difficulty which at present exists, maintain a schoolmaster in their houses for a year or two, paying a small salary and entertaining the teachers at their tables. I have met more than one such a schoolmaster in a Boer's house. In the course of my travels I found an Englishman in the family of a Dutchman who could not speak a word of English,—and was astonished to
