Klondyke had its 'millionaires in huts,' Boerland has its millionaires
in hovels. You will find farmers who are worth many thousands of
pounds living in places under whose roofs a Kaffir would certainly
disdain to pass the night. They possess wives and families, too, but
they exhibit no desire to better their domestic surroundings. If the
houses happen to include another room other than the living room, that
extra room is invariably used for storing grain. The women are untidy
and unprepossessing, and the children have not yet learned to
appreciate stockings and shoes. It is almost paradoxical to think of
human beings in a civilized country living such lives, people who have
great possibilities within their reach. The children readily
assimilate the habits and ways of their parents, and grow up into men
and women of a like type, and so on from generation to generation. No
wonder, then, that the Boers are a retrograde race.

[Illustration: A BOER FAMILY.]

It has been made sufficiently plain that when once the Boers have
acquired a country, they allow that country to rest in peace--from
an agricultural point of view only. This is quite apparent when it is
explained that the Free State has an estimated acreage of 7,491,500,
and out of that only 75,000 acres are cultivated. This is not the
fault of the country, but of the Boer himself. He has no sooner
settled down on a bit of land, where there is a plentiful growth of
grass to feed his stock, than he longs for pastures new, his only
reason for staying where he is being that he does not want the
Englishman to step into his homestead.

No exhibition of national prejudice is intended when I say that were
the Dutch Republics sprinkled with a few hundred Scottish farmers,