It is interesting to note the contrast in the lives of a Dutchman and an Englishman in South Africa. Even when a Boer has accumulated considerable wealth, he is content to live in a house the floor of which consists of the hard-trodden earth. Here he will live happily, with scarcely any of the luxuries, or even comforts, which the average English settler would deem necessary to his well-being.
The Dutchman is a picture of content; the Englishman one of discontent with the country, the government, the climate, the soil,—with everything and everybody, his neighbors, even, not excepted. He draws the line only at himself and his own disposition.
While the Englishman is naturally a social body, liking company and the general gossip heard among his own people, the Dutchman is rather solitary in his tastes. He cares for no neighbors, and would resent the sight of smoke rising from any chimney within sight of his own. His tastes are pastoral, and this leads him to acquire vast tracts of land. He is tormented by the fear that, in the course of time, his cattle and his sheep will increase to such an extent that he will not have grass enough to offer them, nor land enough on which to pasture them.
A Dutchman finds nothing forbidding in the aspect of the dreary country lying north of the Orange River; the stranger, however, finds the change from the most unattractive sections of the Cape to either the Orange Free State or the Transvaal a most depressing one.
There is nothing of a picturesque nature. The land is not wooded, and in the season of drought no more unattractive country can be thought of than this of the Orange Free State.
Still, it is far from being a wilderness. Work is plenty; for it is a country that is well adapted to keep men from indolence or from drifting into that dreamland of ease and idleness, in which the rich man is often led to wander when he has not had to toil for his possessions.
There is much English property and capital, and a good deal of energy is displayed by the English subjects. A few of the Englishmen, or "Africanders," were born in the Cape.
They are scattered through the country, and occupy themselves mostly as shopkeepers in the English towns, where the English language is generally spoken.
Mr. Trollope does not advise the ordinary traveler to visit the Orange Free State in search of scenery; still, there are other attractions to the tourist, one being the promise of renewed health. At Bloemfontein, the capital, situated on a branch of the Vaal River, the dryness of the air renders it a safe resort for invalids. It is, in fact, an inland Madeira for persons suffering from weak or diseased lungs. The only objection is the tedious five or six days' journey by coach,—even though the railway has now reached Kimberley and promises to cross the border,—which renders the journey not only expensive, but very trying to nerves and patience.
The town itself lies very solitary, but is perhaps the most attractive spot in the country. Kimberley, which is its nearest neighbor of any special importance, is more than one hundred miles away. Cape Town is nearly seven hundred miles distant to the southeast, while Port Elizabeth, from which it obtains most of its supplies, lies about four hundred miles to the south of it.