Bloemfontein, next visited, is known as the Convention City. Because of its location, being the most important city in the center of South Africa and well provided with hotels and railway connections, together with its good public buildings, it has become the favored place for national gatherings.
After the Boer War the name of this province was changed to Orange River Colony, against the burghers' wishes. In May, 1910, when the Dutch again assumed power, its former name, and its present one—Orange Free State—again came into use.
Located between hills on two sides, having good streets, shady walks, electric light, good buildings, and a broad, treeless veld to the east, with poverty seemingly absent, an inviting air pervades Bloemfontein. The homes of that city, a great many of them built of red brick, with their vari-colored painted roofs and tidy yards filled with flowers, all nestling under and some built on the side of the kopjes, or hills, put one in mind of that other Dutch capital—Pretoria. Unlike Kimberley, no tin shanties were to be seen here, neither were the streets swarming with half-castes and Hindus.
As in other places in South Africa where there are no mines, smokestacks are few here. The Orange Free State is said to be a good farming section, and from that source, and the general commercial and official business linked with a metropolis and State capital, spring the main assets of the city. Newspapers, a good gauge by which to measure a center, are in advance of the Free State capital.
The marketplace in Bloemfontein is typical of the Dutch, being located in the center of the town, business houses and hotels standing on the four sides. The long ox teams, led by natives with rawhide strips tied to the horns of the leading yoke; the big transport, with its tent at the rear, a Boer sitting in the doorway or opening, smoking his calabash pipe filled with Boer tobacco, and his frau, behind him, knitting; the auctioneers jabbering above a pile of farm produce; the group of farmers, with their wide-brimmed hats and full beards, arguing in the Dutch language, are all in evidence. It was interesting to walk about observing the product of the soil and the people who cultivate it, and the means in use to bring it where it might be profitably sold. With the tent at the rear end of the transport, and "scoff," coffee and cooking utensils, hotel expenses are eliminated, and one may stay as long as one wishes. A great number of Boers pay a couple of days' visit to old acquaintances when they come to this marketplace.
Bi-lingualism, a nightmare to some of the British in South Africa, has its fountainhead in Bloemfontein. Bi-lingualism here means the teaching of the Dutch and English languages in the public schools. When the conditions of consolidation were drafted, dual languages—Dutch and English—to be taught in schools was one of the provisions, and this clause was agreed to by the British representatives at the convention at which the act of federation was ratified. The Minister of Education is from the Orange Free State, and is Dutch through and through. He insists on the dual language clause being carried out to the letter. The Dutch, as spoken in South Africa—it is called the Taal—is not so pure as the Holland Dutch. While one might not agree with the Minister of Education in forcing English scholars to study Dutch, when either French, Spanish or German would be better, his fighting for the perpetuation of his mother tongue must command admiration. Cabinet Ministers of South Africa, by the way, are not cheap salaried men. The Premier receives $70,000 a year, the other members $48,000 a year.
Hotel expenses are from $3 to $5 a day. House rent is rather high, too; but the wages paid mechanics are fair, running from $4 to $5 a day.
In the evening one sees very few black people about the streets. Bloemfontein has a municipal "location"—a place where natives must live—about three miles from town. Except as a servant, the Indian coolie, although a British subject, is not allowed to cross the Free State border. No adverse feeling is entertained for the native, but the line is drawn on Asiatics.
The veld is so bare of any vegetation, save grass, in that part of South Africa that there is not a native tree growing in a radius of a hundred miles from Bloemfontein.
While traveling through farming districts in South Africa one misses the grain elevators seen at every station, and even sidings, when passing through agricultural sections in the United States and Canada.