From Capetown to Ladysmith: An Unfinished Record of the South African War

T HOUSE-THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY-A WRANGLING DEBATE-A D

wn, Oc

expected it, and yet it was a shock. In this breathless age ten days out of sight of land i

e is nothing else in existence clear enough with which to compare it. You felt that all your life hithert

at in the centre. More like a coffin than a table, sheer steep and dead flat, he was exactly as h

nestling hardly visible between his fo

eir impatient gongs and racing trolleys, were pure America (the motor-men were actually imported from that hustling clime to run them). For Capetown itself-you saw it in a moment-does not hustle. The machinery is the West's, the spirit is the East's or the South's. In other cities with trolley-cars they rush; here they saunter. In other new countries they have no time to be polite; here they

rich nor very poor, neither over-industrious nor over-lazy, de

It has a post-office of truly German stability and magnitude. It has a well-organised railway station, and it has the merit of being in Adderley Street, the

nment House is half a country house and half a country inn. One sentry tramps o

ind. It was the Parliament House. The Legislative Assembly-their House of Commons-was characteristically small, yet characteristically roomy and characteristically comfortable. The members sit on flat green-leather cushions, two or three on a bench, and each man's name is above his seat: no jostling for C

Sir Gordon Sprigg, thrice Premier, grey-bearded, dignified, and responsible in bearing and speech, conversationally reasonable in tone. There was Mr Schreiner, the Premier, almost boyish with p

hair: the Speaker blandly pronounced that the hon. gentleman had been out of order from the first word he uttered. The hon. gentleman thereon indignantly refused to put his question at all; but, being prevailed to do so, gave an opening to a Minister, who devoted ten minutes to a brief invective against all Uitlanders and their friends. Then up got one of the other side-and so on for an hour. Most delicious of all

where else, rumbled th

ered British working-men. Inside the offices they thronged the counters six deep. Down to the docks they filed steadily with bundles to be penned in the black hulls of homeward liners. Their word

n was one huge demonstration of the unemployed. In the hotels and streets wandered the pale, distracted employers. They hurried hither and thither and arrived nowhither; they let their cigars go out, left their glasses half full, broke off their talk in the middle of a word. They spok

g hopes and fears of all Johannesburg and more than ha

stant before they said the word, and spoke it softly. It had come at last-the mome