Page:South Africa (1878 Volume 1).djvu/125

 much. But here, as elsewhere in South Africa, punctuality is not among the virtues of the people. Six o'clock means seven, or perhaps twenty minutes after seven. If a man promises to be with you at nine, he thinks that he has done pretty well if he comes between ten and eleven. I have frequently been told that a public conveyance would start at four in the morning,—or at five, as it might be,—and then have had to walk about for half an hour before a horse has made its appearance. And it is impossible for a stranger to discount this irregularity, so as to take advantage of it. It requires the experience of a life to ascertain what five o'clock will mean in one place, and what in another. When the traveller is assured that he certainly will be left behind if he be not up an hour before dawn, he will get up, though he knows that it will be in vain. The long minutes that I have passed, during my late travels, out in the grey dawn, regretting the bed from which I have been uselessly torn, have been generally devoted to loud inward assertions that South Africa can never do any good in the world till she learns to be more punctual. But we got our breakfast at Belvidere at last, and returned triumphantly with our four mules to George.

In the neighbourhood of George there is a mission station called Pacaltsdorp, for Hottentots, than which I can imagine nothing to be less efficient for any useful purpose. About 500 of these people live in a village,—or straggling community,—in which they have huts and about an acre of land for each family. There is a church attached to the place with a Minister, but when I visited the place there was no