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 CHAPTER XII.

BLOEMFONTEIN.

Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Republic, is a pleasant little town in the very centre of the country which we speak of as South Africa, about a hundred miles north of the Orange River, four hundred north of Port Elizabeth whence it draws the chief part of its supplies, and six hundred and eighty north east of Capetown. It is something above a hundred miles from Kimberley which is its nearest neighbour of any importance in point of size. It is about the same distance from Durban, the seaport of Natal, as it is from Port Elizabeth;—and again about the same distance from Pretoria the capital of the Transvaal. It may therefore be said to be a remote town offering but little temptations to its inhabitants to gad about to other markets. The smaller towns within the borders of the Republic are but villages containing at most not more than a few hundred inhabitants. I am told that Bloemfontein has three thousand; but no census has as yet been taken, and I do not know whether the number stated is intended to include or exclude the coloured population,—who as a rule do not live in Bloemfontein but at a neighbouring hamlet, devoted to the use of the natives, called Wray Hook. I found Bloem