Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/298

 not as well known as President Krueger, but he was a better man, and better balanced. Steyn, who is still living here, but in ill-health, is a highly educated man, whereas Krueger could barely write his own name Owing to Easter, the railroads are now selling tickets at half-fare, so that we traveled here for two cents a mile each. This is the regular fare in Kansas, where we are not blessed, or cursed, with government-owned railways The Orange Free State, formerly a republic, is now a state in the South-African union. It has seventeen members of parliament, and sixteen of them are Boers. The seventeenth is a Boer, but a supporter of all English measures. Some of the sixteen Boer members are sons of English fathers, so that it will be seen that politics makes strange bedfellows in South Africa, too A Boer farmer does not pay his negro farm hand to exceed $2.50 a month. In addition, the farm hand receives enough corn-meal to keep him, and such other food as he can pick up. Corn-meal is the staple food on the farms here, for Boers as well as negroes. The Boers are always expressing indignation because the English are spoiling the negroes by paying them big wages. The Englishman who drove us about this morning in a Ford automobile, at $2.50 an hour, pays a negro man $10 a month, and the negro boards himself. Such liberality as this greatly irritates the Boers. And this town negro has almost nothing to do; he only cares for six horses, two carriages and an automobile. The Englishman who drove the automobile talked all the time, and his talk was mainly abuse of the Boers I have frequently remarked that the English are very unre