Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/299

 *liable in their pronunciations. Some of them refer to a horse as a 'orse, while others pronounce the word as we do. In London, there is a famous place, the Hotel Cecil. It is universally called the Hotel Sessil in London, but in Bloemfontein, the capital of an English colony, there is a hotel of the same name, and it is called Hotel Cecil; the word pronounced as it is spelled I don't know how it is generally, but on Monday, March 17, 1913, Bloemfontein, Orange Free State, South Africa, was the dullest town I have ever visited. The handsome stores were empty, and I wondered that the merchants did not close up. In dull towns, pretty women are always numerous, and we saw more pretty women in Bloemfontein than in any other town in South Africa I believe I have frequently remarked in these letters that South Africa is the laziest country in the world for white people. Today I saw a negro driving a public carriage. Beside him sat a white man, who collected the fares, and managed things; but the white man would not consent to do the actual work of driving. When a white mechanic accepts a job here, he asks, "Where are the boys?" meaning, "Where are the negroes to do the work under my direction?" The labor problem has solved itself in South Africa. When a tolerably good man will work for thirty-seven cents a day, and board himself, an employer really has no room for complaint In Bloemfontein, negro women are employed as chambermaids at our hotel; elsewhere we have seen only chamber-men, who worked under the direction of white maids. The negro men are more industrious in South Africa than the women, now that they are civilized, but