TO PRETORIA. 19 



March sunrise and sunset, is incongruous in the extreme, 

 and is better described as the cool dry season. Towards 

 the end of August gardening operations commence, for 

 the rains are soon expected, and I received a Spring 

 Catalogue of Plants and Seeds from a firm in Port 

 Elizabeth that reminded one of the Carter and Sutton 

 publications at home. 



The streets of Pretoria are wide and well designed. 

 Their width, however, had a lowly origin, for they were 

 thus devised and constructed for the convenience of ox- 

 wagons, w r hich could not turn round in narrow roadways. 

 Years hence, when the rail shall have entirely or almost 

 completely replaced the old Boer wagon, this require- 

 ment will be forgotten, and those who originally laid out 

 the town will probably be credited with more artistic 

 and less utilitarian tastes. All the Transvaal towns are 

 designed on one scale : given two parallel squares a 

 church square and market square connect and ap- 

 proach same with a straight road, and let shorter trans- 

 verse roads branch off on each side. Pretoria was thus 

 laid out as Pietersburg is to-day, and the grass-grown 

 paths and squares of the last are only like what the 

 first was a few years since. Pretoria is now going 

 through a building phase ; its giant government build- 

 ings are equal to accommodate the official servants of a 

 State twice the size of the Transvaal ; its mercantile 

 buildings are sufficient for twice its present trade, so 

 that business profits have already approached the com- 

 petitive attenuation. A large market building is being 

 reared upon the market square ; the town will shortly 

 be lighted by electricity ; churches and chapels abound, 

 and a Church of England Cathedral small, of course. 

 A water company now supplies pure water though at 

 a present prohibitive tariff to supplant the former 

 typhoid beverage of the sluits ; there is a permanent 

 race-course, and a prosperous and gigantic distillery 

 sheds a lurid light on three struggling breweries ; there 

 are judges, a national flag, and a national anthem but 

 are these really Boer institutions 1 and what part have 

 the true Boers taken in producing such results ? 



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