220 SOUTH AFRICA. 



well to take " Punch's " advice to aspirants to 

 matrimony, which was " Don't! " 



It is observable that many of the numerous 

 clerkly class who have lately poured into these 

 Colonies are not physically fit for Colonial 

 exigencies, and have come out upon the assumption 

 that the climate is a specific in cases of pulmonary 

 complaints. This idea is erroneous as regards the 

 infinitely greater part of inhabitable South Africa, 

 although true as to certain localities, where, as a 

 rule, employment is unobtainable, the population 

 doomed to be eternally sparse, and discomfort of 

 all kinds endemic among the dreariest aspects of 

 nature. For instance, on the bare, windy, and dust- 

 coloured Karroo district, where life becomes a 

 burden to all except to stolid Boer or native, and 

 here and there a European who has lowered his 

 standard of life to a state of chronic endurance 

 mitigated by Cape smoke or Dop brandy. I have 

 thought it a duty to offer these opinions on the 

 prospects of the uncapitalised hordes of immigrants 

 which have for some time been dumped down on 

 South African soil, and are, in largely increasing 

 numbers, in a pitiable condition of at best semi- 

 starvation, with the near prospect of fatal results 



