EMIGRATION TO SOUTH AFRICA. 221 



as their best hope, for there is no provision in these 

 countries for actual pauperism, and with the 

 exception of here and there a millionaire who has 

 made his pile by speculations to which various 

 descriptive epithets might be applied, the mass of 

 the population is living from hand to mouth, 

 though very generally hardly up to a standard 

 worthy of being classed within the sphere of 

 financial morality, but amply fulfilling the duties 

 of that vulgarised ostentation which has become 

 of late the dominating religion. This leaves no 

 margin for the effective application of the funds 

 necessary to mitigate the miseries of Colonial 

 paupers, and so these poor creatures disappear in 

 squads into as yet unexplored depths, and their 

 fate is as little mentioned or noticed as possible, 

 although no doubt shrewdly suspected. 



Free hospitals for the sick poor are conspicuously 

 absent in South Africa, and the sufferings of the 

 impecunious invalid surpass in misery my powers 

 of description, or any parallel adduced by com- 

 parison of what we hear of in the slums of great 

 European cities. 



Unskilled labour in these Colonies is delegated 

 as a rule to the coloured population, .and paid for 



