OVR NEIGHBOURS. 271 



seem to be much in favour, at least for boys, and the 

 great ambition of a Cape parent is to send his sons home 

 to be educated in Europe — most frequently for the 

 medical profession, a doctor's position being the most 

 coveted one in the colony. In the Edinburgh University, 

 especially, theAfricander element is in greatforce. Those 

 parents who cannot afford to have their boys educated 

 in Europe generally contrive to secure the services of 

 some broken-down gentleman, occasionally even of a 

 clergyman, who lives on the farm and — too often for a 

 shamefully small salary, indeed in one or two instances 

 for nothing but his keep — fills the post of tutor, or, as 

 his employers call him, " schoolmaster," to the turbulent 

 young tribe. As may be imagined, his life is not a very 

 enviable one, the breaking-in process being all the 

 harder in consequence of the long period, prior to his 

 advent, when his charges were allowed to run wild out 

 of doors all day long — to the immense benefit, no doubt, 

 of their robust young bodies, but to the utter neglect 

 of all intellectual and moral training. 



The schoolmaster does not seem to have been a very 

 general institution in the days when some of the older 

 colonists were young; and a business correspondence 

 with Karroo farmers sometimes elicits the wildest 



vagaries of orthography. T , for instance, received 



a letter from one of our neighbours, in which the 

 following sentences occurred: "Your hostridges are vary 

 onpleasand on the public outspan. Pleas to try and 

 halter tham." Another correspondent, intent on the 

 purchase of ostriches, told us he wished " to bye buirds." 



