Plains, but they did just as I did; that is, worked with greater or less success at the business, gained an immense amount of good from it personally, especially in the way of strength and gratifying a taste for healthy adventure, learned much of human nature from associating with the men round about, and then went back to their own homes in England or New York or Boston, largely because, when it came to marrying and bringing up children, they could not well face the conditions; and so the real population of the future in the valleys of the upper Missouri, the Platte, and the Rio Grande, will be composed of the sons of their companions, who were themselves descendants of small farmers in Texas, Missouri, and Illinois, or of working-men from Scandinavia and Germany. "Pardon this long letter, which has wandered aside from the thesis with which it started. I hope that the language of the more highly civilized people will, in spite of the evil influences of to-day, gradually oust the 'Taal' or whatever you call Boer Dutch in South Africa, and that when the conquest of the two Republics is succeeded by the full liberty which I understand the Cape Dutch enjoy, there will come a union in blood as well as in that between the two peoples who are so fundamentally alike. "I am looking forward to the receipt of the three books you have been so very kind as to send me. I do know a certain amount about the Boers from the time of their great trek onward, for it has always seemed to me to be one of the most fascinating bits of modern history." In the spring of 1900 Selous went on a bird-nesting trip to the forest and marshes of the Danube in Hungary, and was successful in getting the eggs of many new species for his collection. When he arrived home in June he found his finances in low water, owing to enlarging his house, and so feared he would be unable to make an extensive autumn hunt, but later on things improved, and he was able to go West after all.