Strife is incessant in the country, and a unification of interests is impossible so long as the enmity continues. Meanwhile the natural growth and development of the country are retarded, and all classes suffer like consequences. A man who is capable of healing all the differences and uniting all the classes in a common bond of patriotism will be the saviour of the country, and far greater than Kruger or Rhodes. A fugitive bit of verse that is heard in all parts of South Africa affords a clearer idea of the country than can be given in pages of detailed description. With a few expurgations, the verse is: "The rivers of South Africa have no waters, The birds no song, the flowers no scent; The child you see has no father, The whites go free, while the negroes pay the rent." A person who has derived his impressions of the physical features of the continent of Africa from books generally concludes that it is either a desert or a tropical wilderness throughout. South Africa combines these two features in such a way that the impression need not be entirely shattered, and yet it is not a truthful one. South Africa is at once a tropical garden, a waterless desert, a fertile plain, and a mountainous wilderness. It has all the distinctions of soil, climate, and physical features that are to be found anywhere in the world, and yet in three hundred years less than half a million persons have found its variety agreeable enough to become permanent residents. Along the coast country, for one hundred miles inland, the territory is as fertile as any in the world, the climate salubrious, and the conditions for settlement most agreeable. Beyond that line is another area of several hundred miles which consists chiefly of lofty tablelike plateaus and forest-covered mountains. Farther inland is the Great Karroo, a desert of sombre renown, and beyond that the great rolling plains of the Kimberley region, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal. Here, during the dry season, the earth is covered with brown, lifeless grass, the rays of the sun beat down perpendicularly, and great clouds of yellow dust obscure the horizon. No trees or bushes are seen in a half-thousand-mile journey, the great broad rivers are waterless, and the only live objects are the lone Boer herders and their thirsty flocks. A month later the rainy season may commence, and then the landscape becomes more animated. Rains, compared with which the heaviest precipitations of the north temperate zone are mere drizzles, continue almost incessantly for weeks; the plain becomes a tropical garden, and the traveller sees some reasons for that part of the earth’s creation.