The Boer’s house consists of a large middle chamber in which the family live and eat and work,--but do not cook. There is not usually even a fireplace in the room. It is very seldom floored. I do not know that I ever saw a Boer’s house floored in the Free State. As the planks would have had to be brought up four hundred miles by oxen, this is not wonderful. The Boer is contented with the natural hard earth as it has been made for him. The furniture of his room is good enough for all domestic purposes. There are probably two spacious tables, and settees along the walls of which the seats are made of ox-riems, and open cupboards in the corners filled not sparingly with crockery. And there is always a pile of books in a corner of the room,--among which there is never one not of a religious tendency. There is a large Dutch Bible, and generally half a dozen Dutch hymn-books, with a smaller Bible or two, and not improbably an English prayer-book and English hymn-book if any of the younger people are affecting the English language. The younger members of the family generally are learning English and seem to be very much better off in regard to education than are their relations in the Transvaal. Opening out of the living room there are generally bedrooms to the right and left,--probably two at one end and one at the other,--of which the best will be surrendered to the use of any respectable stranger who may want such accommodation. It matters not who may be the normal occupant of the room. He or she,--or more probably they,--make way for the stranger, thinking no more of surrendering a bedroom than we do of giving up a chair. The bedroom is probably close and disagreeable, lacking fresh air, with dark suspicious corners of which the stranger would not on any account unravel the mysteries. Behind the centre chamber there is a kitchen to which the stranger does not probably penetrate. I have however been within the kitchen of a Dutch Boeress and have found that as I was to eat what came out of it, I had better not have penetrated so far. It will be understood that a Dutch Boer’s house never has an upper storey.