This at least is certain, that the Bushman fared no worse in the hands of the Boer than he would have done in those of the average settlers of any other race who go out to people and organize new countries inhabited by aboriginal peoples. And while we, the natives of modern Europe, are contented to leave this, the most stupendous, the most difficult, and the most honourable of all the labours which a nation can perform, to any hands that are willing to undertake it; while we send out, not our wisest and best to civilize and elevate and plant the tree of European life among simple peoples, but oftenest the most unfit among our race--the worthless son who cannot study, and who will not labour; the man who even in the much simpler and less important function of a citizenship in an old established society has been a failure--while again and again we send out these men to perform our highest national functions it will still remain a truth, that the old Boer fore-trekker has nothing to be ashamed of when his record as a civilizing and elevating power is compared with ours. We shall return later, and then shall deal at length with this question of the relations of the European towards the original inhabitants of South Africa, and glance at those points wherein our attitude differs from that of the first white settlers; and we shall then glance at the causes which have led to this difference. But, as far as the Bushman is concerned, it may now be unqualifiedly stated that he tends to disappear as certainly under the heel of the Englishman as that of the fore-trekker, and only a little, if at all, slower. Neither does it appear that our languid and more showy methods must be much more pleasant to him than theirs--simpler and more direct. When a primitive man wants breakfast, he takes a sheep, kneels upon it, holds it between his legs, and cuts its throat; he skins it, and taking a slice out of it, fries it on the coals for breakfast. We also demand not less imperatively cutlets for our breakfast; but we manage it another way. We procure an individual some way off to kill the beast and another out of sight to cook it; we have a paper frill put round the bone to disguise it, and set a pot of flowers straight before us to look at while we eat it--but to the sheep--to the sheep--it can make little difference which way it is eaten! We still do our unclean work, but we do it by proxy. And it may be questioned whether what we gain in refinement we have not lost in sincerity.