But certain parts of this book have appeared in periodicals and have caused, no doubt owing to the fragmentary nature of their publication, some misconceptions which it might be worth while setting right. It has been stated by some kindly critic that the subject of this little book was a valuable history of South Africa, while another has suggested my calling it "The History of the Boer." Nothing has been farther from my thought than the writing of any history. In a far different manner I should have equipped myself had it been my intention to do so. Dr. Theal, in his _History of South Africa_, has collected as carefully and dealt as ably with the mere historical incidents of the last two hundred years as it is possible for any one person, in the course of one life, and from one point of view, to do. Still less, as has been suggested, was it my intention to write a homily on South African problems and people. This little book is something far less pretentious, and wholly different. Born in South Africa, I felt from my childhood a wish to set down what I thought and felt about my native land. After I was grown up, but in my youth, I went to Europe for ten years, living in London but visiting the Continent continually. When at the end of those ten years I came back to my native land, it was with an even added interest that I looked at its people and its problems and its physical features, and the wish became stronger to jot down what I thought and felt with regard to it. This little book is the gratification of that wish. It is not a history, it is not a homily, it is not a political brochure--it is simply what one South African at the end of the nineteenth century thought, and felt, with regard to his native land: thought and felt with regard to its peoples, its problems and its scenery--it is nothing more than this; but it is also nothing less. I do not think, simple as such a book is, it need be necessarily quite without interest for any but the writer.