I once met a worthy matron whose husband thought it right to imitate the conduct of Abraham while Sarah was barren; she evidently agreed in the propriety of the measure, for she was pleased to hear the children by a mother of what has been thought an inferior race address her as their mother.

Orphans are never allowed to remain long destitute; and instances are frequent in which a tender-hearted farmer has adopted a fatherless child, and when it came of age portioned it as his own.
Two centuries of the South African climate have not had much effect upon the physical condition of the Boers.

They are a shade darker, or rather ruddier, than Europeans, and are never cadaverous-looking, as descendants of Europeans are said to be elsewhere.

There is a tendency to the development of steatopyga, so characteristic of Arabs and other African tribes; and it is probable that the interior Boers in another century will become in color what the learned imagine our progenitors, Adam and Eve, to have been.
The parts of the colony through which we passed were of sterile aspect; and, as the present winter had been preceded by a severe drought, many farmers had lost two thirds of their stock.

The landscape was uninviting; the hills, destitute of trees, were of a dark brown color, and the scanty vegetation on the plains made me feel that they deserved the name of Desert more than the Kalahari.