Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447

Thus, in less than two years, a real, bustling, hopeful little town had sprung into existence, with all the genuine characteristics of an English community. Education and trade, races and quadrilles, were already flourishing. The well-known political parties, the Buffs and the Blues, the foes of corruption and the friends of established institutions, were already arraying themselves in hostile ranks. In two years more, we may expect to receive the first numbers of the Harrismith Gazette and the Harrismith Independent, the 'organs' of the respective parties; and to learn through their valuable columns, that the 'Harrismith Agricultural and Commercial Bank' has declared its first annual dividend of 10 per cent., and that the new 'Harrismith Assembly-Rooms' were thrown open, on the auspicious anniversary of the royal birthday, to a large and select assemblage of the rank, fashion, and beauty of the city and its neighbourhood.

The writer from whose letter some of the foregoing quotations are made, strongly recommends that the government should offer 'unstinted encouragement and liberal assistance' to promote emigration from Great Britain; and considers that, if this were done, 'thousands of hardy English and Scotch farmers would avail themselves of the advantages which the country offers.' This is possible; but at the same time, it should be known, that the excitement among the native tribes, caused by the war in Caffreland, had extended across the Orange River into the sovereignty, and that much confusion, and, unfortunately, some bloodshed, had ensued. These disorders, it is true, were only local; but it is evident that the neighbourhood of some 80,000 barbarians must, for some time to come, be a source of considerable embarrassment and danger to all settlers in the new colony. In time, no doubt, with the progress of civilisation, this danger will be removed; and the natives may become, as in New Zealand, a source of wealth to the colony, as useful labourers—like the 'skipping Caffres' under the brickmaker's instructions, or peaceful cultivators of the soil. At present, however, the peril from this source is so evident and so serious, that a warning reference to it could not with propriety be omitted in any description of this otherwise promising settlement.

THE SECRET

Jean Baptiste Véron, a native, it was understood, of the south of France, established himself as a merchant at Havre-de-Grâce in 1788, being then a widower with one child, a young boy. The new-comer's place of business was on the south quay, about a hundred yards west of the custom-house. He had brought letters of high recommendation from several eminent Paris firms; his capital was ascertained to be large; and soon, moreover, approving him self to be a man of keen mercantile discernment, and measured, peremptory, unswerving business habits, it is not surprising that his commercial transactions speedily took a wide range, or that, at the end of about fifteen years, M. Véron was pronounced by general consent to be the wealthiest merchant of the commercial capital of northern France. He was never, albeit, much of a favourite with any class of society: his manner was too brusque, decided, unbending—his speech too curt, frequently too bitter, for that; but he managed to steer his course in very difficult times quite as safely as those who put themselves to great pains and charges to obtain popularity. He never expressed—publicly at least—any preference for Royalism, Republicanism, or Imperialism; for fleur-de-lis, bonnet-rouge, or tricolore: in short, Jean Baptiste Véron was a stern, taciturn, self-absorbed man of business; and as nothing else was universally concluded, till the installation of a quasi

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