THE

TRANSVAAL AND THE BOERS

INTRODUCTION

THE BOERS AT HOME

THE Boers of the Transvaal present, or at least presented until within the last ten years, a remarkable instance of a population almost stationary in manners, customs, and education. In European countries, where there is a constant intercourse, both in space and time, between home and foreign lands, between the present and the past, a continual change in these respects is going on with a celerity that increases every year, until many wellmeaning persons are positively alarmed at it. Even in the comparatively unprogressive Cape Colony, a great development has taken place, and the social condition of the average Cape Boer,

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especially near the towns and among the wealthier classes, is very different to-day from what it was fifty or a hundred years ago. At the Cape, indeed, the word Boer has preserved its old Dutch sense of farmer or peasant, akin to the German bauer, and has necessarily none of the peculiar significance that its relative boor has acquired in our own language.

But the great majority of the nomad Boer population, cut off from churches, schools, shops, and every kind of social intercourse save with the one or two accessible neighbours and the occasional trader or explorer, have retained to the full the habits, alike in thought and action, of their forefathers. In the Transvaal, more especially, the Boers have jealously secluded themselves from possible influences of change, until the last few years have introduced an element of novelty which even the stubborn Boer tries in vain to resist.

So lately as 1880 a traveller was able truthfully to declare that "the seclusion in which the South African Republic nursed itself so many years had nourished and intensified the prejudices and habits of the race." All critics of insight agree that the Transvaal Boer of to-day is, to all intents

and purposes, one with the Cape Boer of the last century or the nomad farmers of the Great Trek. It is well, then, before entering upon the story of the Transvaal, to consider a few of the accounts. given by impartial observers of its most distinctive inhabitants.

It is not very easy, indeed, to ascertain the exact truth about the nature and habits of the Boers in the midst of the contradictory reports that one finds in the works of various travellers. At present, too, there is a certain danger that we may lose sight of the undoubted good qualities of the typical Boer on the one hand, or minimise his numerous faults and anfractuosities on the other, according as our political prepossessions incline us to his side or to that of the Outlanders. Let us, however, at least make an attempt to set politics aside for the present, and endeavour to see the Transvaal farmer as he really is.

The truth seems to be that the Boer, like most human beings, is compact of both good and evil. His best qualities are his stubborn perseverance in the face of difficulty and danger, his genuine family affection, his equally genuine though narrow and antiquated religious spirit, his determination

never to endure injustice, his hospitality to guests of whom he approves. His worst faults are his brutal treatment of the natives, his defect in political honesty, and his curious lack of the Dutch passion for cleanliness and industry. It is a fact that he is usually opposed to what we call "progress," and looks with strong dislike upon the incursion of gold-miners and others who desire to

open up" his country. But whether this is to be accounted as a defect, a good quality, or simply a natural outcome of the Boer's history, in which he has so often seen himself dispossessed of a peaceful life, depends greatly upon the point of view.

One of the earliest and most lifelike sketches of the typical country Boer is that given by the Swedish traveller Sparrmann, who is generally admitted to be a most trustworthy authority. He shows us the Cape farmer far changed in a century from the industry and cleanliness of the original Hollander to a state of virtuous and innocent indolence and dirt: the heat of the climate, the fertility of the soil, and the employment of slaves being the concomitant causes of the alteration.

"It is hardly to be conceived," wrote Sparrmann in 1776, "with what little trouble the Boer gets

into order a field of a moderate size; ..

so that ... he may be almost said to make the cultivation of it, for the bread he stands in need of for himself and his family, a mere matter of amusement . . . With pleasure, but without the least trouble to himself, he sees the herds and flocks, which constitute his riches, daily and considerably increasing. These are driven to pasture and home again by a few Hottentots or slaves, who likewise make the butter; so that it is almost only with the milking that the farmer, together with his wife and children, concern themselves at all. To do this business, however, he has no occasion to rise before seven or eight o'clock in the morning... That they (the Boers) might not put their arms and bodies out of the easy and commodious posture in which they had laid them on the couch when they were taking their afternoon siesta, they have been known to receive travellers lying quite still and motionless excepting that they have very civilly pointed out the road by moving their foot to the right or left Among a set of beings so devoted to their ease one might naturally expect to meet with a variety of the most commodious easy chairs and sofas; but the truth is, that they find it much more com

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