with wild beasts to reclaim the desert. In this great northern land,
which no white man had entered or desired, they planted their people,
and loving it as men only can love the land they have suffered and
bled for, the gallant little Republic they raised they love to-day as
the Swiss loves his mountain home and the Hollander his dykes. It is
theirs, the best land on earth to them.
They had fought not for money but for homes for their wives and
children; when they battled, the wives reloaded the old flint-lock
guns and handed them down from the front chest of their wagon for the
men who stood around defending them. It was a wild free fight, on
even terms; there were no Maxim guns to mow down ebony figures by the
hundred at the turn of a handle; a free even stand up fight; and there
were times when it almost seemed the assagai would overcome the old
flint-lock, and the voortrekkers would be swept away. The panther and
the jaguar rolled together on the ground, and, if one conquered instead
of the other, it was yet a fair fight, and South Africa has no reason
to be ashamed of the way either her black men or her white men fought
it.
If it be asked, has the Dutch South African always dealt gently and
generously with the native folks with whom he came into contact, we
answer, “No, he has not”--neither has any other white race of whom we
have record in history. He kept slaves in the early days! Yes, and
a century ago England wished to make war on her American subjects in
Virginia for refusing to take the slaves she sent. There was a time
when we might have vaunted some superiority in the English-African
method of dealing with the native.