Character of the South African Boer.
[Sidenote: A Peculiar Type]
The Dutchmen of South Africa present in character and type one of the
most peculiar racial results of all history. They came originally of a
people who had proved its love of liberty and its faith in religion on
many a well-fought field and in the pages of noble national annals.
Yet they did not carry their qualities with them to the new land in any
sufficient measure to overcome surrounding influences of a pernicious
nature. They were raised from the lowest class in the home community
and migrated practically for the wages offered them by the Dutch East
India Company. In this respect the origin of the Colony was greatly
different from that of New England, to which men of high character and
earnest thought had migrated in order to obtain religious freedom; of
Virginia, where men of the best English families and culture came in
that adventurous spirit which has made the British Empire or the United
States a present possibility; of French Canada, where Jesuits roamed
the vast forests in a spirit of intense missionary zeal and where the
scions of noble French families hunted in the wilderness of the West,
or fought the Iroquois on the banks of the St. Lawrence; of English
Canada, to which the United Empire Loyalists came from motives of
loyalty to King and country.
[Sidenote: Their Religious Life]
As these Dutch settlers drifted into the Colony, over a period of a
hundred years, they left every source of knowledge, refinement and high
principle behind them. It is true they had their Bible. Upon its
interpretation depended greatly their future development of character
amid surroundings of absolute isolation, and it has been a permanent
misfortune that they chose the natural view of narrow and ignorant men,
and made their religious life one of practical devotion to the Old
Testament dispensation in a most crude and sometimes cruel application.
Around them on all sides were the moral laxities of savage life, the
dangerous powers of slavery, the looseness incident to any small
population of whites in the midst of great numbers of ignorant and
superstitious natives. Their Government was intolerant in the extreme,
they had no books or newspapers, they saw no intelligent visitors, and
the naturally somewhat sombre character of the Dutchman developed under
these conditions into a unique mixture of religious zeal, intolerant
ignorance and qualified immorality. To this character was added the
quality of undoubted bravery and into the general melting pot was
thrown the further attributes, as time went on, of intense dislike and
distrust of the Englishman and of absolute confidence and belief in
themselves.
[Sidenote: Mixture of Huguenots and Dutch Culture]
The Huguenots, who joined the small Dutch population of 1689, brought a
considerable element of culture and liberality of thought with them,
but although many of the best families in Cape Colony, and South Africa
generally, to-day trace their descent from these settlers, the effect
upon the scattered masses of the people was very slight. The
distinctive language and religion and culture to a large extent
disappeared under laws which enforced uniformity and in time merged the
Frenchman in the Boer. Of course, the influence was to some extent a
good one and it yet dwells on the surface of affairs in such names as
De Villiers and Joubert, Du Plessis and Le Seuer, or their local
corruptions. A more potent factor in this evolution of character was
the solitary nature of the settler's life. [Sidenote: Boer and
American Colonist] Pioneers on the American continent were often alone
with their families for a time in some advanced frontier location, but
it was not usually a continuous isolation. As the years passed on
other families joined them, settlements grew rapidly, and with these
villages came the various amenities of social and civilized life. But
the Boer seemed to catch from the wandering savages around him
something of the spirit of their roaming life, and in this he was
encouraged by the nature of his occupation and by the Government
regulations, which simply charged him rental for three thousand acres
of grazing ground without confining him to any specific location. He
did not carve his farm out of some primeval forest, build a permanent
home for his family on his own land, or cultivate the soil with the
strenuous labor of his hands. During the century in which his racial
type was developing the Dutch settler moved from point to point with
his cattle in accordance with the season and the pasture, and lived an
almost nomadic life. His covered wagon was to him what the wigwam has
been to the savage of the American continent, while his skill in
shooting held a somewhat similar place to that of the bow and arrow in
Indian economy. Hence the accentuation of his intellectual narrowness
by continued isolation and the strengthening of the physical frame at
the expense of mental power.
[Sidenote: Boer Characteristics]
As the years passed on, however, and settlement increased; as the
effects of English administration and laws were felt more and more
throughout the regions owning the authority of the Cape Government; as,
unfortunately, the growing inroads of the Kaffirs and their continuous
raids made combination necessary amongst the Dutch farmers; as villages
grew more numerous and occasional schools were to be found in the
communities; some modification of these personal conditions might have
been expected. Amongst the Dutch farmers of Cape Colony changes of
this kind did occur. They adopted some of the customs of civilization,
they lost a part of the more intense Boer narrowness and ignorance of
the past, they developed a qualified interest in education of a racial
character, they lived upon terms of slightly freer intercourse with
their neighbors of both races, they had drilled into them a wholesome
respect for the law and a more humane, or, at any rate, legal view of
the natives position. But to the emigrant farmers of Natal, of the
Orange River and the Vaal, these modifications of character were long
indeed in coming, and to a great mass of them have never come at all.
In their main pursuits the Boers of all South Africa are the
same--owners of cattle and horses and dwellers upon ranches as widely
separated from each other as conditions of population and law will
permit. Of course, in Cape Colony and Natal, there are town and
village Dutchmen sufficient to constitute a small class by themselves;
and the slow-spreading influence of a persistent educational system is
having its effect in other directions; while the natural increase of
population has been doing its work in lessening the isolation of the
farmers. So to some extent in the Orange Free State. Physically and
mentally, however, the Dutch farmer is much the same everywhere in
South Africa--tall, raw-boned, awkward in manner, slow of speech, fond
of hunting whenever and wherever possible, accustomed to the open air,
lazy as regards work, but active in pursuits involving personal
pleasure. Especially has this latter quality been apparent in such
amusements as war with the natives, or the English, or in predatory
excursions into alien territory and the shooting of big game.
[Sidenote: Livingstone's Description of the Boers]
All these qualities have become accentuated in the two republics, while
the latter ones have not been called into practical exercise of late
years in the Colonies proper. The Boer of the Transvaal and the Free
State is, in fact, a most peculiar type even in that region of the
strangest inconsistencies. Authorities are not wanting who praise his
general character in terms of the highest laudation. Mr. J. A. Froude,
after spending a few crowded weeks in South Africa, declared with
almost poetic enthusiasm of the Boers that they: "of all human beings
now on this planet, correspond nearest to Horace's description of the
Roman peasant soldiers who defeated Pyrrhus and Hannibal." Mr. F. C.
Selous, who has hunted with and amongst them for years, found "no
people in the world more genuinely kind and hospitable to strangers
than the South African Dutch." Other less well-known travellers and
public men have spoken in equally high terms of the Boer; while during
the last few years a whole library of literature has been published on
his behalf, and proves, if it does nothing else, that Englishmen have
plenty of impartiality in dealing with such subjects. On the other
hand, evidence accumulates that the character made by history and
environment is in this case a permanent one; that the Boer of to-day is
the natural and inevitable product of the past; and that the visitor,
or traveller, or the interested advocate of racial and political
theories, can no more turn over the pages of a record written in blood
and sorrow throughout the wild veldt of South Africa than the Boer
himself can, in Rudyard Kipling's phrase, "turn back the hands of the
clock" in the region now under his control. Dr. Livingstone saw more
of the emigrant farmer in the formative days of his republican and
independent existence than any other Englishman, and he has described
the strongest influence in his historic evolution as a distinct racial
type[1] in the following words:
"They are all traditionally religious, tracing their descent from some
of the best men (Huguenots and Dutch) the world ever saw. Hence they
claim to themselves the title of 'Christians,' and all the colored race
are 'black property' or 'creatures.' They being the chosen people of
God, the heathen are given to them for an inheritance, and they are the
rod of divine vengeance on the heathen as were the Jews of old.... No
one can understand the effect of the unutterable meanness of the slave
system on the minds of those who, but for the strange obliquity which
prevents them from feeling the degradation of not being gentlemen
enough to pay for services rendered, would be equal in virtue to
ourselves. Fraud becomes as natural to them as 'paying one's way' is
to the rest of mankind."
[1] Dr. Livingstone's _Missionary Travels_. London, 1857.
[Sidenote: Impressions of James Bryce]
Mr. James Bryce, in his _Impressions of South Africa_, points out with
evident truth that: "Isolation and the wild life these ranchmen led
soon told upon their habits. The children grew up ignorant; the women,
as was natural where slaves were employed, lost the neat and cleanly
ways of their Dutch ancestors; the men were rude, bigoted, indifferent
to the comforts and graces of life." [Sidenote: Opinion of Canon Knox
Little] Canon Knox Little, so well known as a divine and a writer,
declares[2] that "it is probable that even the most corrupt of the
South American republics cannot surpass the Government of the Transvaal
in wholesale corruption," and then proceeds to analyze the Boer
character in the following expressive terms: "They detest progress of
any kind, are frequently regardless of truth and unfaithful to promises
when falsehood, or betrayal of engagement, will suit their purpose.
They are subject to alternations of lethargic idleness and fierceness
of courage which characterize many wild animals. Some of them are, of
course, not bad fellows to get on with, if there is no reason for
crossing them. They delight in isolation, detest work, dislike paying
taxes, hate all progressive ways, cling to the most wretched stationary
stage of semi-civilization with unparalleled tenacity, and love what is
called 'independence'--that is, selfish self-seeking up to the verge
and over the verge of license. They are utterly uncultured--indeed,
have no conception of what culture means; their very language is
incapable of expressing high philosophical ideas; and the pastoral home
life so much insisted upon by their panegyrists thinly veils in many
cases--such is the testimony of the many credible witnesses who have
lived among them--the most odious vices."
[2] _Sketches and Studies in South Africa_. By W. J. Knox Little,
Canon Residentiary of Worcester. London, 1899.
[Sidenote: Misinterpretation of the Old Testament]
Similar quotations might be given from many sources and of the same
repute and strength. But, leaving unfavorable generalizations on the
one side to offset favorable ones on the other, it might be well to
take the qualities of the people in detail and examine them from
various points of view. Religion is perhaps the first and foremost
influence. The creed of the Boer is based by universal admission upon
the Old Testament. The love and light and liberty of the newer
dispensation has no place in his belief or in his life. The Bible, as
he reads it, permits slavery, tolerates concubinage, teaches the
perpetual intervention of a personal Providence, and makes him as truly
one of a chosen people as was ever Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob. He
lives upon the broad veldt of South Africa a patriarchal life not
unlike in some respects that of the Hebrew of old, and he has
thoroughly convinced himself that the British are to him what the
Philistines were to the Jew, while the natives are intended to be his
footstool as fully as ever were some of the surrounding races of
Palestine to the heroes of Scripture. His religion is essentially a
gloomy and serious one. There is no lighter side of life to him, and a
text from the Old Testament is made to apply to most of the events of
the day. Built into his character by isolation and intensified, in the
crudest and wildest application, by an environment of inherited and
continued ignorance, this religion has produced some very curious
consequences. It has not made the Boer an enthusiast; it has simply
rendered him contemptuous of all other creeds and sects to a degree of
arrogance which is hard to meet and worse to endure. It has not had
any softening influence, but rather a hardening one--making every
prejudice stronger, every hatred more bitter, every avenue of
intellectual expression more narrow and less susceptible to the forces
of modern progress and education. It has developed into a more or less
formal expression of defiant racial pride through the almost profane
belief that the God of the Hebrews has become, essentially and
entirely, the Providence of the Boers. The continuous use of Old
Testament words and phrases has become a part of his individual life,
though it usually means as little as do the continuous oaths of the
cheerful sailor in the performance of his work. Ignorance has, in
fact, crystallized the faith of his fathers into an extraordinarily
narrow creed of which Tant' Sannie, in Olive Schreiner's _Story of an
African Farm_, presents one of many picturesque embodiments:
"_My_ mother boiled soap with bushes and I will boil soap with bushes.
If the wrath of God is to fall upon this land (said Tant' Sannie, with
the serenity of conscious virtue), it shall not be through me. Let
them make their steam-wagons and their fire-carriages; let them go on
as if the dear Lord didn't know what he was about when he gave their
horses and oxen legs--the destruction of the Lord will follow them. I
don't know how such people read their Bibles. When do we hear of Moses
or Noah riding in a railway?"
[Sidenote: Prejudice Against Civilization]
It would appear, therefore, as beyond doubt, and the conclusion may be
stated in very few words, that his religion has intensified the racial
peculiarities of the Boer; has increased an already strong natural
bigotry and tendency to superstition; and has helped to evolve a most
unique and unpleasant personal character. What it has not done for him
may be still further summarized. It has not taught him that
"cleanliness is next to Godliness;" that morality is more than a matter
of the color line; that honesty in word and action is a part of
righteousness; that hatred toward his territorial neighbors, and malice
or contempt toward his racial inferiors, are characteristics of
anything rather than Christianity. Incidentally, it may be said that
the Boer hates the slightest tendency toward show or display in his
religious worship, and that he will obtrude his views of religion upon
others at any and every opportunity. The Dutch Reformed Church is the
State Church of the Transvaal, and has two branches--the Gereformeede,
which believes in the singing of hymns during service, and the opposing
Hervormde Dopper branch, which has been led by Paul Kruger since the
disagreement of 1883 upon this subject. The matter has become a
political one, and the party opposed to singing hymns has now been in
power for a decade. To the Boers of both Republics the Nachtmaal, or
annual Communion, is the great event of the year. Pretoria is the
centre of the annual pilgrimage and the Mecca of all Boers at this
period. From the ranch and farm and village they trek to that point in
wagons loaded with supplies and holding the entire family. It is
really a national holiday, as well as a religious festival, and is the
one occasion upon which the Boer throws aside his love for solitude and
shows himself willing to mix with his kind. Such is the religion of
the Boer in its general results.
[Sidenote: Home Life and Morals]
Of his home life and morals much might be written. The families live
far apart from each other in a house which forms the centre of some
wide-stretching ranch or farm, and the larger the farm, the more
isolated the situation, the fewer and further the neighbors, the better
pleased is the Boer. In a limited sense only is he hospitable.
Visitors are very few, and when they come on horseback and properly
attended they are received in a sort of rude way. Englishmen are not
considered desirable guests--unless they happen to be great hunters
with many stories of the sport which the Boer loves so well. Poor men,
or those who have met with misfortune, are spurned. The women of the
republics are very ignorant, and as mentally feeble as might be
expected from their surroundings and history. Physically, stoutness is
the end and aim of female ambition, and to weigh two, or even three,
hundred pounds is the greatest pride of the Dutch women of the veldt.
They are invariably treated as the inferior sex, and even eat apart
from the men. The Boer woman thinks little of dress, and in the house
wears chiefly a loose and scantily made gown, which does for night as
well as day. Out of doors, upon the weekly visit to church, something
slightly better is used, together with an immense bonnet and a veil so
thick as to make the face invisible. Next to the desire for fatness is
the wish for a good complexion, and these two vanities constitute the
special distinction of the Boer woman. She does little work and takes
less exercise; except in times of war, when she sleeps as easily on the
veldt as in a feather bed, and handles her gun as skilfully as does her
husband. The Kaffirs and Hottentots and miscellaneous colored servants
do the labor of both the kitchen and the farm. They do not share in
the long prayers of the family, or indeed in any religious exercise, as
the Boer regards them as animals not requiring salvation. The common
belief is that they are descended from apes and baboons.
[Sidenote: The Homestead and Immorality]
The homesteads are small and unpretentious, and nearly always dirty in
the extreme, as are the clothes and persons of the people themselves.
Washing is perfunctory and generally the merest pretense. Of course
water is frequently scarce, and this fact affords some excuse for what
has now become a general habit and condition. As to the morals of the
Dutch farmer facts speak stronger than words. In his relations with
his own race his code is as strict as can be desired, and im that
respect the home life is entirely moral. But no law, spiritual or
human, controls him in regard to the negro women with whom he has been
surrounded for centuries. And the result is a brutalization of his
whole nature, a loss of all refinement in manners and the absence of
any real respect for the sex. The Griquas, who have numbered thousands
and constituted large and distinct communities in South Africa, and are
still being added to, are the offspring of Boer and Hottentot unions;
while the Cape-Boys are the result of similarly unrecognized relations
between Boers and the Kaffir women. This immorality extends to the
Boers all through South Africa in their relation with colored
dependents, and it is not difficult to comprehend its degrading effect
upon men, women and children alike.
[Sidenote: Lack of Education]
Ignorance is universal and pronounced. It is more than a mere lack of
education. Such as there is amongst the wealthier portion of the rural
population consists in the occasional visit of some travelling
schoolmaster--generally a broken-down Englishman, or drunken Hollander
who has failed in every other pursuit. Even this measure of
instruction is not supported by the poorer farmers. Schools in the
Transvaal are very rare, though more frequently found in the Free
State. Distances are, of course, considerable, and for this reason
alone organized education would be difficult. In late years the
well-to-do frequently engage tutors--usually of rather doubtful
qualifications--for six months and in order to teach the children to
read and write. But of anything more than this they do not dream, and
the great majority of the adults can do neither. The Old Testament
they are taught until they know it by heart, and do not really require
to read it. Of literature, history, astronomy, the sciences, political
economy, the nations of the world, nothing is known to the average Boer
of the veldt. He believes the earth to be a flat and solid surface
around which the sun revolves. A member of the Transvaal Volksraad is
on record as having jeered at the English view of the matter. He
declared that the earth couldn't move because he had often for hours at
a time watched upon the veldt to see if a certain kopje gave any sign
of motion. As to the sun, didn't Joshua bid it stand still, and how
could he have done that if it was already stationary and the world went
round it? No native Dutchman of South Africa has shown literary
ability. Its only poet is Pringle--a Scotchman. Its only writer is
Mrs. Cornwright-Schreiner--the daughter of a German. Its only
historian is Dr. Theal--a Canadian. New ideas are to the Boer a source
of dread; improvements are spurned as either impious or unnecessary.
Cures for infectious sheep disease or for rinderpest amongst the cattle
are opposed as contravening the intentions of Providence. Compulsory
education is as heartily and vigorously denounced in Cape Colony, where
the most intelligent members of the race are to be found, as is
compulsory vaccination.
[Illustration: THE LAST CARTRIDGE. An incident in the battle of
Glencoe.]
[Illustration: QUEEN VICTORIA AT BALMORAL, OCTOBER 22, 1899. Writing
letters of sympathy to the near relations of the killed and wounded at
the battle of Glencoe.]
[Sidenote: Primitiveness]
Taxation in the republics of to-day is as strongly and sincerely
disliked as it was in the days of the Great Trek, or of the little
republics in the time of Pretorius. Had the Government of the
Transvaal depended upon its ordinary revenues, or upon the taxation of
its own people for munitions of war and for the great armament of the
present day, it would have long since been overthrown by the Boers
themselves. Like the Chinaman, the Dutch farmer reveres the practices
and precepts of his equally ignorant father or grandfathers. They did
not endure taxation, neither will he. His method of cultivating the
soil affords another illustration of this quality. It is that of Syria
and Palestine. Corn is still trodden under the foot of the ox, and the
little agricultural work carried on is done by native servants. There
is, of course, a better class of South African Dutchmen than the Boer
of the veldt. But it is limited in number, outside of Cape Colony, and
the latter constitutes the really important subject for consideration.
For some of his qualities the Boer cannot be seriously blamed.
Surliness of manner, uncouthness in appearance, aversion to strangers,
ignorance of the outer world, religious superstition, are all matters
in which he does not stand alone, and which are the natural products of
an isolated life. So also is the fact of his being stupid and lazy in
ordinary life, and only keen, alert and quick when he stands on the
veldt with gun in hand and his horse by his side intent upon the game
of sport or the greater game of war. But there is no adequate excuse
for his continued hatred of the Englishman, for his tyranny toward
inferiors and colored people, for his personal immorality, or for the
phenomenal arrogance of his conduct and character. The higher class
Boer of the towns in the Free State, and of Pretoria itself, may
eliminate some of the more evident barbarisms of his veldt brother, but
there remains the same extraordinary ignorance of external conditions,
the same monumental conceit, the same absence of truthfulness and
honor, the same arrogance and hatred of British power and progress.
Added to this is the political corruption arising, in the Transvaal,
out of conditions in which poor and ignorant farmers have obtained and
held, through designing adventurers from Holland, the entire government
and control of a State in which gold is being produced in immense
quantities, and lavished, as opportunity offers, for the purchase of
privileges or powers not obtainable through the usual channels of
popular government.
[Sidenote: Love of Liberty]
What of the Boer love of freedom? There is no more admirable quality
in the world than love of liberty; no greater inspiration to gallant
deeds, to high ideals, to noble practices. But there are different
kinds of liberty. The Iroquois of North American history stalked
through his noble forests in all the pride of physical power and the
freedom to torture and slaughter his red enemy or white foe whenever
and wherever he could. He loved liberty in the sense of doing what he
liked. The Dublin assassins of Lord Frederick Cavendish, the Chicago
bomb-throwers, the lovers of lynch-law in Southern States, the
anarchists of Paris or St. Petersburg, all have feelings of the
fiercest nature in favor of freedom. License, however, is not true
liberty, nor is the love of independence amongst the Boers a regard for
freedom in the ordinary sense of that much-abused word. Of course,
there is much that is admirable in the feeling, as there is in any
sentiment or aspiration for which men will fight and die--as there was
in the freebooting instincts of the old-time Scottish clans; as there
was in the loyal passion of the Scottish Highlanders for "Bonnie Prince
Charlie;" as there was in the prolonged and desperate struggle of the
Southern States for a dying cause; as there is even in the Filipino
desire for a sort of wild freedom. In the case of the Boer, however,
it is simply an instinctive desire for solitude and for the free
practice of certain inbred tendencies, such as hunting, slave-holding
and ranching. It can hardly be said to be connected with questions of
government or constitution. No Government at all would suit the Boer
if it were practicable, and his record shows that an oligarchy is no
less agreeable to him than was the one-time division of 15,000 settlers
into four republics. He knows little of the struggles of his reputed
ancestors in Holland for freedom of the higher kind, and for that
equality of religious and racial rights which he is now the first to
spurn, and to even fight in order to prevent others from obtaining in
parts of South Africa.
[Sidenote: Change of Policy]
So long as the Boer love for independence was simply a fond regard for
isolation, which inflicted no serious injury upon other white people
around him, the British Empire and its citizens had no right to
interfere or to do more than laugh at its crudities and, perhaps,
denounce its cruelties to inferior races. But, when the so-called
passion for independence became an aggressive passion for territorial
acquisition, and the love for license to do as he liked with his own
colored population was lost sight of in a widely manifested desire to
acquire control over outside native tribes, the issue became an
Imperial one, and raids upon Basutoland, Bechuanaland, Zululand,
Mashonaland and Tongaland marked the direct pathway to present
developments. This policy of extension, however, required statecraft,
a quality somewhat lacking amongst the rude legislators of Pretoria or
Bloemfontein. It also needed money, the supply of which, before the
discovery of gold, was sadly deficient. [Sidenote: Government of Dutch
Adventurers] President Brand, of the Free State, was a statesman, but,
in the ordinary sense of the word, was never a Boer, and would have
nothing to do with the more aggressive ambitions of the Transvaal
rulers. President Kruger had plenty of native ability, and from the
time of his taking hold of affairs in the Transvaal dates its growth in
strength and influence. He is, however, of German extraction, although
one of the boys who participated in the original Great Trek. Dr. F. W.
Reitz, who ultimately became so strong a personality in the Government
of both republics, was also of German origin. So with Hofmeyr of Cape
Colony. President Steyn, of the Free State, is the son of a Dutchman,
but one who was a resident of Bloemfontein and not a Boer in the
popular sense of the term. Dr. W. J. Leyds, the cleverest manipulator
and schemer of South African history, is a Hollander, as was Dr. E. J.
P. Jorrissen, one of the Dutch negotiators of the Convention of 1881.
These facts illustrate an interesting phase of the situation. It was
not from the ranks of the Boers that men came who were capable of
making the Transvaal an arsenal of military power, a close corporation
of clever financial government, the head of the great Afrikander
movement of the past decade, a force of organized strength for the
destruction of British rule in South Africa, and a diplomatic factor at
the capitals of Europe. The Boers were, and are, simply the
instruments of clever adventurers from Holland. The "Hollanders" first
came to the front in South Africa during the early days of the Free
State. They controlled its incipient constitution for some years, and
helped, incidentally, to check and then kill the agitation for
reincorporation in the Empire. They caused President Brand some
trouble during the preliminary period of his administration, but then
gradually settled down into the quiet and comfortable occupancy of such
offices as required more education than the average Boer possessed.
These they still hold to a considerable extent. After Brand's death
their governing influence became greater; they joined and organized the
Afrikander Bund in the State, and then stood shoulder to shoulder with
President Reitz and his successor, Steyn, until the development of
events brought them into closer relationship with fellow-Hollanders in
the Transvaal under the common leadership of Kruger and the clever
manipulation of Reitz and Leyds.
[Sidenote: Anti-English Influence]
In the Republic beyond the Vaal they first came into prominence under
the administration of President Burgers, who, after his visit to Europe
in the early seventies, brought some individual Hollanders back with
him. But the bankrupt State did not possess sufficient attractiveness
to draw very many adventurers from anywhere during the immediately
succeeding years; and it was not until the discovery of gold, in 1884,
and the prospect of the country becoming wealthy arose, that clever and
adventurous natives of Holland began to think seriously of entering
into the heritage they have since acquired. They did come, however,
and in time acquired control of the chief offices in the State outside
of the Presidency and Vice-Presidency; of the educational system, such
as it was; of the railways and taxes and customs. It was not hard for
them to see that the more isolated they could keep the Boer of the
veldt the better it would be for their permanent success, and that the
more they could estrange the Transvaal from Great Britain and the
British Colonial system of South Africa the easier it would be to
preserve the Republic and its riches for their own use and control.
From these considerations it was natural and easy to take advantage of
President Kruger's anti-British ambitions, of the machinery of the
Afrikander Bund at the Cape, and of the money of the Uitlanders, in
order to build up a great movement against British power in combination
with the Free State; and to transform the republic of emigrant farmers
into a strong, though small, military power. Plenty of foreigners and
foreign help--especially German--was available, and out of that
prominent Boer characteristic of hatred of England and the other one of
pride in his own fighting records and belief in his own invincibility
in war, were built up the military structure of the year 1899.
[Sidenote: War a Big Game Hunt]
To the fighting qualities of the Boer many tributes have been and more
will be paid in the future. It is essentially a product of his
environment. The student of British wars with the Kaffirs and of the
interminable succession of struggles fought by the Boer with Hottentots
and Bushmen in early Colonial days; with the Kosas on the frontiers of
Cape Colony and the Zulus in Natal; with the Matabeles in the pioneer
days of the republics, and with the Basutos during more than a decade
in the history of the Free State; with the Bapedis of the Transvaal and
the Bechuanas of the northern and western borders; with the
Baramapulana of the Limpopo River and the Swazis of the southeastern
border; will understand how much of native guile and savagery there is
in the Boer method of warfare, and why it is so difficult for troops
trained in other kinds of fighting to meet it when combined with
European science in armament and trained skill in the management of
great guns. Added to the quality of native cunning in warfare is an
alertness of movement derived from long and hereditary skill in hunting
wild animals and living constantly on horseback; as well as in fighting
continuously a wily and ambush-making native foe. As with the Kaffir
himself, laziness disappears when the game of the Boer is on the
horizon, and it matters not whether the quarry be animal or human, the
hunter and fighter becomes at once a creature of the veldt; a very part
and parcel of the country around him. He knows every foot of South
African soil. In the words of Pringle, referring to the emigrant
farmer of earlier years:
"Afar in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
Away--away--in the wilderness vast,
Where the White Man's foot hath never passed,
And the quivered Koranna or Bechuan
Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan:
A region of emptiness, howling and drear,
Which man hath abandoned from famine and fear."
Those days are passed; but the instinct remains, the knowledge has
become hereditary, and, through the love of hunting which still
continues in the breast of the Boer, it is to-day a practical and
potent force. To the average Dutch farmer maps are therefore
unnecessary, and the Drakensberg is as familiar in its every detail of
mountain and kopje and rainless river as are the rooms of his own home
on the rolling plains of the Transvaal or the Orange Free State. Hence
it is that the general peculiarities of his complex character combine
to make him a soldier and enemy whom it is no easy task to subdue--even
for the legions of Britain and her allied Empire.