CHAPTER IV

THE WANDERINGS OF THE BOER

We have seen that, within a generation and a half from the landing

of the Huguenots, they had intermarried and blended with the earlier

settlers; and that their common language was the "Taal" (whether that

language was a speech imported from some northern region, or a South

African growth); that they were in possession of slaves, who planted

and built for them; and that further, they were permeated by the

conception that they were the chosen people of God; that South Africa

was a personal bequest to themselves; that the aboriginal inhabitants

of the land were the true Hittites, Perizzites and Jebusites, whom the

God of the Jewish Scripture had ordered should be destroyed; and that

they held, with an intensity of conviction which it is impossible for

the nineteenth-century European fully to understand, that they were the

very people to whom the threats and promises of the Jewish Scriptures

were held out; and that, should they obey the commandments delivered

unto them, their seed should become as the sand of the seashore for

multitude, and they should inherit South Africa.

Settled on the beautiful Cape Peninsula, and in the lovely Western

valleys, where the wild flowers bloom as nowhere else on the earth's

surface; where the streams never fail, and the high mountains shut out

the parching winds of the north, and where almost every plant known to

civilized man will flourish; and where the few Hottentots and Bushmen

who had inhabited the land having been easily exterminated or driven

away, each man sat (not figuratively, but literally) under his own

vine and his own fig-tree, enjoying the fruits thereof; it would be

imagined that, at least for many generations, the descendants of the

early settlers would have rested, cultivating and peopling their lands

along the coast.

But it was not so.

The hand of the Dutch East India Company rested heavily on the people.

In some respects a fair government, and sometimes represented by able

men, it yet, like all other kindred commercial despotisms, crushed the

people where its own interests were concerned under an iron heel. They

might not trade nor barter with the natives, lest they should interfere

with the Company's profits; they might not plant or sow as they wished;

coffee and spice were forbidden as interfering with the Company's

monopoly in the East; the smallest details of daily life were regulated

by an externally imposed law; and the people writhed.

It was not to be supposed that these folk, the sons of roving soldiers

and sailors, or of men who had left their homes in search of religious

freedom, or whose forbears in Holland in the sixteenth century resisted

the Spaniard when his heel was on the flag of freedom in half the lands

of Europe, and who, rather than allow him to fix his foot permanently

on their soil, had turned the waters of the North Sea over lands and

villages; it was not to be supposed that folk so descended, and who

regarded South Africa as their peculiar inheritance, should submit to

dictation and interference at the hand of any external government.

Again and again the most restless and independent of these men drew out

the huge ox-wagon--South Africa's ship of the desert--and putting into

it wife and children and such household goods as they possessed, they

with their flocks and herds bade good-bye for ever to the beautiful

valleys of the Boven-Land. Sometimes they took their course northward

over the high mountain ranges that separate the Western coast land

from the vast Karoo plains; sometimes they kept north-east and along

the coast; but wherever they went their aim was still the same--to

escape beyond the region and rule of the old Dutch Government; and

wherever they went, they went alone, and unaided by any organized

government, their flint-lock guns their only means of defence, their

rhinoceros-hide whips their one sceptre of rule.

And so began, one hundred and fifty years ago, that long "trek" of

the Boer peoples northward and eastward, which to-day still goes

on with unabated ardour and quiet persistency; and which in its

ultimate essence is a search, not for riches, not for a land where

mere political equality may be found; but for a world of absolute and

untrammelled individual liberty; for a land where each white man shall

reign, by a divine right inherent in his own person, over a territory

absolutely his own; uninterfered with by the action of any external

ruler, untrammelled by any foreign obligation--the Promised Land of

Boer!

As a hundred years ago he stood on the banks of the Vaal and the Orange

looking to the lands beyond, so to-day he stands on the banks of the

Limpopo and Zambesi; and still looks northward.[40]

[40] This was written in the April of 1891, when large

treks were being organized in the Free State and Transvaal.

* * * * *

Often the early fore-trekkers moved due north and climbed the vast

mountain ranges. They saw when they reached their summits no descent

on the other side, but the vast plains with their scant olive-coloured

herbage and tumbled rocks.

As sweeping across these wide Colonial plains to-day, one looks out at

them from the windows of the railway train, silent as they still lie,

it is not easy to recall what they must have appeared in the eyes of

those first-born white sons of South Africa whose wagons, moving slowly

along, broke for the first time into these vast, silent plains. Across

each one some white man's eye looked for the first time, taking in the

expanse, which till then only the Bushman had seen as he tracked his

game, or the Hottentot as he travelled with his tribe; across each

one of them some solitary wagon first crept, leaving the marks of its

wheels deep in the red sand, which in all the ages of the past had

been printed only by the feet of the antelope and the claw of the

ostrich and lion, or the light tread of the Bushman and Hottentot--and

the mark of those wheels made the first track of that road on which,

later but surely, civilization with its colossal evils, and its

infinite beneficial possibilities, was to follow.

At night, when they had drawn up their wagons beside some iron-stone

kopje, or near the bed of a sloot[41] where there might be water in the

sand, they heard the jackals howl about them (as you may still hear

them at almost any farm in the Karoo, if in the night you will walk a

mile or two from the house and sit down alone on the rocks) and the

lion's roar, which for the span of more than a life has not been heard

there now. And in the morning, when they woke and peered out between

the sails of the wagon, within a stone's throw they saw the springbok

feeding with wildebeest[42] among them; and when the sun rose, and

they stood up on the wagon-chest and scanned the plain, they rejoiced

if they saw far off a vley[43] where their cattle might drink; and if

they saw none, they looked about for any indication of those carefully

concealed drinking-places of the little Bushman, so well covered

with stones, lest the wild animals might tread them in, or strangers

drink the water; if they found none, and digging in the sand of the

river-beds yielded too little for their cattle, then they trekked on.

If they found enough, then they often stayed for awhile till the veld

was brown and barren and the game gone and then they trekked again.

[41] Sloot = watercourse.

[42] Wildebeest = the gnu.

[43] Vley = depression with water.

Those were the days of hard living and hard fighting. The white man

depended mainly on his gun for food. And when the little Bushman

looked out from behind his rocks, he saw his game--all he had to live

on--being killed, and the fountain which he or his fathers had found

and made, and had used for ages, being appropriated by the white men.

The plains were not wide enough for both, and the new-come children

of the desert fought with the old. We have all sat listening in our

childhood to the story of the fighting in those old days. How sometimes

the Boer coming suddenly on a group of Bushmen round their fire at

night, fired and killed all he could. If in the flight a baby were

dropped and left behind, he said, "Shoot that too, if it lives it will

be a Bushman or bear Bushmen." On the other hand, when the little

Bushman had his chance and found the Boer's wagon unprotected, the

Boer sometimes saw a light across the plain, which was his blazing

property; and when he came back would find the wagon cinders, and only

the charred remains of his murdered wife and children. It was a bitter,

merciless fight, the little poisoned arrow shot from behind the rocks,

as opposed to the great flint-lock gun. The victory was inevitably with

the flint-lock, but there may have been times when it almost seemed to

lie with the arrow; it was a merciless primitive fight, but it seems to

have been on the whole, compared to many modern battles, fair and even,

and in the end the little Bushman vanished.

It, perhaps, was not _absolutely_ inevitable that all should have been

as it was.

If these early fore-trekkers of our land had been Buddhas or Christs,

or even George Eliots or Darwins or Livingstones, the story might have

been different; but so, too, would the whole history of human life have

been, had those gracious individualities, which now here and now there

shoot forth on the highest branches of human life, constituted its

undergrowth as well--if instead of being, as they are, merely the rare

leaflets which show us what the whole growth may attain to when all

have grown taller!

It is true that ordinary missionaries, Dutch, French, English, or

German, have lived among these tiny folk for years, without suffering

either injury or insult; but the fore-trekkers were not missionaries,

nor thirsting to sacrifice themselves for the aborigines. They were

simply ordinary, good folk, rather above than below the common European

average, who had their own ends to look after; and the Bushman, being

what he was, a little human in embryo, determined to have his own way,

the story could take its course in no other direction than that in

which it did!

It is easy for _us_ sitting at ease in our study chairs to-day to

condemn the attitude of the early white men, Dutch or English, towards

him, and regret that they did not take a more scientific interest in

this little half-developed child of South Africa. To the thinking man

of to-day he is a link with the past of our race; a living prehistoric

record; his speech, his scheme of social life, his physical structure,

are a volume in human history, beside which the most hoary manuscript

in China or India is modern; and the oldest relics of Greece and Rome

are things of to-day.

It is easy for _us_ to feel tender over his little paintings when

suddenly we come across them among the rocks; the artist in us

recognizes across the chasm of a million centuries of development its

little kinsman. Something in us nods back to him across the years:--"I

know why you did that, little brother: I do it too--another way, pen

or pencil or stone, it doesn't matter which. You call it an ox: I call

it truth. We both paint what we see, the likest we can! They never

know why we do it. Did you look at your oxen and your zebras and your

ostriches, and feel that you must and you must, till you painted or

etched them? Take my hand, brother manikin!"

Ring round head, ears on pedestals, his very vital organs differing

from the rest of his race--yet, as one sits under the shelving rocks

at the top of some African mountain, the wall behind one covered with

his crude little pictures, the pigments of which are hardly faded

through the long ages of exposure, and, as one looks out over the great

shimmering expanse of mountain and valleys beneath, one feels that

that spirit which is spread abroad over existence concentrated itself

in those little folk who climbed among the rocks; and that that which

built the Parthenon and raised St. Peter's, and carved the statues of

Michael Angelo in the Medici Chapel, and which moves in every great

work of man, moved here also. That that Spirit of Life which, incarnate

in humanity, seeks to recreate existence as it beholds it, and which

we call art, worked through that small monkey hand too! And that

shelving cave on the African mountain becomes for us a temple, in which

first the hand of humanity raised itself quiveringly in the worship of

the true and of the beautiful.

And when in the valley below we come suddenly across a little

arrow-head beside some old drinking-fountain, or find a spot where his

flints and empty mussel-shells lie thick among the soil on the bank of

a sloot where for this many hundred years now no mussels have been, a

curious thrill of interest comes to us: we feel as would an adult who

in middle life should come suddenly across the shoes and toys he had

used in earliest childhood, carefully laid up together.

And we sit down and dig out the shells and flints with our fingers and

the warm afternoon sunshine shimmers over us, as it did over some old

first mother of humanity when she sat there cracking shells. And we

touch with our hands the old race days, that at other times are hardly

realizable by us.

For us it is easy to feel all this.

It is easier yet for the fair European woman, as she lounges in her

drawing-room in Europe, to regard as very heinous the conduct of men

and women who destroyed and hated a race of small aborigines. But if,

from behind some tapestry-covered armchair in the corner, a small,

wizened, yellow face were to look out now, and a little naked arm

guided an arrow, tipped with barbed bone dipped in poison, at her

heart, the cry of the human preserving itself would surely arise;

Jeames would be called up, the policeman with his baton would appear,

and if there were a pistol in the house, it would be called into

requisition! The little prehistoric record would lie dead upon the

Persian carpet.

To indulge in philanthropic sentiment is a luxury easily to be enjoyed

by the idle and luxurious; to share in generous action towards weaker

peoples is a possibility only to those who have sternly set out on the

path of self-obliteration; and he who indulges most of the first knows

sometimes least of the last.

When the fore-trekker mother lay awake at night in her wagon with her

baby at her breast, she listened with strained intensity to hear if

there were not a stealthy step approaching, or for the sound of the

loosening of the oxen tied to the wagon, on whose continued possession

the lives of her husband and children depended. When the children went

out to play during the day, she bade them anxiously to keep near at

hand; and as she sat alone in the heat when her husband had gone out

hunting, she scanned the kopjes to see if there were not a little dark

figure moving on them. To her he was no record of the past, but an

awful actuality of the present; and the stern pressure of the primitive

necessities of life, which in their extremest form have impelled

civilized, shipwrecked men, when starving, to feed on each other's

flesh, stepped in and made brotherly love impossible. The Boer fought

hard and the Bushman hard; they gave and they asked no quarter; neither

can I see that we have any reason to be ashamed of either of our South

Africans.

St. Francis of Assisi preached to the little fishes: we eat them. But

the man who eats fish can hardly be blamed, seeing that the eating of

fishes is all but universal among the human race!--if only he does not

pretend that while he eats he preaches to them! This has never been the

Boer's attitude towards any aboriginal race. He may consume it off the

face of the earth; but he has never told it he does it for its benefit.

He talks no cant.

We condemn the Boer for his ruthless extermination of this little race;

but to-day, we of culture and refinement, who are under no pressure of

life and death, do nothing to preserve the scant relics of the race.

The last of this folk are now passing away from us, together with those

infinitely beautiful and curious creatures, which made for ages the

South African plains the richest on earth, in that rarest and most

delightful of all beauties, the beauty of complex and varied forms of

life. Over them the humanity of future ages may weep; but they will

never be restored to vary and glorify the globe, or to throw light on

the mystery of sentient growth.

We, as civilized men, must recognize that the extinction of a species

of beast, and yet more a species of man, is an order of Vandalism

compared with which the destruction of Greek marbles by barbarians, or

of classical manuscripts by the Christians, were trifles; for it is

within the range of a remote possibility that again among mankind some

race may arise which shall produce such statues as those of Phidias,

or that the human brain may yet again blossom forth into the wisdom

and beauty incarnate in the burnt books; but a race of living things,

once destroyed, is gone for ever--it reappears on earth no more. We are

conscious that we are murdering the heritage of unborn generations; yet

we take no step to stay the destruction.

The money which one fashionable woman spends on dresses from Worth;

the jewels and cut flowers one woman purchases for self-indulgence

would save a race! Lands might be obtained, and such conditions

be instituted, for a lesser sum, as might enable an expiring race

to survive. And the money and labour expended on the murder and

maintenance of a few miserable foxes in a land and among a people

who say they have emerged from barbarism, would send down to future

ages all the incalculable living wealth of South Africa. While we are

unwilling to deny ourselves our lowest pleasures for this purpose, is

it wise that we condemn, with delicate humanity and lofty pride, the

simple fore-trekker, who, rather than die and see wife and children

die, cleared out a small human race before him?

It is probable that more enlightened ages will regard with far more

sympathy the Boer who, having shot a pile of bucks, stood with his wife

and sons busily cutting them up into biltong, that they might have

the wherewithal to live, than that cultured savage who, to gratify a

small vanity and boast of a big bag, slaughters the last of a race;

and contemplates, as a Bushman might do, the heads fastened on his

dining-room wall, with a pride that might only be justified had he

created instead of destroyed them.

This at least is certain, that the Bushman fared no worse in the hands

of the Boer than he would have done in those of the average settlers

of any other race who go out to people and organize new countries

inhabited by aboriginal peoples. And while we, the natives of modern

Europe, are contented to leave this, the most stupendous, the most

difficult, and the most honourable of all the labours which a nation

can perform, to any hands that are willing to undertake it; while we

send out, not our wisest and best to civilize and elevate and plant

the tree of European life among simple peoples, but oftenest the most

unfit among our race--the worthless son who cannot study, and who will

not labour; the man who even in the much simpler and less important

function of a citizenship in an old established society has been a

failure--while again and again we send out these men to perform our

highest national functions it will still remain a truth, that the old

Boer fore-trekker has nothing to be ashamed of when his record as a

civilizing and elevating power is compared with ours.

We shall return later, and then shall deal at length with this question

of the relations of the European towards the original inhabitants of

South Africa, and glance at those points wherein our attitude differs

from that of the first white settlers; and we shall then glance at the

causes which have led to this difference. But, as far as the Bushman

is concerned, it may now be unqualifiedly stated that he tends to

disappear as certainly under the heel of the Englishman as that of

the fore-trekker, and only a little, if at all, slower. Neither does

it appear that our languid and more showy methods must be much more

pleasant to him than theirs--simpler and more direct.

When a primitive man wants breakfast, he takes a sheep, kneels upon it,

holds it between his legs, and cuts its throat; he skins it, and taking

a slice out of it, fries it on the coals for breakfast.

We also demand not less imperatively cutlets for our breakfast; but

we manage it another way. We procure an individual some way off to

kill the beast and another out of sight to cook it; we have a paper

frill put round the bone to disguise it, and set a pot of flowers

straight before us to look at while we eat it--but to the sheep--to the

sheep--it can make little difference which way it is eaten! We still

do our unclean work, but we do it by proxy. And it may be questioned

whether what we gain in refinement we have not lost in sincerity.

The Boer cleared the land of the wild beasts and savages as

expeditiously as he could. But they were not his main difficulty, as we

have seen. On those arid, sparsely vegetated up-country plains, water

and food for his flocks varied with the time of years, and sometimes

were not to be found at all. It was seldom desirable or even possible,

in those days when artificial reservoirs or springs were unknown, to

remain more than a few months on one spot. So when the bushes were

eaten, and the water began to dry up, he spanned in his ox-wagon and

moved away with his flocks and herds in search of fresh pastures. Or,

if he had no flocks and herds and lived by the chase alone, he moved

yet oftener, following the droves of the springbok and hartebeest[44]

as they themselves trekked in search of fresh pasture. He built no

house, or, if he raised a temporary shelter, it was composed of a few

cross-parts thatched with bushes, resembling a high-pitched roof placed

on the ground; but his real home was his wagon.

[44] Hartebeest = an antelope.

With a constant tendency to go northward and north-east these men moved

slowly on; visiting for the first time plain after plain in the karoo

and grass-veld, and piloting their huge canvas-sailed wagons across the

infinite expanses of sand and rock, as their sailor forefathers a few

generations earlier had piloted their ships across the sea.

In many cases for generations this wandering life was continued. Men

were born, grew up, grew old, and died, who knew no home but the

ox-wagon, and had no conception of human life but as a perpetual moving

onward. Even at the present day there are still to be found a few of

these men, hunters and nomads, whose fathers and forefathers also led

this wandering life. They are generally large-limbed, large-handed men,

powerfully built, but somewhat loosely, and a little slouching about

the shoulders; often with long, straggling, yellowish-brown beards.[45]

[45] There seems some tendency in South African climate

and conditions of life to produce this physical type, as

it is often closely approximated to by the descendants of

British settlers. The South Africans as a whole appear to

be larger, and not quite so closely knit as the European

folk.

They are generally somewhat silent of tongue, their blue or grey-blue

eyes often dull as though not fully awakened, but starting into

keenness and life when they catch the glimpse of a springbok across

the plain or a korhaan on wing overhead; and striking forth sparks of

fire when you mention to them the benefits of taxation and a foreign

government--as the flint-lock guns of their forebears struck fire, when

the old flints hit the steels.

These men, whose mothers brought them forth kneeling upon the red sand

amid the bushes at the wagon-side, under the blue African sky, with

little more aid than the wild buck receives when she bows herself to

bring forth her desert young--women who knew nothing of the tinsel and

luxuries of life, who were content to bake their children's bread in

some scooped-out anthill, and who, when for months or years there was

no bread, fed their households with the wild buck's flesh, which they

had prepared with their own hands; who, in time of danger, stood side

by side with their husbands and sons, and when the enemy attacked,

again and again, were found kneeling on the front box of the wagons,

reloading the guns, and urging on sons and husbands to resistance and

even death, as their Teutonic ancestresses had done in Germanic forests

eighteen hundred years before--these men, born of such women, and whose

first view of life was of the red sands and wide skies of an African

plain; who, before they could speak, watched with half-comprehending

eyes the loading of guns and the capture of game, and who, long

before they were adult, could track the wild beast and mark the path

of strayed cattle by the smallest sign upon the sand; who, when they

travelled alone, needed nothing but a few strips of dried flesh, or

a lump of unleavened bread stuffed into their bags, and a saddle on

which at night to rest their heads as they slept under the stars; to

whom every South African bird and beast was familiar; for whom every

plant had its name, and every change in the atmosphere or the earth

its understood significance; to whom every new South African plain on

which they entered was a fresh home; and who, when they died, were

put under the red sand, on which they first saw the light, and left

in the plain with a pile of stones over them in the mighty solitude

they had never feared while alive--these men, and the women who bore

them, possessed South Africa as no white man has ever possessed it, and

as no white man ever will, save it be here and there a stray poet or

artist. They possessed it as the wild beasts and the savages whom they

dispossessed had possessed it; they grew out of it; it shaped their

lives and conditioned their individuality. They owed nothing to the men

of the country, and everything to the inanimate nature about them! The

civilization they had carried away with them from their homes in the

West, they may slightly have lost; but they gained a knowledge as real

as it was intimate of the land of their adoption.

Nor is it probable that South Africa has lost by this return to a

condition of almost primitive simplicity on the part of a section of

her white inhabitants. As it is necessary that the artist or thinker

who is to instruct mankind should not live too far from the unmodified

life of nature, if he is to accomplish work that shall have in it the

deathless elements of truth and virility; so it seems to be a law of

existence that the most dominant and powerful races, if they desire to

keep their virility, cannot remove themselves too far and too long from

the primitive conditions of life. As the great individual is seldom

found more than three generations removed from ancestors who wrought

with their hands and lived in the open air, so the most powerful races

seldom survive more than a few centuries of the enervation of an

artificial life. As the physical body becomes toneless and weakened,

so also the intellectual life grows thin; and it is as necessary for

the nation, as for the individual who would recuperate, to return again

and again, and, lying flat on the bosom of our common mother, to suck

direct from the breast of nature the milk of life, which, drawn through

long artificial channels, tends to become thin and ceases to nourish.

Most great conquering peoples have been within hail of the nomads'

encampment; and all great nations at the time when they have attained

their greatness were largely agricultural or pastoral. The city kills.

(It is, of course, hardly necessary to state that we have no intention

of signifying that vast cities or the civilization which they represent

have any instantaneous effect on national life, and still less that

statistical tables would prove the death-rate higher in the town than

country. These things have no bearing on the decline and fall of

nations, which must slowly and gradually decay from within before the

moment of their catastrophic fall can arrive. It is this decay which is

promoted by the artificial conditions of life in that high condition

of material civilization, of which vast cities, with their abject

squalor, their squandered wealth, and their wide departure from the

natural conditions of life, are at once the symptom and the cause; and

it is a vulgar commonplace, that were the city not recruited from the

more primitive country it would be depopulated in six generations. Vast

and gorgeous cities have always heralded and accompanied the falls of

great peoples; and the ruins of Nineveh, Babylon, Rome, and the vast

fallen cities of India and Greece, are the graves under which a brave,

simple, and mighty people were buried while the walls yet stood. It

would be almost as rational to inquire in the case of a man habitually

over-eating and drinking himself, and who, taking no exercise, dies

at fifty of gout and diseased liver, what hour of inaction, or which

mouthful of meat or drink was it which produced his death, as to assert

that because no detail of a given system of civilization is directly

and instantly destructive to national or individual life, morally

and physically, that therefore the whole system is not slowly but

surely so. On the other hand, is there any reason to suppose that the

emasculation and degradation of human creatures, which has always taken

place whenever a high state of material civilization has been reached,

is an absolutely inevitable concomitant of all complex material

civilization, for all time? Must the story of history for ever repeat

itself? Is it possible that the human intelligence, with its marvellous

powers of forethought and analysis, shall at some time be able so to

comprehend its own condition and to shape human life, that the benefits

of a material civilization shall be grasped, while the emasculation and

disintegration _which have always accompanied it_ shall be escaped? We

have been compelled here to insert this perfunctory note on a subject

so wide and vital that it ill lends itself to perfunctory treatment, to

avoid misconception, till later we return to deal more carefully with

this subject.)

"The Scythians," says the old Greek historian, speaking of some of

the wandering tribes who at a later date were to overrun and subvert

the ancient civilizations, "the Scythians, in regard to one of the

greatest of human matters, have struck out a path cleverer than any

I know--for when men have neither walls nor established cities, but

are all house-carriers and horsemen, living not from the plough, but

from cattle and having their dwellings in wagons--how can they be

otherwise than unattackable and impracticable to meddle with?" Like the

Scythians, our dwellers in wagons have indeed remained "impracticable

to meddle with"; and they will undoubtedly enrich, not only their

immediate descendants, but the blended South African race of the

future, with the strain of their wild nature-impregnated blood.[46]

[46] (Footnote added in 1901.) This passage was written

ten years ago, and printed as it stands five years ago.

It possibly throws some light on the success of the

Republicans in the conflict with the British Empire to-day.

* * * * *

But the old Boers were not always nomads. The course of their

wanderings took the old fore-trekkers sometimes eastward and

north-eastwards, to the more fertile parts of the Karroo, and to the

luxuriant coast lands, where pasturage and water were abundant and

permanent. Here, where after long wanderings the ox-wagon drew up

beside some strong fountain, the Boer surveying the land found it good,

and often resolved to end his wanderings for a time. He might call the

place Matjesfontein, or Jackalsfontein, or Wildekatfontein, after the

fountain he had outspanned beside and the reeds that grew beside it, or

the jackals that howled round it, or the wild cats which he had killed

among the rocks; and here he made his home.

As time passed, close beside the wagon rose a small square or oblong

house built of poles and bushes, and plastered over with mud; and

kraals with walls of rough stones or mimosa-branches were raised, and

placed as near the house and water supply as possible, to save the

stock at night from the depredations of Bushmen or wild beasts, and

to facilitate their drinking in the day. Here, as years passed, and

his sons and daughters grew up about him, he raised a brick or stone

dwelling, solid, square, unornamental, seeming to have as its prototype

the old African ox-wagon taken from its wheels, and anchored to one

spot of earth. And as time passed, he also often made a dam, to ensure

water supply in drought, and sometimes he planted a few willow trees

on the wall, and made a small fruit garden below it, fenced round

with rough stones. But the beautiful homes of Bovenland, with their

massively built houses, and polished wooden floors, raised by the hands

of slave workmen, with their oak-avenues and vineyards and rose hedges,

have seldom tended to repeat themselves in the more arid regions

further north. Without a superfluous detail, or an attempt at ornament,

squatting in the red sand and sun of the up-country plains, these

little buildings, with their coatings of red sand or hard whitewash,

seem almost a spontaneous growth of the land, and, like the brown

ant-heaps that dot it everywhere, are indigenous to the country.

The Western Boer built as if for his children's children to inhabit:

the up-country Boer farm-house of the past, as of to-day, is

essentially the home of a nomad;[47] of one who has anchored himself

temporarily on a spot of earth, but who is ever ready at any moment

to gather his household goods together and move onwards. The typical

up-country farm-house is the home of a man who, knowing that he or his

children may at any moment leave, can waste no time in ornamenting it.

[47] We are, of course, speaking generally.

Within the house the same bare simplicity prevails.

To-day, as one travels on some high up-country plain, one sees across

the flat at the foot of some kopje, or in the centre of a great level,

one of these small brown or white structures, with square black patches

beside it where its kraals lie.

If it be the noon or afternoon of a warm day, as one approaches one

finds that all the doors and windows are closed, and nothing living or

moving to be seen but a few cocks and hens scratching in the sand, or

sitting in the shadow of the house-gable, or perhaps a little hand-lamb

looking for a few blades of green among the dried-up bushes about the

house, or a couple of great Boer bull-dogs lie in the shade of the

wagon-house, and, rising up slowly, approach with heads down and eyes

half closed.

The household are taking their midday siesta, and the green wooden

shutters and door are closed. But, as one dismounts, from behind the

brick oven at the back one sees a little white and sandy head appear,

and a little shoeless or vel-schoened urchin, who has escaped from the

embargo of the midday siesta to play secretly in the sun, rushes into

the house by the back-door, and raises the cry of "Mense!" (people).

When we have dismounted and hooked our horse to a rail or the post on

which a carpenter's vice is fastened, and are preparing to mount the

little stone platform running along the whole front of the house, the

upper half of the door opens slowly, and the Boer's head looks out over

it, his eyes still dreamy with midday sleep.

If we are folk of respectable appearance, unmistakably white and

mounted, he will open the lower half of the door and come out in his

shirt and tan-cord trousers, and shake hands quietly, and having asked

a few questions, will invite us to off-saddle. And when we have removed

the saddles from our horses, and, having first securely knee-haltered

them, turned them loose to feed on the bushes, and replied to our

host's inquiries as to our names, our business, and other small

details, we follow him into the house. The door is divided into two

parts, partly because the upper half being left open, it admits all the

air, and sometimes, if there be no window, all the light that gains

accession to the front room--the windows being so made that they cannot

open--and partly because the lower half, when closed, serves to keep

the children in, and to keep the fowls and dogs out. When we enter we

find the front room of large size as compared to the whole building,

and we are asked to take a seat on one of the chairs or the sofa, whose

seats are composed of thongs of dried ox-hide skilfully interlaced.

The floor of the room is of hardened mud, worn here and there into

inequalities by the tramping of feet; the walls are white-washed, and

from the rafters or against the wall are rests for a couple of guns. In

the centre of the room is a square table, often with unturned legs of

some Colonial wood, and generally of African contrivance; on one side

of the room, opposite the wooden sofa, and made of the same curious old

wood, stands a little square table, generally with a coffee-urn upon

it, and sometimes a little work-box or a large family Bible; beside it

is invariably an elbow-chair of the same make as the sofa, and with

a seat of the same interlaced leather thongs; before the elbow-chair

stands a little square wooden stove, such as you may see exactly

portrayed in many an old Flemish picture of the seventeenth century--a

little solid wooden box with a hole at one side, into which a brazier

of live coals may be put, the top carved out into holes of a fanciful

pattern, through which the heat may rise to the feet of the person

using it. Soon the door of the side room opens, and the mistress of

the house, who also has been taking her siesta, appears in her dark

print gown, and with a clean white pocket-handkerchief tied hastily

round her throat in honour of the newcomer. She silently shakes hands,

and goes to her elbow-chair, placing her feet on the stove, which,

in the summertime, is coalless, and serves merely as a footstool. As

she fans herself to drive away the flies, which in Africa and in the

neighbourhood of stock kraals are numerous, she calls to the Kaffir

maid in the kitchen at the back to make haste and let the kettle boil,

or coaxes the three-year-old child, who stands pressing backwards

against her knee, eyeing the stranger from under a mass of tumbled

hair, with a finger in its mouth, to go and tell the elder sister to

come and make the coffee. Even in her youth the house-mother has been

generally buxom, and, when past it, is often stout, as the result of a

quiescent life and from the lack of open-air exercise.[48] From time

to time the elder children slink out of the side sleeping apartments,

with little bare feet or with undressed leather shoes, and generally

no socks. They extend their little hands and say "Dag!"[49] and seat

themselves silently on the chairs with their little feet dangling down.

Presently an older girl, almost or quite grown-up, appears, who has

been detained by some efforts at personal adornment; she has smoothed

the top of her heavy, silky, dark or fair hair with a brush or comb,

and has put a silk handkerchief round her throat, and perhaps has on

her Sunday town-made shoes. She shakes hands somewhat bashfully, and

goes through to the back room, hurrying on the coffee-making, while we

sit, and, with intervals of silence, discuss the weather and the health

of the stock. Presently one of the children, growing tired of its perch

on the chair, goes out, and leaves the lower half of the front door

open, and the hens enter, and the two large dogs slink quietly in and

lie down under the table. When the hand-lamb and a couple more fowls

follow, the mother calls to one of the children to drive them out, but

the dogs remain under the table, winking with their yellow eyes at us.

By this time the coffee has come. It is placed in an urn on the little

side-table with a brazier of hot coals beneath it, and the eldest

daughter pours it out and hands it round. In the wall of the room there

is generally a small cupboard, the door of which is made with panes of

glass, and which looks like a blind window. Here are kept the spare

cups and saucers, the black bottle of cocoa-nut oil with which the

whole family oil their heads on Sunday mornings, and whatever else in

the way of crockery and ornament, and not for daily use, the house

contains; and, if there be not enough cups out, some are now produced

for the use of the strangers. Even the smallest child has its basin of

coffee, and when the cups and basins have been used they are put into a

brass dish of water and covered with a cloth, to be free from flies and

ready for further use.

[48] That this, and more especially the absence of

excitement and change, and not anything racial, is the

cause of the large size and great weight, sometimes running

to over 300 pounds, of Boer women, is certain, as their

descendants, when leading the ordinary modern life, are in

no way remarkable for size or weight.

[49] Dag = "Day."

If our horses are worn, and we meditate travelling no further that

evening, we shall sit still discussing at intervals, the weather, the

rains of six months ago, and between times the master of the house will

offer us his tobacco-bag made of a "dassie's"[50] skin or of a new-born

kid's, and filled with powerful Colonial tobacco, from which he fills

and refills his own pipe. At intervals cups of coffee are handed round

again, the hot brazier keeps the urn boiling and fresh water is added

from time to time. As the evening approaches the farmer rises to go and

see his stock, and we accompany him to the kraals, where the squares of

dung cut out for fuel are drying on the tops of the stone walls. As the

sun begins to set the flocks come winding home, and pause at the dam

to drink, though if there be a drought there may be little in it but a

basin of baked mud, with a small pool of water in the centre. We stand

beside him as he counts in the sheep and goats at the kraal gates,

while the Kaffir herds milk in the cow kraal, if the drought be not so

strong that the cows yield no milk. As the darkness settles down we go

back to the house. A tallow candle is burning on the centre table in

the front room, and the mother is sitting in her elbow-chair; presently

the children troop in and take their seats on the high-backed chairs,

their heads hanging sleepily, their feet dangling, the dim light of the

single candle making the sombre darkness of the room more visible.

[50] Dassie = coney.

Presently a little Kaffir maid comes in with a small wooden tub such

as in other lands are used about dairies, the tub often having ears to

hold it by, and it is filled with hot water; beside it she brings in a

piece of white, home-made soap, and a little cotton cloth. She kneels

down before the feet of her master or mistress to take off their shoes,

but is directed to go to the visitors first. If you decline she then

proceeds round the room from chair to chair, washing the feet of each

member of the family. When this is finished, the daughter announces

that supper is ready, and, if there be a small back room to the house,

all retire there; if not, they gather round the central table, where

are spread some plates and knives and a few steel forks, and on which

there is a large dish of hunks of mutton boiled in water, or more

occasionally, fried in fat, and another dish with thick slices of

bread; or, if meal be scarce or unobtainable, a dish of boiled mealies,

crushed or uncrushed. Each one of the adults helps himself from the

great dish, while the children are served, and the meal proceeds more

or less in silence, and the elder daughter, who seldom sits down till

the meal is half over, pours out cups or basins of coffee, and stands

them at each one's elbow. The meal is concluded expeditiously in ten

or fifteen minutes and then the whole family rise. It is now half-past

eight or nine; the sleepy children troop off to their beds; and after

sitting a few moments in the great front room, the farmer looking out

once over the half-door to see what the weather is like, and having

a final smoke, you are asked whether you do not wish to retire also,

and the host, taking a tallow candle in a flat candle-stick, leads you

into one of the small side rooms, and hopes you will sleep well. This

room is generally a mud-floored apartment about one-fourth the size of

the front room. In one corner stands a bed, made often like the sofa

and tables of the front room, of home-turned wood, its lathes being

formed of interlaced thongs of ox-hide, and sometimes consisting of a

veritable "kartel" taken from the ox-wagon, and placed on four rough

posts. On the bed is a wool or feather mattress and two quilts formed

of blankets covered with carefully made patchwork, or chintz, and in

the corner there may be a large wagon-chest, but generally the room

contains nothing else, unless it is to be shared by some members of the

family, who will occupy a second bed. The long wandering wagon journeys

have destroyed the sensitive objection to the sharing of a common

sleeping apartment by persons of different ages and sexes. In the wagon

or tent, where each one, from the aged grandmother to the infant and

growing-up youth, lay of necessity closely side by side for shelter

and warmth, the habit of disrobing at night was also lost. As they did

in the old ox-wagon, so still to-day on every primitive, unmodernized

up-country farm, adults and children simply take off their shoes, and

removing the jacket or outer skirt they have worn during the day,

sleep without further dismantling. The grandmother, a young married

daughter and her husband, and some of the younger children often occupy

one room, while the parents, with perhaps a grown-up son and several

children, occupy another. As the windows are not made so that they may

be opened, but are built fast in the frames, even in cold weather the

need for much covering is not felt, but in hot weather the chambers

become leaden and heavy to an extent which drives all sleep from the

eyes of one unaccustomed to the atmosphere; and the stranger sometimes

tosses about, wrestling all night without attempting to disrobe or

sleep, and is glad when about four, or a little earlier, there are

sounds of stirring in the house, and all arise.[51]

[51] Travelling in the north of the Colony along the banks

of the Orange in our childhood, we were once compelled to

pass the night in the house of a very wealthy farmer. At

bedtime we were shown into a room with three bedsteads.

In one slept the father, mother, and the young infant, in

another the grandmother and two of the younger children;

in a large four-poster in the other corner were two girls

of fourteen and sixteen and a youth of nineteen. On this

bed we were asked to lie down, and about one o'clock our

company was added to by a huge Boer bull-dog, which lay at

the foot, and successfully, even for a child, prevented

sleep.

In the front room, as we enter, we find the father already up, leaning

over the half-door with the pipe in his mouth to scan the darkness; the

Kaffir maid has come and made fire in the kitchen, you can hear the

crackling of the wood in the large room, and the eldest daughter slips

out of her chamber and takes the tallow candle from the table to go to

the back and make coffee. Presently the house-mother and the younger

children, the last still without their jackets and dresses, come in and

sit about the room, some holding their vel-schoens sleepily in their

hands. Through the top of the open door you can see a streak of grey

dawnlight along the far-off horizon and by the time the coffee comes

it is almost light in the room; the tallow candle is blown out, and,

except in the dark corner, you can see all the faces. When you have

drunk your coffee you go out; the Kaffir boy has brought your horses

round from the kraal, where they have been all night; if there are

mealies or forage your hospitable host may have had them fed, and when

you have shaken hands with each member of the household, and thanked

the master and mistress for their hospitality, for which they would be

pained if you offered any recompense, you ride away. By the time the

sun rises, you are half a mile across the plain, and the farm-house

is beginning to grow small behind you as you look back from your

saddle.[52]

[52] See Note D, _The Domestic Life of the Boer_.

All day the same peaceful life will run on there. When he has drunk his

coffee, the farmer, with his sons, will proceed to the kraals to count

out the sheep and goats; as he stands at the gate watching them the

early sunbeams will glint on their damp fleeces as they walk down the

sandy road, on their way to the veld, with the Kaffir herd behind them.

When the men return to the house it will be near eight o'clock, the

sun already growing hot; the house-mother, from her elbow-chair beside

the little table, calls out to bring the breakfast, and the children,

who have been playing about before the door and on the kraal walls,

troop in. If a sheep or a goat has been killed, there will be fried

liver and lights, and if there is no bread there will be roasted cakes,

made of unleavened flour and water and baked on the coals, or if there

be neither, each person will be given a cup of coffee and a biscuit,

without gathering at the table. By nine or ten, if the day be hot, the

girl children are called inside, or told to play in the shade of the

house, for fear of browning or freckling their skins; the shutters of

the windows will all be closed, the front door alone letting in what

light and air enters; the house-mother will sit suckling her baby,

or making a little garment, and calling now and then to one of the

daughters to make more coffee. If there are no cattle to be rounded

up, or any small farm duties to be performed, the grown or half-grown

sons go and sit in the wagon-house, and smoke and talk, or make yokes

or vel-schoens; or if there be cattle to see to, or out-kraals to

visit, they or the father mount their horses and ride away into the

veld, often taking their guns with them. If there be no work, then the

father sits on the sofa in the front room, opposite the house-mother

in her elbow-chair, and folds his arms, smokes, and sighs, "Oh--ja"!

and stretches himself, and drinks his ninth cup of coffee, and smokes

again, till at half-past eleven he goes into the bedroom to lie down

for half an hour, having been up since half-past three. At twelve the

dinner is on the table: there are seldom vegetables, and often not

bread, but there is always a great dish of mutton, and generally some

boiled grain, and when the meal is over the Kaffir maids clean the

pots, and the house-mother goes to the back door to see that they are

not scratching in them with a spoon.[53] When the maids have ended they

go back to their huts, and every one goes to lie down, and the house is

closed; and only the flies, and some recalcitrant little boys or girls

who will not go to sleep, but creep out silently to play in the empty

front room, or in the shadow of the house, are left awake. The cocks

and hens strut before the doors, the bull-dogs lie in the shade of the

wagon-house, the little hand-lamb looks for a few blades of green among

the bushes, and the story of yesterday repeats itself.

[53] The spoons being generally of very soft metal, are

easily destroyed by rough usage.

But, quiet as is the every-day life of the unmodernized, primitive,

up-country Boer homestead, it is not without its great events. At

intervals of months or years the "smous"[54] arrives, often a small

Polish or German Jew, with his wagon or a couple of horses heavily

laden with goods--tapes, needles, men's clothing, brass jewellery,

cotton goods, and hardware--all that the farmer's household requires.

He asks leave to outspan, which is generally given him, though the

farmer and his good wife declare they have need of nothing. He then

begs leave simply to unpack and display his wares, and, permission

being given, the rolls are brought into the great front room, and

soon tables, chairs, and sofa are covered with piles of clothing and

trinkets, which the "smous" exhibits one by one, expatiating as he does

so on the heavy loss he is bound to undergo, having given more for

the articles than he fears he can ever receive for them. In the end

he succeeds in disposing of several items, clothing, groceries, and

perhaps a brass watch or a German clock (such as one buys in Tottenham

Court Road for three-and-six, but marked in large figures "Ten pounds

ten," which after much haggling is reduced to seven!) in exchange for

a pile of sheepskins that have been accumulating in the wagon-house,

or a horse, or even some of the treasured money from the old green

wagon-chest.

[54] Smous = hawker.

But there are even greater events: sometimes an uncle or aunt from

a distance comes on a visit; and there are the regular, recurrent

excitements of shearing times, when the farm wakes up for a few days,

there is a noise of bleating sheep, and Kaffirs are talking in the

wagon-house, and there are extra rations to be given out, and the wool

has to be trodden down into the bales; and at the end the great wagon

has to be laden with the bags, which are carried away to the nearest

town or village, if there be one within thirty or a hundred miles, or

to a little country shop.

And there is the great excitement of the year, when the wagon returns

with the stores and clothing for which some of the wool has been

exchanged. Then there are visits to the nearest church to take the

Lord's Supper, coming once in two or three months, or once in two

or three years, as the church may be thirty or three hundred miles

distant: but above all, on the up-country farm as elsewhere, come the

three momentous events common to all human existence--birth, death, and

marriage.

Every year or two the good house-mother contributes a baby to the

household, and her married daughter or daughter-in-law who may

live with her, does so also. And these events serve as a sort of

chronological tablet, by appeal to which the exact date of past

occurrences can be ascertained and are kept in the family memory. The

year of great drought was the year in which Pietje was born; the cows

lost so many calves and had foot-and-mouth disease the year that Anna

Maria came; Henrik Jacobus was born in the year of the great rain at

the end of the long drought; the year when the still-born child arrived

was the very year when the great dam was cleaned out and a new wall was

put round the cattle kraal; and Willem Johannes Jacobus was born the

same year that the patchwork quilt was finished, and Aunt Magdalena

came for a visit.

And Death comes here. The old grandmother goes from her chair in the

corner, and her favourite great-granddaughter inherits her stove; and

the stories she used to tell of the old trekking days, and her faint

childish memories of the Bovenland where she was born, become matters

of tradition; and the little children are carried out often enough

from the close rooms of the house, few surviving who were not born

very vigorous; and sometimes the great elbow-chair by the coffee-table

itself becomes vacant, and the house-mother is carried away by an

untoward child-birth, or a "hart-kwaal,"[55] which is generally dropsy

as well; her chair is not long left empty; but when the time comes for

her husband to be carried out feet foremost, he often asks to be buried

beside his first wife; and they sleep peacefully together under the

piles of rough iron-stones behind the kopjes.

[55] Hart-kwaal = heart-complaint.

But the great and exciting event, which takes place once at least in

the life of every Boer man and woman, and not infrequently more than

once, is marriage.

When the maiden is fourteen or fifteen, and the youth sixteen or

seventeen, they turn their thoughts towards union. Social and family

feeling ordains that with puberty the married life should shortly

begin; and this, under the circumstances, perhaps wisely--certainly

inevitably.

For while, where the intellect is highly cultured, and the cerebral

life composes the major activity of the individual, early marriage

becomes generally the most dangerous of all experiments, and the

fruitful cause of human anguish, or the yet more disastrous cause of

human atrophy and non-development, it may, on the other hand, lose all

its danger where the intellectual faculties are more or less dormant

through non-cultivation, and where the action of the physical functions

form the major activity of the individual concerned. For, while the

brain, in the mentally labouring individual often continues to grow

and modify itself till forty, or in exceptional cases till much later,

and while the psychic condition in the case of such persons tends

completely to modify and change itself between the age of adolescence

and the ripe adult maturity of thirty or thirty-five--so that the man

or woman of thirty-three has often little or nothing in common with

the youth or maiden of eighteen, or even of twenty-one, out of whose

crude substance they have developed; and who therefore may have little

or nothing in common with the individual whom that youth or maiden

selected as a companion, and may therefore find, long before middle

life, the continual union with that individual a moral deformity and a

mental death--it is, on the other hand, probable that where the brain

is not highly active, and under conditions of life in which (however

great the natural intelligence) the intellectual faculties are kept

more or less quiescent, where little mental stimulation is brought to

bear on the individual between the ages of puberty and ripe adulthood,

that little or no change or development takes place; and that therefore

the person who is selected as an appropriate companion at eighteen or

twenty-one will probably be quite as harmonious a companion at thirty

or forty; and the danger of early marriage is non-existent.

The continuance of the power of mental growth and expansion, even to

extreme old age, in such men as Michael Angelo, Goethe, Victor Hugo,

and other men of genius, exemplifies the enormous power of persistent

mental growth which is possible where the intellect is keenly active

throughout life. The man of unusual mental force and activity is often

merely in his psychic adolescence at thirty or thirty-five, when his

physical growth has already ceased, and when the mental expansion

of even the ordinarily cultured and mentally active individual is

generally complete. And this fact, perhaps, largely accounts for the

phenomenon, often remarked, of the evil almost always resulting from

the very early marriages of men of genius, and the often exceeding

happy results of their sex relations and companionships when formed

more maturely. And it may perhaps be set down as an axiom, that the

greater the mental power and activity, the later should be the riveting

of a life-long relationship; and the smaller the mental activity, as

opposed to physical, the earlier may it safely be accomplished.

An analogous condition exists with regard to physical development.

The average man or woman, and more especially those leading sedentary

lives and using the muscles little, develop little or not at all in

muscularity after the ages of eighteen or twenty, while the dancer, the

labouring man, or the athlete, who continually cultivates his muscles

by use, continues to develop enormously; so that an iron band riveted

round the arm of the blacksmith at eighteen would have eaten its way

into the flesh almost to the bone by the time the man were thirty

(if, indeed, it has not arrested all growth); while on the arm of the

student it might still hang loose; and the athlete who at thirty should

be compelled to use the dumb-bells he had used at eighteen would find

them worse than useless.

Those who unqualifiedly condemn early marriage under all conditions,

and those who fail to recognize the atrophy and evil caused by it under

others, have probably failed to look at the matter from both sides.

There is little or no mental suffering or moral evil caused by the

early unions among simple up-country folk, far removed from the stir of

cities, and whose monotonous and unstimulating surroundings give scope

for little intellectual activity, however great may be their natural

mental powers and strength of will. As to the material utility, under

their social conditions, of these early marriages, there is no doubt.

Prevented by their isolated position from any companionship with

those of their own age beyond the limits of their family, and shut

off from those sports and amusements which in cities and even small

societies draw the young of different sexes together in light social

intercourse, and which satisfy the needs of youth as the games of

childhood satisfied the child, and render the celibacy of early youth

not only endurable, but often make those years the most joyful of

life:--and shut out entirely as they are, in their really primitive

condition, from all those intellectual enjoyments which are independent

of actual society, and which, perhaps, are to be tasted to the full

by the man or woman who lives alone with the immortally embalmed dead

in books--a delight which, until under the pressure of overpowering

personal affection, renders some men and women unwilling to give up

their celibate life, fearing they shall be robbed of it!--devoid of all

this, the life of the young African Boer, whether man or woman, who has

attained puberty, becomes inexpressibly empty, and probably physically

and mentally unhealthy, if they remain single.

There is, further, an economic reason for these early unions: the Boer

does not seek to make money that he may marry; he marries that he may

make a start in life. Not only is it impossible for the young man to

trek away to some solitary farm without a companion who may cook his

food, make his clothing, and attend to him when ill, but if he remain

on his father's homestead it is impossible for him to start his own

little household, and he remains merely a child in his father's house

while he remains single; therefore, when he desires to attain to full

manhood and begin life, he of necessity looks round for a partner in

his wife. And the maiden's life is equally barren of aim till she finds

a husband.

It might seem that with his solitary environment this matter of finding

a wife might be one of difficulty and almost of impossibility. But the

skill of the fore-trekker in accommodating himself to the conditions of

his solitary South African life has invented an institution which does

away with all difficulty.

When the youth arrives at the age of seventeen or eighteen, certain

mysterious phenomena begin to take place. When a "smous" comes round he

barters the sheepskins his mother has given him for a pair of brass

studs which the "smous" sells him for gold, or, with a certain part of

his carefully saved small hoard, buys a white handkerchief and silk

necktie; and when his father goes to sell the wool the youth buys for

himself a pair of shop-made boots and a white shirt; and if his father

has given him no horse he exchanges one of his cows for a stallion;

or if he be in a condition of too great shortness of cash, and his

father has no horse suitable, he may even borrow one from a distant

neighbour; but it is a point of pride under the circumstances to have

one of his own. His elder sister or his younger brother are usually his

confidants, and he talks over with them his plans. From ten to fifteen,

or thirty or even forty miles off, there are various homesteads

scattered about the country-side, and desolate indeed must that country

be in which in some of them there are not marriageable girls. He may

have seen none of them face to face, but he has probably seen them at

a distance when he went to church at Nachtmaal[56] with his parents,

and may have even shaken hands with some of them; or he may have seen

them when his father sent him to the neighbouring farms to seek for

strayed cattle; or at some rare wedding dance or New Year's party two

years before he may have seen and spoken to them; and even though he

should never have met them, he is not wholly without knowledge of

them. From his mother and grandmother he has learnt all their descent

and family history; his grandmother's brother was probably married

to their grandfather's cousin, and the family diseases, failures,

characteristics, and virtues are all known to him. Further, he

generally has a good idea of their worldly possessions, of the nature

of their father's farms, of how much wool is sold at each shearing,

and what horses and cattle their parents possess; and he is generally

able to calculate what, considering the number of the children, the

portion of each daughter will be. He has also heard from young men

whom he has met what is the appearance of certain maidens whom he has

never seen; which are fair and which dark; which fat and which thin,

which have the reputation of being sharp-tempered and which mild.

News of this kind circulates freely over the whole country-side. He

has long conversations with his sister, whose advice, however, he

often neglects; and she irons up his white shirt and collar carefully

for him in the back-room one night after the rest of the family have

gone to bed, just "to prevent foolish remarks being made!" There is a

curious reticence preserved by the whole household on the entire matter

as a rule. He may discuss his plans with sister or brother, but is

seldom questioned directly, nor are his plans publicly referred to in

the household circle: though his mother takes many an opportunity of

allowing him to know her view of all the girls on the country-side. If

a son of _hers_ were to be married to such and such an one, she should

never set her foot within her doors, and such an one she knows to be a

lazy slut, her mother was so before her, and the daughter was sure to

resemble the mother. As to such and such an one, she would rather see

her son dead than married into that family; they have all bad tempers.

With regard to another family, they are so poor that they don't see a

piece of fat meat twice in three years' time. Now so-and-so, she has

never seen her, but should not object to such a girl in her family; her

father was a third cousin, they may be considered near relations, and

all the family know how to conduct themselves with dignity. On another

occasion, when the family are seated at table, she breaks out suddenly

with regard to the daughter of a neighbour some fifty miles off, an

only child. She has seen her once in church, she says; she may not be

very beautiful, but what of that?--beauty fades. Her father is an elder

in the church, and her family have always been respectable; she has got

her mother's portion already, and when her father dies she will have

the farm. She may not be very young, she is nearly nineteen, but when

a girl has property she knows her own value too well to take the first

young man who may come round just wishing to go through her things. If

_she_ (the mother) were a young man going out to court, that is the

direction _she_ would look in; but young men must and always will run

after the eye, they never know their own good! She addresses these

remarks to the father, who eats his dinner and quietly assents. And

the young man looks down intently at his plate, and the other members

of the family exchange glances. He knows accurately long before the

time of his actual setting out what view is taken by his parents of his

prospects, and who will and who will not be welcomed.

[56] Nachtmaal = Holy Communion.

On a certain morning he asks his father's leave to go visiting; and

in the evening, when he has counted in the sheep, and attended to

all his duties, or, if the place he intends visiting be at a great

distance, earlier in the afternoon, he equips himself in his best

attire, the studs are in the shirt, the gauze is arranged around his

hat, he puts the white handkerchief in his breast-pocket, where, as

he approaches his destination, it can easily be pulled up and made to

hang out. According to his means will be the quality and smartness of

his suit, but his spurs will always be made to shine so that you can

see your face in them, and if he has no ring he will sometimes borrow

one from his sister or grandmother, which he forces on to his little

finger. His horse has been carefully polished up for days, if not for

months. If it be what it should be, it has very high action, raising

its feet and playing its head as soon as the rein is drawn in, while

it is all-important it should be a stallion--one with black body and

white feet being absolutely ideal for this purpose--a man who went out

courting on a mare would be the ridicule of the country-side.

There is much admiration and interest lavished on himself and his horse

as he rides away from the homestead, the children having never seen

him so accoutred before. Everyone is aware what his object is, his

destination having been generally imparted to his sister or brother,

who are sure to repeat it to the mother, but as a rule no direct

questions are asked. According as that destination is distant, five,

fifteen, twenty, or thirty or more miles, he has to time the hour of

his departure, which is so arranged that just as the sun is setting and

the sheep are coming home to the kraal he arrives in sight of the house

he visits. The children or little Kaffirs who are playing outside

see him from the kraal, or someone catches sight of his approach from

the house, and the cry of "Daar kom mense!" (There come people!) is

raised, and the news flies round. The house-mother, who has perhaps

been sitting at the kitchen door to watch the maids take up the skins

that have been nailed out to dry, and the daughter or daughters, who

have been giving out rations or standing about in the cool, retire

into the house. It is quickly to be seen as the young man approaches

what manner of visitor he is; and the mother seats herself in her

elbow-chair, while the girls retire precipitately to their chamber to

prepare themselves. Then the young man rides round first to the kraals

to meet the father, who, if he feel well-disposed towards him, advances

slowly to meet him; he is always asked into the house; but in rare

cases, where there is some strong objection against him or his family,

he is not invited to off-saddle, and in that case he is bound to leave

the same evening and find a night's lodging elsewhere; but usually,

though his advances may not be desired by the parents, he is hospitably

entertained; and the courtship is seldom arrested at this early stage.

When his horse has been off-saddled he is invited into the front room,

and if his visit be much approved of his steed may be offered a feed of

mealies or oats, an indication which he may accept as most favourable.

When he has seated himself in the front room, the house-mother in her

elbow-chair proceeds to inquire after the health of his relatives, and

if she now meets him for the first time inquires the number of his

brothers and sisters, and questions him gravely on other points of

personal and family history of the same nature, which is considered a

polite attention. There are from time to time slight creakings of the

door of the bedroom in which the daughters are attiring themselves,

as one or other attempts to peep through the crack in the boards, or

to hold it slightly ajar. If there be two of marriageable age, they

both put on their best new gowns and tie fresh handkerchiefs round

their throats; and if they be so fortunate as to remember to bring the

cocoa-nut oil into the room, they heavily dress their hair with it.

Just as the Kaffir maid is bringing the lights into the front room

they appear, and shake hands with the stranger, who silently rises

and extends his fingers, and they both proceed about their evening

duty, preparing the coffee and supper; but in doing so both find it

necessary to return frequently to look for something in the little wall

cupboard in the front room, or to fetch some article from the sleeping

apartments which open out of it. The young man sits on the sofa and

turns his riding-whip round and round, answering the house-mother's

questions or sitting silent, but keenly noting the differing figures

or other points of resemblance or difference between the sisters.

By-and-by, when the family gather round the supper table, the elder

girls, more especially the eldest, wait on them; the children keep

their eyes fixed on the stranger as they eat, and the young man looks

into his plate and eats silently, or answers questions from the

house-father, but notes all that takes place. When supper is ended

the family return to the front room; and the young children troop off

to bed one by one. Then comes the hour of trial if the young man be

bashful and unused to courtship: for having made up his mind which

daughter he desires to pay his attention to, it is now necessary he

should request the parents' permission to sit up with her. If either

the parents or the young lady object, which latter is seldom the

case, there is a refusal and the courtship is nipped in this, its

very first phase: if they consent the mother frequently gets out, or

allows the daughter to get out, a couple of tallow candles, which are

to be burnt during the night. Then, when the rest of the family have

retired, the maiden of his choice comes in and seats herself beside him

on the sofa. From time to time there are creakings at the different

bedroom doors that open into the front room, as the children or other

members of the family get out of bed to peep through at them, and the

young maiden may even suggest their retiring to the back dining-room

if there be one; but after a while the whole household fall asleep,

the tallow candle burns dimly on the table, and the youth and maiden

pass the long night seated side by side and conversing, the girl

generally making coffee near morning, that they may keep themselves

awake. About four, or a little earlier, she gives him a final cup, and

he saddles his horse and rides away; and when the rest of the family

rise he is already gone. To be found there when the sun rose would be

a breach of etiquette. If the youth and maiden have approved of one

another they have made a promise to exchange rings, or have actually

exchanged them, and have made an appointment for his next coming in a

week or ten days' time. If either has disliked the other, there is no

necessity for him to return, and in no case is either bound by this

first visit. He may "ride round" and sit up with half-a-dozen maidens

in succession, and this is not uncommonly done, though the young man

who "rides round" too much runs the risk of acquiring a bad name, as it

is supposed the girls have refused him, or that he is not serious in

his intentions. If all goes satisfactorily, he returns again in a week

or ten days' time, and sits up once more. And it is now necessary he

should think very gravely of the matter, for the third or fourth time

he comes, instead of riding away before dawn, it is understood that he

will wait till the parents have risen, and he and the maiden of his

choice will ask the parents' consent to the marriage; and it is also an

understood thing that he would not have come the fourth time had his

own parents not consented. The elders are now formally asked to give

their consent, this part of the proceedings being purely formal, as

had all the parents not concurred, matters would probably never have

reached this stage. The wedding is supposed to take place about three

weeks after this, the ceremony of "ou'ers vraag" (parents' asking): and

it is either determined to fetch the minister from the nearest village

where one is to be found, or a journey is undertaken to the spot where

he resides. The young couple generally, for a few weeks at least after

the marriage, remain in the house of the bride's parents, though it

is a matter of arrangement with which family they shall permanently

reside, the rule being that the man lives on his father's farm unless

there is good reason it should be otherwise. The wedding is always at

the house of the bride's parents, and accompanied by such rejoicings as

their wealth and the size of their house allow; dancing is kept up all

night, large quantities of mutton, milk-tart, and boiled dried fruit

and coffee being served up. About two o'clock the bride is taken to

the bridal chamber and undressed by the bridesmaids; the bridegroom is

brought to the door by the best man, who takes the key out of the door,

if it have one, and gives it to the bridegroom, who retires, locking

the door on the inside; and the dancing is kept up till after daylight,

when the guests betake themselves to their carts and wagons and return

to their homes, often a day's journey distant. Then the great event of

the Boer's life is ended. After a while, it may be he takes his bride

home to his father's house. They share a room often with other members

of the family, and the girl takes her place as an elder daughter in

the household, and, especially if there be no grown daughter, makes

coffee, gives out the rations, and attends to the maids. After a while,

perhaps, when she has had her first or second child, and the young

couple are of an age to take care of themselves, they remove into

two small disconnected rooms of their own built on at the end of the

farm-house, or a little way off; and it is not uncommon, as sons and

daughters grow up, to have three or four of these small dwellings on

one farm; though some of the married children almost invariably remain

in the large house with the parents. Sometimes, after a few years have

passed, the young couple leave the parental home altogether, and become

part of the band of trekkers who are ceaselessly moving North in search

of new pastures. As the years go by the bride becomes the buxom matron

of twenty-five or twenty-six with half-a-dozen children, and she not

only has her own coffee table and chair and stove, but, as her eldest

daughter soon reaches an age at which she can make coffee, and attend

to the active duties of the household, the mother begins to sit sewing

permanently in her elbow-chair as her mother and grandmother did before

her, and the new generation repeats the story of the old.

In the old days (and still to-day wherever in the far northern

territories the old conditions subsist, and the new have not rushed in)

little or no instruction was of necessity given to the children. Their

mothers or grandmothers taught them the Ten Commandments and the Lord's

Prayer in Holland Dutch, as it had been taught to them, and related

to them some little Bible stories; and occasionally some broken-down

soldier or wandering tramp, who turned up, was hired for a few pounds

a year to instruct the children. Part of his occupation consisted in

treading the wool down in the bales at shearing time, and performing

other kindred duties, and if he was seldom treated with much respect

he more seldom deserved it. It was in the remote past, as it is in

the remote northern districts to-day, an uncommon thing to find an

up-country Boer who could read and write fluently, or add up a sum in

simple addition exactly; and the flood of education which the exertions

of the clergy, and the march of South African civilization is pouring

in on them, is an innovation mainly of the last twenty or thirty years,

which, rapidly as it is advancing, has not yet made itself felt among

the quite primitive portions of the population.

(It may be superfluous, but it may here be convenient to reiterate,

that in describing the Boer, we are not referring to the

nineteenth-century descendants of the Dutch-Huguenots, but to the

Taal-speaking seventeenth-century men of the same blood, who largely

populate our remote colonial up-country districts, but who are perhaps

found most perfectly preserved in the remote portions of their own

states. These folk have as little resemblance to the nineteenth-century

French Dutchman of the Bovenland as the smooth-faced young clerk, who

meekly measures you a yard of ribbon or velvet in a London shop, has

to a wild Highland clansman, though he may have the true Macgregor or

Campbell blood within his veins. Not only the virtues but the vices of

the one form an antithesis to those of the other. There are thousands

of cultured and intellectual English-speaking descendants of the

Dutch-Huguenots, who not only have no trace of the virtue of the true

Boer nor of his failings, but who know nothing of him and have never

drunk a cup of coffee nor passed a night in a Boer farm-house.)

The children grew up with a great respect for the Bible that lay on

the little table, but seldom with the power of studying it; with a

knowledge that God made the world, that Noah and his sons were saved in

the Ark, that the Jews were ordered to destroy the Canaanites; and that

they, the Boers, were the chosen people, and South Africa the Promised

Land: but of complex modern intellectual knowledge they possessed

little, nor in their quiet and peaceful life did they feel the need of

any.

To the outsider this life of the primitive Boer may appear monotonous

and blank. But it has aspects of beauty, and rich compensations of its

own.

Is it nothing, that he should rise morning after morning, in the

sweet grey dawn, when the heavy brains of the card-player and the

theatre-goer are still wrapped in their first dull sleep, and watch

the first touch of crimson along his hills--a crimson fairer and more

rich than that of any sunset-sky--while the stars fade slowly up above;

that he should stand, drinking his coffee on the "stoep" in the sharp

exhilarating air, as the earth grows pinker, till after a while, as

he stands at his kraal gate and watches his sheep file out, he sees

all his plain turn gilt in the sunlight? Is there no charm in those

long peaceful days, when hours count as moments; when one may hear

the flies buzz out in the sunshine, and the bleat of a far-off sheep

sounds loud and clear; when upon the untaxed brain, through the untaxed

nerves of sense, every sight and sound trace themselves with delicious

clearness and merely to live and hear the flies hum--is a pleasure?

Is there no charm in those evenings when after the long still day the

farm breaks into its temporary life and bustle, and the sheep stream

bleating home, and the cows come hurrying to the little calves who put

their heads between the bars and over the kraal gate; and the Kaffirs

come up to the house for the milking, and the children and dogs play

about, and in the great still sky the stars come out one by one; while

there is still light enough from the clear west for the house-mother

to finish her seam of sewing, as she sits at the back-door? Is it

nothing that the competition, ambition, worry and fret, which compose

the greater part of men's lives in cities, are hardly known here?--that

with untired nerves and untaxed brain man and woman may sink to sleep

at night, and in the course of long years hardly know a night of

broken rest or wakeful torture? Are this man's pleasures smaller or

less rational, when he breaks in his young horses or rejoices over the

birth of a dozen white-nosed calves, than those of the man who finds

delight in watching the roll of the dice at Monte Carlo, or who quivers

with excitement as he determines whether he shall put his coin on this

square or that? Is he not a more rational and respectable object when

with his wife and children behind him, he drives his wagon with his

eight horses through his own veld on his way to church, than the man,

who sometimes with the care of an empire on his shoulders, with all

the opportunities for culture which unlimited wealth and unlimited

opportunity can bestow at the end of this nineteenth century, and with

almost unlimited opportunity for the exercise of the intellect in

large fields for human benefit, yet finds life's noblest recreation

in driving round and round in an enclosed park, with four horses,

and a lacquey behind with a trumpet, and a red coat,--like a four

years' child showing off his go-cart! Is not his life, not merely

more rational, but more rich in enjoyment than that of worldlings,

over-gorged with the products of a material civilization? For, it may

never be overlooked, that the intensity of human enjoyment does not

vary as the intensity of the stimuli; but with the sensitiveness and

power of response of the nerves concerned. As the youth obtains a more

enjoyable exhilaration from his first glass of wine than the drunkard

from his bottle, and the child from his sweetmeat than a gourmand

from his dinner--so our African Boer, in common with all who lead a

severely simple life, knows probably more of intense enjoyment than is

compassed by a hundred men seeking always for new sensations and new

stimulations. Is not the human soul a string which may soon be strung

so tight and struck so often that it refuses to vibrate at all and

ends by hanging limp; and the human life is a very small cup, where

all beyond a certain amount poured into it runs to waste? Through the

course of a long life, the man who employs himself on the race-course

or on the Stock Exchange, and the woman who passes from theatre and

ball-room to race-course and hunting-field in search of enjoyment,

probably never truly enjoys what the Boer feels as he looks out over

his door in the early morning, with his coffee cup in his hand, and

sees the grey dawn breaking across his own land; nor knows what the

Boer woman knows when she sits peaceful on the step of the door with

her baby sucking at her bosom, and sees the sunshine shimmering over

the bushes and landscape she lives with. These things the worn dwellers

in cities do not know of.

It may be asserted that our appraisement of the joys of Boer life is

made from the standpoint of the much-cultured person whose highly

active nervous system responds to a small stimulus, that in reality the

South African Boer cares no more for the blue sky over his head than if

it were a piece of blue rag pinned out above him; that the mysteries

of the mighty daily cycle of nature which passes before his eyes, and

which he has to watch whether he will or no, are no more to him than

the lighting and putting out of candles; that the red sand and the

brown stones of the kopjes and the little karroo bushes beneath which

he will at last sleep have no value for him than as a substance he can

walk over, build his house with, or give his stock to eat; and that

Nature, with her complex and subtle speech, has no power of reaching

his heavy consciousness.

But this is not true.

He has no language in which to re-express what he learns from Nature;

but he knows her. The modern poetaster who writes volumes on the sea

and stars, who would die of terror if left out alone for one night with

those very stars and the God of stars that he adores in verse, and for

whom the sea is only endurable seen from a fashionable parade with

bands and much-dressed women to save him from the awful oppression

of being alone with it; it is not _he_, but the Chaldean shepherd who

rejoices when the night comes that he may lie beside his sheep, and

with his head on a stone watch the hosts march past above; it was he

who named them for us and loved them, as a man loves his fellows. As it

is the rough sailor, who amid all the joys of shore longs simply to be

out again and to feel the night spray on his cheek, who loves and knows

the voice of the sea. And when the old Boer tells you simply how many a

young porcupine has at birth, and which bird points the way to a honey

nest, and gives you the names and uses of the bushes you walk over, his

knowledge speaks of a closer union than the poetaster's words.

It is not the girl in delicate attire--such as takes its birth only in

vast cities and as the result of much human labour and thought--who

with attentive male companions waiting on her glances, climbs an

eminence to exclaim loudly over the beauty of the view and the

loveliness of nature, who loves nature--it is the man who silently has

been contented to live and labour on that Alpine height all his life,

and who would die of weariness and thirst if removed from it; it is

he who loves it. As the man who writes sonnets to a woman and throws

himself in transports of passion at her feet for a moment is not the

man who owns her, but he who firmly grasps her hand and walks shoulder

to shoulder beside her through dark and light till death divides them;

so it is not he who praises Nature, but he who lies continually on her

breast and is satisfied who is actually united to her and receives her

strength.

No one with keen perception can have lived among the Boers without

perceiving how close, though unconscious, is their union with the world

about them, and how real the nourishment they draw from it. The little

karoo bushes, where they are shooting, the ironstones of the kopje with

the sun on them, are beautiful to the Boer.

Standing at the back-door of a farm-house once, and looking out over a

little flat filled with mimosa trees in full flower while the afternoon

light was filling all the valley with a haze, a powerful Boer woman

stood beside us watching the scene. Not one of the most refined of her

kind, sharp of tongue, and strong of hand, and unable either to read

or write, the thought struck us how little of the infinite beautiful

land was probably visible to her--when we looked round the woman was

in tears. "Ach," she whispered, "it is a beautiful land the Lord our

God has given us! When I look at it so, something swells up and up in

my throat--I feel I never will be angry with the servants and children

again!"

There is perhaps nothing which shows more the ignorance and limitations

of those of us brought up under conditions of modern artificial

civilization than the common impression that these silent persons

living and labouring always in contact with inanimate nature cannot

perceive or comprehend it as we with larger powers of expression are

able to. A man (not a Boer this time, but an English settler of the

same type, a silent, uncultured hard-working man) who for thirty years

had lived on the banks of a certain little stream, planting his fruit

trees and ploughing his lands, was attacked at sixty by an incurable

disease. Placed in an ox-wagon to be taken to the nearest hospital, his

friends and neighbours accompanied him for a short distance. As the

oxen's feet passed down into the little African stream which he had

crossed and recrossed, and on whose banks he had laboured for thirty

years, he passed his hard horned hands over his face and burst into

tears and, to the astonishment of all about him, broke forth into the

words of Tennyson's song:--

Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,

Thy tribute wave deliver;

No more by thee my step shall be

For ever and for ever,

repeating all the verses; a song which his children had doubtless sung

about the house when they came home from school.

Finally: if absolutely happiness be held to lie largely in the

unlimited control of a man over himself, and in the absolute right to

do at every moment exactly that which is good in his own eyes, without

being questioned or opposed, then the owner of an African farm is

among the happiest of human creatures. The limited monarch is hedged

round on every side by the conditions under which he is allowed to

reign; the despot, whether he rules over a savage tribe or is Czar of

all the Russias, has ultimately to consider at every moment whether he

may not outrage the most subservient of his creatures so far that they

may depose him, while for the ordinary citizen, in the conventional

civilized society, life is so walled about with trivial Thou-shalts

and Thou-shalt-nots, that for some of us it almost ceases to be worth

living; but the owner of a solitary African farm reigns over land,

bird, beast, and man as far as his eye reaches; as a small god, without

opposition and without fear. Alexander Selkirk on his island was not

more absolute than he. And if we except the eagle when she builds her

eyrie on the inaccessible peak of a mountain, and dwells there alone

with her mate and young, no intelligent thing drinks more deeply out of

the cup of personal freedom or reigns so dominant in its own sphere.