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 THOUGHTS ON SOUTH AFRICA


      *      *      *      *      *      *

  OTHER BOOKS BY

  OLIVE SCHREINER

  STORIES, DREAMS AND ALLEGORIES
  DREAMS
  DREAM LIFE AND REAL LIFE
  TROOPER PETER HALKET
  WOMAN AND LABOUR

  T. FISHER UNWIN LTD      LONDON

      *      *      *      *      *      *


THOUGHTS ON SOUTH AFRICA

by

OLIVE SCHREINER






T. Fisher Unwin Ltd
London: Adelphi Terrace

First published in 1923

(All rights reserved)




  To

  MY HUSBAND

  THESE STRAY THOUGHTS ON THE LAND WE BOTH LOVE
  ARE INSCRIBED BY HIS WIFE

  OLIVE CRONWRIGHT SCHREINER


  HANOVER,
  CAPE COLONY,
  _October 11, 1901_.




FOREWORD


"Stray thoughts on South Africa, by a Returned South African" (as they
were originally entitled) were left by my late wife almost exactly as
they now appear.

She went to England for the first time early in 1881 and returned
to South Africa towards the end of 1889. Cape Town not suiting her
asthmatic chest, it was not long after her return that she made
Matjesfontein her home. Matjesfontein is a railway-station on the main
line, 195 miles from Cape Town and 2,955 feet above the sea-level. The
climate suited her on the whole, and Cape Town,--where her family,
friends and social interests were,--was not too far away. Here she
leased a cottage which Mr. Logan, the owner of the little village and
the large hotel, called "Schreiner Cottage."

It was here apparently that most of the "Stray Thought" articles were
written (as well as "Our Waste Land in Mashonaland," which is included
in this volume). This would be from 1890 to somewhere towards the end
of 1892; for she again went to England in 1893, returning the same year.

The first article (Chapter I), dealing chiefly with the natural
features of South Africa, was published in the _Cape Times_, Cape Town,
as a "(_Revised Edition_)" on the 18th August, 1891, with the footnote
"(_To be continued in The Fortnightly Review_)," and the last (Chapter
VI) in 1900. The first five chapters appeared, as far as my knowledge
goes, some of them in _The Fortnightly Review_, others in _Cosmopolis_,
and the sixth chapter in _The Cosmopolitan_. The last chapter on "The
Englishman," which many will regard as the most remarkable part of
this volume, has not been published before, and was apparently never
revised; it was written so hurriedly that I had to type it myself, and
only with great difficulty; the manuscript starts abruptly on a page
numbered 3. A proposed chapter on the Native Races was never written.
"The Domestic Life of the South African Boer" appeared in _The Youth's
Companion_ in November, 1899. It is not a part of "Stray Thoughts,"
but, from its nature, seems to find a fitting place in this book. "Our
Waste Land in Mashonaland" appeared in the _Cape Times_, simply as
"Communicated," on August 26th, 1891. The Dedication, the Introduction,
and the other Notes have not hitherto been published.

All the articles were carefully revised by her, as also the
above-mentioned unpublished matter, except Chapter VIII. It will be
seen from the "Notes" that she was occupied with them at intervals,
and, from the Prefatory Note, that she intended to publish them in 1896
soon after the Jameson Raid.

About this time, however, she began to write _Trooper Peter Halket of
Mashonaland_, which absorbed her time and attention to the exclusion
of the "Stray Thoughts." She and I went to England in 1897, when
she published _Peter Halket_. Not long after our return we went to
Johannesburg and lived there until some little time before the Boer War
started. Subsequently, on account of bad health, her doctor ordered her
to leave. The Boer War and the distressing state of things in South
Africa resulting therefrom, coupled with her ill-health and then the
European War and the almost complete breakdown of her health, account
largely, no doubt, for the non-publication of these _Thoughts on South
Africa_.

                                        S. C. CRONWRIGHT-SCHREINER.

  KRANTZ PLAATS, 6 CAMDEN STREET,
  TAMBOERS KLOOF, CAPE TOWN.

  _January 1923._




PREFATORY NOTE


These articles were written four years ago; the first, a description
of South African scenery, appeared in _The Fortnightly Review_ at that
time.

The rest did not follow. This was owing to the fact that there were at
the Cape at that time certain parties and persons who, using the Boers
of South Africa for their own purpose, yet pandered to them that they
might ultimately more successfully obtain their own ends.

These papers, written by one who had for years lived among the Boers,
sharing their daily life and understanding their language, of necessity
attempt to delineate, not only the coarse external shell of the Boer,
but the finer fibred kernel within, which those whose contact with him
is superficial never see; and while dwelling at great length upon the
one great flaw which mars the relation of the Boer with his fellow men
in South Africa, these papers are of necessity sympathetic in their
treatment of him.

Now, it appeared not well, at a time when certain men in South Africa
were bending down to press their cheek against the heel of any pair
of vel-schoens that might pass them, that any English voice should be
raised which spoke in kindly tones of the Boer, lest the voice of the
sympathizer should blend with and be mistaken for that of the flatterer.

It was certain that the time would come when again the Boer would stand
in need of just treatment at the hands of Englishmen; and these papers
were therefore put aside.

That time has come.

The Boer has been struck a sore blow by the hand that stroked him; and
again it is necessary that he, with his antique faults and his heroic
virtues, should be shown to the world as he is.

Therefore these papers, which make an attempt to delineate him in such
guise as he lives, are now printed. They have been left as they stood
save for the addition of a few foot-notes.

                                        OLIVE SCHREINER.

  THE HOMESTEAD, KIMBERLEY,
  SOUTH AFRICA.

  _February 17, 1896._




CONTENTS


                                                                    PAGE

  FOREWORD BY S. C. CRONWRIGHT-SCHREINER                               7

  PREFATORY NOTE (1896)                                                9

  INTRODUCTION (1901)                                                 13


  CHAPTER

  I.    SOUTH AFRICA: ITS NATURAL FEATURES, ITS DIVERSE PEOPLES,
        ITS POLITICAL STATUS: THE PROBLEM                             27

  II.   THE BOER                                                      65

  III.  THE PROBLEM OF SLAVERY                                       106

  IV.   THE WANDERINGS OF THE BOER                                   148

  V.    THE BOER WOMAN AND THE MODERN WOMAN'S   QUESTION             191

  VI.   THE BOER AND HIS REPUBLICS                                   221

  VII.  THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE BOER                                   249

  VIII. THE ENGLISHMAN                                               321


  NOTE A. THE SOUTH AFRICAN NATION (1900)                            367

  NOTE B. THE VALUE OF HUMAN VARIETIES (1901)                        384

  NOTE C. THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE BOER (1899)                       387

  NOTE D. OUR WASTE LAND IN MASHONALAND (1891)                       393




INTRODUCTION


As a rule, the book which requires a preface of explanation is a book
better not written, and better not read.

But certain parts of this book have appeared in periodicals and have
caused, no doubt owing to the fragmentary nature of their publication,
some misconceptions which it might be worth while setting right.

It has been stated by some kindly critic that the subject of this
little book was a valuable history of South Africa, while another has
suggested my calling it "The History of the Boer."

Nothing has been farther from my thought than the writing of any
history. In a far different manner I should have equipped myself had
it been my intention to do so. Dr. Theal, in his _History of South
Africa_, has collected as carefully and dealt as ably with the mere
historical incidents of the last two hundred years as it is possible
for any one person, in the course of one life, and from one point of
view, to do.

Still less, as has been suggested, was it my intention to write a
homily on South African problems and people.

This little book is something far less pretentious, and wholly
different.

Born in South Africa, I felt from my childhood a wish to set down what
I thought and felt about my native land. After I was grown up, but in
my youth, I went to Europe for ten years, living in London but visiting
the Continent continually.

When at the end of those ten years I came back to my native land, it
was with an even added interest that I looked at its people and its
problems and its physical features, and the wish became stronger to
jot down what I thought and felt with regard to it.

This little book is the gratification of that wish.

It is not a history, it is not a homily, it is not a political
brochure--it is simply what one South African at the end of the
nineteenth century thought, and felt, with regard to his native land:
thought and felt with regard to its peoples, its problems and its
scenery--it is nothing more than this; but it is also nothing less.

I do not think, simple as such a book is, it need be necessarily quite
without interest for any but the writer.

I myself should like to know, apart from what the learned historians
have to say, and apart from the views of passing travellers who have
lived a few years in the country, and who therefore have never seen
its life below the surface--I should like to know just what one
ordinary Chinaman feels and thinks, or does not feel and think, with
regard to his native land at the end of the nineteenth century. I
should like to know just what he sincerely thinks of its pig-tails
and its tea plantations, what he feels to its scenery on the banks of
the Yangtsekiang, and in its northern mountain regions, and exactly
how its pagodas, and its Mongolian dynasty, and the position of its
women, and its flowers, and even its stiff gardens, strike him. I
should be interested to know just what he feels towards its complex
peoples, and the foreigners; what he hopes for its future, and how he
regards its past. His views might not always be correct, perhaps not
often, but as long as they were sincerely his, set down to please no
one and to grieve no one, but because they were his, they would have
a certain interest for me. It would be the picture of only one John
Chinaman--what he thought and felt towards his land, a purely personal
document, but it might have a certain value!

Whatever value attaches to this little book is of this kind only. It is
a personal document.

Had I the health to carry out my plans and to write somewhat in detail
of what I think and feel with regard to our English folk in Africa,
and above all of our Natives and their problems and difficulties, the
little book might have had a certain rotundity; now it is a broken
segment only. Nor should I publish it now were it not at the request of
many friends; for I am unable adequately to revise even this segment.

There is also one insignificant matter I should like to notice. It has
been said I love the African Boer. That is true. But it has been given
as a reason for my doing so that I share his blood, and that is not
true. One could not belong to a more virile folk, but I have no drop of
Dutch blood.

My father was a South German, born in Würtemberg, who studied at Basel,
and when only twenty-one years old came to London, where he married my
mother, of purely English blood; and together with her came to Africa
as a missionary about the year 1836.[1] My training was exclusively and
strongly English. I did not begin learning any other language till I
was eight and have never gained the complete mastery of any other. It
is my mother speech and England is my mother land.

     [1] It was at the end of 1838.--S.C.C.S.

Neither do I owe it to early training that I value my fellow South
Africans of Dutch descent. I started in life with as much insular
prejudice and racial pride as it is given to any citizen who has
never left the little Northern Island to possess. I cannot remember
ever being exactly instructed in these matters by any one, rather, I
suppose, I imbibed my view as boys coming to a town where there are two
rival schools imbibe a prejudice towards the boys of the other school,
without ever being definitely instructed on the matter. I cannot
remember a time when I was not profoundly convinced of the superiority
of the English, their government and their manners, over all other
peoples.

One of my earliest memories is of walking up and down on the rocks
behind the little Mission House in which I was born and making believe
that I was Queen Victoria and that all the world belonged to me. That
being the case, I ordered all the black people in South Africa to be
collected and put into the desert of Sahara, and a wall built across
Africa shutting it off; I then ordained that any black person returning
south of that line should have his head cut off. I did not wish to
make slaves of them, but I wished to put them where I need never see
them, because I considered them ugly. I do not remember planning that
Dutch South Africans should be put across the wall, but my objection to
them was only a little less.

I cannot have been more than four years old when a Boer family
outspanned their ox-wagon on the veld near our mission house. As I
was walking past it a little girl of about my own age, wearing, like
myself, a great white cotton kapje, climbed off the trap at the back of
the wagon and came towards me holding out her hand. In it was a little
fistful of dark-brown sugar, a treat to up-country children in the
wilds where sweetmeats were rare. She held it out to me without saying
a word. I was too polite to refuse to take it, but, as soon as I had
gone a few steps, I opened my hand behind me and let it drop. To have
eaten sugar that had been in the hand of a Boer child would have been
absolutely impossible to me. Often, in later years, I have seen those
two small figures standing there in the African afternoon sunshine in
their great white kapjes, as in a way allegoric of the whole relation
between the Anglo-Saxon and the Boer in South Africa.

It was about the same time that a minister of the Dutch Reformed
Church, but a Scotchman by descent, came to spend a night at our
station. The accommodation of an up-country mission house is limited,
and I had to give him up my bed. On the night following when bedtime
came I inquired if fresh sheets had been put on my bed; on being told
they had not and that the clergyman had only slept in them one night
and I might well use them, I absolutely refused to get in. Nothing, I
said, would ever induce me to sleep between sheets a Dutchman had slept
between. It was in vain it was protested he was not a Dutchman though
called a Dutch minister; I was resolute and passed the night on the
outside of the quilt.

These trivial facts are not wholly without interest as showing the
possible mental attitude of the members of one society towards each
other if divided by race; and they will, I think, serve to show that
whatever sympathy I have felt with my fellow South Africans of other
races is not the result of early bias or training.

I remember it as often a subject of thought within myself at this time,
why God had made us, the English, so superior to all other races, and,
while feeling it was very nice to belong to the best people on earth,
having yet a vague feeling that it was not quite just of God to have
made us so much better than all the other nations. I have only to
return to the experiences of my early infancy to know what the most
fully developed Jingoism means.

Later on, my feeling for the Boer changed, as did, later yet, my
feeling towards the native races; but this was not the result of any
training, but simply of an increased knowledge.

When I was six years old, on a long journey from one part of South
Africa to another, our wagon outspanned at a Boer's farm and we spent
a day and a night there. I must often have visited a Boer farm-house
before, but this visit made a curiously deep impression on me, from
which I date the beginning of that consciousness of a certain political
charm about the Boer and his life, which has never left me. The
orange trees before the door, the first I had ever seen, with their
sweet-scented leaves; the great clean, bare "voorhuis" (front room)
with its mud floors and its chairs and sofa with reimpje[2] seats;
the good old mother with her good-natured smile, sitting in her elbow
chair, with her coffee table at her side and her feet on a stove; the
little shy children, who, as I could not speak Dutch nor they English,
brought me silently their little toys and patchwork to look at and
who were so anxious to be friendly (some of these children are now, I
believe, languishing as political prisoners in English prisons!); the
strange cool stillness of the air next morning when we rose at dawn to
continue our journey; the bleating of the sheep in the kraals, where
the farmer's sons had already gone to count them out; the great blue
mountain behind the house, with the still deep blue shadow beneath the
krantzes[3] on its top; and the farm-house becoming a small white
speck with the orange trees before the door as our wagon crept away in
the early light--all this made a profound impression on me; and I am
conscious that I began to feel even then that charm which the still,
free, simple life of the Boer on his land has since had for me.

     [2] Reimpje = raw leather strips.

     [3] Krantzes = precipices.

Living in another part of Africa, three years later, it was my duty
every morning to go to a Boer farm-house, about a mile off, to fetch
milk. Not more pleasant in my memory is the scent of the quince hedges
I had to pass, or the rushing between its stepping-stones of the river
I had to cross, than of the little daub-and-wattle house of two rooms,
with its mud floors and green windows, with the good old mother, very
stout, sitting always in her elbow-chair beside the little coffee-table
however early I came, and the great buxom daughters bustling about,
while the little bare-foot children ran off to the kraal with my pail
to fill it. They were the poorest class of by-woners (persons who have
no land of their own and live on the land of others), and the little
front room with its mud floor was often very full of flies in the
summer, but the African sunshine fell across the floor from one open
door to the other; and the good old mother used to make me sit on the
stove at her feet, and smiled good-temperedly at my shy attempts to
answer her questions in Dutch, of which I could at that time speak only
a few broken words; and sometimes she gave me a carnation or a bit of
pietercillie from her garden. The little house with its inhabitants
were all objects of interest and sympathy to me. But I am not at all
sure that, small shy person that I was, I did not even then still
regard myself as a person belonging to a quite superior race, surveying
them as it were from a height with sympathetic interest.

It was at this time that I began to study the history of the Boers and
the story of Slachters Nek, of the valiant stand made by Bezuidenhout's
wife; and the sufferings and wrongs of the old Fore-trekkers were
often in my thoughts. I was convinced that, had I lived at the time of
Slachters Nek, I would have saved the lives of those five men, even
at the risk of my own; I would have gone to the Governor, I would have
moved heaven and earth, I would have been a kind of Paladin redressing
the wrongs of the Boer, and I almost regretted that I had not been born
in those dark times that I might have lived for, and if necessary have
died for, him. But still I did not really know the Boer; he was only a
far-off object of pity and sympathy.

It was some years later that I was first thrown into close personal
contact with the South African Boer.

For five years I lived among them as a teacher on their farms,
sometimes among the more cultured, and sometimes among the more
primitive but not one whit less lovable and intelligent, class.
Sometimes for eighteen months I did not see an English face and
was brought into the closest mental contact with them which is
possible--the mental contact between teacher and taught. Watching them
in all the vicissitudes of life, from birth to marriage and death, I
learnt to love the Boer, but more, I learnt to admire him. I learnt
that in the African Boer we have one of the most intellectually virile
and dominant races the world has seen; a people who beneath a calm
and almost stolid surface hide the intensest passions and the most
indomitable resolution. Among the peoples of Europe I have been thrown
into contact with, the Swiss and the Tyrolese of remote Alpine villages
most resemble the African Boer; but there is a certain quiet but
high-spirited indomitableness and an unlimited power of self-control
which is characteristic of the average Boer man and above all the
average Boer woman, which I have not met with in an equal degree in any
other races, though individuals in all races may be found possessing
it, and certain Boers of course have it not.

It has been asked me more than once, on what ground I based the
statement made before the present war began, in papers futilely
written in the hope of preventing it, that, if England made war on the
Republics, she would have to send out at least one hundred and fifty
thousand soldiers to attack these small states, and that even then
there was a possibility that the red African mier-kat might ultimately
creep back into its hole in the red African earth, torn and bleeding,
but alive--it has been asked how I came to form this opinion, when
military authorities, keen financiers and politicians held that at
most twenty thousand soldiers and a few months would see the Republics
crushed.

To this I have only one answer. I based my statement on my knowledge
of the character of the Boer men, but above all of the Boer women. The
measure of its women is ultimately the measure of any people's strength
and resistile power. With the mother of the Gracchi, the Roman Republic
in its might and vitality: with the effete Roman woman of a later
period, the decadent Empire. The heart of the Boer woman is the true
citadel of her people; and while that remains unbroken, though every
city be taken and every village and farm-house burnt, the people is yet
to crush.

I have been blamed for an excessive love of the race, and an
unwillingness to see its faults: but I hardly think this is true.

The Boer has to the full the defects of his qualities; that
scintillating intellectual brilliance and versatility, so common and
so charming in the Frenchman and the Irishman, the Boer, even when
highly cultured, seldom has: he is deep and strong rather than broad
and brilliant: indomitable when he does act, it takes much to rouse
him into action; he is slow and often heavy. And the Boer race has its
Judases, as all other races have; nor do I know of a more sorrowful
sight than the descendant of the old Boer, speaking English often with
so foreign an accent as to be laughable, yet playing the part of the
extreme Anglo-Saxon; losing thereby the charms of the Boer without
attaining to the magnificent virtues which are characteristic of the
best Englishman. But these persons are fortunately rare; and behind
them lies the great, solid, self-respecting mass of the Dutch South
African people.

I do not appraise, as has been said, the Boer as higher or more
valuable than other human varieties. A dogmatic statement as to the
respective values of human varieties, or even of races, has always
appeared to me, since I passed out of my infantile state of ignorance,
as impossible. Each race has its virtues and the deficiencies which are
complemental to its virtues, and the loss of any one race would be to
me the falling of a star from the human galaxy.

When one travels in Italy and sees its harmoniously featured people,
and views that plastic art which the Italian alone has given the
world in many of its noblest forms, and realizes the vast debt under
which all the world rests to the Italian race for its influence on
the fourteenth-century renaissance, and remembers the list of the
mighty dead from Michael Angelo to Dante, one so considering the land
and its people is inclined to say that it would be well to barter any
folk to preserve Italy and her gifts to humanity. But when one crosses
the Alps and enters quaint German villages with their simple folk and
treads on the soil which was the birth-land of the Goethes and Kants
and Beethovens and Luthers, who are the world's wealth as well as
Germany's, when one considers that vast army of intellectual labourers
who have made the name German synonymous with the search after
knowledge and truth for truth's sake; when one walks through the Rhine
provinces with their sunshine, their vines, and their music, and their
stalwart men and fair-faced women, with their German truth of heart,
then it may be forgiven one who has any German blood in his veins if he
feels inclined to seize a flag as children do and walk about waving it
and crying, "I am a German! This is my Fatherland!"

But should one cross the Rhine and live among that folk on the other
side, so old in their civilization, so keenly alive, who have suffered
in the search for freedom, and are so capable of abandoning all for a
lofty ideal; when one considers Paris, that queen among the cities in
beauty and in tragedy, her people scintillating with intellect and an
opalescent life always varying, then one is inclined to say, "Take all,
but leave us France, the right eye of the world!"

And yet, should one cross to little Switzerland and little Holland,
where one knows one stands on ground made sacred in past ages as the
battle-ground where mighty empires which sought to crush freedom were
repelled, and studies that virile folk, one is inclined to exclaim,
"There would be nothing more grand than to belong to one of these small
heroic great peoples," and one thanks the gods they have existed.

Yet, further, if one turns to the northern peninsulas where in their
greatest purity are to be found our fair northern races, and where the
sons of the Sea Kings seem to have retained into these later times
among their fjords and frozen forests much of the charm and freshness
which we dream of as belonging to our own old northern ancestors, a
charm which lives for ever in their great northern Saga, the loftiest
song of battle and the deepest of the love of man and woman that the
world has heard, one is not surprised that sons of Scandinavia send
out into the world to-day works of genius which conquer its thought as
their forefathers conquered the bodies of the men of the ancient world;
one feels that, were the Scandinavian race obliterated, a northern
aurora would have faded.[4]

     [4] If I were compelled to name the most poetical and
     completely ideal human creature I have met in the course of
     somewhat complex travels, I should name a Swede whom I once
     met in Italy.

While, if one turns one's eyes to the great northland in whose people
Europe and Asia mingle, and studies their strangely virile and intense
literature and their characters, in which the lion and the lamb are
so strangely blended, and men willing to die rather than exercise any
form of force towards their fellows are found side by side with those
who know of no governing power but the knout; when one watches this
great, strange, strong, gentle, fierce folk, so yet unexhausted, one is
strangely drawn towards it and compelled to recognize that the Russian
is not merely physically but intellectually one of the mighty modifying
forces of the future.

So, if one crosses the sea to the little island of fogs and mists, it
may be forgiven to one who has its people's blood in his veins, if,
having well studied its people in their past and their present, their
heights and their depths, he should say, as the Jew has a right to
say of his nation--"If we are the worst of humanity, we are also of
its best!" For, like the Jew, if we English have sordid racial vices
we have magnificent virtues; and we resemble him in this, that those
very vices which most mark our national character and by which we
are known throughout the earth, are the very qualities of which our
greatest men and our noblest elements are the negation. As the Jew,
marked everywhere by his devotion to material gain and the thirst for
wealth, has yet, in his loftiest men of genius, realized the height of
spirituality and the negation of all subjection to the sensuous; so
we--the English folk, known throughout the world for our greed of power
and pelf, and as tending always to cloak our self-seeking from our own
eyes and from that of the world with a mantle of assumed virtue: a
tendency which has made the name of England synonymous with hypocrisy
and perfidy throughout the world--yet possess, in our greatest men and
our ethically developed class, a body of individuals whose lives and
ideals are a superb opposition to these qualities. Beside the sordid
gold-seeker, financial speculator, land grabber and buccaneer, stand
our Shelley and our Milton; beside the millions who use philanthropy
as a means of self-gratification and a cloak to greed and ambition,
are thousands with whom it is a heroic reality. Without any national
prejudice may one not say that no people in the world ever possessed
a section more determined to see things nakedly as they are, and,
whether personally or nationally, to prefer justice to self-interest,
than a section of our English people? Have there ever been statesmen in
any land who have more fearlessly denounced injustice and oppression,
not merely when exercised towards their own nation but by it, than
Burke and Chatham when they raised their voices to oppose George the
Third supported by the bulk of the English nation in their attempt
to crush freedom in America? If no nation has more misrepresented,
neglected and persecuted its sons of light, no nation has had more of
them to persecute. If Dante's dream were a reality, mayhap we should
find in that lowest hell, among the sad multitudes walking round
continually with iron weights upon their heads, that every third man
was an Englishman; but we should also scale to no heaven so high that
in the highest circle among the brightest spirits we should not find
the sons and daughters of the damp little isle. If ten righteous would
have saved a city once, shall not a nation be saved by ten millions?
Shall it not be counted for righteousness to our stock-jobbers and
priests and politicians, who, tongue buried in cheek, talk of spreading
Christianity and enlightenment, when he means exploitation and
destruction, that he belongs to a race thousands of whose men and women
do sincerely desire those things which he affects? When the great Jew
raised over his native city his mighty cry of--"O Jerusalem"--was it
not proved by that very cry itself that sons of light were born even in
her degenerate bosom? Was it not something that she gave birth to the
prophets whom she killed and stoned?

It may be allowed any man who has English blood in his veins to feel
that he can never fall in the gulf of insincerity and egoism but he
shall have millions of his fellow countrymen about him, but also that
there are no heights of sincerity and humanity towards which he may
aspire which thousands of his race have not attained; that he belongs
to a branch of the human race which, if it has given birth to some of
the most sordid and crumpled of human blooms, has also borne on it the
fairest of fruit.

Even if one turn to the despised African races, one finds, with much
that is immature and childlike, much that is gracious and charming.
That very strength of social instinct which characterises so many of
them, to whom the social organism is all, the individual composing
it so little, far removed as it is from our individualized Northern
standpoint, may it not yet have its aspects of value and its lessons
for humanity? The very Bushman, so little socialized, and standing
almost on the border-line between the creature that speaks whom we
call man and the creature that thinks and feels without speaking whom
we call beast, that he has something of the attraction of both, would
we be without him? And may one not well be glad one was not born so
late in the order of life that one never saw him? And one who has not
personally known the Jap, the Chinaman, the Indian, the Afghan, the
Spaniard, the Esquimo and the Turk, may well regret that the shortness
of human life has made it impossible for him to love and study them all
in their own habitats?

In truth, I am unable to conceive of the varieties and species into
which the human race has divided itself as other than varied flowers
in the garden of the gods on earth, of which the loss of one would be
heavy. In my own garden I desire to see grow all species and kinds of
flowers, the rose, the rhododendron, the violet and the orchid and the
cactus on the rocks. And I love the purple-eyed periwinkle as well as
any plant; only if it spreads inordinately and threatens to choke all
the others do I say, "It is a weed; pull it up and circumscribe it!"

                                        OLIVE SCHREINER.

          HANOVER,
  CAPE OF GOOD HOPE, 1901.




Thoughts on South Africa




CHAPTER I

SOUTH AFRICA: ITS NATURAL FEATURES, ITS DIVERSE PEOPLES, ITS POLITICAL
STATUS: THE PROBLEM


There are artists who, loving their work, when they have finished it,
put it aside for years, that, after the lapse of time, returning to it
and reviewing it from the standpoint of distance, they may judge of it
in a manner which was not possible while the passion of creation and
the link of unbroken emotion bound them to it.

What the artist does intentionally, life often does for us fortuitously
in other relationships.

It may be questioned whether a man has ever been able to form an
adequate conception of his mother's face in its relation to others,
till after long years of absence he has returned to it, and, whether
he will or no, there flashes on him the consciousness of its beauty,
nobility, weariness, or age as compared with that of others; a thing
which was not possible to him, when it rose for him every morning as
the sun, and mingled itself with all the experiences of his day.

What is true of the personal mother is yet more true of the man's
native land. It has shaped all his experiences; it has lain as the
background to all his consciousness; it has modified his sensations and
emotions. He can no more pass a calm, relative judgment on it, than an
artist can upon the work he is creating, or a child at the breast can
analyze the face above it. The incapacity of peoples to pass judgments
on the surroundings from which they have never been separated is
familiar to every traveller. The mayor of the little German town does
not take you to see the costumes of the peasants, nor the old church,
nor the Dürer over the altar; but drags you away to see the new row of
gas-lamps in the village street. The costumes, the church, the picture
are unique in Europe and the world; better gas-lamps flame before every
butcher's shop in London and Paris; but the lamps are new and have cost
him much; he cannot view them objectively. The inhabitant of one of the
rarest and fairest towns in the colonies or on earth does not boast to
you of his oaks and grapes, or ask you what you think of his mountain,
or explain to you the marvellous mixture of races in his streets; but
he is anxious to know what you think of his docks and small public
buildings. He has not the emotional detachment necessary for the
forming of a large critical judgment. A certain distance is necessary
to the seeing of great wholes clearly. It is not by any chance that
the most scientific exposition of American Democracy is the work of
a Frenchman, that the best history of the French Revolution is by an
Englishman, or that the finest history of English literature is the
work of a Frenchman. Distance is essential for a keen, salient survey,
which shall take in large outlines and mark prominent characteristics.

It is customary to ridicule the traveller who passes rapidly through
a country, and then writes his impression of it. The truth is he
sees much that is hidden for ever from the eyes of the inhabitants.
Habit and custom have blinded them. They are indignant when it is
said that their land is arid, that it has few running streams, that
its population is scanty, and that vegetables are scarce; and they
are amused and surprised when he discants for three pages on the
glorious rarity of their air, and the scientific interest of their
mingled peoples: yet these are the prominent external features which
differentiate their land from all others.

Nevertheless, there is a sense in which the people of a country are
justified in their contempt of the bird's-eye view of the stranger.
There is a certain knowledge of a land which is only to be gained by
one born in it, or brought into long-continued, close, personal contact
with it, and which in its perfection is perhaps never obtained by any
man with regard to a country which he has not inhabited before he was
thirty. It is the subjective emotional sympathy with its nature, and
the comprehension not merely of the vices and virtues of its people,
but of the how and why of their existence, which is possible to a
man only with regard to a country that is more or less his own. The
stranger sees the barren scene, but of the emotion which that barren
mountain is capable of awakening in the man who lives under its shadow
he knows nothing. He marks the curious custom, but of the social
condition which originated it, and the passions concerned in its
maintenance, he understands absolutely nothing.

This subtle, sympathetic, subjective knowledge of a land and people is
that which is essential to the artist, and to the great leader of men.
Without it no artist has ever greatly portrayed a land or a people, no
great statesman or reformer has ever led or guided a nation or race.
To Balzac nothing was easier than to paint the Paris boarding-house.
All the united intellect and genius of Europe could not have painted
it if the grimy respectability of those chairs and tables, the sordid
narrowness of the faded human lives, had not eaten first into their
own substance, emotionally. To a Gladstone nothing is easier than to
make a speech which shall move five thousand Scotchmen to madness. No
foreigner could do it. He might lay out the arguments as well. He could
not put out his hand and touch chord after chord of national emotion
and passion, producing what sound he would. The knowledge of these
chords, and of the manner of touching them, is possible only to a man
within whom they potentially exist.

Both forms of knowledge are essential to the true understanding of a
country. And if it may be said that no man understands a thing till he
has coldly criticized it, it may also be said that no man knows a thing
till he has loved it.

If the perfunctory views in the following pages have any claim to
interest or attention, it rises not in any degree from any special
aptitude in the writer for discussing the questions dealt with--for
none such exists; but from the chance coincidence of fortunate
circumstances, which give to a man born and growing up in a land which
he loves, as a man loves one land once, and who returns to it after
many years' absence in other lands, a somewhat two-fold position.
Half he is outsider; half he is lover. It is only the thought that
this position may possibly yield in itself a certain slight interest,
which overcomes that natural diffidence which a man feels in dealing
with subjects so vital, complex, and large that the opinion of any
individual upon them must be of necessity tentative and limited in
value, and stand in need of large correction.

       *       *       *       *       *

For the right understanding of the South African people and their
problem, the first requisite is a clear comprehension of their land.

Taking the term South Africa to include all the country south from
the Zambesi and Lake N'gami to Cape Agulhas, it may be said that few
territories possess more varied natural features; nevertheless, through
it all, from Walfish Bay to Algoa Bay, from the Zambesi to Cape Town,
there is in it a certain unity. No South African set down in any part
of it could fail to recognize it as his native land; and he could
hardly mistake any other for it.

The most noticeable feature in first looking at it, is the strip of
lowland country running along the entire south and east coast, and
bordered everywhere inland by high mountain ranges.

In the Western Province the coast belt consists of chains of huge
mountains forming a network over a tract of country some hundreds of
miles in extent, the mountains having at their feet level valleys or
small plains. They are composed of igneous though stratified rock,
covered by little soil, and showing signs of titanic subterranean
action; many of them seem to have been hurled up by one convulsive act;
bare strata of rock thousands of feet in extent are raised on end,
their jagged edges forming the summits of vast mountain ranges. In the
still, peaceful valleys at the feet of these mountains are running
streams; in the spring the African heath covers them with red, pink
and white bells, and the small wine-farms dot the sides of the valleys
with their white houses and green fields, dwarfed under the high, bare
mountains. Here and there are little towns and villages, built as only
the old Dutch-Huguenots knew how to build, the long, straight streets
lined with trees on either hand, and streams of water running down
them; and the old thatch-roofed, gabled, white-washed, green-shuttered
houses standing back, with their stone stoeps,[5] under the deep shade
of the trees, and with their vineyards and orchards behind them. No one
can build such towns now. They are as unique as their mountains.

     [5] Stoep = veranda.

Perhaps one sees the Western Province to best advantage in the Hex
River Valley, with its mountains of solid rock rising up thousands of
feet on either hand, the vast strata contorted into fantastic shapes,
and below them the smiling valley with its sprinkling of wine-farms.
Hardly less characteristic is Cape Town itself, the capital of the
Province and of the whole Colony, which lies on its promontory at the
extreme end of the continent. In a valley between two mountains, one
high, flat and of pure rock, its stupendous front overhanging the
town, the other lower and rounded, its cliff worn away everywhere but
on one mighty head which it rears into the blue, the town lies, with
its flat-roofed houses and long straight streets, on a bay as blue and
delicately curved as that of Naples.

Here it was that the wandering Hottentots on the shore saw the first
sails creep across the waters of their blue bay. Here it was that in
1652 Jan Anthony van Riebeek, the servant of the Dutch East Indian
Company, landed with his dependents and built the first houses and made
the first gardens. The fort which they built in those early days may
still be seen near the sea shore; the small block-houses which you may
still see on the spurs of the mountain, a disputed tradition says, were
used in those days as outlook towers against the incursions of possible
foes.

Here the Dutch East Indian Company imported its slaves, often from
Madagascar, English slave-ships bringing them. Here, Peter Kolben tells
us that, about the year 1712, he saw a slave burnt to death. They are,
says he, speaking of the slaves, "most detestable and wicked wretches,"
and "'tis now and then a most difficult thing to keep them in order."
This slave had tried to burn down his master's house; they tied him to
an upright post by a chain which allowed him to make one turn about it.
"Then," said Peter Kolben, "was kindled a fire round about him, just
beyond the stretch of the chain; the flames rose high; the heat was
vehement; he ran for some time to-and-again about the post, but gave
not one cry. Being half roasted he sank down, and said (speaking in
Portuguese), _Dios mio Pays_ (_O God, my Father_), and then expired."

These things have passed away now, as the elephant and hippopotami have
passed from the slopes of Table Mountain, and the thumb-screw and the
rack and stake from Europe, and as other things will pass away yet.

For ten miles along the foot of the mountains stretch the suburbs
of Cape Town, villa and garden, and pine and oak avenue mingling
themselves in endless succession. Here it seems a man might dream away
his life, buried in roses and plumbago, and forget that pain and care
existed.

Perhaps one of the finest views in the world is that from the top of
the Kloof behind Cape Town. To your right is Table Mountain, one of the
sublimest masses of solid matter in the world; below are the pine woods
and the town, with its white, flat houses, and, beyond the blue curved
bay and Blue-Berg Strand, the mountains of Hottentot's Holland, with
a canopy of clouds appearing and receding again into the blue sky. As
you turn, behind you is the blue South Atlantic as far as the eye can
reach, and the terrible serrated peaks of the Twelve Apostles stand
facing it, peak beyond peak, as they have stood for endless ages, with
the sea breaking in the little bays at their feet.

The population of the Western Province is partly English and partly
Boer or Dutch-Huguenot, the descendants of the Dutch East Indian
Company's servants and settlers, and of a large number of French
Huguenots who arrived in the Colony about 1687, driven from France
by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and who, winnowed by the
unerring flail of religious persecution, form, perhaps, the finest
element that has ever been added to the population of South Africa. The
labouring classes are, as elsewhere in South Africa, coloured, and here
largely half-castes, the descendants of the first Dutch residents and
their slaves, or much more rarely of blended Dutch and Hottentot blood.
In Cape Town itself are found also Malays, Chinamen, Hindus, and the
representatives of all European nations.

If leaving Cape Town we go a few hundred miles eastward, along the
coast, we shall find the lowland belt assume new characteristics. The
hills, though high, are softer and more rounded, covered completely
with soil and grass; or their sides, and even summits, are clothed in
bush, stretching for ten or twenty or forty miles. This bush is neither
forest nor scrub. In the valleys of high mountains, or along the
beds of watercourses, it becomes true forest, of vast, thick-stemmed,
timber-producing trees; monkey-ropes thicker than a man's arm hang down
from the branches, and there is forest shade. But, in the main, South
Africa bush is composed of creeper-like bushes, sometimes attaining
forty feet in height, and of many hollow-skinned succulent plants,
aloe, elephant's food, euphorbia, which often attain the height of tall
trees, but are of so light a structure that cut down a child may drag
them. Sometimes the bush grows more or less continuously, the clumps
and bushes being merely intersected everywhere by what seem like little
dry paths.

But in its most characteristic form the bush consists of large
isolated clumps of vegetation. The kunee, a vast creeper-like tree,
whose interlaced branches, touching the ground everywhere, forming
beehive-shaped masses, looking like immense Kaffir huts, often, though
not always, forms the foundation of these masses; around it spring up
elephant's food, namnam, geraniums and plumbago, and perhaps a tall
euphorbia tree, with its cactus-like leaves, shoots up into the air
through it. These clumps of vegetation, sometimes almost solid, and
often forty or fifty feet in circumference, are divided from others by
spaces of short, smooth grass, generally brown except after the early
rains.

In this bush it is particularly easy to lose yourself. As you pass
round clump after clump, there are always others of exactly the same
shape before you, and you sometimes find you have gone two or three
times round the same mass of vegetation. Oxen once lost in this bush
are not easily discovered for days, though hidden behind the next
clump, and it is almost hopeless to look for them unless one can gain
an eminence and oversee a wide stretch of country. In this bush several
Europeans have lost their lives during the last fifteen years.

It is the peculiar home of the great scarlet geranium now common in
English hot-houses, and of the delicate, blue, star-like plumbago, and
of endless ferns; but the heaths and bulbs of the Western Province are
not found here.

Eighty years ago it was alive with elephant, lion, bush-buck, and
wild animals of all kinds. Now, the elephant is extinct, except where
artificially preserved; bush-buck are scarce; a few large leopards may
still be found in sequestered kloofs, and wild cats and monkeys and
parrots are yet abundant, but a lion has not been seen for forty years.
Thousands of small birds feed on the berries that abound here, and
fifty small birds may sometimes be heard chirping in the depths of one
kunee tree.

Eighty years ago, the inhabitants of this tract were warlike Kaffir
tribes of the Bantu race. They have not been exterminated as the
Hottentots and Bushmen in the west have largely been, but are still
found as the servants on farms and in towns. The white inhabitants at
the present day are mainly English, the descendants largely of a group
of emigrants who landed here in 1820, and who proved themselves one of
the most entirely successful and satisfactory bodies of emigrants whom
England has ever sent forth.

Here and there throughout the entire tract are scattered small English
towns and villages; and thriving farms, where sheep and agriculture go
together, are hidden away in the bush.

To see this land typically one should outspan one's wagon on the top
of a height on a hot summer's day, when not a creature is stirring,
and the sun pours down its rays on the flaccid, dust-covered leaves
of the bushes. When the leader has gone to take the oxen to water and
the driver has gone to lie down behind the bushes, if you stand up on
the front chest of the wagon, and look out, as far as your eye can
reach, you will see over hills and dales, the bush stretching, silent,
motionless, and hot. Not a sound is to be heard; your hand blisters on
the tent of the wagon; suddenly a cicada from a clump of bush at your
right sets up its keen, shrill cry; it is glorying in the heat and the
solitude of the bush. You listen to it in the unbroken silence, till
you and it seem to be alone in the world.

Not less characteristic is the bush, when, as a little child, you
travel through it at night. The ox-wagon creaks slowly along the sandy
road in the dark, the driver walks beside it and calls at intervals
to his tired oxen; you look out across the wagon-chest, and, as the
wagon moves along, the dark outlines of the bushes on either side seem
to move too; now a great clump comes nearer and nearer like a vast
animal; then, as you peer into the dark, they seem like great ruined
castles coming to topple over you; and you creep closer down behind
the wagon-chest. Against the dark night sky to the right, on the ridge
of the hill, are the gaunt forms of aloes standing like a row of men
keeping watch. You remembered all the stories you had heard of Kaffir
wars and men shot down and stabbed, as they passed along hill-sides;
and then a will-o'-the-wisp comes out from some dried-up torrent bed,
and far before you dances in and out among the bushes, now in sight
and now gone. You are not afraid; but you are glad when the people in
the wagon begin to sing hymns; and more glad yet when at half-past
nine it stops, drawn up beside a great clump of bush at the roadside.
The tired oxen are taken from the yoke, and you climb out and light a
fire and gather from afar and near stumps of dried elephant's food and
euphorbia, and throw them on the fire, and the flame leaps up high.
Then you all sit down beside the ruddy blaze; and away off the driver
and leader have lighted their fire, and are talking to each other in
Kaffir as they boil the coffee and roast the meat. The light from your
own fire blazes up and lights the great, dusty body of the wagon, and
the tired oxen, as they lie tied to their yokes, chewing the cud; and
it glints on the bush with its dark-green leaves behind you, and on the
faces round the fire; and you laugh, and talk; and forget the stories
of Kaffir wars, and the great wild bush stretching about you.

This tract of coast belt forms part of the Eastern Province of the Cape
Colony, and is under English rule. It is on the whole very fertile,
though more subject to drought than the South-Western districts of the
Colony; none of its rivers are perennial, all being in long droughts
completely dry. Fruit and wool, and to a certain extent grain, are
produced here. The villages, though far less beautiful than those of
the west, show greater signs of commercial activity and civic life.

If we go further north along the coast we come to Kaffirland, a richly
wooded, fertile tract; the scenery about the mouth of the St. John's
River being supposed to be the finest combination of bush, river and
mountain scenery to be found anywhere in South Africa. It is inhabited
by Kaffir tribes of the Bantu race, in a half-civilized condition, and
who are more or less under British protection.

Further north yet we come to Natal, a British colony. The climate here
is warm, the country fertile in the extreme; coffee, sugar, rice,
pineapples, and all tropical fruits abound here, yet the climate is
not much less healthy than in the more southern portions of the coast
belt. Its population is more largely black than white, the natives
being Zulus of the Bantu race and imported coolies; the small white
population is largely English, and appear to be rather above the common
Colonial average in intelligence and culture.

Further north yet from Delagoa Bay to the mouth of the Zambesi
stretches a tract of low lying but fertile and well-watered country;
its streams, unlike most in South Africa, are more or less navigable.
It is concerning this tract that the existing difference with Portugal
has arisen. Though now fever-haunted along the beds of streams,
civilized, drained and cultivated it might become one of the most
fertile parts of South Africa. It is at present inhabited by native
tribes and by Portuguese with their half-caste descendants; the number
being inappreciable when compared to the native population. The
Zambesi, which empties itself on the north, is the largest and only
really great river of South Africa.

If we return to the Western districts of the Cape Colony, and leaving
the coast belt, climb one of the high mountain ranges that here, as
everywhere else, bound the coast belt separating it from the centre of
the country, we shall find to our surprise that on reaching its summit,
we make hardly any descent on the other side; and that what appeared
from the south to be a high mountain range was merely the edge of a
vast plateau. We shall find ourselves on an undulating plain, bounded
on every side by small fantastic hills. The air is dry and clear; so
light that we draw a long breath to make sure we are breathing it
aright. The sky above is a more transparent blue than nearer the coast,
and seems higher. There is not a blade of grass to be seen growing
anywhere; the red sand is covered with bushes a few inches high,
clothed with small, hard leaves of dull, olive-green; here and there
is an ice-plant, or a stapelia with fleshy, cactus-like leaves, or a
rod-like milk bush. As far as the eye can reach, there is often not
a tree or a shrub more than two feet high; and far, in the distance,
rising abruptly out of the plain, are perhaps two solitary flat-topped
mountains; nearer at hand are small conical hillocks, made of round
iron-stones piled so regularly on one another that they seem the work
of man rather than nature. In the still, clear air you can see the
rocks on a hill ten miles off as if they were beside you; the stillness
is so intense that you can hear the heaving of your own breast. This
is the Karoo. To the stranger, oppressive, weird, fantastic, it is to
the man who has lived with it a scene for the loss of which no other on
earth compensates.

As you travel through it after fifteen, twenty, or fifty miles, you may
come upon a farm. The house, a small brown or white speck in the vast
landscape, lies at the foot of a range of hills or a small "kopje,"
with its sheep kraals on the slope behind it, of large brown squares,
enclosed by low stone walls. Sometimes there is a garden before the
house also enclosed by stone walls, and containing fruit trees, and
there is a dam with willow trees planted beside; sometimes there is no
dam and no garden, and the little brown mud house stands there baking
in the sun with its kraals behind it; the only water for men or beasts
coming from some small unseen spring.

Throughout the Karoo there are few running streams; the waters of any
fountains which may exist are quickly drunk up by the dry soil, and
men and animals are largely dependent on artificial dams filled by
rain-water. The farmer makes his livelihood from flocks of sheep which
wander over the Karoo, and which in good years flourish on its short
dry bushes.

In the spring, in those years when rain has fallen, for two months the
Karoo is a flower garden. As far as the eye can reach, stretch blots of
white and yellow and purple fig flowers;[6] every foot of Karoo sand
is broken open by small flowering lilies and waxflowers; in a space a
few feet square you may sometimes gather fifty kinds of flowers. In the
crevices of the rocks little flowering plants are growing. At the end
of two months it is over; the bulbs have died back into the ground by
millions, the fig blossoms are withered, the Karoo assumes the red and
brown tints which it wears for all the rest of the year.

     [6] Fig = Mesembryanthemum.

Sometimes there is no spring. At intervals of a few years great
droughts occur, when for thirteen months the sky is cloudless. The
Karoo bushes drop their leaves and are dry withered stalks, the
fountains fail, and the dams are floored with dry baked mud, which
splits up into little squares; the sheep and goats die by hundreds, and
the Karoo is a desert.

It is to provide for these long rainless periods that all plant-life
in the Karoo is modified. Nothing that cannot retain some form of life
habitually for six months, and at need for eighteen months, without
rain, can subsist here. The Karoo bush, itself a tiny plant a few
inches high, provides against droughts by roots of enormous length
stretching under the ground to a depth of thirty feet. At the end of
a ten months' drought, when the earth is baked into brickdust for two
feet from the surface, if you break the dried stalk of a Karoo bush you
will find running down its centre a tiny thread of pale-green tinted
tissue still alive with sap.

Some plants maintain life by means of fleshy bulbs buried deep under
ground, and in years when no rain falls they do not appear above the
surface at all. Many plants have thick, fleshy leaves, in which they
store up moisture against the time of need; some, such as the common
sorrel and dandelion, become ice-plants; all over their fleshy leaves
and stems are little diamond-like drops, which when broken are found to
be full of pure water, a little plant sometimes having half a cupful
stored in this way. Some have their leaves closely pressed together
into little solid squares or balls, so saving all evaporation from
their surfaces. Many are air plants; and, fastened by the slenderest
roots to the ground or rocks, live almost entirely on the moisture they
may draw from the air, and will grow and bloom for months or even years
in a dwelling without either earth or water.

But the intense dryness modifies plant-life in another way; vegetation
being scarce, all forms are eagerly sought after by animals; and an
unusual number are protected by thorns, or by an intense bitterness,
or by imitative adaption. One curious little plant protects itself by
assuming the likeness of a hard white lichen that covers the rocks: its
sharp-pointed green leaves are placed close together with their tips
upwards, and on the tip of each leaf is a little white scaly sheath;
the resemblance to the lichen growing on the rocks, besides which it is
always found, is so great, that not till you tread on it, and your foot
sinks in it, do you discover the deception.

Even on the insect life the exceptional conditions of the Karoo have a
marked effect. Imitative colouring is more common here than elsewhere;
thus, one insect is so like the white pebbles near which it is always
found, that once dropped it cannot easily be again found; another large
square insect with hardly any power of flight protects itself by lying
motionless on red stones, which it so exactly resembles in colour,
having even the rough cleavage marks upon it, that it is impossible to
detect it, though you know it to be there; hardly any insect or reptile
exists without imitative colouring.

To see the Karoo rightly one should saddle one's horse and ride away
from some solitary farm-house. For twenty miles you may ride without
seeing a living thing, nor passing even a herd of sheep or goats, or a
korhaan or mierkat. At midday you off-saddle in a narrow plain between
two low hills, that widen out at the further end into a wider plain,
from which rise two conical, solitary, flat-topped hills; and the
horizon is bounded by a purple mountain thirty miles off. You put your
saddle down beside a milk bush and tie the halter round the horse's
knee, that he may go and feed upon the bushes; and you seat yourself
beside your saddle on the ground. The milk bush gives little shade, and
the midday sun shines hot upon you. In the red sand at your feet the
ants are running to and fro, carrying away the crumbs that may have
fallen from your saddle-bag; and in the stillness you can hear your
horse break the twigs from the bushes as he feeds; he moves further
off, and you cannot hear even that. Then you notice on the red sand a
little to the right, at the foot of a Karoo bush, a scaly lizard, with
his head raised, and his belly palpitating on the red sand, watching
you. He is a tiny fellow, three inches long. You move, and he is gone
like a flash of light across the sand. By and by the ants have carried
away the crumbs, and they too are gone. You sit alone with the sun
beating down on you. As the plain lies to-day, so it has lain for long
countless ages. Those sharp stones on the edge of the rise to your
right, with their points turned to the sky, for how many centuries have
they lain there, their edges as sharp and fresh to-day as though they
had been broken but yesterday? Those motionless hills; the very knotted
Karoo stem at your hand, for how many generations have the leaves
sprouted and fallen from its gnarled stalk? The Bushman and the wild
buck have crept over the scene; they have gone, and the Englishman with
his horse and gun have come; but the plain lies with its sharp stones
turned to the sky unchanged through the centuries. Those two stones
standing loosely one upon another have stood so for thousands of years,
because there was no hand to sever them.

It is not fear one feels, with that clear, blue sky above one; that
which creeps over one is not dread. It was amid such scenes as these,
amid such motionless, immeasurable silences, that the Oriental mind
first framed its noblest conception of the unknown, the "I am that I
am" of the Hebrew.

Nor less wonderful is the Karoo at night, when the Milky Way forms a
white band across the sky; and you stand alone outside, and see the
velvety, blue-black vault rising slowly on one side of the horizon
and sinking on the other; and the silence is so intense you seem
almost to hear the stars move. Nor is it less wonderful on moonlight
nights, when you sit alone on a kopje; and the moon has arisen and the
light is pouring over the plain; then even the stones are beautiful;
and what you have believed of human love and fellowship--and never
grasped--seems all possible to you.

And not less rare is the sunrise, when the hills, which have been
purple in the dawn, turn suddenly to gold, and the rays of light shoot
fifty miles across the plain and make every drop on the ice-plants
sparkle.

Nor less wonderful are the sunsets, when you go out at evening after
the day's work. The fierce heat is over; as you walk, a cool breath
touches your cheek; you look up and all the hills are turned pink and
purple, and a curious light lies on the top of the Karoo bushes; they
are all gilded; then it vanishes, and along the horizon there are bars
of gold and crimson against a pale emerald sky; and then everything
begins to turn grey.

In the Karoo there are also mirages. As you travel along the great
plains, such as those between Beaufort and De Aar, you continually
see, in hot weather, far off on the horizon, lakes with the sunlight
sparkling on the water; there are islands and palm trees and domes and
minarets and snow-capped mountains. If you remain for half an hour they
do not change. Why the mirage should always take the shape of lakes,
islands, and palm trees, is something which science, in giving us its
cause, has not accounted for.

There is much talk as to whether the Karoo could not be made more
useful agriculturally by the building of great dams, and so be made to
supply corn and vegetables in large quantities. This is irrelevant.
When all the more readily cultivable places in the world and in South
Africa have been brought under the plough, it may pay to turn the Karoo
into a garden. The soil is scanty in most parts, sometimes barely
covering the rocks. The long droughts, the habitual dryness of the air
sucking up all moisture, and the sharp frosts in winter, must make
agriculture always difficult, as it is now almost impossible. There are
vast tracts covered with sharp stones where it is even difficult for
sheep to find a mouthful of pasturage. But the Karoo has a future. It
is a sanatorium of the world. It has a climate that is unequalled. It
will be visited not only by those seeking recovery from illness, from
the moister Zambesi and sub-tropical regions of Africa, but from all
parts of the world. The selfish lover of the solitary Karoo may regret
it, but the day will come when the inhabitants of the Karoo will cull
millions from their dry soil and bare hills, as the inhabitants of the
Riviera cull them to-day.

At present the Karoo is inhabited sparsely by Boer and English
farmers, the homesteads lying often forty or fifty miles apart; and
there are a few small villages, often at distances of more than a
hundred miles, inhabited by the descendants of Boers and English.

The early inhabitants of the country were wandering tribes of Bushmen,
whose paintings of animals we may still find under the shelving
ledge of rocks, and whose arrow-heads of bone and flint may be still
picked up at the sources of some spring they frequented. They are now
gone, like the game which filled these plains sixty years ago; a few
wandering remnants may be found in the extreme north-east, and a few
ragged individuals in cast-off European clothing may be seen about the
back doors of farm-houses. The whole of the Karoo now forms part of the
Cape Colony.

If we leave the Karoo and go north and east, we find ourselves still
on table-lands as high or higher, but the character has changed. The
earth is more completely covered with soil, the hills are smaller and
more rounded, the plains are softer, wider, more rolling, and grass has
taken the place of the Karoo bush. At first, one who has lived long in
the Karoo experiences a sense almost of relief at the changed nature of
the scene; the soft, rolling outlines give one a sense of repose, and
tension is relaxed; it is as when, long accustomed to live with some
strongly marked individual nature, one comes for the first time into
contact with one more negative and weak: for the first moment there is
a sense of relief; then one wearies, and hungers again for the more
positive and active.

The wide rolling grass plains, with their little hills, have their
charm, but one tires of it. Throughout the Orange Free State,
Griqualand West and Bechuanaland, with slight modifications, these
grass plains extend; here they are more rolling, there more hilly;
here dotted with a few beautiful mimosa trees, there level as a table;
but there is always the same succession of level grassy plains, and
generally of low, flat-topped hills, and ant-heaps. These plains are
perhaps seen most typically in the west of the Free State. Here you may
start in your wagon in the morning, and creep all day along the level
earth, by a straight road, with the grasses on either hand; and in the
evening when you stop, you will not yet have reached the low hill you
saw before you on the horizon at starting. At great intervals you may
come upon a farm, the white or brown mud-coloured house standing at
the foot of a little hill, with its dam of rain-water and its garden
and kraals, but you may travel in an ox-wagon more than a day without
sighting one. In the spring the grass is short and green, in the autumn
long and waving, and cattle flourish on it. It is still within memory
of those who have not yet reached middle life when these plains were
alive with game. Some of us can recall, as small children, travelling
across them in the north of the Free State and Bechuanaland when the
wagon seemed to divide herds of antelope and zebra with ostriches among
them, the animals feeding on either side of the road within gunshot.
Now they have been almost exterminated, and game is only to be found
much further north.

The Free State is a small independent Republic, once under English
rule, but rashly given up by England in 1854 as not worth keeping;
it is inhabited by Boers and English, the Boers living mainly on
the farms, the English in the towns. The labouring classes here, as
elsewhere, are black.

British Bechuanaland, which comprises the larger part of this
grass-plain region, is a tract as large as several European countries
combined, inhabited mainly and sparsely by native tribes subject to
England, by a few European settlers, and the inhabitants of a few
embryo villages. Its soil is rich, and, like that of the rest of
the grass plains, if vast dams were built, it might become a great
grain-producing country. Its climate is perfect, rivalling that of the
Karoo.

Griqualand West, one of the most interesting and varied divisions of
the grass plains, is part of the Cape Colony. In it are situated the
great Kimberley diamond-mines, the richest in the world. Within the
space of a few miles lie those marvellous beds of once boiling but now
petrified mud, which have for twenty years modified, and are still
modifying, the history of South Africa.

It is through these grass plains that the Vaal and the Orange Rivers
run; the last the most typical of South African rivers. In nothing
perhaps is the difference between Europe and South Africa more
emphasized than in their rivers. The South African in Europe hardly
knows whether to admire or to scorn the smooth, gentle-flowing streams
between their green banks. The South African river alternates between
being a stupendous body of water, tearing with irresistible force to
the sea between its high banks, or being merely a vast empty bed of dry
sand with gigantic walls, the floor lined by boulders and débris, or
with a silver line of water creeping through it, and a few large pools
gathered here and there. Rising at an immense height above the sea in
the central table-lands, fed by no melting snows, dependent entirely
on the thunderstorms or the heavy rains of the wet seasons, the South
African river rises with a rapidity and sweeps onward with a force that
is almost inconceivable. A mighty body of red or dark-brown water,
it rushes with a greasy, treacherous movement between its banks, the
water being higher in the centre of the stream than at the sides and
breaking here and there into bubbles and foam; on its dark surface it
bears uprooted trees, drowned bodies of animals or men, the stupendous
rapidity of its movement being only noticeable when you mark how a
floating object now at your feet is out of sight round the bend of the
river in a few seconds. Perhaps no object in inanimate nature conveys
the same impression of conscious cruelty, and fierce, untamed strength,
as a full African river.

Every year during the rainy season large numbers of persons are drowned
in the full rivers; the numbers recorded in the papers during the last
rainy season exceeded one hundred and fifty, and a large number of
deaths of Kaffirs and others remains unchronicled. The nature of her
rivers has powerfully affected the history of South Africa.

Crossing the Vaal River, we shall find to the north the Transvaal
Republic. This is a tract of country of great extent and diversity.
In part of it we have bush, in part high grass tablelands; on the
east a low lying, moist, fever-haunted district. On the whole it is
of great fertility. On the ridges of the high tablelands, lie the
great Johannesburg gold-mines, which have drawn men from all parts of
the earth. There are probably about eight black men to each white,
the white population being probably divided between those of Boer,
and English or other European extraction in the proportion of one to
one; but no accurate census has yet been taken. The largest city,
Johannesburg, is mainly English, the farming population Dutch-Huguenot.

If, leaving the Transvaal Republic, we cross the Limpopo, we shall find
ourselves in the country known as Matabele and Mashonaland.

Bounded on the north by the Zambesi, the largest and only truly
navigable river in South Africa, whose falls are the largest in the
world, and further by Lake N'Gami and its low-lying territory, and
on the West by the Kalahari, and on the east by the strip of low
country claimed by Portugal. To the extreme left it is largely flat
and arid, like the greater part of South Africa; the central position
has mountain and bush, while along the low-lying river-beds it is
fever-haunted, to the east is a high healthy tableland, well watered
and wooded.

It is the land of Livingstone. Some of us remember on hot Sunday
afternoons, as little children, when no more worldly book than
missionary travels was allowed us, how we sat on our stools and looked
out into the sunshine and dreamed of that land. Of the Garden Island,
where the smoke of the mighty falls goes up, whose roar is heard
twenty-five miles off; of hippopotami playing in the water, and of
elephants and lions, and white rhinoceroses. We had heard of a man on
the north of the Limpopo, who once saw three lions lying under the
trees on the grass like calves, and he walked straight past them, and
they looked at him and did nothing. We had heard of great ruins--ruins
which lay there overgrown with weeds and trees. From there we believed
the Queen of Sheba brought the peacocks and the gold for King Solomon.
We meditated over it deeply. Yes, we should go and see it.[7] Up a
valley, a great white rhinoceros would wade with its feet in the water;
on each side under the trees zebras and antelopes would stand quietly
feeding on the green grass. We would creep up quietly and look at them.
No one but we would ever have seen them before. We would not disturb
them. We would see the giraffes pick the top leaves from the trees, and
elephant-cows walk along with their little calves at their sides. At
night round the fire we would hear the lions roar, and the wild dogs
howl, and sleep with our feet to the fire, and the stars above us; we
would plant seeds on the Garden Island; we would pass lions and they
should not eat us; we would climb over the ruins where the Queen of
Sheba stood! We almost dropped the book from our knees and rose to go.
In that land there were no Sunday afternoons and no boredom; you could
do as you liked. The very names Zambesi and Limpopo drew us, with the
lure of the unknown.

     [7] She visited the Falls in 1911.

Even to-day there is still much to be learnt with regard to these
lands. To the west it is inhabited by the Bamangwato, under their chief
Kame; in the centre by the brave warlike Matabele, under the chief
Lobengula; in the east by the mild, industrious Mashonas, on whom the
Matabele raid; and there are to-day the men of the British South Africa
Company looking for gold.

It is more than possible that if we went there now we should not find
all we have dreamed of. Elephants are scarce; Selous says he has killed
the last white rhinoceros; if we met a lion he might eat us; the
hippopotami will soon be driven away from the Victoria Falls; the ruins
may not be three thousand years old; boredom and Sunday afternoons
may exist there as elsewhere, and the gold may need much washing from
the sand; but it is certain that in these auriferous regions will
ultimately spring up dense populations. It is from the territories
north of the Vaal and south of the Zambesi, in this moister climate,
with its more navigable rivers, that civilization in its coarser
proportions will first unroll itself. More Southern Africa may produce
better men; our greatest poet may yet be born in the Karoo; our great
artist in the valley of the Paarl; our great thinker among the keen
airs of Basutoland; neither wealth nor dense population have a tendency
to produce the finest individuals; but it is in the north-east of
Southern Africa that mineral wealth and vast populations with all that
they signify for good and evil will probably first arise.

To understand the view taken in South Africa of the opening up of these
lands, it is necessary to turn back from the present day to the Europe
of the sixteenth century, when the hearts and eyes of men were turned
to the new world, and each man who crossed the seas carried with him
the hearts and thoughts of the thousands who remained. There is no
explanation to be given of these sudden movements of entire peoples in
a given direction. Their scientific causes are as subtle as those which
govern the migrations of the lemmings. Some lead and the rest follow.

If we leave these territories we shall find to the south-east a
territory known as the Kalahari Desert; a vast tract where little rain
falls and springs are rare, and there are no running streams; but it is
less accurately called a desert than many parts of South Africa that
are never so called. There are trees and low shrubs in many places;
such antelopes as can exist without much water are found, and a few
wandering natives, who know by long experience where water may be had,
by sucking through the sand. In forty years there will probably be a
railway across it; now it is practically uninhabited.

West of the Kalahari and bordering the Atlantic, up and down the coast
runs a vast territory rich in copper and other metals, but in parts
drier than the Kalahari itself. Instead of karoo it is covered over
a large extent by a coarse, thick tuft grass, which has the curious
power of resisting drought for two or even three years; it still stands
upright and affords food for the cattle and wild antelopes. Such
wandering Bushman and Hottentot tribes as still exist are found mainly
in this part, and, except a few missionaries and traders, the country
is not inhabited largely by white men.

To the east of the Free State lies Basutoland, the Switzerland of
South Africa, rich in its mountains and with a climate of superb
quality. Here is to be found the Basuto nation, a people whose history
since their foundation under their valiant chieftainess Ma' Katees is
probably more epic than that of any other people in South Africa, save
that of the old fore-trekkers who founded the Transvaal Republic.

Again, north of Natal lie Zululand and the adjoining native territories
where the virile Bantu tribe of Zulus, along with other Bantu peoples,
may be found inhabiting an almost tropical and luxuriantly fertile
country: while further north and east yet along the coast stretch
the Portuguese territories, the remnants of Portugal's once large
empire, naturally rich and productive, but in many parts low-lying and
fever-smitten.

This, then, is South Africa; the country which the South African
regards as his native land. To the superficial observer nothing would
be more unlike than its differing parts; between the falls of the
Zambesi with their spray-drenched forest and their banks, unchanged
by civilization as when the eye of Livingstone first beheld them more
than thirty years ago, and a little Eastern Province town, with its
narrow, conventional life; between the wilds of Namaqualand, where the
little Bushman still sits down behind his bush to cook his supper of
animal entrails and lies down with the stars over him, and the white
house and tree-lined streets of the Paarl; between the Kalahari, where
under a thorn tree groups of antelopes are gathered in the moonlight,
and the gambling saloons and music-halls of Johannesburg and Kimberley;
between the kraals of Kaffirland, where the Kaffir boys are holding
their "abakweta" dances in the moonlight with whitened faces, and the
drawing-rooms of Cape Town, where women in low dresses sit aimlessly
talking, there seems little in common.

Nevertheless, through the whole of South Africa there runs a certain
unity. It is not only that geraniums and plumbago, flat-topped
mountains, aloes and euphorbia are peculiar to our land, and that
sand and rocks abound everywhere; nor is it even that the land is
everywhere young, and full of promise; but there is a certain colossal
plenitude, a certain large freedom in all its natural proportions,
which is truly characteristic of South Africa. If Nature here wishes to
make a mountain, she runs a range for five hundred miles; if a plain,
she levels eighty; if a rock, she tilts five thousand feet of strata
on end; our skies are higher and more intensely blue; our waves larger
than others; our rivers fiercer. There is nothing measured, small nor
petty in South Africa.

Many years ago, we travelled from Port Elizabeth to Grahamstown in a
post-cart with a woman who had just come from England. All day we had
travelled up through the bush, and at noon came out on a height where,
before us, as far as the eye could reach, over hill and dale, without
sign of human habitation or break, stretched the bush. She began to
sob; and, in reply to our questionings, could only reply, almost
inarticulately: "Oh! It's so terrible! There's so much of it! There's
so much!"

It is this "so much" for which the South African yearns when he leaves
his native land. The lane, the pond, the cottage with roses climbing
over the porch, the old woman going down the lane in her red cloak
driving her cow, the parks with the boards of warning, the hill with
the church and ruin beyond, oppress and suffocate us. Amid the arts
of Florence and Venice, the civilizations of London and Paris, in
crowded drawing-rooms, surrounded by all that wealth, culture and human
fellowship can give, there comes back to us the remembrance of still
Karoo nights, when we stood alone under the stars, and of wide breezy
plains, where we rode; and we return. Europe cannot satisfy us.

The sharp business man who makes money at the "Fields" and goes to end
his life in Europe, comes back at the end of two years. You ask him
why he returned. He looks at you in a curious way, and, with his head
aside, replies meditatively: "There's no room there, you know. It's so
free here." Neither can you entrap him into further explanations; South
Africa is like a great fascinating woman; those who see her for the
first time wonder at the power she exercises, and those who come close
to her fall under it and never leave her for anything smaller, because
she liberates them.

If we turn from the land itself, to examine more closely the people who
inhabit it, we shall be struck in the first place by the marvellous
diversity of races found among us.

For not only are the South Africans not of one national variety (a
fact not surprising when the extent of our country is taken into
consideration); not only do we belong to the most distinct branches
of the human family to be found anywhere on the surface of the globe,
representing the most widely different stages in human development,
from the Bushman with his ape-like body, flat forehead and primitive
domestic institutions, to the nineteenth-century Englishman fresh from
Oxford, with the latest views on social and political development,
and the financial Jew; but we are more or less a mixture of these
astonishingly diverse types. We are not a collection of small, and,
though closely contiguous, yet distinct peoples; we are a more or
less homogeneous blend of heterogeneous social particles in different
stages of development and of cohesion with one another, underlying and
overlaying each other like the varying strata of confused geological
formations.

It is this fact which lies at the core of the social and political
problem of South Africa, and which makes it at the same time the most
complex and difficult, and the most interesting, with which a people
has ever been called upon to deal.

To grasp our unique condition clearly, it will be well to take a
blank map of South Africa, and pass over it, from east to west, from
north to south, from the Zambesi to Cape Town, from Walfish Bay to
Kaffirland, a coating of dark paint, lighter in the west, to represent
the yellow-tinted Bushmen and Hottentots, and half-caste races; and
darker, mounting up to the deepest black, in the extreme east, to
represent vast numbers of the black-skinned Bantus. From no part of the
map, so large that a pin's point might be set down there, will this
layer of paint representing the aboriginal native races be absent;
darker here and lighter there, it will always be present. If we now
wish to represent the earliest European element, the Boer or Dutch
Huguenots, we shall have to pass over the whole map lines and blots of
blue paint, more plentiful in some parts, rarer in others, but nowhere
entirely absent. And if again we wish to represent the English and
modern continental element we shall have to pass over the entire map,
from the Zambesi to Cape Agulhas, a fine layer of red paint, thinner
in spots and thicker in others, but never wholly absent. If we now add
a few insignificant dots on the extreme east coast, to represent the
Portuguese, our racial map of South Africa will be complete.

Looking at it, the first thing which must strike us is the fact that no
possible line which can be drawn across it will separate the colours
one from another, or even combine their darker shades. There is a dark
patch of red to the north of our map, but there are others equally
dark in the south; the blue colour is prevalent at the north end, but
also in the east; the dark tone is everywhere visible; the colours are
intermingled everywhere, like the tints in a well-shot Turkey carpet.
They cannot be separated.

But should we wish to make our map truly representative of the
complexities of the South African problem, it will be necessary to
go further, and across this intermingled mass of colours to draw at
intervals, at all angles, and in all directions, lines of ink, which
shall cut up the surfaces into squares and spaces of different sizes.
If these lines be truly drawn they will be found to bear no relation
to the proportions of the colours beneath them; they will run straight
through masses of colour, cutting them into parts; and except in the
case of some of the smallest divisions, where the dark predominates, it
will be impossible to trace the slightest connection between the lines
and the colouring.

Our political as well as our racial map of South Africa will now be
complete; for these lines represent the boundaries of the political
states into which South Africa is subdivided. For (and this is a matter
which requires our carefullest consideration) not only is South Africa
peopled everywhere by a mixture of races overlying and underlying each
other in confused layers; but these mixtures of peoples are redivided
into political states whose boundaries, except in the case of a few of
the necessarily ephemeral native states, have no relation to the racial
divisions of the people beneath them, but are purely the result of more
or less political combination and therefore have in them, at core,
nothing of the true nature of national divisions.

This matter lies so deeply at the heart of the South African, and has
so much to do with our complicated problem, that it will be well to
look at it more closely.

A nation, like an individual, is a combination of units; in the nation
the units are persons; in the individual body they are cells. The
single cell, alone and uncombined, is capable only of the simplest
forms of development; the solitary amœboid germ can undergo no high
development, as it floats unconnected in the water or air; it is
only when cells are combined in close and vital union with others,
and there is interaction, that high development is possible. The
highly differentiated complex cells that go to form a human eye or
brain are possible only as parts of a larger interacting organism, a
long-continued and close interaction between millions of cells, and
could come into being in no other way.

Yet more is the analogous fact true with regard to human beings. Alone
and divided from his fellows, the individual man is capable of only
the very lowest form of development. The accounts of persons who have
been lost in infancy and grown up alone, apart from any organization
or interaction with their fellows, shows in the extremest form how
very low is the natural condition of the human amœboid. Speechless,
knowledgeless, its very hands incapable of performing the simplest
operation which the veriest child in the lowest organized society
learns to perform (as we imagine intuitively), such an individuality
impresses on us, in its extremest form, a lesson which all human
history teaches us in other shapes.

Great men, great actions, great arts, great developments, are
impossible without those closely united, interacting organic
combinations of men which we call nations, using that word in its
largest sense, and to include all organized, centralized, interacting
masses of humans and to exclude such as are inorganic and only united
in name or by force. The organically united nation is the only known
matrix in which the human being can attain to full development. A
Plato, an Aristotle, a Shakespeare, a Michael Angelo, implying as much
the existence of a Greece, an England, or an Italy, are as impossible
without them as an eye or brain imply and would be impossible without a
whole human organism. They are the efflorescence of the nations.

Without the closely united, interacting, organically bound body of
humans, no great men, no highly developed masses.

Therefore, in all ages, and rightly, men have set the highest value
on the maintenance of their social organization, and have regarded
as a greater evil than any which could afflict them personally the
destruction of their organism as a whole. The individual particles may
be left untouched (as in the case of Poland), but they suffer more
deeply from the loss of interaction and organized union than had they
separately been individually destroyed.

Nor is it only the particles composing a national organism that gain by
its maintenance in health and unity. From a wider standpoint it is of
importance to humanity as a whole. The virile organized individuality
of Greece, of Rome, of England (while it remained an organized unity
and had not begun to dissolve itself into an inchoate trading firm,
seeking to dominate by force peoples and lands in all parts of the
world for trade purposes), and of France has bequeathed almost as much
to humanity at large as to its own members; and an old, diseased or
disorganized nationality, or a young, shapeless, unorganized mass of
humans, however healthy the individual units composing it may be, is
a mass without the capability of full development or of adding to the
common fund of humanity.

The first need of an unorganized mass of humans is to attain to some
form of vital organization. This must precede the fullest development
of the individual units, and must adjust itself before any complex
internal growth can begin.

Painfully trite as these observations are, it is necessary to keep them
in mind when dealing with the South African question.

Were the political states into which South Africa is to-day
divided--not highly organized and developed nations, bound together by
bonds of race, language, religion and long-continued interaction into
organic wholes, for that is impossible--but, did they possess, however
sporadically and embryonically, the germs from which national life and
unity might develop itself, if without the union of race, language
and ideas which goes to form the ideally united people, there were at
least this one condition, from which national life and unity might
be expected to develop itself: that, divided from each other as the
inhabitants of each of one state might be in race, religion, language
and interest, they were yet more nearly united to the majority of their
fellows within their state on these matters, than with large masses of
the peoples _immediately beyond their borders_--if this were so, then
the problem of South Africa would not only not be what it is; it would
be reversed. Our problem would then be: _How can each separate state
into which South Africa is divided be maintained in its integrity and
so strengthened that it may most quickly attain to full national unity
and organization?_ For so would the benefit of national life be most
quickly and simply attained by the peoples of South Africa.

Geographical size has nothing to do with the perfection or value of
a nation. Greece in her palmiest days, Rome at the height of her
power, were not larger than small South African states; an ant or a
bird are not less valuable or highly organized than an elephant or a
hippopotamus. Small countries such as Greece or Holland, or Switzerland
or England in the days of her greatness, have contributed as much to
the common fund of humanity as the largest countries; indeed, in the
past, when the means of communication were less perfected than at
present, a very minute geographical extent seemed essential to the
health and vitality of a nation; and if the converse seems to hold at
the present day, there is yet no reason why, in a country of such vast
extent as South Africa, half a dozen great, independent nations should
not co-exist. The Cape Colony or Transvaal are larger than France;
there is no _a priori_ reason, if our political states possessed the
least germ of organic unity or nationality, why the ultimate form
of organization in South Africa should not be that of half a dozen
distinct nations. The question is:

Does such a germ exist?

We believe the most temporary survey will prove that it does not.

Short as is the time at our disposal, let us rapidly glance at a few of
our states to see if any germ of national life lies at their core.

Let us take first the Cape Colony, as the oldest, best organized, most
important, and most powerful of our divisions; one whose boundaries,
except at the north-east, are tolerably well defined, and which has
a centralized form of political government. There are in the Colony,
roughly speaking, a million and a half of men.

One million of these are natives, Hottentots, and half-castes, but
mainly Bantus, of the Chuana or Kaffir races; the remaining half
million are divided between men of English and other European descent
speaking English, and the men of Boer descent, often speaking the
"Taal." Now not only are these peoples who form our population not
united to each other by race, language, creed or custom but, and this
is a far more important fact, each division forming our population is
far more closely connected by all these ties to masses of humans beyond
our borders than to their fellow Cape Colonists within. Thus, our
Bantus and Chuanas are absolutely one in race, language and sympathy
with countless of thousands of Kaffirs and Chuanas of Kaffirland,
Basutoland, the Free State, and even Transvaal. They are far more
closely bound to these fellows of theirs in other states than to the
white men in their own. The same may be said of the white population.
Not only are they not bound to the native population in their state,
but the Cape Colonial Englishman is absolutely identical with those
in the Transvaal, Zambesia, Free State and Natal; and the Boer of the
Cape Colony is absolutely identical with the Boers of these different
states; he is only artificially divided by a political line from his
friends and kinsfolk in the Transvaal, Free State or Natal. Race,
language, creed, tradition, which in the true national state form
centripetal forces, binding its parts to one centre, in such a state
become centrifugal, driving them from it; and the political boundaries
are so crossed and recrossed by these lines of union that they are
rendered void.

Let us look at the Transvaal. We have here a great state. Its vast
native population is absolutely identical with those immediately beyond
its borders; and its small white population is far more deeply tied
to its fellow race, men beyond its boundaries, than to blacks or even
to white fellow Transvaalers. Its largest and most powerful city,
Johannesburg, is the most truly cosmopolitan city in South Africa. It
is called the Boer Republic, but if the Boer or Dutch Huguenot element
is to be sought for in its highest perfection, it must be looked for
not in the Transvaal towns, but in the beautiful villages of the Paarl
and Stellenbosch, in the old Cape Colony. The lines which divide the
newly arrived European of Johannesburg from the newly arrived European
of Kimberley, Cape Town and Durban, and the Boer of the Transvaal from
the Boer of the Paarl, are necessarily fictions in any but the most
superficial sense.

All that has been said holds yet more in the Free State. We have
here a small republic whose population is absolutely one with the
populations on all sides of it. The Basuto of the Free State is divided
by absolutely nothing but a political line, the result of a political
agreement, from the Basuto of Basutoland. The Boer farmer is absolutely
one with the Boer of the Colony on the one hand and the Transvaal on
the other; the Englishman of the towns are the Englishmen of the Colony
and the Transvaal. Between the towns of Beaufort West, Harrismith and
Pretoria there is no difference, except that the last is a little more
English than the first.

All that has been said holds also of Natal. The vast native population
is one with that in the native states beyond its boundaries; its
Englishmen are as little divided by any racial, religious or social
difference from their brothers, cousins and friends in the Cape Colony,
Zambesia and the Transvaal as if they were still living in neighbouring
European streets.

Certain there are of the small native states under British or other
protection, which have a semblance of national unity. In Basutoland,
Pondoland, and Matabeleland a more or less homogeneous race does
inhabit a given area; but these states are exactly those which cannot
possibly survive in contact with civilization. Apart entirely from
any nefarious desires or actions on the part of civilized men, there
are a few mechanical inventions, and a few intellectual conceptions
inherent to civilization, which, coming in contact with any savage
state, must inevitably send it into solution; a savage organization
can no more stand in a stream of civilization than a polyp can remain
in a current of corrosive fluid without dissolving into water. But, it
might be suggested, if our political state boundaries are not national
in the true sense of the word, they may at least represent the lines
of united commercial interests, lines which, in such a civilization as
ours, might be almost strong enough to found a quasi-national unity
on! But even this is not so. Commercial interests we have, but they
are not conterminous with our political boundaries. The Eastern and
Western Provinces of the Cape Colony have far more cause for commercial
jealousy and antagonism that have either with the Free State, the
development and increased wealth of which benefits both. Natal is as
deeply interested in the wealth and development of the Transvaal as if
it were a department of her own.

Commercial interests we have, and they are strong; but they are not
conterminous with our state boundaries, and do not strengthen them.

Viewed thus, we see that the States of South Africa are not, taken
isolatedly, national; their boundaries are of the nature of electoral,
cantonal, fiscal, political divisions; _of immense importance, and
by all means to be preserved, as such divisions are_, but not to be
mistaken for those deeper, subtler and organic divisions from which the
life of great nations takes its rise. There is far more resemblance
between the population of the Transvaal and that of the Colony, Free
State, or Natal, than between the populations of Yorkshire and Surrey;
there is far more subtle, deep-lying, organic difference between
Normandy and Bordeaux than between Natal and the Cape Colony. In
looking at the political divisions of South Africa, one is irresistibly
reminded of a well-known English village, in which the boys on the one
side of the street threw stones at the boys on the other, because the
parish boundary ran down the centre. Great nations are not founded on
such differences as these.

But, it might be yet asked: "If our peoples are so mingled that our
states cannot become the foundation of healthy national life, would it
not be possible in so large and sparsely peopled a country to redivide
our races, giving to each its territory?" Apart from the physical
impossibilities which render such a proposal ridiculous, if, by some
almighty force, all our natives could be gathered into one territory,
our Boers in another, and our Englishmen into a third, no sooner would
that force be removed than we should remingle in the old manner, the
native as labourer craving the products of our civilization, the Boer
as farmer, and the Englishman, Jews and other newcomers as speculators
and builders of railroads, and introducers of commerce. A natural want
binds and blends our races. But there is a subtler reason why such
racial divisions are not even thinkable. The blending has now gone
too far. There is hardly a civilized roof in South Africa that covers
people of only one nation; in our households, in our families, in our
very persons we are mingled.

Let us take a typical Cape household before us at the moment. The
father of the household is an Englishman; the mother a so-called Boer,
of half Dutch and half French blood, with a French name; the children
are of the three nationalities; the governess is a German; the cook is
a Half-caste, partly Boer and partly the descendant of the old slaves;
the housemaid is a Half-caste, partly Hottentot, and whose father was
perhaps an English soldier; the little nurse girl is a pure Hottentot;
the boy who cleans the boots and waits, a Kaffir; and the groom is a
Basuto. This household is a type of thousands of others to be found
everywhere in South Africa.

If a crude and homely illustration may be allowed, the peoples of South
Africa resemble the constituents of a plum-pudding when in the process
of being mixed; the plums, the peel, the currants, the flour, the
eggs, and the water are mingled together. Here plums may predominate,
there the peel; one part may be slightly thinner than another, but it
is useless to try to resort them; they have permeated each other's
substance: they cannot be reseparated; to cut off a part would not
be to resort them; it would be dividing a complex but homogeneous
substance into parts which would repeat its complexity.

What then shall be said of the South African problem as a whole? Is
it impossible for the South African peoples to attain to any form of
unity, organization, and national life? Must we for ever remain a vast,
inchoate, invertebrate mass of humans, divided horizontally into layers
of race, mutually antagonistic, and vertically severed by lines of
political state division, which cut up our races without simplifying
our problems, and which add to the bitterness of race conflict the
irritation of political division? Is national life and organization
unattainable by us?

We believe that no one can impartially study the condition of South
Africa and feel that it is so. Impossible as it is that our isolated
states should consolidate, and attain to a complete national life,
there is a form of organic union which is possible to us. For there is
a sense in which all South Africans are one. It is not only that all
men born in South Africa, from the Zambesi to the Cape, are bound by
the associations of their early years to the same vast, untamed nature;
it is not only that South Africa itself, situated at the extremity
of the continent, shut off by vast seas and impassable forests from
the rest of the world, forces upon its inhabitants a certain union,
like that of a crew who, in the same ship, set out on an interminable
voyage together; there is a subtle but a very real bond, which unites
all South Africans, and differentiates us from all other peoples in
the world. _This bond is our mixture of races itself._ It is this
which divides South Africans from all other peoples in the world,
and makes us one. From Zambesi to the sea the same mixture exists,
in slightly varying form, and the same problem is found. Wherever a
Dutchman, an Englishman, a Jew, and a native are superimposed, there
is that common South African condition through which no dividing line
can be drawn. The only form of organization which can be healthily or
naturally assumed by us is one which takes cognizance of this universal
condition. Great and seemingly insuperable as are for the moment the
difficulties which lie in our path on the way to a great, common,
national unity, no man can study South Africa without feeling that, in
this form, and this alone, is national life and organization attainable
by South Africa. Difficult as it may be, it is at once simpler and
easier than the consolidation of any separate part. It is the one form
of crystallization open to us, the one shape we shall assume.

South African unity is not the dream of the visionary; it is not even
the forecast of genius, which makes clear and at hand that which only
after ages can accomplish: it is not even like the splendid vision
of that little-understood man, the first Napoleon, of a unified and
consolidated Europe, which was fated to failure from the moment of
its inception, because dreamed five hundred years before its time.
South African unity is a condition the practical necessity for which
is daily and hourly forced upon us by the common needs of life: it is
the one possible condition which will enable us to solve our internal
difficulties: it is the one path open to us. For this unity all great
men born in South Africa during the next century will be compelled
directly or indirectly to labour; it is this unity which must precede
the production of anything great and beautiful by our people as a
whole; neither art, nor science, nor literature, nor statecraft will
flourish among us as long as we remain in our unorganized form: it is
the attainment of this unity which constitutes the problem of South
Africa: _How, from our political states and our discordant races, can a
great, a healthy, a united, an organized nation be formed?_

If our view be right, the problem which South Africa has before it
to-day is this: How, from our political states and our discordant
races, can a great, healthy, united, organized nation be formed?

This problem naturally divides itself into two parts. For the moment,
the first is the most pressing and absorbing, that of the political
union of our states; and it must precede the other. Great as are the
difficulties which lie in this path at present, difficulties whose
extent can only be understood by one who has deeply studied our
internal condition, yet so urgent is the practical need for it, so
ripe the time, that there are probably men now living who may see it
accomplished. It is impossible to study the South Africa of to-day and
doubt that within sixty years there will exist here a great centralized
and independent form of government embodying the united political will
of the people; that with regard to external defence and the most vital
internal problems, South Africa will be politically one; _its state
divisions, while developed and intensified in certain directions_,
will be relegated to the performance of those invaluable functions of
self-government for which they are so admirably fitted. Circumstances
and individuals favouring, we may see this accomplished before the next
decade is out; it must come at last.

For the moment, the political aspect of our problem is the most
pressing; but there is another, deeper and more important, and of which
no man now living will see the final solution. A central government,
a customs union, a common treasury for purposes of external defence,
these are but the shell in which the vital unity of the community must
be contained if we are ever to become, not simply a large, but a great,
a powerful and a truly progressive people. Day by day, and hour by
hour, every man and woman in South Africa, whether they will it or
no, labours to produce the final answer which will be given to this
question: How, of our divided peoples, can a great, healthy, harmonious
and desirable nation be formed?

This is the final problem of South Africa. If we cannot solve it, our
fate is sealed. If South Africa is unable so to co-ordinate, and, where
she cannot blend, so to harmonize her differing peoples, that if in
years to come a foreign foe should land upon her shores, and but six
men were left to defend her, two English, two Dutch, two of native
extraction: if those six men would not stand shoulder to shoulder,
fighting for a land that was their own, in which each felt, widely
as he might otherwise be separated from his fellows, that he had a
stake,--then the fate of South Africa is sealed; the handwriting has
already appeared on the wall against us; we must take for ever a last
place among the nations; however large, rich, populous we may become,
we shall never be able to look free, united peoples in the face. In
past ages empires have existed which were founded on racial hatred
and force. Of this type were the great states of antiquity--Egypt,
Assyria, Rome, and Greece. They passed away; but for a time they were
able to maintain themselves against states of like construction with
themselves, only falling when they came into contact with freer and
more united peoples.

In the twentieth century it will not be possible for a state
constructed after the plan of the ancient world to attain to power and
developed greatness, even for a time. In an age in which the nations of
the civilized world are with titanic efforts shaping rafts with which
to shoot those rapids down which empire after empire, civilization
after civilization, have disappeared, and will shoot them and appear
below them, free united peoples; if the South Africa of the future
is to remain eaten internally by race hatreds, a film of culture and
intelligence spread over seething masses of ignorance and brutality,
inter-support and union being wholly lacking; then, though it may be
our misfortune rather than our fault, our doom is sealed; our place
will be wanting among the great, free nations of earth. Neither in
art, in science, in material invention, in the discovery of larger and
more satisfactory modes of conducting human life, can we stand beside
them. A man with an internal disease feeding on his vitals cannot
compete with the sound in body and limb.

Taken as a whole, so vast, so complex, and so beset with difficulty is
our South African problem, that it may be truly said that no European
nation has had during the last eight hundred years to face anything
approaching it in complexity and difficulty. To find any analogy to it
we must go back as far as the England of Alfred, when divided Saxons
and invading Danes were the elements out of which organic unity had
to be constructed. But there are elements in our problem which no
European nation has ever had to face, and which no migrating part of a
European race has ever had to deal with, in exactly the same form in
which they meet us. Our race question is complicated by a question of
colour, which presents itself to us in a form more virulent and intense
than that in which it has met any modern people. America and India
have nothing analogous to it; and it has to be faced in an age which
does not allow of the old methods in dealing with alien and so-called
inferior peoples. In South Africa the nineteenth century is brought
face to face with a prehistoric world.

To understand rightly the difficulty of our problem; to grasp the
nature of the obstacles which lie in our path to organic union; to
understand our crying need of it, and to grasp the grounds we have
for hope, it will be necessary to examine closely the different races
of which we are composed; and finally, to glance briefly at some of
the conditions and individuals that are at the present moment largely
influencing the future of South Africa.




CHAPTER II[8]

THE BOER

    ... And that one of these days that golden place
    Shall be reached by the Lemmings yet!...
                                          E. A.

     [8] Written 1892.


As in describing the physical features of South Africa, we lingered
longest over the Karoo, not because it was one of the largest or
most important features in the country, but because it was the most
characteristically South African; so in describing its people, we shall
dwell first and at greatest length on the South African Boer--not
because he is the most important nor the most powerful element among
our peoples, but because he is the most typically South African. The
Bantu and the Englishman may be found elsewhere on the earth's surface
in equal or greater perfection; but the Boer, like our plumbagos, our
silver-trees, and our kudoos, is peculiar to South Africa. He is the
result of an intermingling of races, acted on during two centuries by a
peculiar combination of circumstances, and a result has been produced
so unique as only to be decipherable through long and sympathetic study.

Our limits will not allow of our entering into an analysis of all
those conditions of his early history which have made the Boer what he
is to-day. The bare facts are ably and concisely set forth in works
readily accessible to all[9]; but the great epic of South Africa which
lies beneath them, yet awaits its seer and singer.

     [9] See Theal's invaluable works on South Africa, more
     especially his artistic and finished volume, _Cape
     Commanders_; also Noble's _History of South Africa_, etc.

For our purpose, it is possible only to note shortly a few of those
points in the early conditions of the Boer which bear most strongly on
his later development, which have shaped his peculiarities, and made
him what he is.

The history of the Boer begins, as is well known, in 1652, when Van
Riebeek landed at the Cape with his small handful of soldiers and
sailors to found a victualling station under the shades of Table
Mountain, for the ships of the Dutch East India Company as they sailed
to and from the East Indies.

If one climbs alone on a winter's afternoon to the old Block House on
the spur of the Devil's Peak at Cape Town, and lies down on the ruined
stone bastion, with the warm sun shining on one's back--as one lies
there dreaming; the town and shipping in the bay below, blotted out
in a haze of yellow light, leaving only the great curve of the sands
on the Blue-Berg Strand, and the far-off mountains that peer out and
disappear into the blue; then the noisy little life of the valley slips
away from one, and through the mist of two centuries one is almost able
to put out one's hand and touch the old, long-buried days, when the
first white men built their huts on the shores of Table Bay; when at
night the leopards crept down from the mountain and took lambs from the
kraals, and lions were shot before the hut-doors; when the Blue-Berg
Strand was trodden by elephants, and the Hottentots lit their watch
fires on the banks of the Liesbeck; when the great Hout-Bay valley was
flecked with antelopes; and the stream which comes down now from the
mountain gorge and flows through the valley muddy and dark, was clear
and crystal, and widened out into pools where the hippopotami played,
and then crept away into the sea through the white sand;--days when
the blue mountains were the limit of the world the white men knew, and
shut out the mysterious unknown beyond. Basking alone there on one's
face in the warm sunshine, so near do those old days seem, that one
half expects the lammervanger[10] to spread out its wings and sail out
from the cliffs above, and a bush-buck's step to break the stillness in
the brushwood; and one is loath to shake one's self and go down into
the hot, fretted life of the little city below; where the shop windows
glitter with the work of many lands, and where women with little waists
and high shoes trip down the pavement; and the Parliament Houses, with
their red brick and stucco, stare at one, and on the stoep of the Club
in Church Square tall-hatted men lounge and talk over the latest town
gossip or retire to the bar for whisky; and where in the side streets
are broken pavements, and Malays, and Half-castes, and fish-carts with
their shrill whistles; and in the docks coal-dust and shipping, and
convicts and sailors; and everywhere are canteens and brothels and
churches--all that makes the life of a civilized modern town. It is
hard to climb down through the fir-woods and go back to it.[11]

     [10] Lammervanger (lamb-catcher) = an eagle.

     [11] Roads now scar the mountain side; and within the last
     months the Block House has been turned into a convict
     station; so the strange shadow of the nineteenth century
     civilized man casts itself month by month further across
     our land.

So when one sits to write of African men and things, one would like to
linger long over those early days, every detail of which is precious
to us now; even how Annitje de Boeren was allowed to sell milk and
butter to the early men of the colony; how the handful of folks planted
gardens, and traded with the Hottentots for sheep, and made expeditions
into the unknown lands of Stellenbosch and Paarl. All the story of how
the sapling of white man's life in South Africa first struck its roots
into the soil has an interest no story of later growth can hold for us.
But for the present we can only notice hurriedly, and in passing, a few
of those facts in the condition of the early settlers which seem most
to have made the African Boer that which we to-day find him.

The first fact we have to note is that the men Van Riebeek brought with
him to found his little settlement were men of different nationalities;
largely Frisian or Dutch, but also German, Swedish, and even English.
They were also, almost to a man, soldiers and sailors, children of
fortune, and not agricultural labourers. A century later, when we find
the descendants of these men wanderers across the untrodden plains
of South Africa, their flint-locks as their only guard, the motive
that drives them forward and on only an unquenchable passion for
movement and change, and a fierce rebellion against the limitations
with which civilized life hedges about and crushes the life of the
individual--then we shall find it useful to remember that in part
the original stock from which these men sprang was composed of these
free-fighting children of fortune, rovers of the sea and the sword.
That power of persistent, patient, physical labour and submission to
restraint, that tenacious clinging to one spot of earth on which he
has once taken root, which constitutes at once the strength and the
weakness of the true agricultural classes in all countries, has always
been markedly absent from the character of our South African Boer,
and could hardly have been his through inheritance. For Van Riebeek's
men were not merely soldiers and sailors forced into service by
conscription, but men gathered from all nations by a species of natural
selection, their inborn love of a wild and roving life leading them
into the service of the Dutch East India Company. Over the shoulders
of the men who took their aim at Majuba Hill, and behind the men and
women who again and again, on their long and terrible marches through
South African deserts, have seen their kindred fall dead at their feet
of thirst and want, and have yet moved on, one sees the faces of these
old rough forebears looking! The South African Boer becomes fully
intelligible only when we remember that the blood of those men runs in
him, modified truly and powerfully by other elements, but active in him
still.

We come now to a second small point, to be noted as bearing on the
development of the Boer.

The commanders of the early settlement gave out to certain of their
men portions of land on the peninsula, to be cultivated for their
own and the Company's benefit. These men built huts, planted and
sowed. Thirty years after Van Riebeek landed there were two hundred
and ninety-three white men in the settlement, but only eighty-eight
white women, and the men on their little allotments grumbled for want
of wives. The directors of the Dutch East India Company conferred,
and it was determined to send out from certain orphan asylums in
Holland respectable girls to supply this want; and from time to time,
ships brought small numbers. The soldiers and the sailors at the Cape
welcomed them gladly; they were all speedily married and settled in
their homes at the foot of Table Mountain.

It may appear fanciful, but we believe it is not so, to suppose
that this small incident throws a sidelight on one of the leading
characteristics of the African Boer. For the South African Boer
differs from every other emigrant branch of a European people whom
we can recall, either in classical or modern times, in this: that
having settled in a new land, and not having mixed with the aboriginal
inhabitants, nor accepted their language, he has yet severed every
intellectual and emotional tie between himself and the parent lands
from which he sprang. The Greek, whether he settled in Asia Minor or
Sicily, though economically and politically independent, was still a
Greek; an uncut cord of intellectual and emotional sympathy still bound
him to the mother country; and after two hundred years the inhabitant
of Syracuse or Ephesus was still a Greek of the Greeks; bound not
only to Greece as a whole, but to that particular state from which he
sprang; among the most immortal and typical of Grecian names are those
of men not born in the parent home of the race, but in its colonies.
The modern Australian, Canadian, Yankee, or even American Spaniard, if
of unmixed European blood, turns still to Europe as Home. Political
differences may have had to be settled in blood, and commercial
interests may divide, but, emotionally and intellectually, the bond
which binds a European colonist to the home from which he sprang, and
to Europe as a whole, is an operative fact. The Boer has had no great
conflict with his parent peoples in Europe; he has not lost his race
by mingling it with the barbarous people among whom he settled; yet he
is as much severed from the lands of his ancestors and from Europe, as
though three thousand instead of two hundred years had elapsed since he
left it.

Later on we shall look at certain large and adequate reasons for
this remarkable phenomenon; but among the lesser causes which have
contributed to it, it seems to us more than probable that the position
of these early mothers of the race may have played its small part.

When the ordinary emigrant female bids farewell to Europe to make her
home in the new land, whether she leaves a mud cabin in Ireland, a
vine-grower's cottage in Germany, or a mansion in England, the moment
in which she catches a last glimpse of the land of her youth is one
of the emotionally intense of her existence. The life she leaves may
have been one of hardship, even of bitterness, and the life she goes
to may be one of ease; but binding her to the land behind her are the
ties of blood and childish remembrances of home--ties which shape
themselves as mightily in the mud-cabin or the back slum of the city
as in the palace. She is leaving the one spot on earth where she is
an object of interest and importance to her fellows. When she arrives
in the new world it is to that home that she sends the record of her
marriage--there that she knows the story of her sorrows and her gains
will be waited for! In the hour of childbirth it is to the women of
her own blood "at home" that her heart turns with yearning; and as
years go by "my people" and "my home" gain a colour and size they would
never have borne if near at hand. She thinks of them as a denizen of
the earth, removed to one of the fixed stars, might think of this
old planet, without remembrances of its aches and pains! And as her
children grow up, the first stories they hear are not of Colonial
things and people, but European--of fields in which little children
gather buttercups and daisies, of ice and snow, and the roaring life
of cities; and as the little Colonial children play in the hot sun
upon the kopjes among stapelias and aloes, they think how beautiful
those fields must be, and wonder how the daisy-chains are made, and
how primroses smell! and at night in their little hot beds they dream
of ice and snow, and fancy they hear the hum of vast cities. Even the
names of our European relatives who have played in those fields and
lived in those cities have acquired a certain mythological charm for
us, and the Aunt this and the Uncle that, of whom our mothers tell us,
they are not the commonplace, material uncles and aunts who may live in
the next street and be seen every day. They are real, yet invisible,
like the actual presence in the Holy Wafer of real flesh and blood,
yet removed from sight, like the heroes of a mythological fairy tale!
Europe and its life are to us, from our earliest years, the ideal and
mysterious, with which we have yet some real and practical tie.

No European who has not grown up in the Colony, being born of pure
European parentage, can understand the full force of this Mother
tradition.

Like the odour of an unknown plant or flower, it must be experienced
to be comprehended. Nor does it die out with the first generation. The
mother transmits it to her daughter, and the daughter to her child.
It is the echo of this legend which goes so largely to form that
curious body of sentiment with which the most commonplace colonist
visits Europe for the first time. The most sensitive man, growing up
in the original home of his race, does not understand this subtle and
delicate emotion; and the most hard-shell man of business among us is
not untouched by it when he sets his feet for the first time on the
old-race shores.

"And this is England! And this is Europe!" It is as though he woke up
in a kind of fairy land! The tile cottages with the moss upon them,
the hedgerows, the village greens with the churches, the blue-bells in
the woods--he has seen them all before--in a dream. In the roar of the
great city curious emotions come to him. As he drives in the omnibus
the conductor calls, "Shoreditch!" and he starts and looks out. Above
him is the great church tower--

    When I grow rich,
    Say the bells of Shoreditch!

and again he is one of the group of children holding each others'
hands to play at "oranges and lemons" in a Colonial garden. "So that
Shoreditch we sang of under the fig-trees was a real place! No doubt
the great bells hang up there!"--and for a moment the prosaic back-slum
is an inverted childhood's fairy-land.

And there are perhaps few among us who, on our first visit, do not at
some time creep away to find ourselves in some spot to which we do not
wish our acquaintance to accompany us. It may be a street in a great
city, or a village in a German forest, or an English parsonage; but
we feel we are bound to it with a tie others may not touch. Perhaps
it is only a shop-window at the corner of Finsbury Pavement at which
we stand gazing in, because we know that sixty years before a little
child with bright eyes and rosy cheeks came here, wrapped up in her
furs, and holding her mother's hand, to buy her Christmas doll! And we
stand gazing into it till we turn away sharply, fancying the people see
what we feel. Or we go to a little country village; no one tells us the
way from the station; but we see a church tower and an old elm-tree we
have heard of; and as we walk towards them down the village street,
we would like to run up to every one we meet, and say, "Oh! don't you
see, we are come home again!" We stand at the parsonage gate and look
over at the trim lawn, and the ivy on the bow-windows; and we go away.
There is a stile where we know a man and a woman once talked on summer
evenings, when they did not yet dream that the life they promised to
spend together was to be lived out far over the seas, in the strange
land which their children's children were to inherit. We wander into
the churchyard, and brush the ivy from the gravestones; we stand at
last before what we seek--years of European frost and rain have half
obliterated the writing on the stones; we trace the letters with our
fingers; the names are names we know, and which our kindred in the land
across the seas will bear for generations. And so it comes to pass
that we still call Europe "home"; though when we go there we may find
nothing to bear witness to the fact, but a few broken headstones in a
country churchyard--yet the land is ours![12]

     [12] (Footnote added in 1906.) This I wrote in 1892. I
     could not write it now.

This bond, light as air, yet strong as iron, those early mothers of the
Boer race could hardly have woven between the hearts of their children
and the country they come from. Alone in the world, without relatives
who had cared sufficiently for them to save them from the hard mercy
of a public asylum, these women must have carried away few of the warm
and tender memories happier women bear to plant in the hearts of their
children. The bare boards and cold charity of a public institution are
not the things of which to whisper stories to little children. The
ships that bore these women to South Africa carried them towards the
first "Land of Good Hope" that ever dawned on their lives; and the day
in which they landed at Table Bay and first trod on African soil, was
also the first in which they became individuals, desired and sought
after, and not mere numbers in a printed list. In the arms of the rough
soldiers and sailors who welcomed them, they found the first home they
had known; and the little huts on the banks of the Liesbeek, and the
simple boards at which they presided, were the first at which they
had been able to look round and see only the faces of those bound to
them by kindly ties. To such women it was almost inevitable that, from
the moment they landed, South Africa should be "home," and Europe be
blotted out: the first generation born of these women and the free,
tieless soldiers and sailors with whom they mated, probably looked on
South Africa as does their latest descendant to-day. On their lips,
when they looked at the valley of Stellenbosch, or the slopes of Table
Mountain, the words--_Ons Land_--meant all they mean on the lips of the
Transvaal Boer or the Free State Burgher of to-day,--"_Our Land; the
one and only land we know of, and care for, wish to know of, have any
tie or connection with!_"

If it be objected that the number of these women was too small to have
permanently influenced the attitude of the Boer race in its relation
towards Africa and the home countries, it must be answered, that small
as their number was, they were numerous in proportion to the whole
stock from which the race rose. For it must always be borne in mind
in studying the South African Boer, how very small that stock was.
He was produced--as are all suddenly developed, marked and permanent
varieties in the human or animal world--by the close interbreeding of
a very small number of progenitors.[13] The handful of soldiers and
sailors who first landed, a few agriculturists and their families,
the band of orphaned girls, and a small body of French exiles, to be
referred to later on, constitute the whole parent stock of the Boer
people. From this small stock, by a process of breeding in and in, they
have developed, there having been practically no addition made to the
breed for the last two hundred years; the comparatively large numbers
to which they have attained have entirely to be accounted for by the
fact of their personal vigour, very early marriages, and prolific rate
of increase. Thus the Boer represents rather a clan or family than a
nation; and there is probably no true Boer from the Zambesi to the Cape
who does not hold a common strain of blood with almost every other Boer
he meets. Each Boer has in him, probably, at least a drop of the blood
of these women; and their emotional and intellectual peculiarities can
hardly have failed to leave their mark, if slight, upon the racial
development.

     [13] The permanent and fixed type of the Jewish variety of
     the human race, which enables it to transmit its physical
     and mental characteristics with perfect truth even when
     crossed with another race, was probably created by the
     fact that the Jews were all descended from one or a very
     small body of ancestors, and bred rigorously in and in.
     Their own very suggestive legend states that the original
     founder mated with his own sister, which would make it
     almost impossible for the true Jews to revert to any but
     one type. So it is possible to understand how the Boer,
     in the course of a few generations, has formed a type
     fixed and marked, both mentally and physically, only when
     we consider how small was the number of individuals from
     which he originally sprung, and how he must of necessity
     have bred in and in, cousin marrying cousin again and yet
     again. There probably often land in a large American and
     Australian port, on a single day, more European emigrants
     than the number which composed the whole original stock
     of the Boer, including all French additions; there is
     therefore no possibility of the average colonist forming
     so quickly an equally marked type. Even to-day it is not
     uncommon to find a Boer three times related to his own
     wife; she may be his first cousin on his father's side, his
     second cousin on his mother's side, a fourth cousin through
     a maternal grandmother, and there may have been antecedent
     intermarriages of which there is no record. The children of
     such a marriage inheriting an almost homogeneous blood from
     both sides, can hardly fail to be some fixed type. On the
     other hand, the Boer race has probably been preserved from
     the dangers of interbreeding by the fact that the small
     original stock were of such very distinct national types.

But we must turn now to the most interesting point in the early history
of the Boer, and one which alone would fully account for his attitude
towards Europe, and for many other of his unique characteristics.

In and about the year 1688, thirty-six years after the first landing of
Van Riebeek and his handful of men, there arrived at the Cape a body of
French Protestant refugees, numbering in all, men, women and children,
somewhat under two hundred souls. These people, driven from France by
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, were offered an asylum in South
Africa by the Dutch Government, which they accepted. They were not
an ordinary body of emigrants, but represented almost to a man and a
woman that golden minority which is so remorselessly winnowed from the
dross of the conforming majority by all forms of persecution directed
against intellectual and spiritual independence. Mere agriculturists,
vine-dressers and mechanics, with but a small sprinkling of persons
belonging to the professional classes, these men yet constitute an
aristocracy--ennobled, not through the fiat of any monarch, but
selected by that law deep-lying in the nature of things, which has
ordained that where men shall be found having the force to stand alone,
and suffer for abstract conviction, there also shall be found the
individuality, virility and power which founds great peoples and marks
dominant races.

The fate of the South African Boer was safe from the moment these men
came to mingle their blood with his; as the fate of the North American
States was safe when the _Mayflower_ had crossed with its load of
dissentient Englishmen; as the fate of the Spanish colonies would have
been safe, had Spain, in place of cauterizing her growing points in the
bonfires of the squares of Toledo and Madrid, simply nipped them off
from the parent tree and transplanted them alive in her colonies in the
New World, there to beget a newer and stronger Spain. One is sometimes
astonished at certain qualities found in the South African Boer, till
one recalls the fact that a strain of this uncompromising, self-guiding
blood runs in his veins; making him, what often in his lowest and
poorest conditions he yet remains--an aristocrat!

On the arrival of these men at the Cape, the Dutch East India Company
portioned them out lands to cultivate, mainly in the lovely valleys
of Stellenbosch, French-Hoek, and Drakenstein. At the time of their
arrival they formed probably about one-sixth of the whole population.
How rapidly they increased and how large is the share their blood holds
in the Boer race may be noted if one run one's eye over the list of the
occupants of any district or village inhabited by Boers, and marks how
great the number of French names which will occur. There are districts
in the Western Province of the Colony in which these names largely
predominate over those of Dutch or German origin; and even in the
Free State and Transvaal, they are numerous to an extent which their
original numbers would not have led us to expect. Of our most noted of
Cape families, many bear these names; the De Villiers, the Jouberts,
the Du Toits, the Naudès--and if other names, such as the Reitzes,
Van Aarts, Hofmeyrs or Krugers, are not less widely known, it will
generally be found on analysis that the proportion of French blood even
in these families is as large as in those whose patronymics are purely
French. There is probably not a Boer in South Africa at the present day
whose blood is not richly touched by that of the Huguenot.

But it was not only or mainly by bringing to the formation of the
new race this strong and select strain of blood that the Huguenot
influenced the Boer, and through him the future of South Africa. It is
he who has rendered permanent and complete the severance from Europe to
which we have referred.

When the ordinary settler leaves Europe he goes out more or less under
the ægis of his mother country, and for a time at least, wherever he
may settle, he still feels her flag wave over him; if wronged, it is
to the representative of his mother land that he turns; if he settles
in an uncivilized country, it is as the forerunner of those of his
people who shall follow him that he takes possession of it. Should he
go to a territory already colonized by another European race, he may
lose himself more quickly in the existing organization. But still, for
generations, the Irishman, Scotsman, German or Italian often feels a
certain bond between himself and his parent land; and Europe as a whole
holds a large place in his consideration.

Not infrequently his national feeling is intensified by
transplantation. Nowhere on the surface of the globe were toasts to
the health of the Queen and the Royal Family, and to the success of
old England, more heartily drunk than by the British settlers of 1820,
when they ate their first Christmas dinner, beneath the blazing South
African sun, under the kunee trees of Lower Albany. To these men, as
to the English colonists all the world over, the strength and dignity
of their position lay in the fact that they, a minute portion of the
great English nation, had come to this new land to implant themselves,
a branch from the old stock, which should in time take root and grow
to be a giant worthy of its parent tree. They felt themselves the
ambassadors of a great people, the bearers of a flag which waved over
every quarter of the globe; the representatives of a power which they
believed to be the most beneficent and powerful on earth.[14] So these
men named their little villages and their districts after the men
and places of the old country--"East London," "Port Alfred," "King
William's Town," "Queen's Town," "Lower Albany"--and their farms bore
often the names of the homes in England from which they came. Socially,
religiously, and more especially politically, they strove to reproduce,
line by line, as accurately as circumstances would permit, the national
life they had left. "So-and-so things are done at home." That settled,
as it still to-day to a large extent settles, all argument. To-day
the third generation of these men has arrived at adult years; but
consciousness of national identity with the parent people is hardly
dimmed. The young English African who has never been in Europe may
boast that South Africa is the finest country on earth, and swagger
of its skies, and wild, free life or, ridiculously enough, boast of
the civilization which it has attained; he may resent bitterly any
interference with what he considers his material rights on the part of
the "Home Government." But turn to the same man and ask him what his
nationality may be, suggest that he may possibly be of any other race
than his own, and you will not twice repeat your question--

    For in spite of all temptation
    To belong to another nation,
    He remains an Englishman!

     [14] Yes, we once all believed that.

Deep in the heart of every English-speaking colonist is a chord which
responds to the name of the parent people as to no other; and the depth
of the emotion is curiously exemplified in the most insignificant
matters. That seemingly imbecile passion which causes Colonials to drag
down and retain as mementos the curtains of a bed on which a British
princeling has slept; the comic manner in which the average colonist
will gravely inquire of you on your return from Europe whether you
have "seen the Queen," and their solemnity in all matters pertaining
to ancient and almost worn-out English institutions, all have in them
an element radically different from that which would animate the
average home Englishman, were he to act in a like manner; an element
not to be found in the sycophant crowds which loll open-mouthed
about St. James's on the afternoon of a Drawing-room; and which is
radically distinct from the servility which bows before mere wealth
and success. The colonist is perhaps rather more inclined than others
to criticize mercilessly the princeling or dignitary sent out from
home (and does so very freely after his arrival, when his gilt has
worn off him); but behind the individual man lies something of which
he is the representative, and it is this which causes him to have for
the colonist a quite peculiar value. The enthusiasm he awakens is an
enthusiasm for an emblem, not a man; for the representative of English
nationality, not for the ruler. The difference between the feeling of
an Englishman in the colony and the Englishman at home, with regard
to all the insignia and emblems of the common national life, forces
itself strongly on the notice of one who visits England for the first
time. There is an absence of the element of passion and romance in the
"Man at Home's" way of viewing these things; the difference between
these attitudes being best compared by likening it to the difference
between the feelings of two men, one of whom remains in the house of
his parents and possesses it, the other of whom leaves it for ever.
If outside the house windows grows a great lilac tree, it is simply a
material part of the house he inhabits to the man who possesses it. As
long as the branches shade the window, or do not damage the walls, he
regards it with passive approval; when they begin to obstruct the view,
and the roots interfere with the foundations, he has not the slightest
remorse in lopping off the branches, or, if need be, uprooting the
whole tree; the whole house is still his, the tree he regards from the
utilitarian standpoint. On the other hand, to the man who has left the
home of his childhood and gone to a foreign land--if one should by any
chance send him a sprig from the old tree that grew before the windows,
he would wrap it up and carry it about buried in his breast--the
small sprig is an emblem to him of the old home which once was his,
and to which he is still bound by ties of affection, though severed
for ever by space. It would be as irrelevant to accuse the one man of
insensibility because he did not weep over the chopped-down branches,
as to accuse the other of emotional weakness because he grew tender
over his sprig. The Englishman in England needs no visible emblem of
that national life in the centre of which he is imbedded, and of which
he forms an integral part. To the Englishman separated from that life
by wide space and material interests, the smallest representative of
the old nation has a powerful emotional value. It is to him what the
lock of his mistress's hair is to an absent lover; he treasures it and
kisses it to assure himself of her existence. If she were present he
would probably notice the lock little. The princeling is our lock of
hair, the Union Jack our sprig of lilac.

Even in the seemingly childish deference to manners and fashions
imported from home, along with less exalted motives, this
idealizing instinct plays its part. Nowhere on earth's surface
are English-speaking men so consciously Anglo-Saxon as in the new
lands they have planted. You may forget in England that you are an
Englishman; you can never forget it in Africa.

The colonist will oppose England if he fancies she interferes with
the material interests of the land he inhabits, as the married man
takes the part of his wife, should he fancy his own mother seeks to
over-dominate her. The wife is the bearer of his children, the minister
to his material comforts; but deep in his heart there is a sense in
which the mother has a place the wife will never fill. If his wife
die he may soon find another, and her hold will be lost and her place
taken; but his relation towards his mother is ineradicable; more
changeless because more purely ideal and immaterial. She is the one
woman he will never allow man or woman to speak slightingly of while he
lives. He may quarrel with her himself, may even wound her, but he will
allow no other man to touch her by word or in deed.

If to-morrow England lay prostrate, as France lay in 1871, with the
heel of the foreigner on her throat, there are sixty millions of
English-speaking men and women all the world over who would leap to
their feet. They would swear never to lie down again till they had seen
her freed. Women would urge on sons and husbands and forego all luxury,
and men would leave their homes and cross the seas, if in so doing
there was hope of aiding her. It will never be known what colonial
Englishmen feel for the national nest till a time comes when it may be
in need of them.

    Our dearest bluid to do her guid
    We'd give it her and a' that!

For it may be more than questioned whether even brother Jonathan, in
spite of the back score against her and the large admixture of foreign
blood in his veins, would sit still to see the foreigner crush the
nesting-place of his people; to see the cradle of his tongue, the land
of Chaucer and Shakespeare trampled down by men who know not their
speech. And the Irish-Englishman all the world over, forgetting six
centuries of contumely would, with the magnanimity of his generous
race, stand shoulder to shoulder with his English brother, as he stood
and died beside him in every country under the sun. Blood is thicker
than water--and language binds closer than blood.

The England of to-day may disregard this emotional attitude towards
herself and her colonists, and by persistent indifference and coldness
may kill it, as a father by neglect may alienate the heart of his
son, and turn to stone what was once throbbing flesh. And it is fully
possible that as England of the past, when her government was conducted
by an ignorant, monarchical aristocracy, despised her colonies because
they were small democracies, and alienated them by ruthlessly using
them for her own purposes; so the England of to-day, becoming rapidly
a democracy may, through the supine indifference and self-centred
narrowness inherent in the nature of over-worked uncultivated masses,
kill out for ever the possibilities which might arise from the full
recognition and cultivation of this emotion. But the fact remains that
to-day this bond exists; the English-speaking colonist is bound to the
birthplace of his speech; and little obtrusive as this passion may
be, it is yet one of the most pregnant social phenomena of the modern
world, one capable of modifying the future, not only of Anglo-Saxon
peoples, but of the human race.[15]

     [15] (Footnote added in 1900.) Yet England killed it in
     America a century ago, and she is killing it in South
     Africa to-day.

We ask no forgiveness for thus digressing, for until the attitude
of other European colonists towards their home lands has been fully
grasped, the very exceptional position of the Boer, and the effect of
his attitude on himself and South Africa, and the importance of the
Huguenot influence in producing this attitude, cannot be understood.

So complete has been the Boer's severance from his fatherlands in
Europe, both France and Holland, that for him they practically do not
exist. For two hundred years their social and political life has
rolled on unrecked of by him; Paris and The Hague are no nearer to
his heart than Madrid or Vienna. He will swear more lustily at you if
you call him a Frenchman or a Hollander than should you call him an
Englishman or a German; and we have known primitive Boers who have
vigorously denied that they had even originally descended from either
Hollanders or Frenchmen.

The Huguenot has caused this severance in two ways.

Firstly, through the fact of his being a religious exile, and an exile
of a peculiar type.

The exiled Englishmen who founded the Northern States of America,
though they might wipe the dust off their feet against the land
they left, did not cut that land wholly out of their affections and
sympathies. A Government party, dominant for the moment, had made it
impossible for them to continue their own form of worship in peace; but
in the land they left, half their countrymen were bound to them by the
closest ties of spiritual and intellectual sympathy, and were a party
so strong as soon to become dominant. It was not England and its people
who expelled them, but a step-motherly Government. Therefore they
founded "New England" and clung to the old.

The Huguenot ancestor of the Boer left a country in which not only the
Government, but the body of his fellows were at deadly variance with
him; in which his religion was an exotic and his mental attitude alien
from that of the main body of the people.

To these men, when they shook off the dust of their feet against her,
France became the visible embodiment of the powers of evil; her rule
was the rule of Agag, whom the Lord should yet hew in pieces; her
people were the children of Satan, given over to believe a lie, and her
fields were the plains of Sodom and Gomorrah, on which in judgment the
Almighty would yet rain down fire and brimstone; a righteous Lot fled
from them in horror with all that he had. To these homeless fugitives
the Europe that they had left was as the "house of bondage." The ships
which bore them to South Africa were the Ark of the Covenant of the
Lord their God, in which He bore His chosen to the Land of His Promise.
As the Huguenot paced the deck of his ship and saw the strange stars of
the Southern Hemisphere come out above him, like Abraham of old he read
in them the promise of his covenant-keeping God:--"To thee and to thy
seed shall the land be given and they shall inherit it. Look up and see
the stars of heaven if thou canst count them: so shall thy seed be for
multitude; like sand, like fine sand on the sea-shore. And when thou
comest to the land that I shall give thee, thou shalt drive out the
heathen from before thee."

And as he entered Table Bay, and for the first time the superb front of
Table Mountain broke upon him, he saw in it his first token from his
covenant-keeping God--"The land that I shall give thee!"

And the beautiful valleys of Stellenbosch, French-Hoek and the Paarl,
in which he settled, were to him no mere terrestrial territories on
which to plant and sow; they were the direct gifts of his God; the
answers to prayers; the fulfilment of a divine covenant; a fief which
he held, not through the fiat of any earthly sovereign, but directly
from the hand of the Lord his God. The vines and fig-trees which he
planted, and under which he sat, were not merely the result of his
labour; they were the trees which aforetime he had seen in visions when
he wandered a homeless stranger in Europe--"_The land that I shall
give thee!_" To this man France was dead from the moment he set his
foot on South African soil, and South Africa became his. Unlike the
Englishman, the Huguenot no more thought of perpetuating the memory
of France in "New Parises" and "New Orleanses" than the Jew, when he
had escaped from the land of Egypt, thought of recalling the cities
of Pharaoh in the names of the towns in Palestine. There is hardly a
spot in Africa named by the French Huguenot in memory of his land: he
called his farms "Springbok-fontein," "Beeste Kraal," "Jakals-fontein,"
and "Kat-kop."[16] Better to him has seemed a South African jackal or
wild-cat than all the cities of France.

     [16] Springbok-Fountain, Cattle Pen, Jackal's-Fountain,
     Cat's Head.

Thus to the Huguenot, not only was France the object of his abhorrence,
and Europe a matter of indifference, but the South African land became
from the very moment he landed the object of a direct and absorbing
religious veneration, excluding all other national feelings. And
in very slightly modified form he has transmitted this state of
feeling to his latest descendant. Deep in the hearts of every old
veld-schoen-wearing Boer that you may meet, side by side with an
almost religious indifference to other lands and peoples, lies this
deep, mystical and impersonal affection for South Africa. Not for
the land, as inhabited by human beings, and formed into social and
political organizations of which he is a part; not for the land,
regarded as a social and political entity alone, is it that he feels
this affection. It is for the actual physical country, with its
plains, rocks and skies, that his love and veneration are poured out
(absolutely incomprehensible as this may appear to the money-making
nineteenth-century Englishman). The primitive Boer believes he
possesses this land by a right wholly distinct from that of the
aborigines whom he dispossesses, or the Englishmen who followed him;
a right with which no claim of theirs can ever conflict. His feeling
for South Africa is not in any way analogous to the feeling of the
Johannesburg digger or speculator for the land in which he has "made
his pile," nor even to that of the ordinary colonist for the territory
in which his habitation lies; nor is it quite of the same nature as
the passion of the old-world Swiss for his mountains, nor of the
Norwegian for his fjords. Its only true counterpart is to be found
in the attitude of the Jew towards Palestine--"When I forget thee, O
Jerusalem!" His feeling towards it is a faith, not a calculation. It is
as useless to attempt to influence the Boer by showing him that he will
derive material advantage by giving up the rule of his land to others,
as it is to try and persuade an ardent lover that he gains by sharing
his mistress with one who will contribute to her support. His feeling
for South Africa is not primarily based on utilitarian calculations or
considerations of the material advantages to accrue to him from its
possession; it is the one vein of idealism and romance underlying his
seemingly prosaic and leaden existence. Touch the Boer on the side of
South Africa, and at once, for the moment, he is hero and saint--his
feeling for it a religion.

It has been from the complete failure to grasp this attitude of the
Boer towards South Africa that curious mistakes have been made by
far-seeing politicians and keen diplomatists in dealing with South
African problems; mistakes only to be comprehended when one considers
that curious inability inherent in the so-called "practical intellect"
in all ages to comprehend anything beyond the narrow aims and ambitions
which constitute its own little world. It is this inability which so
often makes the conduct of these shrewd people, when they have to deal
with the wider problems and deeper emotions of human life, like the
conduct of a child who, to remove a speck of dust from the eye, should
insert a needle and stir it about in the living substance.[17]

     [17] Let it be remarked that this passage was written in
     1892, and printed in England in 1894.

The Huguenot, by implanting this religious passion for South Africa
in the heart of the Boer, and by the fact that he brought with him no
political sympathies with France, helped to sever the Boer from his
parent States; but even these influences while they would account for
his division from his parents' nationalities, would not alone account
for that complete severance from the common social and intellectual
life of Europe, and from all civilized European societies, which
characterizes the Boer of the past and of to-day, and we must seek for
its cause further.

When the Huguenots first arrived at the Cape, they had little to
complain of in the treatment they received at the hands of the Dutch
East India Company--lands were given them side by side with the earlier
emigrants, by whom they were kindly received. But the Government of
the Dutch East India Company, then dominant at the Cape, like that
of all commercial companies, was a despotism, and resembled rather
the dictatorial rule existing on board a troopship than any form of
government we are now accustomed to picture as existing in a young
European settlement. When the Huguenots landed their speech was
French, and the ruling powers disapproved of it, and determined to
exterminate it, and substitute at once the Dutch language. A decree
was passed prohibiting its public use. It might not be used in the
churches, nor taught to the children in the schools. The Huguenots
resented this enactment. Smaller in numbers, but superior in culture
and intelligence, they were unwilling to see their speech forcibly
submerged; and there was a time when they went so far as to talk of
physical resistance. But in the end they were subdued, and within a
generation the French language was extinct. The old grandmother might
still mumble it in her chair in the corner, or sing its nursery rhymes
to her grandchildren in it, but they no longer understood her; law and
arbitrary force had done their work. We are inclined to believe that no
single autocratic action on the part of any South African Government
has ever so deeply influenced the future of South Africa and its people
as this seemingly small proceeding, influencing only a few hundred folk.

To show how this has happened we must somewhat digress.

The language spoken by the Boer of to-day is called "the Taal," i.e.
"the Language." It is not French, nor is it Dutch, nor is it even in
the usual acceptation of the word a dialect of Dutch; but it is a form
of speech based on that language. It is used at the present day all
over South Africa by the Boers and half-castes as their only speech;
it is found in its greatest purity in the Free State, Transvaal, and
frontier districts, where it has been least exposed to scholastic and
foreign influences during the last few years. To analyze fully this
tiny but interesting variety of speech, would take us far beyond our
limits. It differs from the Dutch of the Hollander, not as archaic
forms of speech in Europe often differ from the literary, as the
Italian of the Ligurian peasant from that of the Florentine, or the
Somersetshire or Yorkshire dialects from the language of the London
newspapers; these archaic European dialects not only often represent
the earlier form of the language, but are often richer in varied
idioms and in the power of expressing subtle and complex thoughts than
are their allied literary forms. The relation of the Taal to Dutch is
of a quite different kind. The Dutch of Holland is as highly developed
a language, and as voluminous and capable of expressing the finest
scintillations of thought as any in Europe. The vocabulary of the Taal
has shrunk to a few hundred words, which have been shorn of almost
all their inflections, and have been otherwise clipped. The plurals,
which in Dutch are formed in various and complex ways, the Taal forms
by an almost universal addition of an "e"; and the verbs, which in
Dutch are as fully and expressively conjugated as in English or German,
in the Taal drop all persons but the third person singular. Thus the
verb "to be," instead of being conjugated as in the Dutch of Holland
and in analogy with all other European languages, thus runs:--Ik is,
Je is, Hij is, Ons is, Yulle is, Hulle is,--which would answer in
English to: "I is," "thou is," "he is," "we is," "you is," "they is"!
And not only so, but of the commonest pronouns many are altered out
of all resemblance to their originals. Of nouns and other words of
Dutch extraction, most are so clipped as to be scarcely recognizable.
A very few words are from Malay and native sources; but so sparse is
the vocabulary and so broken are its forms, that it is impossible
in the Taal to express a subtle intellectual emotion, or abstract
conception, or a wide generalization; and a man seeking to render a
scientific, philosophic, or poetical work in the Taal, would find
his task impossible. The literary artist who has tried to introduce
into his work of art in any European language a picture of Boer life,
knows how impossible it has been to find any organized dialect which
would correspond to it.[18] In English neither the Scotch nor country
dialects, nor the Irish brogue, nor the pithy inverted forms of city
slang will answer. To a certain extent he will be able to preserve its
form and spirit in copying the manner of a little child, as it lisps
its mother tongue. But this would not preserve all its peculiarities.
Its true counterpart is only to be found in the "pigeon" English of
a Chinaman or, better still, in the Negro dialects of the Southern
American States. In the stories of _Brer-Fox_ and _Brer-Rabbit_, as
told by the old Southern slave in _Uncle Remus_, we have one of the
few literary examples of such a speech as the Taal. In both languages
there is the same poverty of vocabulary, the same abbreviated condition
of words, the same clipping of forms, and the same much larger
intelligence in the speakers than ill-formed language gives them the
power of expressing--a thing which can never happen where a people
has _slowly_ shaped its own language--and, as a result, the same
tendency to suggest indirectly ideas which the speaker has not the
power of directly stating, from which results the irresistible humour
of both dialects. It is often complained of by persons lately from
England, that when the English South African has a joke to make, or
comic story to tell, he lapses into the Taal, which is not understood
by the newcomer; the truth being that it is the use of the Taal which
transforms an ordinary sentence into a joke, and makes the simplest
story irresistibly comic. There is hardly a South African that has
not at some time told a story in the Taal who, when called upon to
translate it for the benefit of some stranger, has not found that the
humour had evaporated and the laugh gone. Merely to attempt to express
a deep passion or complex idea in this dialect is to be often superbly
humorous. The story is told of two Cape students whose Edinburgh
landlady gave them notice to quit because their laughter disturbed her
other lodgers. On inquiry it turned out that they were, for their own
diversion, engaged in translating the book of Job into the Taal! And so
entirely is the Dutch of South Africa removed from the rich sonorous
Dutch of Holland, both in structure and sound, that we were lately
requested by a woman, whose native speech was the Taal, to come to her
aid, as her newly arrived gardener was a German, whose speech she could
not therefore understand. On the gardener appearing, we found he was
a Hollander, recently from Amsterdam, and speaking the most excellent
Dutch!

     [18] Though the Scotch of Burns's best poems comes nearer
     to it.

So widely in fact has this dialect separated itself from Dutch that the
Boer boy at the Cape working for an examination finds it as hard to
pass in literary Dutch as in English or French, and it not infrequently
occurs that the Boer boy is plucked in Dutch who passes in all other
subjects. Between the language of the _Camera Obscura_ and the _Paarl's
Patriot_ there is hardly more affinity than between the old Saxon of
Alfred's day and the slang of a modern London street boy.[19]

     [19] It must of course be understood that a great deal of
     real Dutch of Holland is used in South Africa. The Bible
     is written in it, the services of the church are more or
     less conducted in it, and students learn to speak it almost
     correctly.

In answer to the question, "How did this little speech arise?" it is
sometimes suggested that the original soldiers and sailors who founded
the settlement being largely Frisian and wholly uneducated, never
spoke Dutch at all, but a dialect; and that, being mainly uncultured
persons, and using no literature, their speech easily underwent further
disintegration. On the other hand, it has been said that the Taal has
been formed by the intercourse between the Dutchman and his slaves,
and the aboriginal races of the country; that these people, obliged to
use an imperfect Dutch, taught their broken lingo to their masters'
children, which has so become the language of the Boer.

Something is to be said for both views, more especially for the second.
At the present day the Taal is the only tongue of the many thousands
of Half-castes which have resulted from the union of the Boer with
his slaves; and it is exactly such a broken form of speech as does
arise, when a large body of adults are suddenly obliged to learn and
use a foreign tongue, as was the case with the slaves. But neither of
these theories seems to us wholly to cover the ground. In the Southern
States of America for a hundred years slave nurses brought up English
children, but not the slightest effect on their English speech was
produced, and nowhere in America is a purer English spoken than by
the descendants of the Southern planters. Even allowing that, being
uncultured, the forefathers of the Boer might more easily have let
their speech slip than was the case with the more cultured planters,
it still seems unlikely that a people so rigidly and exceptionally
conservative as the Boer has shown himself to be, even in the smallest
details of daily life, during his two hundred years in South Africa,
should suddenly and entirely have dropped his own pure language and
accepted his speech from the hands of his despised dependents.

We put forward the suggestion with diffidence, perhaps to be corrected
by those who have considered the matter more deeply, but it has
appeared to us that, fully to account for the Taal, it is necessary to
allow at least some place to the influence of the French Huguenot and
the sudden suppression of his French speech.

A considerable body of adult persons, suddenly introduced into a
population whose language they are abruptly and by force compelled to
use as their own if, as in the case of the French Huguenots, they are
socially the equals, and intellectually the superiors, of the people
among whom they settle, and if they at once proceed to intermarry with
them, may, and almost must, powerfully influence and disintegrate the
speech of the majority. The Taal is precisely such a speech as the
adult Huguenots, arbitrarily and suddenly forced to forsake their own
language and to adopt the Dutch, must have spoken. And that they should
have imposed their broken language on their fellow colonists seems far
more probable than that the slave should have done so. In language,
yet more than in other human concerns, imitation is the expression of
an unconscious admiration. The mannerisms, accent, and intonation of
an individual, admired or loved, are almost inevitably caught; those
of the despised unconsciously though carefully avoided. The cultured
woman, labouring from philanthropic motives for ten years in the slums
of a city among the outcast poor, finds her speech become almost more
punctiliously correct through shrinking from the lower forms used about
her; but were the same woman to love and admire a man of an uncultured
class and live ten years with him, her speech would inevitably be
tinged by his. The child follows the speech of its mother; the lover
of the loved.[20]

     [20] This view with regard to the possible origin of the
     Taal (whether it be of any or of no value) was first
     suggested to us by a somewhat curious case which came
     under our own observation. A young man from one of the
     German-speaking Swiss cantons arrived in South Africa, and
     immediately married a Dutch girl. Both parents could speak
     a little English. They went immediately to live in a remote
     and out of the world spot among the mountains, where they
     seldom came into contact with other Europeans. Here their
     children were born. Neither of the parents were educated
     people. When I came into contact with them a most curious
     phenomenon had developed itself; the whole family spoke
     a language which was not Dutch nor German nor English,
     but a most curious blending of all three, and the words,
     from whichever language taken, had exactly the same clipt
     form we find in the Taal. There was not one member of the
     family who could speak a single sentence correctly in any
     of the three languages. They had, in fact, developed a new
     language for themselves. No doubt their children learnt
     English and Dutch later when they went into the world; but,
     had the descendants of that family been preserved distinct
     for a couple of generations, a new and astounding variety
     of human speech would have been formed. One of the most
     remarkable points was that each member of the family spoke
     in exactly the same manner.

At least the fact is certain, whatever else may be doubtful, that
within one generation after the arrival of the Huguenot at the Cape the
language spoken by the people was neither Dutch nor French, but that
broken dialect we call the Taal.

If our supposition be correct, and the Taal was indeed partly formed in
the way we have suggested, then that curious affection of the Boer for
his little cramped dialect, which makes it second only to South Africa
as the object of his passionate devotion, becomes comprehensible, and
not only understandable but almost pathetic when we regard it not
as a speech picked up from the group at the kitchen doorway, but as
inherited from the best of his early forbears, and first shaped by the
lips of the young Huguenot mother as she bent over the cradle of her
half Dutch child, striving to shape her speech in the new and father
tongue. If this be so, then the Taal is indeed what the Boer so often
and so vociferously calls it--his "Moedertaal"; and one is bound to
regard his feeling for it as one regards the feeling of a woman for her
mother's old wedding-gown and faded orange blossoms--they may be mouldy
and unfit for present-day use, but her tenderness for them is a matter
for profound sympathy rather than ridicule.

If our supposition be correct and the Huguenot truly helped in the
formation of the Taal, then his influence over the Boer, and through
him over South Africa, has been, as we have said, almost unlimited. For
the Taal has largely helped to make the Boer what he is.

It has been to him what its spinal column is to a vertebrate creature,
that on which its minor peculiarities depend, and the key to its
structure. It has been the prime conditioning element in his growth,
beside which all others become secondary.

Naturalists tell us that on certain isolated mountain peaks, or on
solitary islands, surrounded by deep oceans, there are sometimes found
certain unique forms of plant and animal life, peculiar to that one
spot, and not to be found elsewhere on the earth; and that, further,
there is nothing in the climate or the soil to account for the fact
that this special little plant, or winged insect, or tortoise, should
be found there and nowhere else. The whole fact is a mystery, till
science makes a further discovery. It finds all over the surface of
the earth, the fossilized remains of just such, or analogous plants
or animals, and then the mystery is solved; and it is clear that our
unique species have no particular relation to the spot in which they
are found, nor have they been evolved through its influence. They are
but the survivals of forms of life once universal, which have been
preserved in those situations when the rest of their species perished,
through the action of some isolating medium--the inaccessible height of
the mountain crags or the width of the ocean--which has preserved them
from the forces which have modified or destroyed their race elsewhere.
Such a unique human species is the true South African Boer. Like the
marsupials of Australia, or the mammoth tortoises of the Galapagos
Islands, he is incomprehensible while we regard his peculiarities
as evolved by the material conditions about him; he becomes fully
comprehensible only when we recognize the fact that he is a survival
of the past; that the peculiar faiths, habits, superstitions, and
virtues now peculiar to him were once the common properties of all
European peoples; that he is merely a child of the seventeenth century
surviving on though modified by climate and physical surroundings into
the nineteenth, and that the true isolating medium through which this
remarkable survival has been effected has been mainly the Taal.

If in the struggle for existence between the different forms of speech
in the early days of the Colony, either pure French or pure Dutch had
conquered and become the language of the French-Huguenot settler, if
he had inherited as his birthright any recognized form of literary
European speech, the Boer as we know him could not have existed; and
in the place of this unique and interesting child of the seventeenth
century, wandering about on South African plains when almost all his
compeers in Europe have vanished, we should have had merely an ordinary
inhabitant of the nineteenth century. For when we come to consider it,
it has not been only the nature of his life in South Africa nor his
geographical severance from Europe which has been the cause of his
peculiar mental attitude and social condition, and which divides him
from the large body of the nineteenth century European folk.

That complexus of knowledge and thought, with its resulting modes
of action and feeling, which for the want of a better term we are
accustomed to call "the spirit of the age," and which binds into a
more or less homogeneous whole the life of all European nations, is
created by the action of speech and mainly of opinion ossified and
rendered permanent, portable, in the shape of literature. Even in the
middle ages it was through this agency that the solidarity of European
life was attained. Slow as were the physical means of transport
and difficult as in the absence of printing was the diffusion of
literature, the interchange was enormous. Mainly through the medium
of the Latin tongue, held in common by the cultured of all civilized
European countries, thought and knowledge travelled from land to
land more slowly, but not less surely, than to-day. The ambassador,
the student, and the monk in their travels exchanged thoughts with
the men of foreign countries through its medium, and the religious
meditation poured forth by the monk in his cell in Spain, the romance
shaped by the French poet, the chemical discoveries of the Italian
professor, once committed to Latin manuscript, were the property of
all Europe. In the pocket of the travelling monk or wandering scholar
carefully preserved copies crept from land to land; from the learned
class the knowledge of their contents filtered down to the wealthy,
and from these to the people, till at last in the German cathedrals
were sung the hymns of the Spanish monk, the Dutch chemist perfected
the experiments of the Italian, and the romance of the Frenchman,
translated from Latin into the colloquial tongues, was sung from end to
end of Europe, beside peasant-hearths and baronial castles; and whether
we study those centuries in Italy or England, in France or Spain, their
spirit, though modified in each, is essentially one.

At the present day, though the use of a common literary tongue has
ceased among us, the interchange of thought with its resulting unity
is yet more complete. The printing-press, the electric-telegraph which
gives to language an almost omnipresent voice, and above all, the
habit of translating from one language into another whatever may be of
general interest, are more completely binding all nations throughout
the world where a literary speech prevails, into one body; until, at
the present day, civilized men in the most distant corners of the
earth are in some ways more closely united intellectually than were
the inhabitants of neighbouring villages in the middle ages, or than
savages divided by half a mile of forest are at the present day. The
chemical discovery made to-day by a man of science in his laboratory
and recorded in the pages of the scientific journal, is modifying the
work in a thousand other laboratories throughout Europe before the
end of the week. The picture or ideal of life, painted by the poet
or writer of fiction, once clad in print travels round the globe,
modifying the actions of men and women before the ink with which it
was first written has well dried out; and the news that two workmen
were shot at a strike in Hungary, committed to the telegraph wire,
will, before night--and quicker than the feet of an old crone could
have carried news from house to house in a village--have crossed from
Europe to America and Australia, and before to-morrow half a million
working men and women, separated from each other by oceans, will have
cursed between their teeth. Probably to no man is the part played by
literature in creating this unity in the civilized world so clear as to
the writer himself, with whom it is often a matter not of intellectual
interference, but of ocular demonstration. What he has evolved in a
sleepless night in London or Paris, or as he paced in the starlight
under the Southern Cross, if he commit it to writing and confide it
to the pages of some English review will, within two months, have
passed from end to end of the globe: the Europeanized Japanese will be
reading it in his garden at Tokio; the colonist will have received it
with his weekly mail; it will be on the library tables of England and
America. Even if his thought be thrown into the more permanent form of
the separate volume, it may be months or years, but if it be of value
in itself, it will as surely go round the globe on the current of the
European speech. The Australian will be found reading it at the door
of his house on the solitary sheep-run; the London city clerk, as he
rides through the fog in the omnibus, will take it from his pocket; the
Scotch workman will spend his half-holiday over it; the duchess will
have fingered it in her boudoir; the American girl may have wept over
it, and the educated Hindu have studied it. A little later on if it
have value, it will, through translation, pass the limits of national
speech. The German student will be carrying it in his breast-pocket as
he walks along the Rhine; and the French critic will be examining it
with a view to to-morrow's article; the Russian will be perusing it in
its French dress; and even the polygamous Turk, in his palace on the
Bosphorus, will be scanning its pages between sips of coffee. Within a
few years the writer may see on his table at the same moment a pile of
letters from every corner of the globe, and from men of almost every
race that commands a literature. The thoughts which have visited him
in his solitary night will have brought him into communion, closer
than any of physical contact, with men and women in every corner of
the globe; and as he handles the little pile--dating from a British
Residency at Pequ, a cattle-ranch in California, an unknown village
in Russia--he realizes perhaps with surprise, that even his own
slight thread of thought forms one of those long cords which, passing
from land to land and from man to man, are slowly but surely weaving
humanity into one. Perhaps to the modern writer alone is that "human
solidarity," transcending all bounds of nation and race, for which the
French soldier on the barricades of Paris declared it was necessary
for him to die, not merely an idea, but a solid and practical reality.
His kindred are not only those dwelling in the same house with him,
but that band of men and women all the world over of whatever race or
colour in whom his thought is germinating; for him almost alone at
the present day is the circle of nationality, which for the ordinary
man still shuts in so large a part of his interest and sympathies,
obliterated by a still wider, which knows no distinction of speech,
race, or colour--his readers are his people, and all literary peoples
his fellow-countrymen.

So powerful, indeed, is the unifying effect of this interchange of
thought that to-day the mental life of all countries sharing European
literature may be compared to one body of water in a great inland sea;
divided indeed into bays, gulfs and inlets, but permeated everywhere
by the same currents and forming one common mass. The three large and
almost international forms of speech, English, French and German,
may well be compared to main currents, a particle committed to whose
waves is instantly swept abroad everywhere; yet the smallest form of
literary speech, such as the Dutch or Portuguese, does not shut out the
people using it from the common interchange. Like little bays, divided
from the main body by a low sand-bar, before which the waves of the
outer currents may be delayed for a moment, but which they are sure to
overleap sooner or later, bearing in all that the outer mass contains,
and sweeping out to join the larger body all the deposits peculiar
to the smaller, so into the smallest literary speech is sure to be
borne, sooner or later, by means of translation, all of value that
deposits itself in the larger life and literature of Europe, and all
they have to contribute is borne out into the larger. The moralizings
of a Russian reformer and the visions of the Norwegian playwright, for
a moment confined within the limits of their narrower national tongues,
are yet swept into the world-wide speeches and span the globe, adding
an integral portion to "the spirit of the age," as certainly as though
first couched in a world-wide tongue.

In this common life of literary European peoples, the African Boer has
had, and could have, no part. Behind him, like a bar, two hundred years
ago the Taal rose, higher and higher, and land-locked him in his own
tiny lagoon. All that was common to the great currents of European life
at the time of his severance from them, you will still find to-day in
his tiny pool, if you take a handful of his mental water and analyse
it, but hardly one particle of that which has been added since has
found its way into him. His little speech, not only without literature,
incapable of containing one, and comprehensible only to himself and
his little band of compatriots, shut him off as effectively from the
common growth and development of Europe as a wall of adamant. The
superstitions, the virtues, the ideals of the seventeenth century, you
will find faithfully mirrored in him; the growths, the upheavals, the
dissolutions, the decays which have marked the nineteenth century have
passed by without touching him in his Rip Van Winkle sleep behind his
little Taal.

It is somewhat curious to reflect on all that he has missed. The Europe
he left was a Europe still reddened by the fires that burned witches
and heretics; Newton was a little child playing in Lincolnshire fields;
Descartes had been in his grave two years; it was not twenty since
Galileo had been obliged, before a Christian tribunal, to disclaim the
heresy of the earth's movement; it was not fifty years since Bruno was
burnt for asserting the unity of God and Nature, and Vanini at Toulouse
for empiricism; and Calvin's murder of Servetus still tainted the
spiritual air.

For the Boer, the awakening of human reason in the eighteenth century,
with its stern demand for intellectual tolerance, and its enunciation
of universal brotherhood, never existed. The cry for Liberty, Equality,
and Fraternity, with which later on the heart of Europe leaped forth to
grasp an ideal for which men's hands were not yet quite pure enough,
but which rent the thunder-cloud of despotism brooding over Europe;
the Napoleonic wars and the crash of thrones; the growth of physical
science, re-shaping not only man's physical existence but yet more his
social and ethical life, of these things the Boer behind his little
Taal wall heard and felt nothing.

Even the rise of the commercial system during the last century, which
has spread out its claw till it covers not only Europe, but is digging
its nails into the muscular fibre of all the world, and which has
enthroned in place of all the old ideals, national, religious and
personal, simply one--wealth; and which seems to sit to-day, crowned
over human life as no tyranny has ever done before--of this phase of
modern life the Boer also knows nothing. He still believes there are
things money cannot buy; that a man may have three millions of money
in syndicate shares, and hold command over the labour of ten thousand
workers, and yet be no better than he who goes out every morning in
his leather trousers to tend his own sheep. Still less has the Boer
caught the faintest sound of that deep whisper, which to-day is passing
from end to end of the civilized world, questioning whether this
commercial god be indeed the final god of the race; whether his throne
might not yet fall as others have fallen before: a whisper which may
at any moment break out into the wildest cry that has yet rung round
earth--and humanity, breaking down the idol, may start on its march in
search of a new shrine.

Of these two mighty movements, the one apparent and dominant
everywhere, and the other silently riddling the ground beneath it into
holes, till it sounds hollow beneath the foot--of these matters also
the Boer knows nothing. As he is ignorant of the gracious and generous
developments of the modern world, so he recks nothing of the diseases
which have fastened on to it, or the reactions against them.

Even of those large external events which have marked the march of the
civilized world during the last forty years few reports have reached
him; or but a faint adumbration. The American Civil War of thirty-five
years ago, when the foremost branch of the Anglo-Saxon peoples
decided, amid a torrent of its own blood, what was to be the permanent
attitude of advancing humanity on the greatest question of interhuman
relations--of this he knows nothing. John Brown and Harper's Ferry
are names as unfamiliar to him as Marathon and Thermopylæ; Goethe,
Beethoven, Kant, Darwin, Whitman, Mill, Emerson, and Marx are as
absolutely mere names to him as Jan Dikpens or Jan Bovenlander. Few of
the stars shining over our heads now were in his firmament when he left
Europe, nor was the dark shadow there which broods over us.

When one considers these things, then we understand our African Boer.
There is then nothing puzzling in the fact that he, a pure-blooded
European, descended from some of the most advanced and virile nations
of Europe, and being no poor peasant crushed beneath the heel of
others, but in many cases a wealthy landowner with flocks, herds,
and crowds of dependents beneath him, and in his collective capacity
governing States as large as European countries, should yet, in this
latter half of the nineteenth century, possess on many matters a
faith which has been outgrown by a London or Paris gamin; that he
should hold fanatically that the sun does not move and repeat the
story of Gideon to support his view; and that he often regards scab,
itch, and various skin diseases affecting his stock as pre-ordained
of an almighty intelligence which should not be interfered with by
mere human remedies; that he looks often upon the insurance of public
buildings as a direct insult to Jehovah, who, if he sends a fire
to punish a people, should not be defeated by an insurance of the
building;[21] that his faith in ghosts and witches is unshaken;--all
this becomes comprehensible when we remember that his faiths, social
customs and personal habits, so astonishing in the eyes of the modern
nineteenth-century European, are nothing more than the survivals of the
faiths and customs universal among our forefathers two hundred years
ago; that they in no way originated with, or are peculiar to, the South
African Boer.[22]

     [21] This view was propounded and backed by the votes of a
     majority in the Transvaal Parliament recently.

     [22] It may be truly remarked that among the uncultured in
     Europe the same faith in ghosts and witches and even more
     appalling superstitions are rife; and this is certainly
     the case. But what is peculiar is that this unscientific
     attitude is formed in men often of unusual ability and high
     practical gifts.

The fact that this survival, and his opposition to the modern spirit,
is not merely the result of the Boer's geographical severance from
Europe, and that it has largely depended on his little language, is
made clearer when we glance at other emigrant European peoples. However
far distant from Europe, in North America, Canada, Australia, or New
Zealand, wherever a European race has settled, if it has not (as in
the case of the Spanish and the Portuguese in their South African and
South American colonies) mingled its blood largely with that of the
aborigines, then that translated branch is found, not only to retain
its connection with European life and growth, but in many cases to
lead in that growth. It is often remarked on as matter for wonder in
these colonies how large is the percentage of individuals taking the
lead in the social, material and intellectual life, who were reared
among circumstances which most widely severed them from the external
and material conditions of modern civilization. But there is no cause
for this wonder. The European emigrant who settles in the backwoods
of a new country, may rear his family in primeval solitude, they may
grow up on the roughest fare and the closest contact with untamed
nature; the man may have no education and little time or aptitude for
imparting to his son culture or learning, but his speech is one of the
earth's great tongues, spoken by one in fifteen or one in twenty of
the inhabitants of the globe, and his son inherits it. The mother or
grandmother may teach the child his letters from an old primer, and,
for the rest, his education may be only that which nature gives to the
wildest of her children. He may grow up without the sight of a city,
and beyond the reach of the touch of luxury; but he has in his hand the
key to all nineteenth-century civilization. Should a chance traveller
pass at intervals of months or years, the boy may listen eagerly to his
conversation; and if he leaves behind him a tattered book or the torn
page of a six months' old newspaper, or if the lad's mother unearth
from the bottom of an old trunk a couple of brown volumes brought by
her mother or grandmother from Europe, the boy can spell them out
and pore over them, and gain a glimpse into the world beyond. If,
at seventeen or eighteen, he tires of the life of the backwood and
desires to see the life beyond, he has only to shoulder his bundle,
and at the end of a hundred or thousand miles he finds himself in a
city. All about him may be strange at first; he is awkward in act, slow
in speech, but there is not a word or a sound in the world about him
that is not modifying him; the talk of the men in the lodging-house,
the arguments of the men in the public-bar, the chatter at the street
corners, the newspapers he takes up, the cheap books he buys for a few
pence, open the modern world to him. In six months' time he may only
be distinguishable from the men about him by his greater vigour or the
more quiet strength which a contact with inanimate nature has left him.
In five years' time, if he have inherited will and intelligence, you
may find him the rising man of business or the self-taught but cultured
student; in ten or fifteen more he may be the learned professor, the
railway king, the foreign ambassador, the president of a state, or the
writer with a world-wide reputation. Given that a man inherits as his
birthright some literary European speech and attains some elementary
knowledge of its letters, and the civilized world is his oyster, the
knife to open which he holds in his hand, if he have the strength to
use it. No isolation among barbarous surroundings can sever a man from
the life of Europe who keeps his hold on the language and literature.
In the heart of Kaffirland to-day you may come across a solitary
German trader's hut; the man who inhabits it has been twenty-five years
severed from Europe; his material surroundings are little better than
those of the barbarians around him; but on the shelf in the corner are
a dozen old books, and in the drawer of the table he has a score of
last year's reviews and papers. You are astonished by the passionate
eagerness with which, as soon as he has lost his shyness, he proceeds
to discuss, or rather to pour out his views on the world's greatest
problems to you; and when he finds you have just returned from Europe,
there is something pathetic in the range and child-like eagerness of
his questions:--"What do they think in Europe, of the possibility of
war between Russia and England?" "Did you see the new French actor who
came out last year?"--whose name you, fresh from Europe have perhaps
not even heard. "Is the Queen looking aged?"--and he draws out a little
shilling guide to the year before last's picture gallery, and gives you
his opinion of the little prints. While you are having your dinner of
Kaffir corn or mealies and mutton he discusses the existing relation
between France and Germany; and he asks your opinion on some detail
connected with the last revolution in South America, of which you are
perhaps obliged to confess you know nothing. He has read of it in all
his papers. Twenty-five years of separation have not tended necessarily
to sever the man from the life of Europe, but have rather sharpened
his interest; and it would sometimes seem as though the denizen of
some solitary outpost of civilization is apt to take a broader and
more impartial view of civilization, as a whole, than he who in some
world-centre of civilization, such as London or Paris, is apt to get
too much dust in his eyes from the life immediately about him to be
able to see far. The solitary white child, who grows up in the mission
house on the banks of the Ganges, or the planter's home in the far
Indies, may discover with astonishment when at last it finds itself in
the heart of that civilization of which it has dreamed and for which
it has panted, that from the old book-shelf with its score of volumes
read and re-read and long pored over, and from the mail-bag arriving
once a month, every scrap of whose news from the great outer world was
carefully stored in childish memory and long dwelt on, it had learnt
most of what London and Paris had to teach it; that what it had sucked
out in its solitude was the true core of civilization; that what was
left for it to consume further was principally the shell; for it would
not be difficult to mention half-a-dozen books in any literary European
language which, read a dozen times and pondered over, would make a man
a true denizen of the nineteenth century in all that it holds of value,
and enable him to reach the forefront of European life. A bee will
make as sweet and as rich honey from one bunch of flowers as though
you should give him a whole garden to choose from; its quality and
sweetness will depend upon the nature of his own little tube--but you
must give him that one bunch.

It is that one bunch that has been denied to the Boer.

For to the young Boer, growing up on an African farm and speaking
nothing but the "Taal," this culture in solitude was impossible. If
travellers passed, they might be Frenchmen, Germans, or Englishmen,
but even their conversation was not comprehensible to him; if they
left behind them book or newspaper, he could not decipher it; and
the most brilliant effusions of an Amsterdam writer could reach him
almost as little as an article in the _Figaro_ or _The Times_. If his
mother turned out of the old wagon-chest volumes brought from Holland
or France by her grandmother, they could awaken no curiosity in him;
they were not in the speech he used daily. The Dutch of Holland was as
little a means of communication between himself and the outer world
as the Greek of Plato is to a modern Greek peasant. If his mother
taught him his letters, he had small use to make of them; even the
great family Bible was in Dutch; and fifty years ago there was not
one frontier Boer in thirty who could read or write, though he knew
many passages of the Bible by heart and could repeat them with the
book open before him.[23] Many could not even do this. If he had
found himself in any great city of Holland or France he would not only
have found himself alone, but an unintelligent barbarian. The Boer
seldom came in contact with even the smart Colonial townsman of Dutch
descent but he shrank from him, and crept back to his own people, who
understood his speech, with more and more of clinging: they were his
humanity, his world; beyond them was nothing.

     [23] "I can read," said an intelligent woman in our
     presence, "but only the first of John and the fifth of
     Matthew." Who shall say how much she lost and how much she
     gained!

One is sometimes asked to define exactly what the term "Boer" means.
There is only one scientific definition for it; it signifies a South
African European by descent whose vernacular is the Taal, and who uses
familiarly no literary European language. It does not denote race of
necessity; the Boer may be French, Dutch, German, or of any other
blood--one of the most widely spread Boer families is Portuguese,
and one Scotch in descent--neither does it of any necessity denote
occupation; the word "Boer" means literally "farmer," and practically
the Boer is often a farmer and stockowner; but he may also be a hunter,
trader, the president of a republic, or of any other occupation--he
remains a Boer still while the Taal remains his only familiar speech.

That the Boer himself accepts this definition, though without analysis,
is clear; he will say of a man who has learned and uses habitually a
literary speech, "His father was a Boer, and his brothers are still
Boers," implying that he is one no more; and to call a learned judge or
brilliant barrister, whatever his descent, a Boer, would be, from the
Colonial standpoint, merely absurd. There is an old fairy tale which
tells how an enchantress once muttered a spell against a certain city,
and raised up about it in a moment an invisible wall, which shut it
out from the sight and ken of all passers-by, rendering all beyond its
walls invisible to the men and women within, and the city imperceptible
to those from without. Such a wall has the Taal raised about the
Boer--as long as it remains standing the outer world touches him not,
nor he it; with how much of loss or gain who shall say!

Like those minute creatures, who, at a certain stage of their
existence, form about themselves a hard coating, and in that condition
may lie embedded in the animal tissues in which they are found for
weeks, or years, without undergoing any change or growth; but who, if
at any moment their cyst be ruptured, start at once upon a process of
rapid evolution, developing new organs and functions, and bearing soon
no resemblance to the encysted creature that has been--so the true
old Boer has lain, encysted in his Taal, knowing nothing of change or
modification; yet from the moment he breaks through it, evolution sets
in rapidly; the child of the seventeenth century departs, and the child
of the nineteenth century arrives--and the Boer is no more!

If it be asked whether the Taal, in making possible this survival of
the seventeenth century in the Boer, has been beneficial or otherwise
to South Africa, it must be replied that the question is too complex to
admit of dogmatic answer.

If somewhere in Europe a small mediæval town had been miraculously
preserved up to the present day, and were suddenly discovered in the
nineteenth century, we might find much in it to condemn; its streets
narrow; its houses overhanging, shutting out light and air, its drains
non-existent; but over the doors of the houses we should find hand-made
carving, each line of which was a work of love; we should see in the
fretwork of a lamp-post quaint shapings such as no workman of to-day
sends out; before the glass-stained window of the church we should
stand with awe; and we might be touched to the heart by the quaint
little picture above the church-altar; on every side we should see
the material conditions of a life narrower and slower than our own,
but more peaceful, more at one with itself. Through such a spot the
discerning man would walk, not recklessly, but holding the attitude
habitual to the wise man--that of the learner, not the scoffer.




CHAPTER III

THE PROBLEM OF SLAVERY


There is yet one point to be noticed in the early condition of the Boer
before we pass to his later history.

The forefathers of the Boer were slaveholders.

When the first white men arrived in South Africa it was inhabited by
three distinct native peoples.

From the shores of Table Bay to the Orange River on the north, and from
the Atlantic to the Maluti Mountains, over thousands of miles, were
scattered two of these races, quite unlike and yet more nearly related
to each other than to any other branch of the human family. The most
important in number and the most widely spread of these people were the
Hottentots, a small wiry folk, with yellow faces, black wool in little
hard knobs on the head, protruding jaws, low foreheads, and small
eyes. They were split up into endless tribelets, dispersed over all
the western and central portions of South Africa. More or less loosely
organized under chieftains, the same tribes inhabited permanently the
same tracts of country; though they moved from point to point to find
pasturage for their cattle in the dry and wet seasons, as the Boer
did later. Their condition of civilization was not high compared with
that of many other African peoples; they had large flocks and herds,
on whose flesh and milk they lived, but they had little agriculture.
Their round houses, made of slight wooden frames, with mats fastened
over them, could at any moment be taken up and removed; and the
little clothing they wore was of skins. But they were a versatile,
excitable, lively, little folk, as their few remaining descendants
are to-day; rather gentle than fierce, and very emotional; and loving
dancing and song. They could fight if compelled, but preferred peace.
Later they were found to make good fighters under European leaders,
but they could not lead or organize themselves. Their senses were
preternaturally keen, their perceptions quick, but they were incapable
of bearing a long-continued intellectual or emotional strain. They are
the eternal children of the human race. Their language, peculiar for
the vast number of klicks it contained, formed by striking the tongue
in different ways against the palate and teeth, was yet a fairly well
organized form of speech, capable of expressing tolerably complex
conceptions. It was certain of these Hottentot tribes, under their
native chiefs, whom the first white settlers found inhabiting the
shores of Table Bay and the slopes of the mountains; and it was these
folk with whom they traded, and whom they ultimately fought and drove
away.

Scattered among these Hottentot tribes throughout the whole western
half of South Africa was found another and yet more interesting human
variety, the astonishing little people known as the South African
Bushmen. Akin in race and speech to the dwarf races found in Central
Africa, they are lighter in colour, being a dirty browny-yellow,
perhaps owing to the cooler climate of the south, which they have
probably inhabited for countless ages, and in which they may have
originally developed. So small in size are they that an adult Bushman
is not larger than an ordinary European child of eleven; they have tiny
wizened faces, the wool on their heads growing in little balls, with
naked spaces between. The sex organs of the female differ materially
in structure from those of any other human female; while round the
skull is a curious indented line forming what is called by the Boers
a double head; and their ears, as looked at from the back, seem to
grow out on small pedestals. These people seem to resemble, not so
much a race of children as a race caught in the very act of evolving
into human form. Their language, full of klicks, while nearer to the
Hottentot than to any other, is yet as remote from it as Sanscrit from
French; showing merely that there must have been at some distant period
a common origin; the language, like the person of the Bushman, seeming
to represent a type from which the Hottentot may have developed in the
course of countless ages, possibly by crossing with higher African
races, such as the Bantu.

These small people had no fixed social organization; wandering about
in hordes or as solitary individuals, without any settled habitations,
they slept at night under the rocks or in wild-dog holes, or they made
themselves a curious little wall of loose bushes raised up on the
side from which the wind blew, and strangely like an animal's lair;
and this they left again when the morning broke. They had no flocks
or herds, and lived on the wild game, or, when that failed them, ate
snakes, scorpions, insects, or offal, or visited the flocks of the
Hottentots. They wore no clothing of any kind, and their weapons were
bows and arrows, the strings of the bows being made from the sinews
of wild animals, and the arrows tipped with sharpened bones or flint
stones, poisoned with the juice of a bulb or dipped in the body of
a poisonous caterpillar; and these formed their only property. They
had no marriage ceremony, and no permanent sex relations, any man and
woman cohabiting during pleasure; maternal feeling was at its lowest
ebb, mothers readily forsaking their young or disposing of them for a
trifle; and paternal feeling was naturally non-existent. Their language
is said by those who have closely studied it to be so imperfect that
the clear expression of even the very simplest ideas is difficult. They
have no word for wife, for marriage, for nation; and their minds appear
to be in the same simple condition as their language. The complex
mental operations necessary for the maintenance of life under civilized
conditions they have apparently no power of performing; no member of
the race has in any known instance been taught to read or write, nor
to grasp religious conceptions clearly, though great efforts have been
made to instruct them.

At the same time they possess a curious imitative skill, and under
shelving rocks and in caves all over South Africa their rude etchings
and paintings of men and animals are found, animated by a crude life
and vigour. Their powers of mimicry are enormous. We have known an old
Bushman, living in a place where there were a dozen Europeans; the
old man could by a few contortions of the face and figure represent
each one, bringing out even their subtle peculiarities of appearance
and of character, without uttering a word. When he had finished his
performance he would generally burst into a wild dance of artistic joy,
and ask for tobacco or brandy!

In no instance has a member of this people been truly civilized. When
confined in European houses and compelled to wear European clothing,
they contract consumption and die. By the early settlers and the
Hottentots they were supposed to be absolutely incapable of feeling,
and the Boers, and even the Kaffirs, still regard them as only
half-human, and probably descended from baboons.[24] They will bear
resentment for long years with the persistency of many wild animals,
but have also a curiously strong sense of gratitude, and are not
incapable of powerful affection of a dog-like kind.

     [24] This is a view we have heard seriously expressed by
     some Kaffirs.

Some years ago we came into contact with a Bushboy, who had been
procured from his mother for a bottle of brandy, and who was carefully
tended in the hope of civilizing and rearing him. He, however,
contracted consumption. On the day of his death, his mistress seeing
what his state was, bade him lie down in the little box which was the
only bed he could be induced to use. Half an hour after we discovered
him in the yard cleaning the knives, with the struggle of death
already in his face and the rattle in his throat. Asked why he had
come, he shook his head and said he could not allow his mistress to
have her dinner with an unpolished knife. We took him back to his
box, and gave him a sugar-stick. He curled himself up; gave a look of
unutterable gratitude and affection to his mistress, gave one suck at
his sugar-stick, and died--like a small wild animal--but one capable of
profound gratitude and affection.

These people have now almost disappeared; a few hordes in the
North-West, and solitary individuals hanging about the pale of
civilization, are all that is now left of them: but at the time of the
arrival of the early settlers they formed a most important element in
the population.

Wholly distinct from both these peoples, and yet more widely divided
from them in appearance and social institutions than from the
Indo-Europeans, is the third order of people whom the early settlers
found in South Africa.

They filled the whole of the eastern side along the shores of the
Indian Ocean, and are still to be found there in undiminished or
even increasing numbers. Divided into two great branches, and these
again being split up into endless tribes, they yet all belong to the
great Bantu family. Unlike the little Hottentot, and the yet smaller
Bushman, the Bantu is tall and dark, sometimes approaching in colour
to the black of the Negro. Physically, he is finely proportioned and
of unusual strength; his appearance suggesting a Negroid people with a
cross of Arab blood; his traditions, customs, and certain words in his
language, seeming to bear out this suggestion. Branches of this people
are found as far north as Zanzibar. They differ from the West-coast
Negro; and, in place of his child-like abandon, have a proud reserve,
and an intensely self-conscious and reflective mental attitude. The
language they speak is of a perfect construction, lending itself
largely to figurative and poetical forms, yet capable of giving great
precision to exact thought.

The two great branches into which they are divided are about as
distinct from one another as are the Celtic and Teutonic branches
of our own Indo-European family; the language of one half being as
intelligible to the other as French is to the German. When analysed,
the derivation of their speech from some common source is clear. Of the
one branch, popularly known in the Colony as the "Kaffir,"[25] the Zulu
and Matabele nations may perhaps be taken as the best examples at the
present day.

     [25] Kaffir: A loose term, derived from the Arabic, and
     sometimes employed to signify all dark-skinned Africans,
     but generally used in the Colony to designate this
     particular branch of the Bantu people.

Of the other, or Chuana family, one of the best examples to be found is
the Basuto, or Ma' Katees nation (so called from Ma' Katees, a warlike
chieftainess who ninety years ago gathered a number of broken tribes
under her rule and settled them among the Maluti Mountains in what is
now Basutoland); or another, in the Bamangwato under their noteworthy
chieftain Kama; a man whose persistent endeavour at the present day to
enable his people to grasp the incoming tide of civilization, and to
rise on its waves instead of being submerged by them, is unique in the
history of savage peoples; his endeavour to preserve his tribe from
the evils of civilization, till they are strong enough to grasp its
benefits, constituting one of the most interesting social experiments
which is being carried on anywhere on the earth's surface at the latter
end of the nineteenth century. To this Chuana family belong also the
Mashonas and other kindred tribes.

Closely as these branches of the Bantu family resemble each other
in the eyes of a stranger, one who has lived among them and studied
them will tell a Chuana from a Kaffir with as much ease as a keen
observer will tell an Italian from an Englishman. Their difference in
intellectual tendencies and social customs is as great as in language
and appearance. The Chuana is more devoted to agriculture, more skilled
in handicrafts, having been a skilful smelter of iron and builder of
dams and walls long before the first arrival of the white man. He
builds his house square, has a great love of property, is acquisitive
and economical. He takes to modern civilization with an ease that is
astonishing, and his desire for learning is intense. A white-headed
Basuto man of seventy came to us once with a cow and a calf, the most
prized of his earthly possessions, offering to give both if he could
be taught to read, and went away in tears when told it was impossible.
"Ah! it is because you do not wish me to be wise like the white man,"
he murmured bitterly.

The Kaffir branch, on the other hand, differs from the Chuana in
being more warlike; agriculture is left much more to the women. The
Kaffir is more proud, more sensitive, more inclined to dominate and
rule than the Chuana. He has in full development all the virtues of
the military type, but has perhaps fewer of those of the industrial.
He is absolutely without fear, and faithful to his word when in his
savage condition. The Chuana will fight in defence of his land or his
beloved property; the Kaffir merely to maintain his own freedom and for
the love of conquest. He prefers power to wealth, and independence to
security. But when cultured he shows the same avidity for study as the
Chuana.[26] In both his vices and his virtues he curiously resembles
the Anglo-Saxon of the past.

     [26] So considerable is the aptitude for abstract study
     displayed by the Bantu, that there are cases in which even
     Bantu females, preparing for the matriculation examination
     of the Cape University, are found not to be inferior to the
     average male Europeans sharing the same course of study.

At the time of the arrival of the white man all these Bantu peoples
were organized (as they still are to-day wherever unbroken by the
white man's power) into tribes, under chieftains to whom the whole
people owed an absolute devotion, but who were largely aided in their
deliberations by the older and leading men. They were in a state of
civilization apparently much higher than that of the Britons at the
time of the Roman Conquest, and more resembling that of the Saxons
before the first introduction of Christianity. They had well-built
round or square houses, kept sheep, goats, and cattle; their skin
clothing and shields were often shaped with high art; and they had
a complex agriculture, rich in grains and vegetables; they made
serviceable and ornamental pottery, smelted iron, and their weapons
and hoes were of marvellous workmanship, when the rude nature of their
tools is considered. Their social feeling was, as it is at the present
day when not destroyed by contact with Europeans, almost abnormally
developed. The devotion of the tribe to its chief, and of the tribesmen
to each other, and the intensity of their family feeling, can hardly
be understood by those who have not lived among them. When a chief
or headsman is arraigned, innocent men will often step in, blaming
themselves to shield him. An interesting case of this kind occurred
some years ago, when the headsman of a village being tried in a
Colonial Court for a crime of which, by no possibility, could more than
one man have been guilty, three of his men stood up, each declaring
that he, and he alone, was the guilty person! The heaviest punishment
that can be inflicted on a Bantu is to sever him from his family and
social surroundings; death has, when compared to this, small torture
for him.

Each Bantu tribe holds its land in common; re-apportioning it as the
increase or diminution of its numbers may require. The doctrine that
land can become the private property of one is a doctrine morally
repugnant to the Bantu. The idea which to-day is beginning to haunt
Europe, that, as the one possible salve for our social wounds and
diseases, it might be well if the land should become again the property
of the nation at large, is no ideal to the Bantu, but a realistic
actuality. He finds it difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile
his sense of justice with any other form of tenure. And it is only
painfully and slowly (and perhaps never quite successfully!) that under
the pressure of autocratic European rule he is brought to allow that
absolute, individual property in land may be consistent with right.
It may be remarked in passing that if it be desired to deal justly
with the South African native, it is as necessary to grasp this mental
attitude of his with regard to the possession of land as in dealing
with the Boer it is necessary never to forget his theocratic conception
of his claim on South Africa, and his passionate affection for it.[27]

     [27] "I cannot understand you," said a thoughtful Bantu to
     us once; "a man can have his own cow and his own knife, but
     land is for all."

The laws and traditions of all Bantu races are very complex, and,
though orally transmitted from age to age, they are scrupulously
observed. "It is our custom," ends all argument with the Bantu. Their
etiquette in ordinary social life, before they have come in contact
with the lower phases of civilization, seems often based on a higher
sense of honour than that which governs the ordinary relations of
Europeans. When one Kaffir approaches two who are talking he frequently
stands still at some distance from them, and then comes nearer. When
asked why he does this he replies: "Lest they should not see me coming,
and I should overhear what they say."

In the division of labour women have the almost entire charge of
agriculture and manufacture. House-building, pottery-making, the
shaping of clothes and implements are left to them--and especially
among the Kaffir branches, all agriculture is entirely in their hands.
The men fight and hunt and make their weapons, and the young lads tend
the cattle, leaving all other labour to the females.

It was by these three orders of native people that South Africa was
inhabited when the first white men settled here. And, as we have seen,
it was especially with the little, lively, child-like yellow-faced
Hottentots, inhabiting the Cape Peninsula, that the newcomers came in
contact. The white men had apparently received orders from the East
India Company to treat the natives well, in order that they might be
induced to trade; and at first it would seem that good feeling existed
between the friendly little Hottentots and the white newcomers. The
Hottentots gladly sold their cattle to the Company for brandy, beads,
or knives; and the Company made vast profits by the trade.

Later, when the white men began to enclose the ground of the Peninsula,
and ordered off the Hottentots with their cattle, the Hottentots (who,
in common with most African races, can easily understand the sharing
of lands, but little, or not at all, their exclusive possession by
individuals) resented this exclusion from the lands on which for
countless ages their forefathers had fed their cattle and built their
huts.

There was much bitter feeling, and finally there was war. The little
Hottentots were exterminated or driven back; and the white men settled
down peacefully on the beautiful Cape Peninsula, and in the fruitful
valleys beyond.

Then it was that the white men began to look about for slaves to till
their ground and build their houses, as was everywhere the manner of
seventeenth-century colonists. But it was not among the native races of
South Africa that they found what they were in search of.

It is a curious little fact, and one which it may be forgiven to the
South African, if he, having so little else in the past history of
his peoples to be proud of, gloats over for a moment, that of all the
races which, within the range of historic record, have inhabited South
Africa, not one of them has lent itself readily and completely to the
uses of slavery! Be it the effect of our climate, with its curious
tendency to excite and exhilarate the nervous system, be it the reflex
action of our scenery with its vast untamed features, breeding in us
an intense consciousness of individuality and a rebellion against all
restrictions, or be it merely a coincidence, this remains certain: that
Boer, Bantu, Bushman, Hottentot, or Englishman--not one of us has been
of the stuff of which serviceable slaves are made! This characteristic
is the one bond that unites our otherwise discordant nationalities. We
do not easily bow our wills at the dictation of another, nor are we
readily shaped into mere beasts of burden.

The little Bushman when we pressed him hard could creep away among his
stones, and die; leaving nothing behind him but his little arrowheads
beside the fountains and his bits of pictures on the rocks and stones,
to show how he too was once on the path to become human. And our little
Tottie could laugh and dodge and play at working, till he also has
vanished, leaving only a few Half-caste descendants, soon to fade away
after him. And our Bantu, still with us and increasing in numbers, sets
his broad back persistently against compulsion to perform unremunerated
labour, his strong social and tribal feeling making him hard to crush.
In truth our early fellow countrymen were and are as little fitted to
play the part of the dumb instruments of labour as the South African
Boer or the South African Englishman of to-day.

That little door, which nature always leaves ajar that the meanest of
her creatures who will may go out by it, and escape--where the voice of
the oppressor is heard no more--that little door we all of us know how
to enter if need be, rather than lay aside the "I will" that makes the
man. If we know nothing else, at least we all of us know how to die.

It would have been as easy for the early Boers to catch and convert
into beasts of draught the kudus and springbucks, who kick up our
African dust into your face, and are off with the wind, as to turn
into profitable beasts of burden our little, artistic Bushmen, or our
dancing Hottentots; and our warlike Zulu Bantus from the East Coast
would hardly have been more acceptable as domestic slaves than a leash
of African lions. Then, as now, when submissive slaves are desired in
South Africa, they have to be imported: we do not breed them.

The folk whom the early settlers procured as slaves, were mainly
negroes from the east and west coast of Central Africa; a people who,
combined with a great deal of muscular power, and a charming gift of
devotion to others, exhibit a weakness of will, and an absence of
individuality, which in all ages has fitted them to inflict the evils
of slavery on the more dominant races. With these were Madagascan and
other Eastern folk, with more individuality, who, we are told, gave
their owners much trouble.

These captive people were brought in ships to South Africa, and on
their arrival portioned out among the early settlers. It was by the
hands of these folks that the walls of the old Dutch houses, whose
thickness we still so much admire, were raised, and it was they who
planted the long lines of oak avenue and vineyard which still stretch
mile after mile across our land.

It is sometimes thrown into the teeth of the Boer, as an accusation
which sets him on a completely lower platform than that on which his
English fellow-citizen stands, that his fathers were slave-owners. That
this should be so is, indeed, remarkable; not only when we reflect that
most of those ships which brought the first slaves to South Africa were
the property of Englishmen and manned and officered by English seamen;
but when we further reflect that, if the houses and avenues of the
Cape Peninsula are often the work of slaves, the yet fairer homes and
the easeful leisure of certain cultured English men and women at the
present day are the result of their fathers' traffic in black flesh.
And it is yet more remarkable that the fact of a slave-owning ancestry
should ever be thrown in the face of the Boer when we reflect that it
is not forty years since the leading branch of the Anglo-Saxon people
found no other means of removing the institution from among themselves
than by rending their national life well-nigh to fragments.

Slavery is, in truth, a condition so common in the very early stages
of social growth, and when it occurs in those stages is generally so
comparatively innoxious that it may almost be regarded as a natural if
not quite healthy concomitant of early social development. When the
primitive master and his slave live in like huts, share like food, and
are engaged in like occupations, slavery is slavery in nothing but
name. It is exactly in proportion as a society has attained to a high
intellectual and material development that the institution exhibits its
most malignant features; causing an arrest of both moral and material
progress in any highly cultured and civilized society in the midst of
which it is found.

Slavery may, perhaps, be best compared to the infantile disease of
measles; a complaint which so commonly attacks the young of humanity
in their infancy, and when gone through at that period leaves behind
it so few fatal marks; but which when it abnormally attacks the fully
developed adult becomes one of the most virulent and toxic of diseases,
often permanently poisoning the constitution where it does not end in
death.

It certainly cannot be said of the African Boer that he continued
to maintain this institution when he had reached a higher stage of
development than that at which other European nations have forsaken
it. Though in point of time he maintained it later than some, yet it
cannot be asserted by any one who has considered the matter that it
was more at variance with his intellectual and emotional standpoint,
and therefore more immoral, that the African Boer should have kept
slaves in South Africa seventy years ago than that the Greek of the
time of Pericles, or the Roman of Cicero's day, should have done so.
And it certainly was far less at discord with his intellectual and
moral condition than with that of the highly-cultured and enlightened
Anglo-Saxons who in America and Jamaica have continued to support and
fight for the institution within the memory of this generation. In
truth, we must allow that the full-fledged institution was less at
discord with the moral and intellectual condition of the Boer than are
to-day at variance with our own those lineal descendants of slavery,
the disabilities attaching to sex or class, which in our most civilized
societies still exist.

It is then not surprising, though much to be regretted, that two
hundred years ago the Boer sought to become, and did become, a
slave-holder.

If it be asked, "Was slavery, as carried out at the Cape, of a more
or less vindictive nature than as carried on among other civilized
nations?" the reply can only be that slavery among civilized folk is a
disease so monotonous in its symptoms that whether we study its story
as inlaid on the mud tablets of ruined Chaldean cities, or as described
in Greek or Roman literature, or view its image in such stone picture
as that which Sennacherib, King of Assyria, caused to be made (and
which to-day hangs on the walls of the British Museum for him who wills
to see); or whether, on the other hand, we examine it as described in
the nineteenth-century novel, or sit in the evening beside the old
Boer grandmother, as, with her feet on her stove, she describes the
remembrance of her far-off youth--the story is one, and its details
monotonously unvarying.

Old white men and women are still living in South Africa who can
remember how, in their early days, they saw men with guns out in the
beautiful woods at Newlands hunting runaway slaves. They can tell you
what a mistress once did when a slave became pregnant by her master;
and there are stories about hot ovens--such stories as the story of
Dirk, whose master seduced his wife, and Dirk bitterly resented it.
"And one day," says the narrator, "we children saw Dirk taken across
the yard to the wine house; we heard he was to be flogged. For some
days after we fancied we heard noises in the cellar. One night, in
the moonlight, we heard something, and got up and looked out; and we
saw something slipped across the yard by three men. We children dared
say nothing, because my grandfather never let anyone remark about
the slaves; but we were sure it was Dirk's body." There is nothing
new in these stories; they are as old as the times of the Romans and
Chaldeans, and older than the ruin of Nineveh which they preceded. They
would be echoed by the walls of half the out-buildings still standing
in Jamaica and Cuba, had they the power of speech. To pretend we have
never heard them before is hypocrisy; to be surprised at them is folly;
to imply that they are peculiar to South Africa and the outcome of the
abnormal structure of the Boer soul is a lie.

Old black men and women are still living in South Africa who remember
how, as little children, they were playing on a beach in a hot land,
where there were tall, straight trees that do not grow in South Africa,
and how white men came and took them away. They remember the names of
some of their playmates; and the "yellow food" that they used to eat,
they say it does not grow here. If you look at their backs, from their
necks to below their thighs they have white stripes which have been
there for sixty or seventy years, and with which they will go to their
graves. Neither in this is there anything peculiarly South African.

No more were these people always submissive. Sometimes the human in
them woke. Especially the Madagascar slaves got tired, and tried to
run away. "They are a most evil-disposed people," says an old German
writer, "and have always only one thought, and that is, _to escape_."
"They fear nothing so that they may be free of their masters."

These people looked up at Table Mountain, and at our blue African
sky, and our veld with its sage-green bushes, all the world that for
the rest of us has meant freedom, and which for them meant despair,
and their one idea was to flee. They did not know the land across the
mountains, but singly or in parties they were always running away. They
were caught and brought back, and flogged or broken on the wheel, says
the old Chronicle; they hardly ever escaped.

There are times to-day, riding across the plains in the direction of
Hottentots Holland, when the vision of these creatures creeping across
the veld in search of freedom comes suddenly to one; and a curious
feeling rises. We are not in that band that rides booted and spurred
across the plain, looking out to right and left and talking loud.
We are in the little group cowering behind the milk bushes; we are
looking out with furtive, bloodshot eyes, to see how the masters ride!
We--we--are there;--we are no more conscious of our identity with the
dominant race. Over a million years of diverse evolution white man
clasps dark again--and we are one, as we cower behind the bushes; the
black and the white.

But slavery in South Africa, as elsewhere, did not always show its
misshapen and deformed side; there were cases in which as men grew
up they learnt to feel gently to the hands that had tended them in
early infancy, and showed kindness; and kindness begat gratitude, and
gratitude begat love--and the circle of human beatitude was complete.
In certain rare instances the words master and slave came to mean not
user and used, but giver and lover, and human nature was justified in
the lowest of her kinships.

If it were, however, made absolutely compulsory on us to pass a
relative judgment on slavery as it existed at the Cape or elsewhere
among civilized nations, we should say that probably it was less
touched by humanizing and elevating conditions than was the case
occasionally where, as among the Greeks and Romans, it existed among
men of the same colour, and often of the same race and intellectual
standing; but that the Boer, being, though not more gentle when roused,
yet naturally of a somewhat more pacific nature than the Spaniard or
Englishman, it is highly probable that slavery at the Cape was of a
much _less_, than more, ferocious nature than elsewhere, where an Aryan
people has enslaved a dark one.

If a more minute and exact history of what slavery really was in South
Africa be required, it will perhaps be found best recorded by each of
us in our hearts. If in those lowest moments which come, if rarely, to
each human soul, when the primitive man wakes, and hatred and passion,
aided by self-interest, fight for the mastery within us; if at these
moments the most developed among us will turn our gaze inwards, and
imagine that the object of our hatred or desire lies in our hand,
unshielded from us by any fear of reprisals, unguarded from us by that
mighty wall, which long ages of contact with our brethren has built up
in the human heart round the rights of our equals--if we imagine that
the wall reared by conscience does not in this case exist, hedging our
fellows from us, that early training has convinced us that he lives
for _us_, and that the primal law of his moral being in submission to
_our_ will--we shall then have a clearer picture of what slavery really
was in South Africa and elsewhere than any pen can paint. We shall
understand, as none can make us, why it is that humanity, as she creeps
on her upward path, is slowly but surely withdrawing herself from all
remnants of those institutions which are based on the conviction that
it may be well for one man to dominate another for his own ends.

The causes and evils of slavery are not to be studied in South Africa
or America, but among the shadows within our own hearts. And this
much-talked-of slavery in South Africa was but what you and I, and the
man over the way would have made it had we lived in South Africa two
hundred years ago.

Slavery in its legal form was extinguished at the Cape about the
year 1834. The English Government, who had at that time taken over
the Colony, purchased and liberated all the slaves at the cost of
£1,247,000. Official slavery passed away; but it left, as always, its
indelible marks on the dominant race who had suffered from it. We
shall deal later with its intellectual and emotional reaction on South
Africa. We have now only time to consider one of its large legacies.

Slavery bequeathed to the Boer, and to South Africa mainly through
him, its large Half-caste population: a population which constitutes
at once the most painful, the most complex, and--if any social problem
were insoluble in the presence of human energy and sympathy, we might
add--the most insoluble portion of our South African national problem.

The bulk of that Half-caste population which to-day fills our Western
towns and throngs upon our Western farms, and which is found scattered
over the whole of South Africa, arose originally and mainly as the
result of sexual intercourse between the Boer and his imported slaves;
and also with such aboriginal Hottentots or Bushmen, as he obtained
possession of.[28]

     [28] There are a few Half-castes now in South Africa who
     are results of the union of Englishmen with the Boer
     Half-castes who are the result of slavery; and even a few
     who are the result of the union of Englishmen, principally
     soldiers, with the aboriginal natives. But the mass of
     Half-castes were in existence seventy years ago when
     the English first began to people the country. It need
     hardly be said that the preponderance of Half-castes who
     owe their origin to the Boer in no way indicates any
     superiority in the matter of sexual self-respect on the
     part of the English. There exists at the present day in
     our seaport towns, under the ægis of the English flag,
     and legislated for by the English Government, a traffic
     between English soldiers and sailors and the lowest class
     of Half-caste women, more anti-social, and, if it be
     possible, more degrading than any relation between the
     ancient slave-holders and their female slaves. Yet, as the
     women concerned in this traffic belong very largely to
     that unhappy class, not one in fifty of whom is fruitful,
     and whose children, when such are born, generally die in
     infancy, there is no very great effect produced on the
     population of the country; the thousands of Half-castes
     born every year being mainly the result of unions between
     Half-castes. It should be well borne in mind, in dealing
     with this subject, that so rapid is the rate of human
     increase under even tolerably favourable conditions, that
     four Half-castes born two hundred years ago, might easily
     be the progenitors of at least two hundred Half-castes at
     the present day, without any further admixture of European
     blood.

In the early records of the Colony we find that out of every four
children born to slave-mothers three were at one time the children
of white men and masters. Only nineteen years ago there died in
the Colony an old white man who left behind him forty Half-caste
descendants--grandchildren and others--and whose standard saying in
his early days is reported to have been: "When I want a smart slave,
then I beget him!"

It may be remarked that no particular turpitude can be attributed to
the action of the Boer in this matter. English, Dutch-Huguenot, or
Spaniard, our Indo-European pride of race and our vaunted self-respect
have always failed to save our breed where Aryan males have become
absolutely possessed of even the most loathsome or degraded females of
non-Aryan peoples. That our pride should have the strength to save our
blood is the dream of the future, not a realization of the past.

As long as slavery continued at the Cape this mixture of Boer and black
men went on.

Into the absorbingly interesting question of Half-castism as looked at
from the scientific standpoint, it is not possible for us now fully to
enter. This one thing is certain, that to the question, "What are the
exact physiological, intellectual, and moral results which arise from
the admixture of Aryan with Negroid or other non-Aryan races?" science
has as yet no really definite answer to give. The whole question--one
of the most vital and wide-reaching of those which lie before the human
intellect for solution in the ages to come--is yet one the very hem of
whose skirt science has not begun to raise.

To obtain any really exact knowledge on the subject it would be
necessary to carry on extensive experiments: to obtain large numbers
of individuals of pure Aryan blood, of non-Aryan blood, and of
mixed blood, and placing them in exactly identical conditions (not
merely materially, but morally and emotionally), to exclude from
them the knowledge of any tradition or history which might modify
their development. If this were done it would then be possible, if
the numbers were large enough to exclude individual variations, to
determine exactly in how far the mixed creature was better, worse,
different from, or like to either parent species. As, however, the
human race is not likely to undertake such experiment during the next
millennium, and as we have at present no such exact knowledge of the
conditions which govern the laws of inheritance as would enable us to
deduce the nature of offspring from the study of the two parent forms
(our knowledge even with regard to animals being purely empirical on
this point), we are obliged to fall back on cruder and less scientific
methods.

We are compelled, in the first place, to study the vulgar verdict,
which rough, ungeneralized human experience has recorded, and to see in
how far any other evidence we can obtain sustains or opposes it. The
universality and unanimity of the popular verdict on the Half-caste
is remarkable. The Half-caste, it is asserted in every country where
he is known, whether it be in America, Asia, or Africa, and whether
his ancestors be English and Negroid, Spanish and Indian, or Boer
and Hottentot--the Half-caste is by nature anti-social. It is always
asserted that he possesses the vices of both parent races and the
virtues of neither; that he is born especially with a tendency to be a
liar, cowardly, licentious, and without self-respect. "You may catch a
jackal among the bushes, but not a Half-caste when he doubles," says
the Indian. "God made the white man, perhaps he made the black; but the
devil made the Half-caste," says the South American. "The devil sits
behind the ears of a Half-and-half," says the Boer proverb. "Who the
white man is we know; and who we are we know," says the black Bantu to
his Half-caste fellow-servant; "but what are you? Half-monkey whom no
one can believe!" "The Half-caste as he creeps out of his mother's womb
is a born liar," says the Colonial Englishman; "he is never a man."

This unanimity of verdict demands our attention. Like the old faith
that the earth was stationary and the sun moved round her, it would not
be universally received were there not some specious appearances in its
favour, though it need contain no necessary truth. Mankind is easily
duped, but not without an adequate show of reason. In South Africa the
truth of the assertion of the inherent depravity of Half-castes seems
on the surface borne out to the full by facts. Three-fourths of the
prostitutes who fill our brothels and lock-hospitals are "coloured,"
or Half-caste; only the remaining fourth are of pure breed.[29] In
the smaller criminal cases tried in our Magistrates' Courts, the
"coloured-man" figures out of all proportion to the pure-blooded
Europeans, Bantus, or Malays. If you pass a gang of convicts clanking
in their chains, you will find the number of tawny faces exceeds those
pure white or black in a manner not warranted by their proportional
numbers in the community.

     [29] Except in Johannesburg.

On the whole, there can be no doubt as to the superficial appearance of
strong anti-sociality on his part; the only debate which can arise in
the mind being, as to whether this anti-sociality is inherent and the
direct result of the mixture of bloods, or is an accident, dependent on
external and changeable conditions.

In early childhood we remember to have heard a sapient old lady remark
that she had always noticed that orphan and adopted children, as
born, were differently constituted from all others; you might take
them from their birth and bring them up with your own: they never
turn out the same! It has since often occurred to us that the fallacy
underlying that old lady's induction, and patent even to a childish
intelligence, might, in a more complex form, underlie the dictum with
regard to the Half-caste. As the old lady overlooked the fact that,
while _materially_ the position of the adopted child might resemble
that of her own, _emotionally_, and therefore eventually _morally_,
its training was wholly unlike. That a child brought up in a home
which it feels its own by right, and surrounded from infancy by the
yearning affection born of parental instinct, has a moral training
differing by at least three-fourths from that of a child who grows
up always doubtful of its own standing, and looking out with fierce
and bitter eyes into a world which has no welcome for it: so it has
always appeared to us that a Half-caste, even in a state in which he
is politically on the same footing as his fellow-citizens, must find
a something in his emotional relations with the world about him which
would account for his assuming a lower social attitude, without any
necessity of appealing to a theory of inborn depravity.

The social position of the South African Half-caste has been peculiar.
He has originated in almost all cases, not from the union of average
individuals of the two races uniting under average conditions, but as
the result of a sexual union between the most helpless and enslaved
females of the dark race and the most recklessly dominant males of the
white. He has risen from a union not only devoid of the intellectual
sympathy and kinship between man and woman which translates the
relation of sex from the sphere of the crudely physical to that of the
æsthetic and intellectual; but even that lower utilitarian element
was wanting to this union which exists wherever men and women of the
same race, and moderately respecting each other, unite permanently for
the purpose of producing offspring and sharing the material burdens
of life. The Half-caste came into the world as the result of the most
undifferentiated sex instinct. He saw the first light usually in the
back room of the slaves' compound, or in the hut across the yard,
and entered a world in which there was no place prepared for him. To
his father he was the broken wineglass left from last night's feast
or as the remembrance of last year's sin--a thing one would rather
forget--or, at best, he was a useful tool. To his master's wife, if
there were one, he was an object of loathing (of that curious loathing,
known perhaps only to the Aryan woman, who sees the blood that flows
in her children's veins, flow also beneath the dark skin of an alien
race; unless, indeed, it be shared by the dark man, when he sees on his
wife's arm a child that is not of his colour); his mother had often a
black husband or lover of her own; and the Half-caste crept about the
backyard of its father's house, and in and out of the slave cells, and
as it grew, it learnt that it belonged neither wholly to the black
group who ate their food in the kitchen doorway, nor to the white, in
the great dining-hall. When full consciousness came to him, half he
despised the black flesh about him, with the instinct of a white man's
son; and half, he hated, with the passion of the black woman's child,
the folk in the large house.

He belonged to neither--the very breast he had sucked was not of the
same colour as himself. But it was not even the fact that he was born
into a society in which there was no appointed station for him, and no
class with which he was wholly at one, that constituted the forefront
of his wrong and suffering.

The true key to the Half-caste's position lay in the past, as it still
lies to-day, in the fact, that he is _not at harmony within himself_.
He alone of all living creatures despises his own blood. "I could bite
my own arm," a coloured girl once said in our presence, "when I see
how black it is. My father was a white man!" The Half-caste alone of
all created things is at war within his own individuality. The white
man loves the white man incarnate in him, and the black man loves the
black. We are each of us our own ideal. The black may envy the white
his power or his knowledge, but he admires himself most. "You say
the devil is black! But I picture him a white man with blue eyes and
yellow hair," said to us a Bantu once. "I have a great sorrow," said
an intelligent native preacher. "I know that the Lord Jesus Christ was
a white man, yet I could not pray to Him and love Him as I do if I did
not picture Him as black and with wool like myself."

Of that divine contentment with his own inalienable personality which
lies at the root of all the heroic and half the social virtues, the
Half-caste can know little. If it were possible for him with red-hot
pincers to draw out every ounce of flesh that was black man's, and
leave only the white, in most cases he would do it. That race which
would accept him he despises; and the race he aspires to refuses him.

So the first Half-caste arose: a creature without a family, without a
nationality, without a stable kind, with which it might feel itself
allied, and whose ideals it might accept.

As time has passed in South Africa the slave has been set free, the
Half-caste has multiplied, and now forms a more or less distinct
section of society, and so, to a certain extent, his position has
improved on that of his first progenitor. He may now marry legally with
one of his own more or less uncertain type; he may have his home;
and his children are his own. Nevertheless, socially his position
remains much what it was. Without nationality, traditions, or racial
ideals, his position is even to-day not analogous in South Africa
with that of any folk of pure-bred race. For even the Bantu, till we
have utterly broken him under the wheels of our civilization, grows
up with a solid social matrix about him, which inevitably results in
a social training from which the Half-caste is excluded. Even when
severed from that tribal organization with which all his most heroic
virtues are connected, and subjected under the feet of a dominant race
which does not understand him, and which he does not understand, the
position of the ordinary Colonial Bantu is not identical with that
of the Half-caste. We may not ourselves much more value him, and his
chances of cultivating social affections and virtues may seem small
as regards ourselves. But let the despised Kaffir leave you and go
home; once in his hut, surrounded by his wives, his children, and his
friends, he sits there a man among men. He is in a society which has
its own stern traditional social standards and ideals, by living up to
which he may still become an object of admiration and respect to his
fellows, and, above all, to himself. His ideals and traditions may not
be ours, but they form no less the basis of an invaluable discipline in
social feeling. His tribe may be broken up, but he still feels himself
an integral part of a great people, up to whose standard he is bound to
live, and in whose eyes, as in his own, he is one of the goodliest and
completest creatures on God's earth. Until we have robbed him entirely
of this sense of racial unity and of racial self-respect he is not
morally on the same footing as the Half-caste.

If I go into my kitchen in the early morning on my farm, and find the
Kaffir herd lighting his pipe at the kitchen fire while he waits for
his rations--if anxious to find out his tribe I ask him whether he
belongs to this or that tribe, naming the wrong one, he starts to his
feet, his eyes flashing and his shoulders drawn back, "I am Tambook
oprecht!" he replies proudly. ("I am a pure-blooded Tambookie.") An
ancient Greek or a modern Englishman, when proclaiming his unity with
his nation, could not thrill with greater emotion than this menial of
my kitchen. And I know that that fountain of social virtue, which on
occasions may well out into a Marathon or a Thermopylæ, is strong in
him; that beyond the narrow interests of the personal life for him, as
much as for me, there exists a great human entity to which he is bound
by the bonds of honour and love.

The Englishman will swear to you on the word of an Englishman, and the
Bantu on the word of the Bantu, but no Half-caste ever yet swore on the
honour of a Half-caste. The world would break into cackling laughter
did he do so: "The _honour_ of a _Half-caste_!"

Neither is the condition of the Half-caste woman analogous to that of
the pure-blooded Bantu in our society. (We again ask no forgiveness
for the length of this digression on Half-castism. It will be seen
when we come to sum up, and combine the different portions of our
South African problem, that no time spent in the consideration of
this subject is wasted if it tends to throw any light on it. There
are certain questions in South Africa on which no man is qualified to
pass an opinion till he has studied as far as possible this matter,
and made up his mind as to the direction in which action with regard
to them is desirable.) However much the standard of sexual virtue
among Bantus may differ from our own with regard to polygamy and other
institutions, at least officially disapproved among us, officially
approved among them, there does exist a standard, and it is often more
closely adhered to than our own. We have it on the most irrefragable
evidence that when, after war, a few years back, a regiment of English
soldiers was stationed for many months in the heart of a subdued Bantu
tribe, not only was the result of the contact between the soldiers and
the native women nil as regarding illegitimate births, but it had been
practically impossible for the soldiers to purchase women for purposes
of degradation throughout the whole time.[30] Even when draggled
under the feet of our savage civilization in European seaport towns,
the Bantu woman seldom shows the same inveterate tendency to gravitate
towards sexual self-abandonment which the Half-caste exhibits,
preferring, in a majority of instances, the healthier and more equal
sex-relationships with men of her own race, to prostitution under the
foot of the white man at any price.

     [30] (Added in 1896.) We are not referring to that which
     takes place when Englishmen, untrammelled by any public
     opinion, are absolutely dominant over a crushed native
     race, as in the territories north of the Limpopo to-day.
     We shall deal with this, to an Englishman most sorrowful
     matter, at some future date.

It is impossible that the Half-caste should possess that traditional
standard and racial pride which tend to save the black woman from
absolute degradation.[31] She necessarily feels it small disgrace to
bring her children into the world as her own ancestors were brought;
and better to her often is the most degrading relationship, which
binds her children closer to the ancestral race she covets, than the
most honourable which binds them to the ancestral race she scorns.
No ancestral code of honour rises up in her case, strengthening her
self-respect.

     [31] We must, of course, be understood to speak generally.
     There are to be found, among the lowest class of our
     Half-castes, women of the most spotless sexual integrity
     and of irreproachable sexual pride. But one is undoubtedly
     justified in stating, that, generally speaking, the
     Half-caste is less sexually self-respecting than the
     white woman, or even than the black woman is till she has
     been totally severed from her own social surroundings and
     therefore practically reduced to much the same condition
     as the Half-caste. In her native state the Bantu woman is
     in many respects in a higher sexual position than large
     numbers of civilized females. Of the price paid for her at
     her marriage she receives nothing, it passes to her family.
     She not only supports herself by her own labour, but is
     the mainstay of the society in which she exists, largely
     feeding and clothing it by her exertions. Her position is
     probably much farther from that of the female who lives
     idly and parasitically on society through the sale of her
     sex functions than is that of most European women, married
     or single.

That almighty "we," the consciousness of which lies at the base of all
organic virtue, and which in the perfect socialized man so extends the
narrow consciousness of the little individual "I," that it inwraps
at last not only all human races, but even broadens itself out till
it covers the creatures not yet human, on the good old earth--this
consciousness of unity with the living world about it, in the
Half-caste often of necessity narrows itself, till nothing is left but
an awfully isolated "I."

We all learn our first lesson in the school of human solidarity, and
therefore in the true school of virtue, as we lie infants against our
mother's breast, white against white, black against black; and, looking
to the face above, know dimly we are not alone, it is I and thou--we.
Our knowledge widens when we stand betwixt our father's knees, and feel
the strong hands guarding us from harm--it is father, mother, and I
who are the great human "we" for us. It increases through our contact
with the brethren of our blood, who eat of the same bread with us; it
spreads wider when in the sports and studies of youth we are linked
with certain of our fellows identical with ourselves, and it takes a
vast stride when, as adults, beyond the limits of kinship and personal
contact, we recognize our union with that vast body of human beings who
share our speech and our historic past; till the final expansion takes
place when, beyond the limits of the nation, and even of the race, in
the heart of the poet, the saint, or the sage, the fully-developed
human creature, that little "we," which for the infant meant only
"mother, breast, and I," and for the child, kindred; and for the youth,
comradeship; and for the adult, nation and race,--so widens itself that
it enfolds, not merely kindred or nation, but all sentient life, and
the final goal of human morality is reached.

In this high school of the affections and therefore of morality, in
which the last steps are attainable only because the first have been
passed through, the Half-caste has but very partially been able to
graduate. Often without a family, always without a nation or a race, a
more or less solitary nomad, his moral training has been often only in
that pseudo-school, where repression and fear but ill supply the place
of the affections.

The flotsam and jetsam thrown up on the shores of life as the result of
contact between the lowest waves of conflicting races, loved by none,
honoured by none, where was he to learn those lessons in social feeling
from which alone are capable of blossoming the highest social virtues?

In those countries in which the wild elephant is found, it is well
known that when, as frequently happens, an individual is expelled
from the herd, and compelled to wander alone, his nature frequently
undergoes a change. Originally of the same character as the rest of
the group, the mild and retiring nature of the social elephant leaves
him. He not only attacks man and beast without provocation, but in his
spleen rends branches from the trees, and ploughs up the earth with his
tusks. He is then known as the rogue elephant, and, hated and feared by
man and beast, if he does not in a few years die, worn out with his own
ill temper, he is killed by the creatures he attacks.

The Half-caste is our rogue elephant. While he remains severed from our
social herds, he does, and must, constitute an element of social danger.

Reviewing, thus, the popular verdict on the Half-caste, it must be
granted that there do exist in his external conditions causes more
than adequate to account for his low development in social feeling;
and this, apart entirely from any necessary or congenital anti-social
taint. The cowardice, inveracity, and absence of self-respect and
self-restraint with which he is accredited, are exactly those qualities
which ostracism, and lack of organic unity with the body social,
must always tend to cultivate. Had he been begotten by Cherubim upon
Seraphim and born before the throne of God, and then transported to
a slave-compound, to grow up raceless, traditionless, and believing
himself contraband, we should in all probability have had a being with
the same anti-social characteristics we often have to-day. That amongst
the most despised class of our labouring Half-castes we have all met
individuals, not only of the highest integrity, but of the most rare
moral beauty and of heroic and fully developed social feeling, does not
impugn the theory of his unfortunate position. If you should sow human
seed inside the door of hell, some of it would yet come up white lilies.

We are not able, it is true, dogmatically to assert that the mixture
of blood in his veins may not have something to do with his mental and
moral attitude. As we have before stated, at the end of the nineteenth
century we are still too much in the dark as to the laws which govern
inheritance to hazard dogmatic assertion. We are at present as little
able to declare what will be the result of the mixture of two human
creatures and how they will re-act upon each other in the offspring,
as we are unable to assert what will result from the mixture of
two unanalysed chemicals which we throw into the crucibles in our
laboratories.

There is, indeed, one, though it appears to us only one, scientific
fact which in any way lends support to the theory of inherited
anti-sociality on the part of the Half-caste.

It has been ascertained by those who have profoundly studied the
matter, that where two varieties of the same domestic animal--such,
for example, as the totally distinct varieties of the pigeon--which
have for generations bred perfectly true, are crossed, that in
certain cases the progeny resulting from this cross resembles not so
much either of its parent forms, but _reverts in colour, shape, and
other characteristics, to that original parent stock from which both
varieties have descended_. Thus, in the case of pigeons: if a white
fantail, which breeds quite true, be crossed with a black barb, a
variety which also breeds very true, the offspring being always black,
yet the mongrels resulting from this cross may be black, brown, or
mottled; but they may also resemble neither father nor mother in any
way; they may have the brilliant blue colour, the black wing bar,
the barred and white-edged tail feathers of the wild rock pigeon,
from which original all the different domestic varieties of pigeon
descended. Why this crossing of different varieties which each breed
perfectly true should produce these unstable creatures with a tending
to revert to the primitive original type of the race, is not known;
that it does so, is certain.

If, now, we apply the same law of inheritance to human creatures, and
suppose that two wholly distinct human varieties cross, and take, for
example, the Zulu and the Englishman--both of which varieties breed
perfectly true, the Englishman always producing a white European
and the Zulu a black Bantu; both races being characterized by the
strongest social feeling, and both being remarkable for their bravery;
if we leave this law of reversion out of consideration, the natural
supposition would then be, that the offspring of such a cross, while
in colour and other matters they represented a compromise between the
two parent forms, would, as far as social feeling and courage are
concerned, which are common to _both_ parent varieties, be at least as
well endowed in these qualities as either parent variety. But it might
not be so. If this law of reversion holds with human creatures (and we
have no reason to assert that it cannot do so); and supposing that the
original type from which in the remote past both Zulu and Englishman
have descended was of a lower order as regards social feeling and
courage, than that to which both Englishman and Zulu have attained
to in the process of ages of development, then their offspring might
revert to that lower type; and the vulgar dictum, that the Half-caste
is more anti-social than either his parent forms would in this case be
naturally and scientifically true.[32]

     [32] Of course the same law of reversion might, under
     certain conditions, produce development and not
     retrogression. If, as is sometimes held (though we
     ourselves are very strongly of the opposite opinion),
     the Hottentots and Bushmen of South Africa are not human
     creatures caught in the very act of developing from lower
     forms, but are the result of degeneration from some higher
     type; then the creature resulting from a cross between the
     two might revert to that higher type, and be of higher
     social feeling and loftier intellectual power than either.
     We have ourselves in only one instance met an individual
     who was a cross between the English and Kaffir races,
     though we are aware that several such exist in South
     Africa. This man was certainly merely a composite of the
     two races, without any tendency to revert to a lower type.
     He was the son of an English gentleman, his mother was a
     wild Kaffir woman who had not been draggled under the feet
     of civilization. The man was proud, determined, resolute.
     Self-educated, he raised himself to a post of high trust
     under the English Government; he combined the dash and
     courage of the Kaffir with the pride and intelligence of
     the Englishman. He had the fault which is common to both
     his parent races, of being cruel and indomitable when
     opposed; but of the vices supposed to be inseparable from
     Half-castism, servility, and insincerity, he had not a
     trace. He was a man and a gentleman. But, whether if such
     crosses were common such men would generally arise, is
     quite another question.

If it be objected that the crossing of races among Europeans causes
no retrogression; that the two most mixed races in Europe, the
English and the French, show no more tendency to revert to a lower
social type than the less mixed nations, such as the Scandinavian;
and that further, when at the present day a cross is made between
two European branches, such as the Italians and English, or the
French and the German, the offspring are of unusual virility and
power, intellectually, morally, and physically; that further, those
individuals on whom depends the progress of the race, and who
constitute its efflorescence--its men of genius--have in European
countries, in a large proportion of cases, been of crossed European
descent[33]; and, finally, that we in South Africa have continually
practical evidence of the energizing effect of European crosses in the
remarkable vitality and intelligence of children who result from Dutch
and English intermarriages[34]:--we would reply that this in no way
bears on the question.

     [33] This somewhat surprising result has been arrived at by
     Havelock Ellis in the course of his scientific studies on
     the nature and causes of genius. He has drawn up tables of
     interest showing the relations of genius to race.

     [34] It is interesting to note that two of America's most
     celebrated literary men, Bret Harte and Walt Whitman, are
     both of mingled Dutch and English descent.

The inhabitants of Europe, from the scientific standpoint, form
merely one variety, or rather a blend of closely allied varieties, so
intermixed that no invariable characteristic divides one from another.
Only those who look no deeper than the superficial demarcations of the
present, and who are ignorant of the manner in which, in the centuries
preceding and following the Christian era, our Aryan forbears peopled
Europe, when for twelve hundred years wave after wave of Aryan humanity
swept across the land, now from the Danube to Spain, and then from
Scandinavia to Italy or Greece; and again at other times back from
Italy or Greece over North-East Europe, each disposing, now here and
now there, its layer of folk, till the great conglomerate European
family was formed--only those who are ignorant of the peopling of
our old continent can regard as other than comparatively superficial
scorings on a solid surface those national lines which conquest and
political institutions, aided in the course of time by language and
manners, have drawn across an essentially homogeneous mass. It is no
mere coincidence which makes the Italian girl of Lombardy often as
fair-haired and fair-skinned as her Swedish sister; the same old Goth
may have forefathered both. And the English brunette and her Spanish
rival may have an even closer blood link than that which binds them
to the folk in their own street; while the so-called Teutonic peoples
are so manifestly one physiological folk, though politically and
socially severed, that were a German, a Dutchman, and an Englishman
to trace back their parentage, they might easily find that a short
twelve hundred years ago it centred in the same individuals. On the
extreme West of Europe, where the Portuguese may have his trace of
African blood, and on the East where the Russian has his strain of
the Mongolian, real differences of race do occur; but, taking Europe
roughly and as a whole, not only do our existing national divisions not
represent fundamental blood divisions, but they run transversely with
such variations in blood as do exist. The large blue-eyed Yorkshireman,
who mates the small dark-eyed South of England lass, may easily be
making a far more decided cross than had he married a large blue-eyed
Dutch or Danish cousin from over the water; the South German is
notoriously more distinct, in the shape of his skull and other fixed
mental and physical characteristics, from the North German than he is
from the Swiss and French folk across his own border; and language and
political unity as little indicate common racial descent in the past as
blood relationship in the present.

Common country and common political institutions resulting as they
do in common ideas, common interests and common habits, are the true
source of national life; and as such of vast political importance.
But they have small and sometimes no connection with the profound
physiological questions of race and consanguinity; and from the
physiological standpoint are of little count.

It is not only possible that the most pure-blooded descendant of the
Romans still existing may be some inhabitant of Treves or Marseilles;
but it is more than possible that not one man or woman with the blood
of the folk who founded the city on the Seven Hill exists among the
herd who creep round the Capitol to-day.

Languages, and the remnants of languages, in civilized or
semi-civilized conditions, remain often in places where they arose,
when the tribes of men who framed them have passed away; and except
among purely barbarous nations, who exterminate all whom they subdue,
a common language, or the absence of a common language, forms no
criterion of blood relationships. The empty shell of a mollusc may lie
on the spot where it lived long after the creature has died, or been
eaten out of it; and he is an unwary naturalist who, picking it up,
and finding it filled with the creatures who may have taken up their
abode in it, imagines there is any necessary organic relation between
the shell and its inhabitants. Like the unscientific naturalist, the
popular mind is quite satisfied where it finds persons using a common
language to suppose racial unity and descent; and, where there is no
common language, the opposite; while these things often merely signify
conquest or contact.

Thus the nations of Europe are far more homogeneous from the
physiological and racial standpoint than our sharply marked differences
of language and political institutions would suggest.[35]

     [35] We are far from implying that there are no pure
     sub-varieties of Europeans even at the present day. In
     sequestered valleys and villages there undoubtedly are
     still folk who have not mingled their blood for at least
     two thousand years, and the inhabitants of certain Welsh
     valleys, Cornish hamlets, and villages in Brittany and
     Spain, though now divided from each other by speech,
     and nationality, may be absolutely of one blood and one
     descent. That even the artificial national lines which
     were drawn in the middle ages, and which form the basis
     of our national divisions at the present day, do coincide
     in some ways with more or less organic distinctions, we
     fully allow. In that great medley of Teutonic peoples who
     inhabit the German Empire to-day, there does really appear
     one mental characteristic which might almost mark them off
     from the rest of Europeans as a distinct variety; this
     is the musical talent. All the greatest composers have
     been Germans, almost every peasant and burgher you meet
     finds music an important element in his existence. Yet
     is this peculiarity wholly organic? The English are the
     least musical of all European nations, yet it is notorious
     that a family of English children reared in Germany
     exhibit often the same serious passion for music, the same
     knowledge of it, and even the same power of producing it.
     No two European nations are more unlike than the French
     and English, yet perhaps the most typical Frenchman we
     ever met was an Englishman born in Paris. And there can
     be little doubt that a French boy reared from birth in
     English surroundings would share the true Anglican worship
     for rough outdoor games, and if fed plentifully from youth
     upward on large quantities of beef, pudding, and ale, and
     leading an outdoor life, would at least as much resemble
     the typical John Bull of big belly, double chin, and red
     face, as do the Englishmen of America and the Colonies!
     The fact is that nine-tenths of what are popularly known
     as national peculiarities are not even skin-deep. This is
     proved when men of different nationalities are thrown into
     the crucible of Colonial life; after two generations spent
     there, if exposed to the same conditions and using the same
     speech, the nationality is almost undiscoverable. We in the
     Colonies, who stand at a vantage for perceiving how real up
     to a certain point are the European national peculiarities,
     and yet how essentially superficial, know that even the
     Irishman, whose peculiarities are more marked than those of
     any other purely European race, cannot with any certainty
     be distinguished from his fellows of other blood after a
     couple of generations, if born in a Colony. Even in the
     case of the Semitic Jew who _does_ form a distinct variety,
     breeding more or less true, national characteristics are
     vulgarly attributed to blood which are undoubtedly the
     result of circumstance. A Jew severed from his social
     atmosphere and brought up in a society in which wealth was
     at a discount and scientific and literary attainment at a
     premium, would no doubt turn that intellectual fertility
     which is the gift of his blood into those directions; and
     though his descendants would undoubtedly inherit his nose,
     they would probably show no inherent tendency to lend money
     at sixty per cent.

When, therefore, a cross takes place between Europeans of different
nationalities, if the resulting offspring should revert to the parent
stock from which both arose, his reversion will carry him no further
back than a few thousand years (which in matters of racial development
is but yesterday afternoon!) to those common Aryan ancestors of the
race who were probably endowed with as much social feeling and perhaps
more courage than their latest descendants. In truth, so homogeneous
are the majority of Europeans in blood that a cross between two
nationalities is of the same nature as that which takes place when
farmers, having flocks of the same breed which they have inbred for
several years, seek to increase their virility by crossing them with
the flocks of their neighbours. There is no real change of breed;
merely that increase of vitality which comes from a change of the same
blood.

The fact, then, that interbreeding between men of European blood causes
no deterioration, or is of marked benefit, has no necessary bearing
whatever on the question as to what will result from the crossing of
widely severed human varieties; varieties so distinct that to find
the progenital link between them we might have to travel up the lines
of human life till we reached those early forms in which articulate
speech was only in process of development, differences which are
to-day, even in the fœtal condition, unmistakably distinct.

We have dwelt at this considerable length on this matter because it is
well we should attempt to look impartially on both sides of a question
of so vital import to the inhabitants of Africa, both in the present
and in the future. And it must be borne in mind that even among animals
not all the crossed descendants of widely separated varieties show this
tendency to revert to the primitive type, but merely that there is a
general tending for them to do so, and that there may be in any given
case other conditions which would entirely defeat the working of the
law.[36]

     [36] Thus supposing, for example, a cross between English
     and Japanese. Both these have now attained to the same high
     point of intellectual and social developments, the Japanese
     being probably more artistic and refined, the Englishman
     possibly more dominant. If these varieties developed from
     ancestors lower in the scale of growth than either are at
     present, then their offspring might revert to that type
     and be lower than either parent form; but it is also quite
     possible that other factors may come into play, and the
     extreme refinement and artistic instinct of the Japanese,
     combining with the coarser virility of the Englishman,
     might produce a creature higher in the scale of life and
     more desirable than either parent species. All that we are
     qualified to assert in the present infantile stage of our
     knowledge is, that there is a danger, and we are inclined
     to believe a very great danger, of reversion to the lower
     primitive type where two widely severed varieties cross,
     that humanity may by that process lose the results of
     hundreds of years of slow evolution.

Summing up, then, what we know on this matter, with all the
impartiality of which we are capable of, this one thing only seems
certain--that there _do_ exist in the social conditions of the
Half-caste's existence, in almost every country in which he is found,
causes adequate, and more than adequate, to account for all, and more
than all, the retrograde and anti-social qualities with which he is
credited; and that therefore in spite of the fact that there do exist
certain circumstances which suggest the possibility of the crossing of
widely discovered varieties producing a tendency to revert to the most
primitive ancestral forms of both, yet, until science has been able
to demonstrate that not social conditions, but a congenital defect,
has made the Half-caste what we find him, the balanced and impartial
mind, in answer to the popular accusation against him of congenital
anti-sociality, can bring in only one verdict, that of--_Not Proven_.

If it be inquired what profit we gain from this analysis of the
Half-caste, seeing that, whether it be the result of inheritance or of
external conditions, it is equally allowed that he has a tendency to
certain anti-sociality, we would reply that the benefit is great.

Firstly:--There is a marked, though more or less illogical, tendency
in human nature to regard with greater aversion an individual whose
defects, whether physical or mental, are the result of conditions long
preceding their birth and fixed by inheritance, than an individual in
whom they are not inherent. As a hunchback, so made by some accident
after birth, is more kindly regarded than one who is so born; so, if it
be once grasped that the defects of the Half-caste may not be inherent,
but may be the result of post-natal conditions, there will undoubtedly
be a tendency on the part of many to regard him with greater kindliness.

Secondly:--It is all important, socially, that the fact should be
distinctly brought home to us, both as individuals and collectively
as a society, that the mingling of our breeds, whether through the
action of reversion or of the external conditions, is frequently the
cause of the production of persons with a low degree of sociality, and
therefore--_is almost always distinctly anti-social_.

Thirdly:--An analysis of the condition of the Half-caste brings home to
us, as nothing else can do, our own racial responsibility towards him.

The Bushman, Hottentot, and Bantu were here long years before we
arrived; the powers and forces which created and placed them here asked
no permission from us; we are at liberty to assert that had our advice
been asked not one would ever have been created or placed in South
Africa.

It is not so with the Half-caste; Englishman and Dutchman, we
brought his ancestor here for our own purposes--if we except the few
Half-castes descended from Hottentots and Bantus this is true; Boer and
later Englishman, we inoculated him with our virile blood to make him
permanent. He is here, our own; we have made him; we cannot wash our
hands of him.

When from under the beetling eyebrows in a dark face something of the
white man's eye looks out at us, is not the curious shrinking and
aversion we feel somewhat of a consciousness of a national disgrace and
sin?

The Half-caste is our own open, self-inflicted wound; we shall not heal
it by shutting our eyes and turning away from it.

(By a curious coincidence, while writing this on the Half-caste, there
hobbled up to our window a tall Half-caste woman, to whom we had often
given medicines. She stuck a letter through the window, and asked us
in Taal--the only language she spoke--to read it for her. The letter
had been written at the request of her second son, to inform her that
he had just received a sentence of four months, the crime not being
stated. It also asked her whether she had heard that his brother Jacob
was free again. On inquiring what this meant, she replied that her
eldest son had just served four years for attempted rape. We asked
her whether she had other children. She lighted up; the watery, blue,
Caucasian eyes looked at us out of the shrivelled, brown face. "I have
four daughters," she said, "the eldest is living with a white mason in
the Fraserburg district. I have always brought my children up well,"
she added proudly, "since they were so high"--indicating with her hand
a child of about three years old. "I have told them, 'Have nothing to
do with a black man, hold by the white.' My three youngest daughters
are all prostitutes among the gentlemen of Kimberley!" Her further
remarks cannot be recorded. She then asked us for more salve; and,
raising her skirt, showed the wound, where a gangrenous sore had eaten
away the flesh, till in some places the bone was showing.

To the white woman who looks at such an object as this, deeper than
any loathing--is shame. It is not the black man's sin that is staining
our African sunshine, as we watch that figure amble across the yard;
it is the white man's degradation. What the Boer began the Englishman
finishes.)

But it is not only in the existence of our lower class of Half-castes
that slavery has left to South Africa a heritage of suffering.

There are subjects which touch so closely the finest sensibilities of
human nature that the hand shrinks from dealing with them as it might
from etching a pattern on a palpitating human heart with the most
delicate of instruments. Nevertheless, it is essential this matter
should also be considered.

There were cases in which the ordinary Half-caste did not marry into
the dark race, but again into the white, their descendants becoming
ultimately almost purely white. There were also cases, though they
were rare,[37] in which love and genuine respect found the gulf which
divides race from race not wide enough to prevent their crossing, and
in which white men took as their lawful wives women of dark race. The
offspring of these lawful marriages naturally remarried into the white
race; and so it comes to pass to-day that there are certain white
men and women, both Dutch and English, often of the greatest natural
intelligence, and sometimes of great culture, wealth, and physical
beauty, who have in their veins this remote trace of non-European blood.

     [37] Such as the case of Eva the Hottentot, who married
     in the early days Van Meerhof, and one of whose daughters
     married a well-to-do Cape farmer.

These folks are often essentially and practically entirely Aryan;
the remote strain of dark blood during seven or eight generations of
white inbreeding being practically so eliminated that it is no more
present than a nightmare of ten years ago is present within my brains
to-day; and no more manifest than in the bull-dog who may win first
prize at a show is manifested the fact that, eight generations before,
his ancestral tables show a strain of spaniel blood. Nevertheless,
in South Africa, difficult as it may appear for those who have only
lived in Europe and who have never mingled with persons of mixed race
to conceive it, the position of such individuals is often one of pain
and difficulty, and the cause of as acute suffering as any which human
creatures are called on to go through. Over the heads of such men and
women in South Africa dangles a sword, which a twirl from the hand
of the most brutal and ignorant passer-by may at any moment send to
their hearts. And, as the low-bred cur, safe behind a grating, may bark
with safety at the noblest mastiff passing by, so the meanest and most
ill-descended beings, sheltered behind the consciousness of an unmixed
Aryan pedigree, may taunt with their descent men and women the latchet
of whose shoes they may not be worthy to unloose.

The true anguish of the position lies in the fact that so strong is
the Aryan prejudice against colour, that it affects the individuals
themselves; a taunt with regard to dark ancestry is always felt by the
person against whom it is directed as the most cruel and unanswerable
of blows, the extent of their silent suffering being measured by the
fact that as a rule no reply is ever attempted, and that by their
nearest friends it may not be referred to. It may be doubted whether,
even within the families themselves which are so situated, the fact of
such descent is ever openly discussed, as men in a chamber where one is
dying seldom use the word death--the thing itself is too near.

It is, moreover, on the most sensitive side of human nature that
suffering is often inflicted on such men and women. It is on the side
of the sex affections, and whenever the question of marriage arises,
that men and women who have perhaps never felt their disabilities
before are made to realize them, by reluctance on the part of those
they desire, or of their friends, that there should be a mingling of
the blood; it is then that the ancestral shadow looms large.

It may be questioned whether we, who have no such shadow hanging in
the background, can ever fully realize all it signifies to those in
whose existence it has place, however wide our sympathies. The man
who suffers from some ancestral disease, be it consumption or gout,
regards himself as an object for pity and interest, and may seek and
find consolation in the sympathy of his fellows; but the man or woman
who suffers from this imaginary ancestral stain must maintain a perfect
and unbroken silence. To offer him sympathy would be an insult; to
receive it he would feel a degradation.

This aspect of the matter is all important because it throws a further
light on that all-important question of the sociality or anti-sociality
of crossing races in a country situated as is South Africa at present.

It is clear that even in those instances in which no degradation or
manifest anti-sociality on the part of descendants is the result
of racial inter-breeding, and when, owing to education and happy
surroundings, they become eventually some of the most cultured,
valuable, and virtuous members of society; still, so great an amount
of suffering is inflicted upon them and their descendants in societies
constituted as ours are, that the original act which made possible
their existence must be regarded as distinctly anti-social, though
in this case the result has not been manifest human degradation, but
merely unjustly inflicted and wholly unmerited human suffering.

Fully recognizing that many persons of mingled descent are of
remarkable and even unusual mental power, of high social feeling, and
allowing that there is a possibility that in the ages to come, when
the great people of South Africa shall be fully formed, that if there
be in that great people an infusion of the blood of the African races,
it is possible, that instead, as is usually supposed, of that great
race being hopelessly degraded, and rendered inferior to other races,
because of its infusion of African blood, it may by crossing with the
dark and more undifferentiated African races, with their possibly less
developed nervous systems, and heavier animality, receive an increase
of hardihood and vitality, and a greater staying power, which may
enable such a mingled race actually to go further in the race of life,
than others not so mingled.

As the modern gardener who has a rare and highly developed double rose,
a Maréchal Neil or Cloth of Gold, if he wish it to be of exceptional
beauty and sturdy growth, does not graft it on the stalk of another
rare highly developed rose, but on a root of the old single wild rose,
from which all roses descended, so it may be that the mingling with a
more primitive type, under certain conditions, may fasten the roots of
a race on earth: and that even the despised African may have some other
mission towards humanity, as a whole, than the mere hewing of its wood
and drawing of its water, even the building up of the rough physical
basis of its life--allowing all this as possible, it is yet difficult
to conceive the condition under which the action which originates a
cross between the dark and light races in South Africa to-day shall not
be anti-social, and its results almost unmitigatedly evil, whether the
offspring be rendered anti-social by inheritance or circumstances; or,
whether, rising in the scale of being, they attain to the highest point
of development, and pay merely in unmerited suffering for the action of
others.

Future ages may attain to a knowledge of the exact laws of inheritance,
and may then know certainly what the result of such commingling of
widely distinct human varieties will be; but for us, to-day, it is a
racial leap in the dark which no man except under the most exceptional
conditions has the right to make. What the Black man is we know, what
the White man is we know: what the ultimate result of this commingling
will be no man to-day knows.

Of all the anti-social actions which can take place in a country
situated as South Africa is to-day, for cowardice and recklessness
perhaps none equals the action of the man who in obedience to his own
selfish passions originates such a cross of races[38]: for cowardice,
because the pain and evil resulting from his action can never under
any circumstances recoil on himself, but must be borne by others;
for recklessness, because the results of his action must go on for
generations after he has passed away, acting in ever-widening circles,
in ways which he cannot predict, and producing results which cannot be
modified.

     [38] There may be, as we before said, rare cases in which
     the crossing of black and white races in the first instance
     was not the result of primitive lust, but of profound
     self-abnegating affection and sympathy; in which the man
     or woman has deliberately selected one of the darker race
     for life-long companionship, and has been willing to endure
     all that scorn and social contumely could conflict for the
     sake of that companionship. Where honour and affection and
     life-long marriage bind a man and woman of diverse breeds,
     it is difficult to speak. Perhaps so mighty a love has laws
     of its own; and the children of such a union might be far
     better born and better trained than the children of average
     pure-breed marriages. It can only be said that such cases
     are so rare that practically they need hardly be considered
     in studying the Half-caste problems of our day.

For, let it never be forgotten, the crossing of human breeds differs
entirely in one all-important point from that which is artificially
carried on by the breeders of domestic animals. If such breeder makes a
cross, and it be found to be undesirable, and injurious to his flock,
he may set to work again to eliminate it; and though every experienced
breeder will confess how difficult it is to accomplish this, how again
and again the strain he seeks to eliminate will crop up; nevertheless,
by the free use of destruction, and by rigorously preventing from
perpetuating themselves all animals which show a trace of this cross,
he may, after a certain number of generations, expunge the strain. But
humanity has no such power over itself. We are unable either to destroy
or to prevent from breeding such varieties in our societies as may
appear undesirable; and if such a variety should have physical virility
and fruitfulness, society would not only be incapable of repressing it,
but it might ultimately even people down all more desirable forms.

Each society, as each age, has its own peculiar decalogue, applicable
to its own peculiar conditions. For South Africa there are certain
commandments little heard of in Europe, because the conditions of life
raise no occasion for them, but which loom large in the list of social
duties in this land. The first of these would appear to be--_Keep your
breeds pure_!

In proportion as this commandment is accepted, and its injunction
carried out by our black and white races in South Africa during the
next fifty years, so probably, to a large extent, will be our healthy
growth and development.[39]

     [39] We are well aware of the argument that, by bridging
     the cavity which yawns between race and race, the
     Half-caste serves to make possible a more kindly sense of
     union between the two. We see the weight of this argument,
     and allow something for it, even much; but, so enormous is
     the amount of suffering inflicted by the intermingling of
     the dark and light races in South Africa to-day, that no
     hypothetical gain seems to justify it.

We have now dealt, with such fullness as for the moment we are
able, at the problem of Half-castism, which slavery has been mainly
instrumental in bequeathing to South Africa.

At the other multitudinous, and in certain ways more important, effects
of slavery on the peoples of South Africa, it will be more convenient
to glance later.

In South Africa, as elsewhere among civilized peoples, what an enslaved
race may have endured physically is amply avenged by emotional and
social loss on the part of the enslaving till the balance of loss
inclines, at last, rather in the direction of the owning than the owned.

The good, aboriginal, old South African thought, doubtless, as did his
English brother in America, that when his slaves were safely landed,
and the slaver had been paid and had sailed away, his black folk had
been settled for, and that he had now nothing to do but enjoy in peace
the fruits of their labour. But his descendants are learning, and will
yet have to learn, with their American cousins, that what was paid on
that day was but the first instalment of a long, national debt. We in
South Africa have been steadily paying it for two hundred years, and
when the last instalment will be due is not yet at all clear.

For the evils of slavery in a civilized community are like those
birds of prey which may indeed leave their nests in the morning, but
at nightfall return to the old nest, and are sure to be found there,
nestling soft and warm.

We have now glanced at those facts in the early condition of the Boer
which it is necessary we should look at if we are at all to understand
his relation to the land of South Africa; and we are prepared to pass
on to glance at his later history, and to an analysis of his condition
to-day.




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.




CHAPTER V

THE BOER WOMAN AND THE MODERN WOMAN'S QUESTION


Even in matters of sex and the inter-relations of the sexes, which form
the very core of human life, the Boer's primitive condition is not
without its vast advantages.[57]

     [57] It is perhaps hardly necessary to repeat that by
     the term "Boer" it is not intended to signify all the
     Dutch-descended inhabitants of South Africa, but only such
     as have retained the old seventeenth century habits and
     ideas of their forefathers, and who speak only the "Taal."
     Probably almost half the inhabitants of South Africa of
     Dutch or French descent now speak English, and are often
     entirely indistinguishable from the other inhabitants of
     the country; the interest therefore which attaches itself
     to the Boer who has preserved until to-day the manners
     and ideas of two centuries ago does not attach to them.
     We shall deal with such persons later among the other
     nineteenth century folk of South Africa.

One who goes among these people expecting to find their sex
relationships and their feeling with regard to sexual phenomena
highly complex and poetical, will be disappointed. The æsthetic and
intellectual transfiguration of sexual instinct is the result of a long
course of intellectual evolution; and in the race or the individual
it, perhaps, more certainly than anything else, indicates the height
of development which the man or the society has reached, and the width
of the chasm which divides it from the primitive conditions of life.
It would be as rational to go into the woods and search on the wild
rose-stems for a Maréchal Niel or a Queen of Roses, with their wealth
of petals and perfume, as to go into a primitive up-country farmhouse
expecting to find the woman's heart humming "Portuguese Sonnets" to
her husband; or the man who, having lost his first wife, looks forward
through the rest of life to the death which shall at last allow him to
sleep beside her, and who shall have found every act of life sanctified
by the remembrance of a close intellectual fellowship. These things are
an efflorescence which can only appear on the branches very high on the
tree of life; perhaps possible only to the philosopher or poet, or to
those who are potentially such; and to look in any simple pastoral or
agricultural people for the intense and individualized affection which
is possible alone to the man or woman in whom the mental functions
entirely predominate over the physical, is a delusion.

The young Boer, when at sixteen or eighteen he passes from childhood to
manhood, looks about him for a female companion. "I am courting three,"
he may say, "and I am not yet sure which I shall take. So-and-so has
the most stock, but she is very plain; so-and-so is pretty and white,
but my mother does not like her; so I suppose I shall take so-and-so."
Nor is there sometimes more intensity of individualized feeling
expressed on the part of the woman. "Will you come to my wedding? I
am going to be married in two months' time," a maiden may say. And
when it is inquired to whom, she replies that there are several youths
courting her, and she intends to decide within the next three or four
weeks which she shall have, and has the material for the wedding dress
already in her box.

Nor even after marriage is there sometimes more individualized
intensity of feeling. Persons who have lived together with apparent
satisfaction and contentment for ten or twenty years will not have
lost their partners for three weeks before they are courting or being
courted; and it is an understood thing immediately on the death of
one spouse, the survivor shall as a rule look for another. Marriages
after thirteen weeks of widowhood or widowership are not uncommon. "If
it please the Lord to take him first," a very happily married wife
once said, looking across the room at her conjugal companion, "I shall
choose the man the likest him that I can get. I don't believe any woman
ever had a better husband."

You may inquire at a farmhouse, at which you called a month before,
after the house-mother who then sat in her elbow-chair. The husband
with deep sorrow may tell you she is dead, and describe her death, then
adds, brightening up, "But the week after next I am going to be married
again to so-and-so, the daughter of so-and-so"; and he looks to you for
congratulation.

"I am sick of all this talk of choosing and choosing," says the
old-fashioned mother, whose children may have imbibed somewhat of the
modern attitude on the subject. "If a man is healthy and does not
drink, and has a good little handful of stock and good temper, and is
a good Christian, what great difference can it make to a woman which
man she takes? There is not so much difference between one man and
another." Nor from her own standpoint is she wholly mistaken.

What the young man desires in a wife is a female companion who will
bear his children, suckle them, attend to the servants, and make his
moleskin clothing for him, and who will always be sitting in the chair
opposite when he comes into the house, and be ready to pour out his
coffee for him until his daughter is old enough; and who will save him
from that feeling of weary solitude he would be oppressed by if he sat
in the farmhouse quite alone; further, who will, if possible, bring
as much to the common housekeeping in the way of sheep, cattle, and
household goods as he himself brings; and, finally, be able to advise
him over all matters of domestic economy and external business. Of
the girls in the district many would probably be able to fulfil these
obligations equally well. Out of the hundred girls in the countryside,
eighty would make him almost equally happy, and the remaining twenty
would only be unsuitable through some serious defect in health, or
temper, or intelligence. Nor are the woman's needs in the direction
of sex companionship very different. She requires a man to look after
the common stock; to give her children; and if he do not drink (and he
very seldom does), and so spend the household money when he goes to
sell the wool; if he never buys or sells without asking her advice,
and is not ill-tempered but affectionately inclined, all that which she
most craves in a sexual partner is granted her. That essentially modern
condition of mind, in which an individual remains sexually solitary
and unmated because no other is found who satisfies the complex
intellectual and emotional needs of a nature in which these needs are
as imperative as the physical, and in which union with an individual
not singled out by an almost immeasurable sympathy from the rest of
their sex would be morally abhorrent, and union with such beloved
individuality is regarded as the crowning good of existence--this is a
condition of mind unintelligible to the primitive Boer.

That dream, which waking haunts the hearts of certain
nineteenth-century men and women (as indeed it has haunted hearts
in all centuries which have reached a certain stage of intellectual
growth, from old Montaigne pacing in his long study in France, to Plato
in the gardens of Athens)--the dream of a sex union, in which the
physical shall be but emblematic of an indissoluble union of head and
heart, which shall be as fruitful in the mental life of both man and
woman as the physical union is fruitful in perpetuating the race, and
across which shall lie as its darkest shadow only the fear of death's
separation!--this dream the real old Boer has of necessity never yet
dreamed.

If we suppose a child to take a handful of smooth, square blocks,
and seek to amuse itself by placing them securely one on another, he
would probably find small difficulty; each block he seized would fit
with equal smoothness on the surface of any other, and his game would
require no skill.

If, however, one should take a knife and trace a few shallow
geometrical lines and figures on the surface of the blocks, and the
object was to make them interfit perfectly on one another, the game
would now be more complex. Each block would not now accord with the
surface of any other with equal smoothness; and though all might be
super-imposed, some would fit well and some ill, as their surfaces
coincided or not; and the mating of them, though still simple, would
require some skill.

If yet again one should carve out the surface of certain blocks
into arabesque designs and delicate organic figures, the child's
problem would be made almost insoluble. Each surface would require
to be matched with a surface corresponding to its own in complex
indentations, and it would be hard to find any two which might be
brought into contact without breaking off some of their finer points
and marring their beauty; and that child might sit long with each
ornate block in its hand, and only when by rare good fortune a surface
harmonizing with its corrugations was found, could the matching go
on satisfactorily. The game so simple when it began with the smooth
blocks, would have become an intricate puzzle with the carved.

Very crudely, but with some sharpness, would this child's play
exemplify the great problem of sexual selection in the different stages
of social and individual growth.

The primitive savage, running naked in his primeval wood, or the
savage who survives in the heart of a civilized society in the form
of the pure sensualist and libertine, resembles our flat block. In
him, sexual instinct is still so simple and undifferentiated that
every female whom, as the naked savage he captures in war, or, as
the clothed savage, purchases with his gold, is equally suited to
satisfy his needs; for him the search for sex fellowship is neither
much more difficult, or more important, than that of the jelly-fish or
the hippopotamus, or any creature still in the quadrupedal stage. For
persons in this stage of emotional and intellectual development there
is no more any complex problem of sexual selection than for the child
with its smooth blocks there is a problem of block selection.

On the other hand, if we turn to the individuals of our own or past
ages who have reached the highest individualized development, emotional
as well as intellectual, we shall find them in the matter of sex
selection not inaptly to be compared with our most ornate and carved
blocks. As the child may hold its flowered block long in its hand
unable to mate it without injuring it, so individuals with highly
differentiated intellectual and emotional sex needs, not only find
the attainment of satisfactory sexual relationships one of the most
difficult and important matters of life, but they frequently fail
entirely, and are compelled to accept the mutilated life of celibacy,
or the more mutilated life of inharmonious union.[58]

     [58] That on the higher planes of development, where the
     individuality becomes complex and varied, the unions of
     Socrateses with their Xanthippes, or fruitless celibacies,
     are not universal, can only be accounted for by the fact
     that, unlike the artificial blocks which the carver may
     shape as he will, the men and women of any society or age
     are part of one organic body and, except where unhealthy
     social conditions prevent their being exposed to the
     action of the same forces, will tend to develop in the
     same direction, and again to meet on the higher planes of
     growth as they did in the lower. Therefore the most highly
     developed and individualized men and women of any society,
     if they have been exposed to the action of the same
     cultivating forces, may often be compared to those delicate
     and intricate puzzles carved from one ball of ivory by the
     Chinese, which only need to be brought into juxtaposition
     to show how admirably they harmonize and how essentially
     they form but one whole.

Though as the carved block once interwedged with a corresponding
surface yields a combination more stable than could ever be effected
between smooth surfaces; so, sex emotion having blossomed into its
intellectual and æsthetic stage, the unions of men and women, though
more difficult of attainment, may be when attained of more permanent
strength; till, in the case of a Pericles and an Aspasia, we may
find it possible for the most highly developed human natures to find
in sexual companionship carried out on the highest planes the same
absolute completeness of satisfaction, which an Indian hunter, on his
lower plane enjoys, when he captures a new squaw.

Midway between these two extremes in the matter of sexual evolution
may be placed the condition of our primitive South African Boer. If,
in the matter of sexual relationships, he has not attained to the very
highest æsthetic and intellectual standpoint yet reached by human
nature,--if even the transports of the monogamous bird, who pursues
his courtship with a breast swelled out with song, are little known
to him, he is yet very far removed from the level of the barbarian,
or the civilized libertine of our cities. He resembles our block when
in its second stage of complexity, where it passes from its matchable
condition and has not yet reached that stage of organic complexity,
which makes successful mating almost insuperably difficult. Our Boer,
when he seeks a wife, seeks, it is true, not so much the individual as
the woman--but it must be a woman of his own race, class, and stage of
growth; and if his psychic sexual wants are still so simple and uniform
that many a woman of his own class may satisfy them, they still exist.
The woman whom he places in the elbow-chair of his house, must share
his simple religion, his ancestral view of life and its right ordering,
must be able to instruct his children in those simple matters in which
he was himself instructed, and to order his household with dignity;
and, simple as these needs are, they are imperative. It is _not_ as a
merely physical companion, and still less a sexual slave, whom he seeks
to rule for his own pleasure, that he desires her: undoubtedly his sex
relations are on the whole dominated by less crudely primitive instinct
than those of the larger numbers of the sex unions, both legal and
illegal, which are formed in our nineteenth-century societies, however
much they may in certain matters fall below the highest ideal.

His system of sex relations has generally two vast advantages: it is
healthy, and it is just.

It is healthy, in that it is in harmony with his whole mental and
material condition.

We who are habituated to living in societies in a state of rapid
growth and development, in which as a result certain individuals
under the stimulus of new conditions attain to the highest stage of
psychic development, while others remain in the most primitive; and who
possess, bound up in one body social, persons in a hundred different
stages of culture; we, who are accustomed to feel that the harmonizing
of our institutions and manners with the needs of our enormously varied
social units constitutes an always pressing and almost overpowering
difficulty, and who are accustomed to feel this above all in matters
of sex--we find it difficult to conceive of the existence of a society
which has no social problems, and, above all, no sex problems--yet this
is very nearly the state of the primitive Boer.

One may live beside him for years, and watch his social life, without
the thought ever occurring, "Ah! were but the sexual condition of these
folk altered, were their traditions and modes of action with regard to
sex but more in harmony with the need and thoughts of at least the best
part of the community, how healthful would be their condition!" That
unlovely confusion which prevails in our civilized life, where sham
institutions, too high for one-half of our folk, overlay institutions
too savage to see daylight, and the sex relations, which should be
the joy of a people, form often the diseased and painful side of the
national life--and the perception of which haunts one hourly, as one
walks the streets of our great cities, or watches the life of our
drawing-rooms or alleys--does not exist in the simple uniform condition
of the South African Boer.

In our hurly-burly societies, in which the brothel with its female
outcasts and the male prostitutes whose gold supports it are found
side by side with men and women to whom sex relationships are already
sacramental; in which a large mass of the community are still in that
stage in which marriage itself is contracted mainly as the result
of an arithmetical calculation, while, to another large and always
growing section, it is a union based upon, and mainly consisting of, a
psychic union, whose spontaneity constitutes its strength:--we in such
societies are compelled hourly to discuss, if not audibly at least in
our own minds, the right and wrong, the usefulness and non-usefulness
of the sexual laws and customs of our societies; and we seek in vain
to reduce them to a uniformity suitable to the wants of all. To us,
as individuals and as societies, life presents itself as a series of
problems, which have to be worked out and solved, if solved at all, by
the individual for himself during the course of his life, and by our
societies as wholes in the course of generations; and this is above
all true with regard to matters of sex. For the Boer, on the other
hand, in his quiescent and unchanging social condition, there is no
such difficulty. With him, where generation has succeeded generation
without being exposed to the action of any new forces, and where almost
identical mental and material conditions have been brought to bear
on every member of the society, there is of necessity almost absolute
social homogeneity--and with homogeneity an absence of all those varied
conditions which perplex us.

What was good for the Boer's father is generally good for himself,
what is good for one man in his society is generally good for another;
tradition, the enforcing of which for many of us is simply an endeavour
to fit a child's shoe on a man's foot, or to force the fare of a
cannibal down the throat of a civilized man--tradition is his safe
and sure guide, and what all the folk about him do is also generally
the right and wise thing for himself. Above all, on matters of sex he
has no doubts, no difficulties, no perplexities: his curious little
courtships, his matter of fact but rational and honourable marriages,
his monetary institutions as they bear on sex, are all admirably
suited to his mental and emotional condition; and without altering
his intellectual outlook and his physical surroundings it would be
impossible to improve on them.

If it be objected that our nineteenth-century disorganization on sexual
matters, with its consequent enormous accumulation of suffering and
friction, is but an indication of our active growth and the rapid
development taking place at a hundred points in our social system--we
fully allow it.

But it remains true that that harmony between the sexual institutions
of a society and the highest wants and ideals of all its members, which
constitutes the condition of perfect health, is known in the little
Boer society (as it is in that of many other simple and stationary
people)--and it is not known in nineteenth-century communities, though
it may, and probably will, be to those of a later age. Sex and sex
relationships are no more the causes of gigantic suffering and social
evil among the Boers than food is the cause of colossal suffering to a
man who gets the kind he needs.

Whenever the stationary condition of such a society as that of the
primitive Boer is broken up, and he begins to grow, dislocation on
sex matters must occur, with its consequent suffering, before he can
attain to a new plane; but it must be allowed that the absence of this
suffering and dislocation is one of the great advantages of his present
condition.

Further, as we have said, the Boer's system of relations in matters of
sex is just.

We know of few social conditions in which the duties and enjoyments of
life are so equally divided between the sexes, none in which they are
more so.

This assuredly is no small matter.

A sense of sexual justice exhibits itself among these simple folks in
that, in the matter of inheritance, sex is allowed to play no part.
Not only at the death of parents is property equally divided between
children of both sexes, but that subtler and much more common and
grave injustice which in nineteenth-century societies exhibits itself
in the large sums expended on the higher education of sons, while the
daughters go often more slightly instructed, in the Boer's primitive
condition does not exist. This initial act of sexual justice renders
the Boer woman in marriage free and equivalent to the male. As a rule
she not only brings to the common household an equal share of material
goods, but, and this is infinitely of more importance, she brings to
the common life an equal culture. The fiction of a common possession of
all material goods which exists in many nineteenth-century societies,
notably the English, is not a fiction but a reality among the Boers;
and justly so, seeing that the female as often as the male contributes
to the original household stock.

But far more important than the fact that she holds an equal right over
the material things of life is the fact that she takes an equally large
and valuable share in the common work of life.

While the man counts in his sheep and rounds up his cattle and attends
to the shearing, or goes a-hunting, or at intervals builds a house,
or dam, or kraal; the woman, in addition to the bearing of the common
children, and feeding them at her breast, and rearing them with her own
hands, tends to the feeding of her household. It is she who with her
own hands shapes its clothing, she who trains and teaches her sons
and daughters all that in many cases they ever know of the religion
and the tradition of their people:--in the old days this was always
so, and still to-day is often true. It was she who in those days,
when conflicts with savage men and wild beasts were a part of daily
life, faced death side by side with the man, who stood always shoulder
to shoulder with him; and it is she who still to-day--and rightly,
considering her past and present--has a determining influence in peace
or war.[59]

     [59] Speaking of the Boer insurrection of 1815, Sir Andries
     Stockenstrom in his _Autobiography_ says of two families
     of Boers, who were surrounded by British soldiers: "They
     placed themselves in a position of defence under their
     wagons. One of the soldiers by whom they were surrounded
     having ventured within range, entreating them to surrender,
     was shot dead on the spot. The fire was, of course,
     returned. Bezuidenhout's wife, reloading the guns as they
     were discharged, kept encouraging her husband and brother
     Fabre not to surrender; until at last Bezuidenhout fell
     dead, riddled with bullets, and she and Fabre were seized
     dangerously wounded, as well as her son, a boy of twelve,
     slightly."

The Transvaal War of 1881 was largely a woman's war; it was from the
armchair beside the coffee-table that the voice went out for conflict
and no surrender. Even in the Colony at that time, and at the distance
of many hundreds of miles, Boer women urged sons and husbands to go to
the aid of their northern kindred, while a martial ardour often far
exceeding that of the males seemed to fill them.[60]

     [60] This was written in 1890, nine years before the War of
     the Republics began.

If the Boer woman of to-day does not, like her Teutonic ancestresses
of eighteen centuries ago, lead her nation to war, going bare-footed
and white-robed before it, it is still largely her voice which urges
it forward or holds it back. It may, perhaps, be said that one-half
only of the fighting force of all nations appears upon its fields of
battle; that the other is heavily engaged at home in producing and
rearing, at a risk to life almost as great and at the cost of suffering
immeasurably greater, the warriors of the nation--but the Boer woman's
share in the defence of the state is more direct, more conscious and
unmistakable.

Further, if it cannot be said of the Boer woman that of the labour
which sustains and builds up her society she absorbs the same enormous
and all-important share which is found to devolve on women in many
primitive societies--it must be yet allowed that her share of labour is
relatively far more useful and important to her society than that of
immense masses of females under nineteenth-century conditions.

If, unlike the female in those societies in which almost the sole
occupation of the male being war and the chase, to the female is
left, in addition to the bearing and rearing of the whole people, all
agricultural and manufacturing labour, from the cultivation of the
fields, and the grinding grain, to the building of houses, and the
weaving of garments, and in which even the primitive artistic labour
of the society largely devolves on them in the ornamenting of utensils
or clothing--if the Boer woman cannot lay claim to the exclusive
possession of all these important fields of action, she still retains
possession of one full half of the labour of her race. Under no
circumstances has she become the drone of her society, or sunk to the
condition of being merely a parasitic excrescence on the national life,
fed, clothed, and sustained by the labours of others in return for the
mere performance of her animal sex function--her very children, when
once she has gone through the mechanical labour of bearing them, being
reared by others, while she contributes nothing either mentally or
physically to the fund of labour which sustains the state--a condition
into which large masses of females in the civilizations of the past and
present have tended to sink, which is universal among the inhabitants
of Eastern harems to-day, which was tending to become universal among
the wealthier classes in Europe until forty or fifty years ago a
counter movement took its birth.

If the Boer woman does not manifest that superiority in intelligence
over the male section of her society, which is continually remarked
with surprise by those who study the women of many primitive societies
(and which is doubtless the result of the more strenuous, complex, and
important labours with which they occupy themselves, as compared with
the males of their societies), the Boer woman's condition is even more
happy yet, being one of intellectual equality with her male companions;
a condition which seems to constitute the highest ideal in the human
sexual world. Between the Boer woman and her male comrade we never find
yawning that mental chasm which in Eastern harems, and frequently in
European drawing-rooms, divides the males, highly trained, and in many
cases laboriously active, and therefore mentally strong, from their
females, so frequently mentally vacuous and feeble, in whom the passive
enjoyment of ease has taken the place of all strenuous systematic
exertion; and who have become in many cases so enervated, that in
passing from their society to that of the males of their own circle we
seem to be passing intellectually into contact with another and higher
tribe of creature. We believe there is hardly a Boer farm-house in
South Africa, where the perturbing influence of the nineteenth-century
civilization has not yet crept, where it would be possible to discuss
any matters with the male members of the household which its females
would not have discussed with an equal thoughtfulness, knowledge, and
intelligence. Nay it has sometimes even appeared to us that the Boer
woman, probably owing to her somewhat more arduous and complex labours
with regard to her children, does exhibit, as compared to the male, a
slightly greater thoughtfulness, and a larger tendency to inquire into
the causes of things and to interest herself in impersonal matters:
tendencies which the males of the upper classes in the nineteenth
century commonly exhibit to an immensely larger degree than their
females.

Among the finest specimens of the Boer we have met have certainly
been women, devoid of the culture of schools, but keen, resolute,
reflective, and determined; showing no trace of that frivolity, love of
pleasure, and uncertainty of thought, which so often marks the female
of the wealthy classes in our nineteenth-century societies, and renders
her so markedly the inferior of the male.[61]

     [61] It is hardly necessary to state that we are not
     referring to the labouring classes in modern societies,
     in which, when the male and female are both exposed to
     the same conditions of labour, the same intellectual
     homogeneity is to be observed. The position of these women
     differs, however, from that of the Boer woman in the less
     social consideration they enjoy, this depending on causes
     too complex to be here entered on.

No man, we believe, can study the condition of the South African Boer,
before he has been acted upon by the nineteenth-century conditions,
without being convinced that not only is one full half of the social
labour in the hands of the women, but that it is not the least complex
or socially honourable; and that she is far more the fellow labourer
and comrade of man, than are the mass of women in nineteenth-century
societies.

It has often be said of the Boer woman that she, almost alone, still
sits immovable in her elbow chair, while all her sisters, Teutonic,
and even Keltic and Slavonic, have risen to their feet; and that while
the women of all European societies, from New Zealand to America,
from Australia to Russia, have risen, or are tending to rise up, to
re-adjust their relations to human life, she alone sits stolid in
her elbow-chair. It is said of her that in that vast movement, which
without leaders or instigators, is taking its rise from end to end of
the civilized world, awakening in the heart of the young English girl
on solitary karoo plains, stirring in the breast of the duchess in her
boudoir, and guiding the hand of the working-girl as she knocks for
admission at the door of the factory--that movement which, like some
vast tidal wave, silently gathering strength as it swells in the ocean
depths, will break at last on the shores of life, carrying all before
it; and, whether for good or for evil, will accomplish a more radical
modification in human life than any the world has witnessed, since in
pre-historic ages the discovery of fire or of letters modified all
future human existence on the globe--it is said of her that in this
movement the Boer woman has no part. This is true, and well it may be
so.

For let us pause an instant to consider what, in its ultimate essence,
this Woman's Movement represents.

It is not a sudden endeavour on the part of earth's women to attain
to greater physical enjoyment or more luxurious ease. There have been
self-indulgent and sensuous women since the days when our fore-mothers
ground corn with handstones, individual women seeking ever to increase
their sexual and sensual enjoyments, and evade their burdens; but it
is noticeable that it is exactly these women who are _not_ found in
the van of change to-day. If the woman's movement of this country may
be said to have its origin in any one class more than another, it is
exactly among those women of the wealthier classes whom modern life has
supplied with overwhelming liberality with all the material enjoyment
and comfort which existence can yield; and who have no physical or
sexual indulgence or material good to gain by change, but who have much
to lose. It is these women, and not the overtasked labourer's wife with
ten children to rear, feed, and labour for, it is these women above all
who have started to their feet and are demanding the re-organization of
their relations to life; and side by side with the factory girl and the
ill-paid solitary spinster whom the struggle of life is driving to the
wall, are found the millionaire's daughter and the countess, and the
comfortably situated woman of the middle classes, for whom earth has
left no material good unyielded. The Woman's Movement is essentially
_not_ a movement on the part of civilized women in search of greater
enjoyment and physical ease.

Further, it is not a movement that has its origin in a sudden and
astonishing revelation to earth's womanhoods of the fact that physical
and mental suffering in an unequal proportion has been the guerdon of
their sex. Unless a woman be unendowed with that modicum of reflective
power which characterizes even the lowest savage, she must always
have been aware of this fact. Since the first Eve, slowly rearing
herself from the quadrupedal to erect bipedal attitude, found the
pains of child-bearing and bringing forth immensely increased by her
erect attitude, her arms filled with her helpless offspring, and her
fighting powers diminished by her absorption in shielding and feeding
the race, till that time when she became the agricultural slave of her
more unhampered companion, women have always suffered, and they have
known that they suffered. If you sit down beside the savage woman as
she kneels on the ground grinding her corn between her handstones,
you may have painted for you a picture of woman's suffering, such
as few civilized women could paint, because few have so intense an
experience into which to dip their brushes. Yet there has been in all
the countless ages of the past, when women suffered immensely more than
they suffer to-day, no Woman's Movement.

Sitting beside a Bantu woman once as she knelt on the ground grinding
her corn, we, anxious to arrive at her conception on religious matters,
inquired of her whether she believed there was a God. She shook her
head, and said that she did not; there might be a God, but if there
were one, He was not good. When further we inquired why this was so,
she replied that if God were good He would not have made women. There
might be a God for the white woman, but there was certainly none for
the black; and then she broke into a description of the condition
of women in semi-barbarous societies, the force of which cannot be
retained when translated from her picturesque and passionate language,
but its substance was much as this:--"See there," pointing to two small
girl children playing beside the huts, "they are happy now; they play
all day; they play with their brothers; they think they are boys; it
is good with them. Now, wait a little--when they are so high," raising
her hand as high as she could reach kneeling, "it is still well with
them. Then the breasts begin to grow; the people look, and say, she
is beginning to be a woman; then they say, where are the cattle for
her? Then a man comes, perhaps he is old; it does not matter--'Here,
take her; give us the cattle.' She goes home with him. She plants the
corn, she makes the hut; she makes his food for him. Soon the child
begins to grow in her body; that is good. All day she works,"--putting
her hand to her back--"her back aches; it doesn't matter. It is all
right; she is glad she is going to have a child; the man will like her;
he will not beat her. At night she cooks the food, she cleans round
the hut, she has children, she grinds the corn! See there, all those
baskets--her hands made them full of corn! Then the wrinkles begin to
come; see, her breasts get soft; she is old. Then the man comes home at
night. 'Make haste, make haste,' he says, 'you do not grind the corn
nicely.' She grinds it as she always ground it, but he beats her. 'Make
haste, make haste! You are old--you are lazy! What is your face so
ugly for?' She works; he beats her. See here"--pointing to her breast
as though there were a mark on it--"he beats it with a whip: the blood
comes out. Never mind. Take the child, put it at the breast, let it
suck: the blood comes on its face. She wipes it off"--with an action of
the hand as though she were wiping the blood off an imaginary child's
face.--"Then he brings the young wife. The young wife is strong; her
arms are still fat. She has still many children in her. The young wife
says, 'Do this; do that.' The old wife must not speak. Then the breasts
dry up--there is no milk in them. She works in the fields all day. She
brings the wood home. 'Make haste! Make haste!' The old wife is done
for! There--throw her away; she is good for nothing. Let her sit out
there on the dung-heap! She is only a thing! The man can have as many
wives as he likes. Yes, there is perhaps a God for the white woman;
there is none for the black."

Now, what is curious with regard to a state of feeling such as this
woman experienced, is that, intensely bitter as she is against the
impersonal fate which has made her what she is, keenly as she feels her
own servitude, and intensely conscious as she is of her own pain, there
is not in her the dawning of a feeling which might ultimately result
in rebellion, nor the shadow of a feeling of resentment against even
man, nor is there any hope, one might almost say desire, to alter her
own position. If you suggest to her that she may alter matters, she
looks at you with a leaden-eyed despair, with more than incredulity,
almost with condemnation. She looks at you as the tortoise might, on
whose back, according to Eastern tradition, the elephant stands who
supports the world. If he complained to you that the elephant's feet
were heavy on him, and you suggested that he might move out from under
them,--"What! and destroy the world, which ultimately depends on me!"

Keenly conscious of their suffering, and bitter against fate have been
the hearts of numberless women of all ages, but it has been silent
bitterness, such as we mortals feel who are conscious of the existence
of death from the cradle to the grave, and object strongly to it, but
say little, knowing it is useless, and its presence inevitable.

What is new is not that woman suffers or knows that she suffers. The
woman of to-day probably suffers less than the women of any period,
since that most primitive time when men and women both wandered free;
the absolutely new thing is her conscious determination to modify her
relation to life about her.

If, then, a Woman's Movement be not in its ultimate essence a sudden
and insane desire on the part of woman for increased material enjoyment
and physical ease, nor, on the other hand, the result of a sudden
revelation to herself of her own sufferings, what in its ultimate
essence is this movement?

Vast social phenomena, rising up in what appears to be obedience to an
almost universal instinct, must be based on some equally comprehensive
social condition, which acts everywhere as its cause; a cause which
will not be less irresistibly operative because those who are acted
upon by it have not always grasped it intellectually, nor are capable
of reasoning on its nature. As those vast herds of antelope which
at times sweep down across our South African plains from the north,
bearing all before them, are propelled, not by any logical induction,
the result of an intellectual process, but are driven onwards, whether
they will or no, by the pressure of a stern fact which forces itself
painfully on the consciousness of each isolated individual in the
herd--the fact, that behind lie parched deserts desolated by drought,
while before are green lands;--so nineteenth-century women are urged
on by the pressure of a condition which they have not created, and of
whose nature they have not even in many cases a clear intellectual
perception, yet which acts upon the whole mass, causing irresistible
social movement through its pressure on each isolated unit.

Looking at the modern Woman's Movement from the widest standpoint, and
analysing, not isolated phenomena connected with it here and there, but
its manifestation as a whole, the conviction is forced upon us that the
Woman's Movement of the nineteenth century in its ultimate essence is
_The Movement of a Vast Unemployed_.

Let us pause for a moment to consider how and why this is so.

In primitive societies woman performed the major part of the labours
necessary for the sustenance of her community, as she still does in
Africa and elsewhere, where primitive conditions exist. In addition
to child bearing she was the agricultural labourer of the community;
and while the male of necessity reserved his energies for war and the
chase, the agricultural and domestic labours devolved on woman. Not
only did she plant the grain and reap it, but she ground it and made it
into bread and beer; it was she who built the hut, shaped the domestic
utensils, and in travelling she was the beast of burden, and carried
the household goods; she was generally the doctress, and often the
wizard or priestess of her people.

In woman, with almost all creatures which give suck to their young, and
unlike birds of prey and many orders of insects and sea creatures, the
human female tends to be less heavy in build than her male equivalent;
and with an equal vitality and a strength of endurance and persistent
activity greater than that of the male in some directions, she is not
yet as a rule his equal in muscular strength. In a society in which
physical force ruled exclusively, and the most muscularly powerful
males were of necessity dominant even over their weaker fellow males,
woman, less powerful to hold, to strike, and to kill, was also of
necessity almost everywhere under the physical control of the male, and
often more or less enslaved. But the part she played in the communal
life was all important: as a social labourer she often, if not always,
exceeded the male in value. As far as physical activity can expand
the mind and body, everything tended to increase her vitality and
intelligence; and undoubtedly in the primitive societies of the past,
as in those still existing at our own day, the woman was found in
thoughtfulness and general intelligence the equal or superior of man to
an extent surprising to those accustomed to the wide division between
the male and female in those classes of modern societies where the male
absorbs the larger portion of social labour and the mental training
required by it.

Undoubtedly woman suffered, and often suffered heavily, in those
primitive societies, but she must always have been clearly conscious,
as was the Bantu woman quoted, of the inevitableness of her position.
She may have cried out against fate in moments of bitterness, but
she must always have recognized her own social importance, and even
the anti-sociality of attempting to shirk her obligations, upon the
fulfilment of which depended the very life of the society.

Had there arisen a Woman's Movement in any tribe, and had it been
successful, that tribe would have become instantly extinct. The labours
of war and the chase were inconsistent with the incessant child-bearing
and rearing essential where life is precarious; she could not generally
have competed on equal terms with men in war and the chase, when these
depended on strength of arm and muscle in wielding spear and axe; she
would have forsaken the higher and equally essential labours of society
for those for which she was less fitted, and the result must have
been the destruction of her society. Not only was a Woman's Movement
impossible, but had it been possible it would have been anti-social.
Her labour formed the solid superstructure on which her society rested;
her submission to her condition was the condition of social health and
even national and tribal survival. She suffered and knew she suffered,
but she knew also that her condition was inevitable and her society was
upheld by her toil.

In the later social condition, where war and the chase ceasing to
demand the entire attention of the male, men began of necessity to
encroach on woman's fields of labour, to undertake her agricultural and
outdoor labours generally; woman, though her field of labour became
more or less restricted to domestic toil within the dwelling, still
retained possession of a full half of the labours of her societies.

Down even to recent times, the woman, whether lord's wife or peasant,
with her own hands wove the clothing of her household and of the entire
race. If woman no longer planted the grain, it was she who made the
bread and brewed the ale, she who knitted the hose and shaped the
clothing of her people. It may be questioned whether down to quite
modern times woman's domestic labours did not equal or even exceed
in general social value those of men in other fields, and were not
as complex, demanding as much activity of body and versatility and
strength of mind.

In a social condition in which practically all women but religious
enthusiasts married, where child-bearing and the rearing and training
of her children and the supporting of her household with food and
clothing, and through them the whole race, occupied the entire
strength and time of woman, she could not complain that she lacked
social functions; nor would it have been possible for her to undertake
other social duties without deserting those of more importance. If
man's work was from sun to sun, while her work was never done, if she
laboured under certain social disabilities which were not inevitable,
she still knew that her labour was as valuable and essential to her
race as that of man, and there is no evidence of any movement on
her part to readjust her relations to life and to enter the fields
of labour apportioned to the male. In the main she was satisfied
with her condition. If isolated women here and there entered new
fields of labour, became professors at universities, or took to
statecraft or trade, it was because of some great individual aptitude
in these directions, and not because woman felt ill at ease and in
disco-ordination with her share of the world's labour or her place in
social life.

With the rise of what we term modern civilization, all this has become
slowly reversed.

The invention of modern machinery, and the discovery of modes of
compelling natural forces to perform the labours in earlier times
performed by the muscles of human creatures, with the resulting
conditions, have profoundly modified all modern life, and above all
they have affected the position of woman.

With steady and persistent advance the field of woman's domestic
industries has been invaded and is passing from her. In remote country
districts she still weaves and brews and bakes, not as a luxury
and amusement, but from necessity, and still feeds and clothes her
household, and marries early, and gives her children what training they
get: but exactly as modern civilization advances, and where it is found
in its fullest development, these conditions recede.

Her loom has been transformed into the vast factory where thousands of
steam-driven machines, largely possessed and guided by men, accomplish
the labour she performed in her home, and clothe the world; the
steam-driven sewing-machine is fast supplanting the woman's needle, and
even the domestic sewing-machine; bread, the manufacture of which has
been through all ages one of woman's chief handicrafts, is increasingly
the work of machinery, owned and guided almost exclusively by males;
beer, the right brewing of which was our grandmother's pride, is
exclusively the manufacture of machinery and males, who, for absorbing
this branch of the female's work, are often rewarded with knighthoods
and peerages; the very preserves and sweetmeats which our fore-mothers
prepared are now produced cheaper, if not better, in vast factories;
the milkmaid is vanishing, and cheese is as often a male as a female
manufacture; clothes are washed, windows cleaned, carpets beaten, by
machinery, and the smallest minutiæ of domestic life are more and
more passing out of the hands of the woman householder; the male cook
penetrates into the kitchen as the male accoucheur penetrates into the
birth-chamber.

Yet far more noticeable is the shrinkage of woman's ancient field of
labour in other directions. The mother, who in primitive societies
was the guide and instructress of her daughter till adult years were
reached, and whose son grew up about her knees till youth began, now
finds, whether a city workwoman or a duchess, the education and
training of her children pass largely from her hands into those of
specialized instructors, almost from infancy. From the infant school
and kindergarten to the college and university, the education of the
young has now become a complex and highly specialized business, the
successive classes in schools being instructed by persons distinctly
trained for their work, and the average mother's calling as trainer and
educator of her own offspring is rapidly dwindling.

Further, all branches of labour are becoming more specialized,
requiring distinct, long-continued, and often very complex training for
their performance.

Any woman or man might in simpler times be turned into the fields to
hoe or bind corn, and with little instruction might do it as well as
their fellows; but a comparatively high training is required even
for the modern labourer who is to take control of our complex modern
agricultural machinery, of our steam-driven ploughs and binders; and
as we advance from these, the simpler forms of manual labours, to the
intellectual callings, the demand for prolonged and special training
has become imperative. From this specialized training for particular
callings woman is largely excluded, and therefore her hold on many old
forms of labour is relaxed. Even amid her other domestic labours the
woman of the past might find time to acquire knowledge of the simples
and poultices which formed the staple of the healing art, and might,
with a proficiency excelled by none, minister to the complaints of her
family or community; and the old woman was the recognized accoucheur
and adviser of her societies. Now, without long and complex training,
no woman can practice her old art, and a field of study, surprisingly
large if we study the history of the past, falls from her.

Finally, in the one great field of labour which is and must always
remain woman's exclusive domain, there is shrinkage. The changed
conditions of life accompanying modern civilization have reduced the
demand upon woman as a child-bearer. In primitive societies, where war
and the exigencies of primitive life were continually denuding the
race, woman was as a rule compelled to bear persistently, if the number
of warriors was to be maintained; and in a later social condition,
where all the crude labours of life were performed by human labour and
a vast and unlimited supply of unskilled labourers was always required,
there was almost the same demand upon her. Moreover, the training and
rearing of the young was a comparatively simple matter.

The growing substitution of machinery for human labour in almost all
forms of handicraft has diminished the demand for untrained labour;
both the family and the State have reached a point where they recognize
that the mere production of a human creature, unless there be also
the means of fitting it for the complex conditions and duties of
modern life, does not increase the wealth or strength of either state
or family, but is a source of weakness and suffering, and there is a
steady tendency for persons to marry later and produce fewer offspring
as civilization advances in a class or race. So radically has woman's
condition changed with regard to this form of labour, that while, in
most societies of the past, every woman not physically incapable was a
child-bearer, and bore more or less persistently from youth to age, in
our own societies at the present day there has arisen a vast body of
women compelled, not by any religious enthusiasm, but by the exigencies
of modern civilized life, to remain throughout life absolutely celibate
and childless, performing no sex function whatever. This phenomenon is
accompanied by another equally important, the increase as civilization
advances, and especially in our vast cities where it is found in its
complete form, of that body of women, who, while not celibate, are also
not as a rule child-bearers and mothers, but leading a purely parasitic
and non-productive life, drawing their aliment from a society to which
they contribute nothing in return.

Child-bearing must always remain the all-important labour of many
women during some portion of their lives; at the present day it has
become a labour which millions of women are never, by the exigencies
of modern life, called upon or permitted to perform; and upon few or
no women is the demand for child-bearing from youth to age sufficient
to fill or even partially fill her life. Deplorable as it is that any
woman should have to go through life without the joy of motherhood, the
glory and compensation of woman through her long ages of excessive toil
and suffering, the fact has to be faced that, for millions of women,
child-bearing has ceased to be one of the labours that life offers them.

Thus the modern woman stands with the prospect of shrinking fields
of labour on every hand. She is brought face to face with two
possibilities. Either, on the one hand, she may remain quiescent and,
as her old fields of labour fall from her, seek no new: in which case,
as modern civilization advances and her old forms of manual labour are
absorbed by machinery made and guided by highly-trained males, and
she fails to attain to the new complex mental training which would
fit her for fields of mental labour, she is bound to become more or
less parasitic, as vast bodies of women in our wealthier and even our
middle classes have already become, depending on her sex functions for
support, and returning nothing equivalent to society for that which it
expends on her, leaving the major portion of all human labours to man,
thus becoming slowly but surely enervate, as all parasitic peoples and
classes tend to be, while the residual celibate portion of her sex, who
perform no sex function and yet are not fitted by training to enter the
new fields of labour, will be driven to seek in fierce competition with
each other a pitiful livelihood in such remnants of woman's ancient
fields of labour as without training they can retain a hold of.

Such a condition already exists in our societies in certain classes,
where millions of women live supported by males without performing
any productive labour but occasional child-bearing, and often not
that, supplied with the material comforts of life, and sucking in the
results of the mental and physical labours of the race without any
equal return, as the parasite bug or fungus sucks the blood or sap of
its animal or vegetable host; while a large body of other women, often
celibate and childless, are driven to perform the few labours still
open to the untrained or little trained females, who are compelled so
enormously to overcrowd those few occupations that her life can hardly
be maintained by working in them. This condition, if woman remains
quiescent, must tend in time, as civilization spreads and she does not
seek new forms of labour as the old pass from her, to become universal.

This is the one possibility.

On the other hand, woman may determine not to remain quiescent. As her
old fields of labour slip from her under the inevitable changes of
modern life, she may determine to find labour in the new and to obtain
that training which, whether in the world of handicraft or the mental
field of toil, increasingly all-important in our modern world, shall
fit her to take as large a share in the labours of her race in the
future as in the past. She may determine not to sink into a state of
parasitism dependent on her sex functions for support, but to become
what she has been through all the ages of the past, the co-worker
with man and the sustainer of her society. It is this determination
which finds its outcome in the Woman's Movement of our age, a movement
entirely new and revolutionary when regarded from one aspect, yet
profoundly conservative when regarded from another. New, in that it is
an attempt on the part of woman to adapt herself to conditions which
have never existed before on the globe; conservative, in that it is
an attempt to regain what she has lost. For the hand of the woman who
knocks so persistently at the door of the factory for admission to its
labour in all its branches is but the hand of the old spinning woman
following her loom in its transformation and determined to keep her
hold on it; the women who have fought persistently and have at last
in a measure won their right to the training that shall fit them to
be the physicians of their race are but the "wise woman," "skilled
in herbs and all simples," of the past seeking to adapt herself to
new conditions. The Woman's Movement is essentially a movement based
on woman's determination to stand where she has always stood beside
man as his co-labourer. And the moral fervour which is the general
accompaniment of this movement rises from woman's conviction that in
attempting to readjust herself to the new conditions of life and retain
her hold on the social labours of her race, she is benefiting not
herself only, but humanity.

It is a movement impossible in the past and inevitable in the present
to women within whom the virility and activity of the Northern Aryan
races is couched.[62]

     [62] We glance at this matter briefly here as we have dealt
     with it in detail in _Women and Labour_.

Such being the nature of the Woman's Movement of our day, it becomes
readily manifest why the African Boer woman has taken no part in it,
though belonging by descent to the most virile portions of the Northern
Aryan peoples.

For her, the conditions of woman's life and work have not changed; she
still has her full share of the labours and duties of life, and the man
might as well complain of the insufficiency of his field of toil as she
of hers.

When that day comes, as come it will, when the waves of modern material
civilizations with their vast burden of mingled good and evil shall
break round the walls of the most solitary up-country farmhouse in
Africa--when the Boer woman finds her old field of labour slipping
from her; when the roof of her old brick-oven falls in for ever,
because a man-driven cart brings round her bread every morning; when
the needle with which for generations she had stitched the clothing
of her household slips from her fingers or is used only for amusement
and luxury; when her husband orders his trousers from the man-tailor,
and the old bombazine kapje she stitched so carefully for herself is
replaced by a Paris bonnet; when her children almost from infancy pass
into the hands of trained teachers and as soon as youth is reached
leave her roof altogether to gain higher instruction; when her husband
complains at the birth of each new child after the sixth that he does
not know how to pay for its education and rearing; when he with whom
she has shared every business and interest from the selling of a sheep
to the sowing of a field, and who sat in the heat of the afternoons
on the sofa opposite her discussing his plans for to-morrow's work,
goes out every morning to return only at night occupied with callings
and business of which she has no understanding and can take no share;
when, if she complains of loneliness and the emptiness of her life,
he tells her to go out and buy balls and knock them through arches in
her back yard or over a net, as children and youths do, or put a few
flowers in vases--when this day comes and she sits alone, her children
at school, her husband gone and absorbed in business of which she knows
nothing, and she hears the flies buzz in the stillness, as African
flies will still buzz when all else is changed; and when she looks down
at the face of the girl-child still at her breast and realizes that
out of every six girls she bears one will most likely never know the
joys of motherhood; when she knows that of women born of her race and
blood thousands stand at the street corners because no higher use in
life is to be found for them: as she sits there alone she will begin
to reflect, to wonder why these things must be, and to ask herself of
what value her life is, and what she makes of it; and with this thought
the new time will have come. She who has sat still so long will rise
from her chair, she will push aside her coffee-table and knock over her
stove, and will demand of life the right to experiment and see if these
things be inevitable and unchangeable.

She who has been the companion of man in peace and war will know how
to find her way with him into the new fields of life and intellectual
toil. And if it were possible without the intervention of a period of
parasitism and enervation for the old Boer woman of the laager and the
trek, who with her companion man first tamed South Africa and peopled
it, to transform herself in the person of her descendant into the
labouring woman in the new and complex fields of modern civilization,
South Africa might boast in the future as in the past of possessing one
of the most virile womanhoods that the world has seen.

If the Boer woman still sits motionless in her elbow-chair to-day,
when her sisters of the Old World and the New are rising to their feet
to readjust their relation to life--she yet does well to sit there till
her conditions of life change, for it is a throne.

     _Note added in 1898:_ As we were engaged in copying this
     article, it chanced business took us into the country. In
     the veld, some ten miles from the town, we saw approaching
     a large wagon with a team of ten donkeys. Before the
     donkeys plodded a small Hottentot boy of eight years. As
     the wagon approached we saw it was laden with wood and
     dried cakes of manure ("mest," kraal-fuel) for the next
     morning's market in the town; but what the figure was
     upon the front box (voorkist) we couldn't quite make out.
     Then it came nearer and we saw, in truth for the first
     time in our life in such a position, a huge Boer woman of
     perhaps forty. She wore a black dress made without regard
     to fashion with a full short skirt and short jacket. On
     her head she had a large white cotton kapje (sun bonnet),
     such as Boer women make, projecting far forward with white
     curtains hanging on to the shoulders. In her hand she had
     a wagon-whip made from a bamboo eight or nine feet long,
     with the plaited leather cord long enough to reach the
     front donkeys of the span. She sat massively upright on the
     front-box. We looked at her as we passed and she scowled
     at us from under her deep kapje with resentment which I
     knew meant, "Verdomde Engelse vrou, do you think I care for
     your ridicule!" She took her whip from her shoulder and
     gave a resounding clap in the air with it over the backs
     of the donkeys; and she went on one way and we another.
     But if she had known what was in our heart, we might have
     stopped and shaken hands. We found out afterwards that she
     had nine children and was the wife of a man, an invalid and
     too feeble to work, that they were what is known in South
     Africa as "bywoners," poor people living on the land of a
     richer farmer, and that she supported her family entirely.
     She would take her wagon of fuel to the next morning's
     market, and the little clerks and shopkeepers and women
     with flowers in their hats would laugh at her short black
     skirt and kapje and her resolute scowl. Had we but been
     able to sit beside her on her voorkist and been able to
     make clear to her our meaning, we would have said: "The new
     women from all the world over send you their greetings,
     Tante![63] In you and such as you we see our leaders, and
     we are following in your steps. For God's sake, Tante,
     hold fast your seat on the front-chest and your fuel and
     carry it to market in spite of all the fools. I see in you,
     Tante, something that harmonizes strangely with this great
     blue African sky above us and the little koppies to our
     right, and the great plain to our left, and the red sandy
     road in which your donkeys plough, and the thorn-trees here
     and there casting their shade. Like this wide plain, you
     wake in me an aspiration for freedom and independence which
     no woman in the town below us could awaken. For God's sake,
     Tante, never give up your wagon-whip for a mother-of-pearl
     card case, and your kappie for a straw hat with paper
     flowers, and, instead of digging up fuel in your kraal and
     cutting wood, take a croquet mallet for your weapon of
     toil! I see in you, Tante, the secret of many a brave fight
     that your race has fought for freedom, and many still to
     come. When you paste little black spots on your cheeks and
     pencil your eyebrows with black, and wear an eighteen-inch
     waist, and trip with high-heeled shoes with your head on
     one side, there will be no more Amajubas. Keep thy hard
     horned hands, Tante. The day will perhaps come when thy
     sons and daughters will grasp the artist's brush and the
     thinker's pen and the mechanician's tool in place of the
     spade and the axe and the driving-whip; but, till that time
     comes, labour on in thine own field. It is easier to pass
     from any one work to any other work than from parasitism to
     labour; and they will need work well, Tante, who will work
     more usefully, more bravely, than you. The working-women
     from all the world over, whether they toil with the head
     or the hand, indoor or out, send their greetings to you,
     Tante. You are not only the backbone of your race and of
     South Africa, but you and such as you are the backbone of
     the human race. In many an hour of weariness and doubt over
     the future of woman, of South Africa, and humanity, your
     sturdy figure on the wagon chest will come back to us.
     Sit fast, Tante! I see in you a promise of a great free
     labouring race of men and women for South Africa. The world
     is not played out while you sit on your wagon box and clap
     your whip. God bless you! The future is ours, Tante! Let
     the fools laugh. He laughs loudest, who laughs last!"

     [63] Tante = Auntie.





CHAPTER VI

THE BOER AND HIS REPUBLICS


Such is the life and such are the social conditions of the primitive
Boer wherever he is found to-day from the Zambesi to the Cape.

In our cities and villages, the descendant of the Boer is found in
wholly different forms. He is the law-giver, the magistrate, the
successful barrister, the able doctor; everywhere children of the Boer
fill our schools and bear away the prizes; and in the yearly university
lists of successful candidates, the names of the Huguenot-Dutch youths,
and more especially the girls, rank high, and often equal or exceed in
number those of all other residents in the Colony.[64]

     [64] To prevent misunderstanding, it is necessary to state
     that the term Boer, like the term Highland clansman, is
     more than a mere designation of race. Had Scott been
     asked to describe a typical Highland clansman, he would
     at once have described him with certain manners, ideas,
     virtues and wants, forming an absolutely true picture of
     the ancient clansman, which yet might not in any way apply
     to the Duke of Argyle or other cultured descendant of the
     Highlander, who, though being the Chief of a Highland clan,
     and possessing possibly no drop of foreign blood, would
     yet belong to a wholly different type of civilization.
     Probably not one half of the descendants of the Boers are
     Boers to-day, in the sense of speaking only the Taal and
     abiding by seventeenth-century manners and customs; and in
     twenty-five years there will not, we regret to think, be a
     Boer born in South Africa, though there will be more than
     half a million South Africans of Dutch-Huguenot descent.
     Serious political miscalculation is the result of the
     misconception that all Dutch-Huguenot South Africans are
     primitive Boers. In childhood we remember having heard
     that a Scotch Highlander was coming on a visit; and our
     disappointment when, instead of a clansman, speaking
     Gaelic, wearing a kilt, and playing the bagpipes, a
     delicate young man, much addicted to reading Tennyson and
     playing Beethoven, appeared, was probably much like that
     which awaits the foreigner who still in all South African
     Dutchmen expects to see the Boer.

We have often been led to speculate on the marked success of the
descendants of the African Boer in the purely intellectual walks of
life, not only in South Africa, but also when visiting the universities
of Europe. Race, and the healthful and stimulating climate of Africa,
may have their share in the result; but it has sometimes appeared to us
that, given these, a further explanation of the intellectual virility
of the male and female descendants of the Boer may perhaps in part be
found in the fact that for several generations the intellect of the
race lay to a large extent fallow, and was not overtaxed or strained.
Every noted judge or politician, every successful university student,
male or female, is the descendant of men and women who for generations
lived far from the fretful stir of great cities, where petty ambitions
and activities and useless complexity in small concerns tend to wear
out and debilitate the intellect and body. Vast cities, as up to
the present time they have existed, are the hot houses wherein the
human creature, over-stimulated, tends, unless under very exceptional
conditions, to emasculate and decay. In the peaceful silences of the
veld the Boer's nerve and brain have probably reposed and recuperated;
therefore the descendant to-day, thrown suddenly into the hurrying
stream of modern life, appears in it with the sound nerves and
couched-up energy of generations; though whether he will retain these
under modern conditions is to be seen.

The Boer has, as we shall see, founded two republics in South Africa.
The first, the Orange Free State, has a most unique little history.

The earliest white men who crossed the Orange River, and made their
homes in the high grass plains, were emigrant Boers who had trekked
from the Cape Colony. Later, British Sovereignty over the country
was proclaimed; but in the month of February in the year 1854 the
British Government, desiring to restrict British possessions and
responsibilities in South Africa, determined to relinquish the Free
State and its inhabitants. So opposed were the indwellers of the State
to this, that they sent home to England a deputation headed by the
Rev. Andrew Murray, a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, to beg of
the English Government not to give up the territory. But the English
Government refused to entertain their request, regarding the country
as a source of expense and responsibility, without any compensatory
advantages. Diamonds were then undiscovered, and the mineral wealth of
South Africa was unknown. The inhabitants of the territory therefore
gathered themselves together, drew up a constitution and formed
themselves into a republic, under the title of the Orange Free State.
The first sitting of the first Volksraad of the Free State took
place on March 28, 1854. From that time the little Boer republic has
gone on increasing its property and multiplying its inhabitants, its
educational institutions advancing and its agricultural capacities
developing, till to-day it is allowed by all who have studied its
conditions to be one of the most harmonious and well-governed little
nations in existence.

In the year 1869, diamonds were discovered in the Free State territory,
and England, naturally, immediately desired to obtain possession of
that section of the country which contained the Kimberley mines. After
much bitter discussion, the Free State authorities were compelled to
accept ninety thousand pounds for the strip of land which they were not
strong enough for the moment to defend by force of arms.

This loss of their richest diamond field (the Free State still contains
some smaller ones) appeared a severe blow to the Free State, but by it
they were saved from the misfortune which later befell their northern
sister republic, when the discovery of vast quantities of gold made it
an object of desire and almost unconquerable lust to the speculator and
capitalist, Jew and Christian.

       *       *       *       *       *

The history of the northern republic, known as the South African
Republic, or Transvaal, while resembling that of the Free State in many
points, yet differs from it largely in others.

When later we enter into a detailed consideration of the different
states and communities into which South Africa is divided, we shall
closely examine its history and structure; for the moment it is enough
to glance rapidly at its past record, merely to understand the
position of the Boer in South Africa to-day.

The story of the foundation of this state is perhaps the most epic and
unique of all the pages of human history during the last centuries,
but for the present it is enough to note the main facts. In 1795, the
British first conquered the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch East India
Company. The Stadholder, who had fled from Holland to England when the
French Army entered the Dutch provinces, acquiesced in this, but the
South African people were not consulted. In accordance with the Treaty
of Amiens, Great Britain in 1803 restored the Cape to the Batavian
Republic, but a few months later European war broke out afresh. In 1806
Great Britain again conquered it, and held it till 1814, when the King
of the Netherlands formally ceded it to her in return for six millions
pounds sterling. The King was urgently in need of money, and as Great
Britain would not restore the Cape under any circumstances he was glad
to get the six million pounds. The people of Africa were not consulted
in regard to this cession either. It was made without their knowledge
or consent. Since 1814, Great Britain has her possession of the Cape
Colony, a period now of above eighty-six years.

The conditions under which the English Government took possession of
the land were exceedingly propitious. The bulk of the inhabitants,
severed already for a century from Europe, cared little if at all which
European power it was that victualled its fleets and held official rule
at Table Bay, if their rights of free internal action were but left
untouched. The Dutch East India Company, though probably not worse
than other commercial companies, had the peculiar incapacity inherent
in all such bodies for the wise governing of a free people, and had so
alienated the hearts of the South Africans that they had already risen
against it. There was no prejudice against the English as such, and
had a tolerable amount of tact, sympathy and judgment been evinced in
dealing with the early inhabitants of the land, there need have been no
white race problem in South Africa to-day.

The English Government in the early days appears to have been not
unfortunate in some of the persons who were sent out to represent it at
the Cape. In such individuals as General Dundas, the Earl of Cadogan,
and Sir John Cradock, England had not merely well-intentioned servants,
but men of tact and judgment. But she was not always to be so fortunate.

We English are a peculiar people. More often than most other races,
and in this point resembling the Jews, we tend frequently to run to
extremes of contradictory vice and virtue. Exactly as the Jewish race
tends to incarnate itself on the one hand in a Moses, an Isaiah, or
a Spinoza, so far removed from all material and personal ambitions
and desires, and on the other hand in the grasping money-lender and
millionaire; as it is now manifest in a Christ and then in a Judas
Iscariot, so we English appear to manifest among our folk the extremes
of self-sacrificing humanity, magnanimity, and heroism, and of sordid
all-grasping self-seeking. In South Africa we have had our Livingstones
and our George Greys, and our Porters, men, who, across the arid wastes
of political and public life, shed the perfume of large and generous
individualities; men, the mere consciousness of a national relation
with whom is rightly a matter of pride to an English South African's
heart; while, on the other hand, our race has here manifested in
certain of its representatives as much of low ambition, and merciless
greed, as it has been the unfortunate province of any individuals of
any race ever to exhibit.

But between these extremes has lain the bulk of our ordinary officials
and citizens of English descent, with the blended vices and virtues
of our people; and generally possessed of the one quality which
seems to be the mark of our average Englishman. With a great deal of
loyalty toward our own race and a great deal of desire for freedom and
independence for ourselves, and a passion for carrying out our own
methods, we have also a tendency to understand very little of other
races and individuals, as less important and justifiable, and far less
virtuous, than our own. This is perhaps more or less characteristic
of all Teutonic peoples as compared with Celtic; but it appears
certainly more marked in our own English division than in any other.
This disposition has its advantages. We are not easily influenced for
evil or for good; if we do not learn readily, we do not soon give up
that which we have learned; it yields to us a great stability; and as
long as, whether as individuals or as a race, we remain on our own soil
and among our own native surroundings, though it may make life a little
narrow, and somewhat hard, its disadvantages are not serious or vital.
But the moment we are placed in close juxtaposition with other races,
or enter foreign lands, more especially as rulers or controllers, then
that which was an innoxious venial defect becomes a serious, it may be
even a deadly, deficiency.

In certain of our rulers this quality has manifested itself powerfully,
and has led to the most enormous and catastrophic effects. Among such
men was Lord Charles Somerset. While he was an energetic man of unusual
ability, as far as can be judged across the uncertain historical
shadows of seventy years (we are far from accepting as proved all the
charges of extortion and corruption made against him); it was yet
during his rule that one of the most disastrous mistakes made during
England's rule in South Africa took place; and, in truth, his rule in
South Africa may be said to have been one long blunder.

Gracious and obliging to those who submitted absolutely to his own
will, he was a man oppressive and overbearing to all who resisted his
own views. Devoid of imagination and wide human sympathies, he, in
common with certain later representatives of England in South Africa,
failed entirely to understand the nature of the people he came to
govern, the land they lived in, or the conditions evoked by the unique
combination of land and people; and the results of his rule were evil
for South Africa, and yet more disastrous for England.

The mental attitude of the brave free-men who had peopled the untrodden
land and made themselves a home in our African wilderness was for him,
as for some who have succeeded him, a region he was never able by his
mental constitution to penetrate.

Many things had produced pain among this free-folk. The mere fact that
without their consent or desire their land had been placed in the hands
of England; that there were no representative institutions through
which the people could make their voice heard; that the Dutch language
spoken by all the white inhabitants with the exception of a few English
officials was not recognized by the Government; that the Governor
received ten thousand pounds a year and four residences out of the
small revenue, and that he with a few officials absorbed one-fourth of
the entire revenue of the land; that he ruled with the same autocratic
absoluteness with which the Czar of all the Russias is supposed to
control his subjects--all these were sources of friction. But all these
smaller matters might have been removed into the background and made
of little account, had more tact and judgment been shown. But this man
moved along his own course, apparently as oblivious of the thoughts and
affections of the people whom he had to deal with as a dull menagerie
keeper is of the thought and dispositions of his lions.

One of the things most keenly felt by the colonists was the arming
of Hottentots and placing them under English officers as soldiers in
control of the country. The Hottentots are an interesting, lively and
volatile, brave little race, now nearly extinct. They were, except
the Bushmen, the most primitive of African peoples; and anyone who
has lived in countries where primitive dark races are found side by
side with white men will recognize at once how much bitterness will
be evoked by this proceeding, and how cruel is the result in the long
run to the primitive races themselves who are so used. Were England
to-morrow to conquer the United States, and to organize and drill the
American negroes for the purpose of keeping down the white races, not
merely would the whole American population rise to a man, but it would
be the most cowardly and cruel, though indirect, way of assisting in
the destruction of the negro.

From a small beginning in 1815 rose an occurrence which has set an
uncleansable mark on the history of South Africa, and which, through
South Africa, may perhaps ultimately react on other streams of life.

In the Baviaans River Valley, on what was then the extreme northern
frontier of the Colony, lived a farmer called Frederick Bezuidenhout, a
man who had always been opposed to the resignation of the Colony to the
British Government, which had now finally supplanted the Government of
Holland for nine years. He was summoned to appear before the landdrost
of Graaff Reinet for striking a Hottentot, and he refused to obey the
summons. A corps of Hottentot soldiers under the command of Lieutenant
Rousseau was sent to arrest him. They went up the wild and beautiful
valley of the Baviaans River, till they arrived at Bezuidenhout's farm
near the banks of the stream. Bezuidenhout and one of his servants
stationed themselves behind the stone wall of the sheep-kraal near
the house. When ordered to surrender in the name of George the Third,
King of England, he refused to do so, and fired his gun, but no one
was touched. He then retired to the house and slipped out at the back
before the Hottentots could capture him, and climbed into a krantz, or
precipice, across the river, accompanied by one of his native servants.

We have visited the spot; it is a scene of singular loveliness. The
wild rocky African mountains rise on every hand; at the bottom of
the valley is a tiny plain which may be cultivated; mimosa and other
typical African trees are scattered about, and the krantz, or great
precipice of broken rock, into which Bezuidenhout climbed, rises
precipitously from the bank of the river, some rocks jutting up like
fortified towers. From the lower, the riverside, this krantz is almost
if not quite inaccessible; but by going round and climbing the hill
you can easily come down upon the top. The place in which Bezuidenhout
hid is often called a cave, but in the common acceptation of the term
it is not such. The rocks which form a large proportion of our African
precipices are of a peculiar formation, apt to split vertically into
huge blocks, between which great chasms are often formed, and many of
us remember playing among such chasms in our childhood. It was into
such a cavity that Bezuidenhout retired, open to the sky at the top
and forming a kind of little room to be readily entered into from the
top only, while in the walls are small chinks and holes through which
one may look out and see the river and plain below. At the time of the
year at which we visited the spot, hundreds of the red African aloe
flower on their long spikes were in bloom at the top of the krantz, a
large wild bird had built its huge nest on the point of the rocks at
the top of the opening, and the trees springing out of the krantz were
in leaf. Some state there was one servant with him, others two. The
soldiers are said to have discovered the spot by seeing the muzzle of a
gun gleam from one of the openings in the side. Finding they could not
reach it by climbing up from the river, they went round on to the hill
and came upon it from the top of the crags. The soldiers called upon
Bezuidenhout to surrender, but he refused, declaring he would never
be seized alive by Hottentots. A volley of shots was fired down from
the top and Bezuidenhout fell dead. His native servants surrendered,
and were afterwards tried, but acquitted as being merely dependents.
Towards evening his brother, Jan Bezuidenhout, came, and with the other
relatives removed the body, which was buried the next day.

Over the grave impassioned speeches were made by friends, especially
by Jan Bezuidenhout, who declared that they would never rest till
the Hottentot corps was driven out of the country, and their wrongs
were redressed. So began the first small uprising against England of
1815. On the 9th of November a little body of farmers met at Diederick
Mulder's and resolved to take up arms, but were betrayed by a spy,
who hurried away to inform the English officials. Five days later
the little commando, under Willem Krugel, numbering fifty men, took
the oath to stand by each other till death. "I swear by God Almighty
never to rest till I have driven the oppressors of my nation from this
land." On November the 18th they were surrounded by a large body of
troops under Colonel Cuyler; eighteen of the men surrendered, while
the rest fled. Five men, Jan Bezuidenhout, Cornelius Faber, Andries
Meyer, Stefanus and Abraham Bothma, resolved to fly from the country
to take refuge in Kaffirland, and with their wagons and families to
cross the river. An English major, with one hundred Hottentots and
twenty-two white men, followed them. In the Winterberg Mountains, the
wagons of two of the men were first overtaken and captured; but Jan
Bezuidenhout, Cornelius Faber, his brother-in-law, and Stefanus Bothma
were out-spanned near a small stream by a ravine in the mountains.
They had lit their fire, and Bothma went to the stream to fetch water;
when a band of Hottentot soldiers, under an English lieutenant, who
were hidden by the stream, fired on them. Bothma had no arms and was
captured, Faber returned the fire, and fell wounded in the shoulder
and was also captured. There were now left of the fugitives only Jan
Bezuidenhout, his wife, and their son, a boy of twelve years, all of
whom were at their wagon. The Hottentots gathered round the wagon and
called to them to surrender. Bezuidenhout's only reply was to fire.
His wife stepped to his side. "Let us die together," she said. And she
stood beside him re-loading his guns. He soon fell mortally wounded.
She is said to have seized his gun and fired, but was struck by a
bullet, and her son also was wounded. Bezuidenhout died in a few hours,
and the wife and son were made prisoners.

Thirty-six persons in all were arrested for this rising and were tried
on the 16th of December--a day which became celebrated in the later
history of South Africa, being observed in the Dutch republics as a
public holiday, under the title of Dingaan's Day, because on that day
the great Zulu army of Dingaan was conquered by the Boers at Blood
River. The same day is also, curiously enough, memorable as the day of
the outbreak of the first war of independence.[65]

     [65] On December 15, 1899, was fought the battle of Colenso.

The prisoners all fully admitted having taken the oath. On the 22nd of
January, 1816, they were sentenced, six of them to death, to be hanged
at Slachter's Nek, where the oath had been sworn by them; while the
rest, after witnessing the execution of their fellows, were to undergo
various punishments, ranging from banishment for life to imprisonment
and fines. Martha Faber, the widow of Jan Bezuidenhout, and the sister
of Cornelius Faber, one of the men to be hanged, was sentenced to
banishment for life from the eastern part of the colony. Krugel's
sentence was afterward changed to banishment for life, because he had
taken no part in armed resistance and had done the British Government
great service in the Kaffir wars; but Hendrick Prinsloo, Cornelius
Faber, Stefanus Bothma, Abraham Bothma, and Theunis de Klerk were
sentenced to death by hanging on the 9th of March, 1816.

These sentences were within the letter of the law, but no blood
had actually been shed by any of the prisoners in their small and
abortive rising. It was universally supposed that the Governor would
exercise his prerogative of mercy, and commute the sentence to one of
banishment. But it was not so. On the 9th of March, 1816, a scaffold
was raised on the ridge of stony land uniting two mountains, near which
the oath had been sworn, and which has since been known throughout
South Africa as Slachter's Nek, or the Butcher's Neck. The train from
Port Elizabeth to the Midlands passes this spot daily, with the Rish
River flowing to the right and the neck on the left. Here were brought
the five men sentenced to be hanged, and the thirty-two who were to
witness it; one of them, Frans Marais, had been sentenced to be tied
with a rope around his neck to the foot of the gallows, while his
companions were being hanged.

A great crowd of people stood about, hoping and feeling convinced, even
to the last moment, that a reprieve would come. Colonel Cuyler with
three hundred soldiers guarded the scaffold from the people. The men
asked to be allowed to sing a hymn before they mounted. Their voices
were firm and clear. They appeared perfectly resigned. No reprieve
came. There was a moment of awful silence in the crowd as the drop
fell. But the scaffold was not strong enough to bear the weight of the
bodies of the five powerful men; it broke, and the men, half strangled,
were thrown to the earth. Then a wild and passionate cry arose from
the people; wives, mothers, sisters, and relatives of the condemned
men cried, as they rushed toward the gallows, that God Himself had
intervened, and the men given back to them. It was not to be. As soon
as they had recovered consciousness, the gallows were repaired and the
men were forced to remount; the three hundred soldiers guarded the
scaffold, and the work was done. A deep, low murmur is said to have
risen from the crowd as it was completed.

The relations of the dead men asked for the bodies, but were refused;
an order having been given that they should be buried under the
gallows.[66] So came to an end the day of Slachter's Nek--the worst
day's work for England that up to recent times has yet been done in
South Africa. Certainly the Governor was within the letter of the law.
Technically speaking, nations have recognized that any body of persons
strong enough to resist by force the mastership over any strip of the
earth's surface and over the individuals inhabiting it, may, if these
individuals oppose the will of the stronger, be termed rebels, and if
they seek to resist by force be hanged. But there are other modes of
regarding life than the technical. England, without the consent of
these men, had taken over their land nine years before--a land which
they and their fathers, and not the Dutch Government or the East India
Company, had won from the wilderness and peopled. They were a small
section of the population, and they had taken no single life in all
their uprising (it has not even been stated that the shots fired by
Bezuidenhout and his wife grazed any of the Hottentots!)

     [66] Some persons going to visit the grave found the hand
     of one of the dead men, supposed to be that of Theunis de
     Klerk, protruding from the earth with the finger pointing
     right upward. It was taken to indicate that the men had
     been buried alive. But there is no reason necessarily to
     believe this. The soldiers had probably thrown only a
     thin layer of earth over the bodies, which being buried
     immediately while still warm, the muscles had probably
     contracted after death and forced the hand out with the
     rigid finger.

Had Lord Charles Somerset exercised his prerogative and extended
mercy to these five men, he would have done more to consolidate the
English rule in South Africa than, had he been able to introduce two
hundred thousand men, he would have been able to effect. In the lives
of English soldiers alone, England has probably paid at the rate of
over a thousand a head for each man hanged; and if she could that day
have purchased the necks of those five Boers at ten millions each, they
would have been cheaply bought.

It is a curious property of blood shed on the scaffold for political
offences that it does not dry up.

Blood falling on the battlefield sinks into the earth; it may take a
generation, or it may take two, or more, for it wholly to disappear,
but it is marvellous how the memory of even the most bloody conflict,
between equally armed foes, does, as generations pass, fade.

But blood shed on a scaffold is always fresh. The scaffold may be
taken down, the bodies buried, but in the memory of the people it
glows redder and redder, and with each generation it is new-shed; it
sanctifies, sacrificially, the cause it marked. It may be questioned
whether anywhere in the history of nations, blood, judicially shed for
political purposes, whether the actual means were rifle-bullet, axe,
rope, or the slow anguish of long imprisonment, has ever really aided
the cause in which it was shed. It appears even quite possible that if
Charles the First had been killed on the battlefield instead of being
beheaded, there might have been no Restoration in England.

The African people dispersed quietly and went back to their farms; but
the picture of Slachter's Nek was engraved in the national heart.

After this blunder, Lord Charles Somerset remained in Africa for some
years. He was at last recalled, not on the ground of his treatment of
the old inhabitants, but in answer to the complaints of a few newly
arrived English colonists, by whom he was charged with corruption and
oppression.

Burke had promised to move for his impeachment, but his wealth and rank
protected him (he was an elder brother of the Lord Raglan afterwards
so notorious for his conduct of the Crimean War), and he died at
Brighton in the year 1831.

But his work lived on, and, in addition to other causes, helped to
produce that bitterness in the hearts of South Africans which led to
that important movement known in South African history as the Great
Trek.

In 1828 it was finally enacted that not only was the African Taal,
though the only language of almost the entire people, not to be used
in law courts and public documents, but even petitions written in that
language were no longer to be received by the English Government; and
a little later, men speaking their native language, in the land of
their birth, were not allowed to sit on juries unless they could speak
English, a language they had no facilities for acquiring. Other causes
worked in the same direction towards the embitterment of the minds of
the people against English rule. Even the most generous act recorded
of our English race was a cause of fresh suffering and wrongs. In 1830
the English people, guided by its best element, voted a sum of twenty
million pounds for the liberation of the slaves throughout the English
colonies and possessions; and a portion of this sum it was determined
to expend in buying and setting free the slaves in South Africa.

It is a curious exemplification of the absolute impossibility of
guiding wisely, justly, or successfully the affairs of a nation six
thousand miles distant, which has again and again been exemplified in
the history of South Africa, that this plan miscarried. An intention,
which leaves Europe a white-garbed bird of peace and justice, too often
turns up, after its six thousand miles' passage across the ocean, a
black-winged harbinger of war and death.

The intention of the English folk who voted the sum was generous; in
reality, owing to the blundering of officials and the cunning and
rapacity of speculators (already the poisoners of English rule in South
Africa), all went wrong. Very little of the money voted ever reached
the hands of the people for whom it was intended. Men and women who
had been in affluence before were everywhere reduced to absolute
beggary; and they had the additional irritation of knowing that,
while they were supposed to have been generously dealt with, they had
received nothing. When one remembers that the bitterest war of this
century was waged, only forty years ago, between the English-speaking
folk of America, when one half of the community endeavoured to compel
the other to relinquish its slaves, it is a matter of astonishment that
the slave-owners of the Cape Colony so quietly gave up their claims,
claims which till that time had been recognized by every nation on
earth as wholly just and defensible.

But that which most embittered the hearts of the colonists was the
cold indifference with which they were treated by their rulers, and
the consciousness that they were regarded as a subject and inferior
race. It is this consciousness which among a high-spirited people forms
the bitterest dreg to the cup of sorrow put to the lips of a people
governed by aliens, and one for which no material advantage can atone.
In the eastern parts of the Cape Colony the feeling of bitterness
became so intense that about the year 1836 large numbers of individuals
determined to leave for ever the Colony and the homes which they had
created, and to move northward to the regions yet untouched by the
white man, where they might form for themselves new homes, and raise an
independent state. It is this movement that is known in South African
history as "The Great Trek."

Under such leaders as Carel Johannes Trichard, Andries Potgieter
(the man after whom the town of Potchefstroom in the Transvaal is
called), Gerrit Maritz, and Piet Mauritz Retief (after whom the town
of Pietermaritzburg in Natal is named), the people gathered themselves
together in families, men, women, and children, and, selling their
farms and movable property for whatever they could get, in-spanned
their great ox-wagons, and, taking with them such of their flocks
and herds as they could remove, left their birthland for ever, and
moved northward, sometimes in large bodies amounting to two hundred
souls. Crossing the Orange River, which was then the boundary of the
Cape Colony and beyond which the British control did not extend,
they entered the country, which is now the Orange Free State, and
crossing the Caledon River moved still northward towards what is now
the Transvaal. Most of these men came from the eastern and midland
districts of the Colony, and were the descendants of the men who had
already resisted the rule of the Chartered Dutch East India Company
and endeavoured to found their own republic in the midlands; men in
whom the self-governing republican instinct, inherited with their Dutch
blood and sucked in with their mother's milk, was strong as probably
in no other race on earth, unless it be the Swiss. With the exception
of Piet Retief, few, if any, of them were from the old districts of
the Western Province. Among those in Andries Potgieter's trek was one
Casper Krüger, from the Colesberg district of the Cape Colony. He took
with him all his family, among them a lad, just over ten years of age,
later known as Paul Krüger, President of the South African Republic.

Fully to describe the sufferings, struggles, and wanderings of these
people, before they succeeded in founding their republic in the
Transvaal, would far exceed the limit we have set ourselves. But to
understand the Boer of to-day and the problems of to-day we must very
rapidly glance at the march of the fore-trekkers.

At the time of the Boer trek, the great power in central and eastern
South Africa was the Zulu nation. Under their renowned chief Tchaka,
one of the most remarkable military geniuses of history, possessing to
the full the vices and virtues of his type, the small Zulu tribe had
become a great nation, dominating over and treading down other native
tribes and races. Killing the older men and women and absorbing the
youths and maidens into his own people, as he conquered tribe after
tribe, he had by his wonderful military discipline produced a vast
army of warriors, before whom no native people could stand. In 1828,
Tchaka was assassinated by his half-brother Dingaan, who, without
sharing his genius, possessed his fault as a ruthless destroyer
of men. At the time of the Great Trek, Dingaan ruled over the Zulu
nation and its dependencies in Natal and Zululand. In the Transvaal,
a division of the Zulus, which had broken from Tchaka under their
celebrated warrior-chief Umsiligaas, had, under the name of the
Matabele, founded a great warrior nation, moulded after the ideal of
Tchaka; they devastated the lands and destroyed the native tribes which
resisted their power. When the first party of the fore-trekkers under
Potgieter arrived in the northern districts of the Free State, the
native tribes there welcomed them as a possible assistance against the
inroads of the powerful Matabele. The whole country was in those days
filled with game to an almost inconceivable extent, and it was largely
on the fruit of the gun that the fore-trekkers lived. In 1836 their
first great conflict with the Matabele under Umsiligaas took place.
The fore-trekkers had spread themselves out in small parties, camping
with their wagons near the Vaal River, and the Matabele attacked them
wherever they were found in small numbers.

Near what is now known as Erasmus Drift on the Vaal River, a small
party in five waggons was suddenly surrounded and several of the Boers
were killed. Barend Liebenberg's little party was taken by surprise,
and six men, two women, and four children, with twelve native servants
were destroyed, and three white children, a boy and two girls, carried
away captive. The great Matabele army then rapidly advanced to where
the main body of the emigrants had encamped at a spot now known as
Vechtkop, about twenty miles from the present village of Heilbron,
in the Free State. Paul Krüger, then a child, can still remember the
preparations for defence, and relates how the wagons were drawn up in
a square, mimosa branches cut down and dragged to the wagons, women
and young children helping in the labour; and how these branches were
tied together by chains to fill in the spaces between the fore and back
wheels of the wagons to prevent the Matabele warriors from crawling up
between them.

Early in the morning of the 2nd of October the vast army of Umsiligaas
was reported as approaching. Commandant Sarel Cilliers, who commanded
the laager, found that he had in all, including boys of twelve and
fourteen, forty men with whom to meet the vast horde, and the women and
girls were busy smelting lead to mould bullets for the old-fashioned
guns.

Cilliers and thirty-two of his men rode out to meet the enemy upon the
open plain, where Matabele were formed into great squares upon Tchaka's
system, and sat upon the ground, each man with his shield before him,
as was always done preparatory to a great attack.

Cilliers sent out a loud-voiced envoy to inquire why they came to
fight the white men who had done them no harm. At once the thousands
of warriors sprang to their feet with the mighty war cry: "Umsiligaas
alone has the right to speak!" Brandishing their shields and assegais,
the front ranks deployed to right and left, forming those two horns,
so celebrated in Zulu warfare, which were intended to inclose the
enemy. The emigrants mounted their horses, reloading their heavy
muskets as they went and firing at the points of the horns; and with
great difficulty, in an hour and a half, they reached the laager.
Here men, women, and children knelt down for a short prayer, while
the Matabele indunas were massing the column for the grand assault.
Then followed a desperate fight. The Zulus poured forward in thousands
with magnificent courage, even seizing hold of the wagons with their
hands to tear them apart, and piercing the wagon sails again and again
with their assegais. The Boers fought with desperate determination,
the women reloading the guns and handing them to the men who stood at
the corners of the laager. In the end, with heavy loss on both sides,
the Matabele were repulsed, but in their retreat they swept away with
them all the sheep and cattle of the emigrants. Hunger and desolation
then reigned in the laager, and had it not been for the timely arrival
of another party of emigrants all must have perished. Later on, the
combined emigrants followed up the Matabele to their strongholds in the
Transvaal in the hope of recovering their goods and the lost children.
After long and bitter conflict the old flintlock gun conquered, and
the Matabele moved northward towards the territory where they are now
found, known as Matabeleland.

Of this war, it can only be said that South Africa has no reason to be
ashamed of the way in which either of her children, black or white,
fought. On the one side there was the Zulu with his great theory of
imperial expansion, not wholly unpardonable in a savage, resenting
the intrusion of any other powers within his sphere of influence,
if not into his actual territory, and determined to use his mighty
armies to extend his rule. On the other hand, the white emigrant, in
his small and feeble numbers, but armed with his old flintlock gun
(which, though it took some minutes to load and discharge once, was a
formidable weapon when compared with the best Zulu assegai), who was
equally determined to make a home for himself and his wife and children
in the great South African wilds. It was a fine, free fight, if any
conflict between humans can be so termed. One looks back to it with
none of that pain with which the generous spirit beholds the conflict
of overwhelming strength with weakness. When two equally prepared
gladiators enter the arena, repulsive though the sight may be, one may
well feel sympathy with both. This was no case of blowing naked savages
to fragments with Maxims or Winchester repeating rifles, and, if in the
end the old flintlock gun conquered, there were times when it seemed
more than probable the victory would be on the other side. The African
lion and the African tiger rolled together on the ground in a fair
and free fight. If the Boer fell, with him fell wife and children; he
fought for life and a home as the Zulu fought. Behind him there was no
vast civilized power to whom, when he had provoked war, he could cry
for aid, and whose hired soldiers could wipe out and be avenged upon
the feebler foe. Alone, unbacked by any extraneous force, dependent
on his own right arm, the Boer went forth. South Africa has no reason
to be ashamed of the way in which either of her sons, black or white,
fought in those old, terrible days.

In the highly cultured citizen of the end of the nineteenth century,
we rightly demand, as a primal and common virtue, breadth of human
sympathy and catholic impartiality of intellectual judgment, unwarped
by personal interests, which is the attribute of the developed man; but
we are yet able, in regarding more primitive times and men who laid
no claim to our transcendent modern virtues, to accept indomitable
courage and love of independence, though the most primitive of virtues,
as a possible foundation from which later all those higher mental
beatitudes, which we have a right to demand from the self-exulting
nineteenth-century human, may spring. In these two primitive virtues
neither Boer nor Zulu ever showed himself wanting in those old days.

While one part of the emigrant body remained in the Transvaal and
Northern Free State, another passed over the Drakensberg Mountains into
Natal, under a man who stands forth as the most romantic figure among
the early fore-trekkers, Piet Retief, a man of some culture, and of a
singular generosity of nature.

The land of Natal was at that time practically uninhabited. Tchaka and
his warriors had swept the country clean of its native tribes; but he
considered it within his sphere of imperial influence. When Retief and
his companions, who went to examine the land, looked down at it from
the top of Spion Kop, they saw that the land was fair and good and
almost wholly uninhabited, and they made overtures to Dingaan, Tchaka's
successor, who resided at his kraal on the White Umvolosi, a hundred
miles distant in Zululand, for the right without let or hindrance
from the Zulus to inhabit this country. Dingaan readily consented,
on one condition--that the emigrants should obtain from a Basuto
tribe some cattle they had taken from his people. This was easily
done, and Dingaan expressing complete satisfaction, a thousand wagons
containing the Boer families trekked over the Drakensberg into Natal,
and scattered over the unpeopled country along the banks of the Upper
Tugela and Mooi Rivers. Piet Retief, with sixty-five followers, some of
whom were mere lads of fifteen or sixteen, went to visit Dingaan at
his kraal on the White Umvolosi, in order that their agreement might be
finally ratified. Some advised caution in going, but Retief fearlessly
laughed their counsels to scorn. Dingaan met his visitors with much
apparent joy and kindliness. Great dances were given in their honour,
and an agreement of permanent peace and fellowship was drawn up by
Mr. Owen, the missionary who was with Dingaan. On the last day, when
the party came to bid farewell to the chief, they were directed, as
usual, to lay aside their weapons when entering the king's presence,
and they did so. They were then offered Kaffir beer to drink. Then,
in an instant, at a given signal from Dingaan, his warriors fell on
them. "Seize the wizards!" he cried in Kaffir. Some of them defended
themselves gallantly with their pocket knives, but all were at last
overpowered and dragged to the official place of execution, a ridge of
high rocks on one side of the kraal, where their brains were knocked
out. Their bodies were then left exposed. Not one of the men escaped.

The manner of their death was recorded by the missionary who, as soon
as possible, left the Zulu kraal with all his party, fearing the same
fate for himself.

On that day a great army of ten thousand Zulu warriors moved forward
silently to attack the scattered emigrants in Natal.

At a spot near to the present village of Weenen ("Weeping"--so
called in remembrance of that terrible day), which lies not very far
from the village of Colenso, the Zulu army killed an entire body of
emigrants--forty-one men, fifty-six women, one hundred and eighty-five
children, and two hundred and fifty coloured servants. The bodies
were mutilated, and neither woman nor child were spared; some were
found with as many as thirty spear-wounds in them. All the white souls
in Natal would have perished had not three young men escaped, who
warned the remaining scattered parties of their danger. The wagons
were hastily drawn together into little laagers, and after a long and
desperate struggle the Zulus were repulsed, women standing beside the
men, reloading their guns and aiding almost as greatly in the defence
as the men.

Then the remnant of the people gathered themselves together to discuss
what should be done. A few had given up all hope, and even spoke of
retracing their steps across the hundreds of weary miles they had
traversed. But the women--then as always, the strength of the South
African people, and who resembled more those old Teutonic ancestresses
of our northern races, of whom Tacitus tells us that "they dared
with their men in war and suffered with them in peace," than we in
the drawing-room and the ballroom--the women raised their voices
unanimously, and cried that there should be no surrender; there, where
their fellows had fallen, they would found their republic or die, and
they, who had faced death, beside man, were listened to. In one battle
ten Boers fell, among them Piet Uys, the father of a family noted down
to the present day for courage, whose young son, a mere lad, seeing his
father unhorsed and stabbed by the Zulu soldiers, rushed back and died
beside him.[67]

     [67] It was a younger son of this noted family who so
     distinguished himself for bravery in a later Zulu war, when
     fighting side by side with English soldiers, and who is
     reported, with I know not how much truth, to have saved the
     life of a noted English General.

But in the end, at the great and terrible battle of Blood River,
December 16, 1838, the Zulus were defeated, and Dingaan fled. His
brother Panda was made king in his stead. From that time the 16th of
December has been always a holiday in the African Republic.

When the Boer army arrived at Umgungunhlovo, Dingaan's kraal, they
found still the bodies of their sixty-six comrades, which after
eighteen months were yet untouched by beasts of prey, though dried
and decayed. In Retief's leathern bag was found the paper signed with
Dingaan's cross, giving them permission to inhabit the land of Natal,
from the Drakensberg to the sea at Durban, from the Tugela River to the
Umzimvobu.

In this land the Boers now settled down to plant their new Republic. At
Pietermaritzburg, named after their dead leader, they built the church,
standing to this day, which they had vowed to their God if He enabled
them to conquer Dingaan; and they planted their seat of government
there. But it was not long before the English Government at the Cape
Colony, many hundred miles away, became uneasy at the success of the
Boer in realizing his dream of founding an independent state, and there
was issued a proclamation stating that Natal was henceforth to become
a British territory; and soldiers were despatched to Natal to support
this claim.

We know of few pages in the history of our English imperial expansion
which fill us with more shame than this. We had already more land in
the Colony than we could people, and these folk, at the cost of much
life, had travelled far to find freedom from our rule. After a war,
the most even and the most justifiable of all those of which South
African history has any record between a black race and a white, the
fore-trekkers had saved themselves from Dingaan's power; and when they
had set about the realization of their dream and the foundation of
their little republic, we stepped in. We had the ships, and the men,
and the money, and we crushed their dream--for the moment.

At Durban, the seaport of the Republic, there was some sharp fighting
between the soldiers we sent and the Republicans, but in their infant
state the Republicans were wholly unable to compete in numbers or arms
with the forces we could put in the field.

When the Commissioner sent by the English authorities to annex the
land arrived at Pietermaritzburg, there were bitter and stormy scenes.
Most of the inhabitants absolutely refused to remain under British
rule. There was a mass meeting of women, whose leader, the ancient
wife of Erasmus Smit, the old fore-trekkers' preacher, addressed the
Commissioner for two hours,[68] painting a picture of all they had
suffered in founding their new state and of the injustice done in
robbing them of it.

     [68] Having, it is said, closed the doors so that he could
     not escape.

At the end of the meeting, the women passed an unanimous resolution
that rather than submit to English rule they would leave the land
which, with so much blood and anguish, they had won. "We go across
these mountains to freedom or to death," said the old woman, pointing
toward the Drakensberg Mountains, which, through the names of Laing's
Nek and Amajuba, have since become known to all the world.

Over these mountains almost the whole population of Natal passed,
leaving only about three hundred families, the ancestors of the present
ten thousand Boer inhabitants of Natal.

Those who passed over the Drakensberg Mountains joined the bodies of
fore-trekkers who had remained on the north side of the mountains,
and entered into that great region where no British flag had yet ever
waved, which no Englishman had ever dreamed of claiming, and which was
left almost desolate and uninhabited as the result of Mosilikatzi's[69]
raids. Here they founded their republic, known as the _Transvaal_ or
_South African Republic_.

     [69] Mosilikatsi and Umsilikazi (Umsiligaas, p. 238) are
     the same person--S.C.C.S.

By the Sand River Convention, ratified by Sir George Cathcart in 1852,
it was agreed that the English Government should not follow them into
the territories north of the Vaal River; that their independence should
be recognized; and that there should be no attempt on the part of the
British Government to interfere with their government or management of
their own affairs.

The most interesting point with regard to the South African Boer is
his astonishing gift for forming new societies, and, as it were,
instinctively creating for himself a new social structure, under
whatever conditions he may find himself.

The South African Boer forms never a mob. With his curious love of
liberty and independent action, he combines a yet more curious instinct
for cohesion and inter-action. There is no folk on earth which has
exemplified, as this little mixed Teutonic people has done, the ancient
Teutonic instinct for combining a high standard of personal freedom
with a strong social organization.

Take at random a handful of African Boers; let them wander away into
some desert and be unheard of for a few years. When you find them
again, they are a people organized and inter-acting, with the true old
Teutonic institutions--the district gatherings, the central government,
the force for defence composed of all the burghers, under their local
chiefs--always the same outline preserved, and always instinctive
re-adaptations and variations according to the varying conditions of
the new society. Studying this matter, one is forcibly reminded of the
instinct in a swarm of bees, which, however often removed from spot
to spot, still seek at once to deposit their old hexagonal cells, yet
always varying the shape of the hive as they are compelled to build it
between two plates of glass, in a hollow tree, or in a hand-made hive.
To the scientific student of the evolution of human societies nothing
in the range of modern history is more interesting and curious than the
analytical study of the little states which the South African Boer has
always tended to deposit in varied yet kindred forms.

In the South African Republic, or Transvaal, the Boer has shaped a
social organism singularly strong, and at the same time plastic; the
external governing power being responsive to the will of the electorate.

Of the latter history of this state it must suffice to note a fact,
perhaps not unknown to any student of modern affairs, that in the
'seventies of the nineteenth century an attempt was made to wrest their
country from this people and to annex it to the British Empire. All
the world knows how at Paardekraal, on the 13th of December, 1880, the
little nation gathered itself together, each man, taking a stone in his
hand, placed it upon a heap beside those of his fellows, swearing as he
set it there that he would never lay down his arms till the Republic
was freed--a heap which has been carefully preserved as a national
monument. How at Ingogo, Laing's Nek, and Amajuba they fought, all the
world knows also. How England, dominated at that moment by that wiser
and more far-seeing Jekyll, who in the past has never failed to exist
somewhere within her bosom, ready for action when not overborne by his
fellow, the purblind and all-grasping Hyde, restored to the Republic
the recognition of its independence; thereby saving England from the
indelible disgrace of a persistent attempt to crush a great and free
little people, and from the permanent loss of South Africa, which,
had she persisted in her course, would long ere this have yielded
her no foothold in the southern seas, this also all the world knows.
How, gold being found in vast quantities in the Republic, the eyes
of all men of greed and wealth-lust turned towards this little land
from all parts; how the Chartered Company incorporated by the Hyde of
England while the Jekyll slept, having become needy and greedy, and
finding the land given it not filling its pockets as it desired, could
wait no longer, and sent in an armed force to take possession of the
goldfields; how the Republicans started to their feet to drive out the
invaders; and how at Doorn Kop, on the 3rd of January, 1896, was fought
the most memorable battle of modern times; for here, for the first time
in history, the military force of the international capitalist and
speculator, armed, hired, and equipped by him, without even the decent
covering of a national cloak to hide from the world the ugly outline
of its greedy form, met the simple citizens of a state, farmers and
peasants and townsmen, who leaped up from their New Year's feast, and
thrusting a slice of bread or New Year's cake into their pockets, and
a hunk of meat into their saddle-bags, mounted and were off to meet
the foe; met it and defeated it--so opening the long campaign of the
twentieth century which began between two little African kopjes and
which will end on the earth's mightiest battlefields--this, too, all
the world knows.[70]

     [70] The yet later story of how another attempt was made
     by the same hands in new and subtler form, beguiling by
     misrepresentation a great people into lending them its
     national mantle to cover the grotesque misshapenness of
     their nakedness, in order the more easily to grasp the
     gold and land, and with it the independence of this little
     nation--this, and much that followed, is known in rough
     outline to all. But for the present we have gone far enough
     to be able roughly to estimate what the position is of the
     African Boer and of his nineteenth century descendant in
     South Africa, at the present day.

The descendants of the original white inhabitants of the land,
entering it a century before we English folks arrived, have, as we
have seen, spread themselves out over the whole country, and now form
the substratum of the white African Nation. In the Cape Colony,
which is still politically connected with the Island of Britain, they
number at least three out of five of the white inhabitants of the
country. In their lovely old homes in the Western Province, buried
away among oaks, and surrounded by vineyards and fruit gardens laid
out by their ancestors two centuries ago, the farming descendants of
the Dutch-Huguenot live with simple plentifulness amid their supremely
beautiful surroundings. In the remote Midlands and Northern and Eastern
frontier districts of the Cape Colony they still live often, as we
have described, in their simple homes, mighty men of the gun, and
rulers over flocks and herds. While in our Colonial towns and villages
the descendants of these farming folks are found, whom education
has transformed, often in one generation, from the Taal-speaking
Boer to the foremost rank of the nineteenth-century civilization and
intellectual culture; they are, as we have seen, often among our most
able lawyers, our best judges, our most skilful magistrates and civil
servants; while the lists of our university examinations are filled
with the names of both men and women of Boer descent.

Such is the Boer and such are his descendants in the Cape Colony to-day.

In the two Republics which he has founded he will also be found in
both the types, the old and the new; now as the old fore-trekker, with
the faiths and virtues and the vices of the seventeenth century strong
in him; then as the cultured professional man and the child of the
nineteenth century, with all its additions and omissions.

In the Colony of Natal, the northern part is still mainly populated
by Boers, the descendants of those men who there founded their early
Republic of Natal, and remained when the rest of their fellows trekked
across the Drakensberg into the Transvaal.

Taking South Africa thus as a whole, the descendants of the
Dutch-Huguenots outnumber the white men of all other races put
together, and immensely those of purely British descent. But everywhere
the process of intermarriage has been so vast and rapid during the
last thirty years that it is no more possible to draw a quite sharp
dividing line between the two races. There are probably to-day no large
South African families, Dutch or English, which have not during the
last thirty years intermarried. And in another generation the word
Dutchman and Englishman will have lost all meaning and be heard no
more; we shall then be only the blended South African Nation.




CHAPTER VII

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE BOER


Before turning to consider the English element in our society, we would
linger yet a moment, before we finally leave the Boer, to consider some
of the many assertions made with regard to him, and what of truth or
falsehood appears to us to lie in them, and, above all, how they have
come to be made.

It has been said, though it will probably never be said again by any
person who knows what courage is, that the Boer is a coward and cannot
fight. How, in view of his history during the last two hundred years,
this ever came to be said, even by his bitterest foes, has appeared to
us always a matter of some astonishment. We can explain it in any way
only when we consider the fact that bravery, like every other virtue,
may assume more than one shape, and that men accustomed to recognize
it under one aspect do not readily recognize it under another. In the
animal world, there is the courage of the bull terrier always eager
for a conflict, and seeking a fellow combatant for the pleasure of
fighting him, and the courage of the mastiff, whom you may even tread
on with impunity as he lies sleeping at your foot, but who, should his
master or his master's property be attacked, may be more dangerous than
any bull terrier; there is the courage of the tigress robbed of her
young, who faces fearlessly fire and death to regain it, yet at other
times prefers to slink away from man, and there is the courage of the
game-cock who chafes angrily against the bars to reach the game-cocks
in other cages; and the courage of the red African mier-kat, who
attacked, will try to get to his hole, and, if he cannot, will fight
fearlessly to the death.[71]

     [71] There are three species of mier-kat generally known in
     South Africa, two of which are mild and easily tamed, and
     the red mier-kat, a creature absolutely fearless and which
     no one has ever succeeded in taming.

In the human world, there is the same diversity of courage; there is
the courage of the woman robbed of her infant, who climbs where no
other human foot dare tread and recovers it from the eagle's eyrie,
while the crowds below look on with breathless astonishment, and the
courage of the peasant woman, who, after being broken three times on
the wheel, on being asked to give up the names of her confederates,
already almost past speech, shook her head in refusal, is again put on
the wheel, and dies. This courage is quite consistent with an extreme
distaste for conflict and an extreme sensitiveness to pain, and takes
its rise only in natures so constituted that impersonal passions or
convictions are capable of obliterating the natural bias, and this form
of courage is probably the most indomitable. But there is also the
courage, very rare in its way, of the prize-fighter, always showing
his biceps and challenging his acquaintances, and to whom life would
probably not be worth living without the applause and excitement of the
ring; but who, on the other hand, if he knew that the odds were fifteen
to one against him, and that there was neither money nor applause to be
gained if he won, would probably refuse to fight at all.

Now the courage of the old-fashioned Boer tends markedly to resemble
the first rather than the last type; and, why this should be so, a
study of his history makes clear.

In all societies, whether savage or civilized, in which a distinct
military organization exists, and in which military success is the
path to emolument and power, much meretricious glory hangs about the
occupation of the slayer.

From the Bornean savage, who until he has a certain number of skulls
to hang about his waist may not marry or take share in deliberations
of state, and the Zulu who must first wet his spear in human blood to
be accounted a full man, on to many of our so-called civilized states,
where in pageants and pastimes preference always is given to the man
who slays or overthrows over the man who creates or produces, war is
continually surrounded with a certain meretricious tinsel which ends by
making the thing attractive for its own sake. It is to increase this
artificial charm and render war attractive, that the savage hangs cats'
tails round his waist, sticks cock-feathers in his hair, and beats on
his tom-tom, when he is working himself up for battle, and that the
so-called civilized man wears red stripes on his trousers, struts with
his chin high in the air and his shoulders well held back and padded,
and that he wears feathers, tails, or portions of metal, whatever is
believed to make his appearance more striking and important. It is
this which makes war and the warrior so attractive to the ignorant
youth of both sexes. The soldier, dressed and holding himself as other
men, would not be so eagerly sought after by the idle woman of the
ball-room, nor would her cook be so anxious to walk about with the
private if he walked as other human creatures walk and had the same
kind of hat; and the peasant boy who enlists does so, in nine cases
out of ten, because of the drums and the marches and the flags. It is
not generally really the desire to feel the blood and the brain of a
fellow-creature, dismembered by your hand, start out, and still less
to lie with one slug in the stomach and another in the lungs, while
the blood rises in mouthfuls and there is a rattle in the throat, that
tempts the majority of men to become soldiers. It is, in nine cases
out of ten, not the desire to kill or be killed, but a hunger for the
tinsel with which war is surrounded, that influences men who affect a
love for it; it is the hope of fame, metal stars, gilt crosses, the
glitter and glare of the parade-ground, and the possibility of title
and honours, which make the youth to enlist and maiden to say, "How
beautiful is war!"

For the African Boer there has never been this meretricious tinsel
pasted over the ghastly reality of war. His training for two hundred
years has been in a wholly different school. For generation after
generation the Boer has gone out with his wife and child into the
wilderness, and, whether he wished it or no, the possibility of death
for them and for himself, by the violence of beasts or men, has been
an ever present reality. Night by night, as he has gone to sleep in
his solitary wagon or daub-and-wattle house, he has had his musket
within reach of his hand; and his wife hearing a sound in the night
has sat up anxiously, whispering, "What is that!" and together they
have listened while the children slept. If the Boer went out to hunt
lion or buffalo, it was accompanied with no hilarious excitement at
the thought of the applause of friends at his success, of pictures in
the illustrated magazines, and the newspaper paragraph over the mighty
hunter. All it meant was this, that, if he killed the lion, then the
cow that gave milk for his children would be safe, and his small son
could now go out and herd the lambs without danger. If he brought home
a load of springbok or of wildebeest, it meant simply that his wife cut
it up into biltong and hung it to dry outside the house for food. If
his own right arm failed him, or he kept no sufficient watch and fell
by the hands of savages or the jaws of beasts, then it meant that not
only he died, but possibly that wife and children died with him; and it
might be years before the news of their death travelled down to their
kindred if, indeed, it ever reached them. If, single-handed and however
bravely, he defended himself and his against odds of the mightiest
kind, there was no admiring world before which his success would be
blazoned forth. Even were he a commandant, and died at the head of his
little body of men ever so heroically, there was no Westminster Abbey
and no requiem for him; his comrades buried him where he fell, and a
little heap of rough African stones on a wide African plain, with the
African wind blowing over him, was all that he had for recompense.
If he led his little band to victory, there was no triumphal entry
into the city with bunting flying, and bars filled with drunken men,
and hoarse mobs shouting incoherently, or delirious women anxious to
kiss him, or present him with weapons gilt and jewelled--simply, he
went home to his house or wagon, and his old wife kissed him and said
she was glad he had come back; and his comrades said, "He is a good
fighter," and next time there was war he had to go in front again.
If his aim were true and his hand never shook and his courage never
failed, then it meant life for himself and all dear to him; if he
failed, then it was death; but that was all.

In this stern, silent school for generations the Boer has been trained.
Courage has become inherent and hereditary with him; he sucks it
in with his mother's milk; and, with it, an equally uncompromising
antipathy to war and conflict. For generations, deadly strife and
conflict, or the possibility of it, was part of the daily unending
discipline of his life. He regards it now as one of life's crowning
evils, to be avoided if possible--never to be flinched from when
inevitable.

It is this attitude which has led to so much misunderstanding of the
Boer's character by those who do not know him, and even by those who
think they know him. His view with regard to the chase illustrates
exactly his attitude toward human slaughter. If the leopards or wild
dogs decimate his flocks, he will spend days in the most unwearied,
skilful, and daring hunting; yet when he has killed them he will often
return home, and say with a sigh of relief, "Now it will be six months
before I need go after them again." If you inform him that in England
at great expense men keep and breed up foxes which, with great damage
to crops and hedges, they afterwards spend days in hunting, he will
look at you as though doubting the truth of your assertion, remarking
quietly: "But the Rednecks must then be mad? What do they want with the
wild beasts?"[72]

     [72] A young Englishman, coming out to Africa some years
     ago, for the purpose of distinguishing himself by shooting
     some big game, and hearing there was an old Boer on a
     farm near by who had the reputation of having been a most
     noted hunter, endless lions having fallen to his gun, in
     addition to large game and bucks, determined to visit him.
     He returned much disappointed. Instead of finding the house
     filled with trophies of the chase, which he hoped he might
     perhaps purchase, he found not one skin or pair of horns in
     the little three-roomed house. After very much difficulty,
     and as a matter of politeness to the stranger, the old man
     was at last induced to recount one or two hunting stories.
     The thing which he appeared to be most proud of was a frame
     of everlasting flowers which a daughter of his, who had
     been to school, had made and placed round a cheap print on
     the wall. He asked the young man whether they had those
     flowers in his country; and, when told they had not, smiled
     softly to himself at the manifest superiority of South
     Africa. It is, of course, not only the true Boer hunter
     who manifests this simplicity. If the works of the great
     African hunter, F. C. Selous, with their unvarnished tale
     of occurrences, be compared with the gilded narratives
     of some persons who have once shot a tiger from the back
     of an elephant or a tree-platform, the same unconscious
     simplicity will be manifest, dividing the man who can do
     the thing from the man who desires it to be thought that he
     can do it.

His attitude toward human conflict is exactly the same.

We say advisedly, after a long and intimate knowledge of the
old-fashioned Boer, that never, in one instance, have we heard man
or woman speak of war with joy, desire, or elation. For this folk
there is no more glamour or amusement about war than for a nurse who
has attended hundreds of cases of small-pox and cancer there is a
glamour and glory about these diseases. It is with extreme difficulty
that old men and women can be got to describe the conflicts they have
lived through in their youth. After speaking a few minutes they will
suddenly break off with: "Ah! but war is an awful thing! God grant that
you may never see what we have seen, or go through what we have gone
through." Not in any single case have we known the old Boer to vaunt
himself on any success or act of courage. (With the young fashionable
nineteenth-century descendants in towns, who have seen no fighting, it
may be different.)

Having known intimately for five years an elderly man, and having
always noticed certain marks on his face, we inquired one day the
cause, and were surprised to learn that he had been an actor in some
most heroic scenes; having in one instance gone up a mountain alone
to fetch down the wounded, and that he bore on his body at least ten
scars, gained in different conflicts. Neither by this man nor by any
of his family, whom we had known intimately for years, had the fact
been mentioned. "Yes," said a close female relative quietly, when we
questioned her on the matter, "he is a man who can fight; he is not
afraid"; and that was all. She regarded his action in the same light as
a ploughman's wife might regard her husband's power to plough twenty
acres in a given time and who would show no lofty pride in stating
it--it was "all in the day's work." The old-fashioned Boer never speaks
of war without becoming solemn and reverential, and, metaphorically
speaking, taking off his hat. "Man fights; but victory is of God."[73]

     [73] (_Note added in 1899._) This was illustrated when
     speaking some time back to a young Boer who was present at
     Doorn Kop, where Jameson surrendered, and who took part
     in that fight. We asked him what he thought of Jameson's
     men. He replied, slowly and quietly, that they were "flukse
     kerels" ("smart men"), adding: "You see, it was not that
     _we_ were better men than they were, but God was with us!"

It is this solemn, reverent, almost shy, manner of speaking of
conflict, which misleads the ignorant stranger. In conversation several
years ago with a man newly from Europe, we dwelt on what we believed
to be the superb fighting and staying power of the African Boer. "How
is that possible," said the newcomer, "when every individual Boer you
meet is an arrant coward?" And he proceeded to illustrate his assertion
by stating that a short time before in conversation with three young
Boers, all greatly his superiors in size, he had offered to fight all
of them in succession to show which was the better man, an Englishman
or a Dutchman. They declined the contest, and one of them, smiling
sheepishly, walked up to him and asked him to take a cup of coffee.
"They funked it! They funked!" cried the newcomer. "They dared not
stand up to me, and I was the smallest of the four!" It was not easy to
explain to the Public School man that while he was regarding the Boer
as an arrant coward, the Boer was regarding him, good-naturedly, as a
fool! The Boer looked upon the offer, without any cause of quarrel,
to break each other's skulls much as a horny-handed ploughman, the
son of six generations of ploughmen, would regard an offer to plough
six acres of land in which nothing was to be planted, simply in order
to see who could plough the fastest. "He talks too much; he cannot
fight," was probably the comment of the Boers after he had left them,
and possibly each man merely misunderstood the other. The Englishman
might have fought well, in spite of all his talk, and the Boer in spite
of his silence. It is the difference in mental attitude, doubtless,
which has misled the ignorant newcomer, and often the old inhabitant of
the country who is not gifted with the power of reading human nature
beneath its surface, into holding the view that the Boer is not a
fighter. The truth is, the African Boer, devoid as he is of all passion
for conflict, regarding war as part of the stern and unavoidable evil
of life, to be quietly faced, but never sought, will, if his people,
his land, or his freedom, are attacked, go forth to meet war with the
same grim unbending resolution with which his forefathers went out to
found their homes in the desert. As long as the African Boer remains
the African Boer, whenever these things are touched, he will be found
among his plains and on his kopjes ready to die, the silent, bravest
child of our broad veld.

       *       *       *       *       *

It has been said of the Boer that he is conservative; that he follows
line by line the manners and traditions of his fathers; that that which
has been sacred to his forebears is sacred to him; that he is immobile,
and does not change. This is in part true; in part, untrue.

It is true that the primitive Boer has preserved in the South African
wilds the ideals and manners of his ancestors of two centuries ago;
that in him the seventeenth and even remnants of the sixteenth century
are found surviving as among few peoples in Europe; but, if this
survival of the past be taken to imply an organic incapacity on his
part to adapt himself to change, if it be taken to imply the immobility
of a weak and therefore unadaptable nature, which has not the vitality
and strength to change, it is wholly untrue. Nothing so indicates the
dogged, and almost fierce, strength of the South African Boer as this
unique conservatism. Placed in a new environment, removed from all the
centres of European culture and thought, thrown out into the African
deserts, surrounded by the most crudely primitive conditions of life,
and often by none but savage human creatures, nothing would have been
easier, or would have seemed more inevitable, than that rapid change
should at once have set itself up in the African Boer; nothing more
difficult, and almost impossible, than that he should maintain that
degree of cultivation and civilization which he had brought from Europe
and already possessed. Again and again, under like conditions, men of
lofty European races have been modified wholly. Thrown amid new and
savage surroundings, when, after a few generations of isolation from
European life, they again come into contact with us, we find that
whatever of culture or knowledge they brought with them has vanished;
their religion has atrophied; their habits of life have become
modified, and, often inter-blending with the savage races about them,
they have lost all, or almost all, the old distinctive European marks.
They are a new human modification, but a modification often lower
in the scale of life than even the savage peoples by whom they were
surrounded, a degenerate and decayed people. On the east and west coast
of Africa, in South America and elsewhere, again and again this has
happened. Europeans, not having the conserving strength to retain what
they possessed, and not being able to emulate the primitive virtues
of the savage, have gone back in the scale of being. With the South
African Boer this has not been so.

After two hundred years we find him to-day with that little flag of
seventeenth-century civilization which he took with him into the
wilderness two hundred years ago, still to-day gallantly flying over
his head, untorn and hardly faded after its two centuries' sojourn in
the African desert. With the instinct of a powerful race the Boer saw
or rather felt his danger. The traditions, the faiths, the manners of
his fathers, these he would hold fast by. To move, to be modified in
any way by the conditions about him, was to go backwards; he would not
move; so he planted his foot and stood still.

You say that he still wears the little short jacket of his
great-great-grandfather's great-grandfather? Yes, and had he given that
up, it would have been to wear none at all! So, line by line, his wife
made it, carefully as his father's forefather's had been. You say he
stuck generation after generation to the straight-backed elbow chair
and the hard-backed sofa of his forefathers? Yes--and had he given them
up, it could have been to adopt nothing more æsthetic; it would have
been to sit on the floor; so he held solemnly to the old elbow-chair
and the straight-backed sofa, almost as a matter of faith.

You say that he had only one book, and clung to that with a passion
that was almost idolatry? Yes--but had he given up that one book, it
could not have been to fill a library with the world's literature; it
would have been to have no literature at all! That one book, which
he painfully spelled through and so mightily treasured, was his only
link with the world's great stream of thought, morals, and knowledge.
That compilation of the history, poetry, and philosophy of the great
Semitic people was his one possible inlet to the higher spiritual
and intellectual life of the human race. In that he clung to it so
passionately, worshipped it so determinedly, he showed his intense
hankering after something other than the mere material aspects of life.
He was not a man with a thousand avenues open before him toward thought
and spiritual and intellectual knowledge, who wilfully shut his eyes to
them, saying, "I will see none but this one": he had no other to see.
If the Boer had forsaken his Bible we should have found him to-day a
savage, lower than the Bantus about him, because decayed. In nothing
has he so shown his strength as in clinging to it.

To one who wisely studies the history of the African Boer, nothing is
more pathetic than this strange, fierce adherence of his to the past.
That cry, which unceasingly for generations has rung out from the Boer
woman's elbow-chair, "My children, never forget you are white men!
Do always as you have seen your father and mother do!" was no cry of
a weak conservatism, fearful of change; it was the embodiment of the
passionate determination of a powerful little people, not to lose
itself in the barbarism about it, and so sink in the scale of being.
To laugh at the conservatism of the Boer is to laugh at a man who,
floating above a whirlpool, clings fiercely with one hand to the only
outstretching rock he can reach, and who will not relax his hold on it
by so much as one finger till he has found something firmer to grasp.

That the conservatism of the Boer has in it nothing of the nature of
mental ossification, and that he has preserved his pliability intact,
is shown by the peculiar facility with which, when the time comes, the
Boer leaps in one generation from the rear of the seventeenth-century
thought and action to the forefront of the nineteenth.

The descendant of generations of old seventeenth-century Boers
returns from his studies in Europe an enthusiast over all the latest
inventions, an advocate of new ideas and an upholder of the newest
fashions. In colonial life, it is a matter of common remark, none are
more attracted to the new and the modern than the nineteenth-century
educated Dutch, whether man or woman. It would almost seem as though
that very dogged strength of character, which for ages has made him
capable of retaining his hold upon the old, when the necessity for
doing so passes, makes him equally resolute to grasp the new.

It has been said of the African Boer that he used his old flintlock gun
for a generation after Europe had discarded it. That was true; but had
he discarded it, it could only have been to adopt the assegai of the
Kaffir. The day he was shown the Mauser, he recognized it and grasped
it, and he has used it--not without effect!

In very truth, if one should speak frankly of what one most fears for
the African Boer, it is a too rapid renunciation of his past, and an
acceptance of the new without a sufficient and close examination. Were
it possible that our words should reach him, fain would we apostrophise
our old-world Boer and his wife thus:--"_Hou maar vas, Tant' Annie! Hou
maar vas, Oom Piet!_"[74] Be not too ready to give up the past, we pray
you. All that is new is not true, and that which comes later is not
always an improvement on that which went before. We English have an old
saying that if you keep your grandmother's wedding-dress sixty years,
times will have come round and it will be in the fashion again. For
the world goes round, O Oom and Tante!--unwilling as some of you may
still be to believe it!--and that which was new becomes old, and that
which was old becomes new again! Do not be too anxious to change your
old customs, your simple modes of life, your deep faiths, till you know
what you are exchanging them for: the world goes round; and the day may
come when you, South Africa, and the world will have need of that which
you now are so willing to throw away.

     [74] "Hold fast, Aunt Annie! Hold fast, Uncle Piet!"
     practically meaning, "Stand where you are and hold your
     ground."

"Oom and Tante, I will whisper to you a secret! Here, in the very heart
of this great material civilization of ours which swells itself so
bravely and makes so much noise--here, in the heart of it, there are
some of us men and women who are beginning to have our doubts of it; we
are beginning to find it out. We may not be very many now, but we shall
be more by and by; and we are beginning to question what all this vast
accumulation of material goods in certain hands, this enormous increase
in the complexity of the material conditions of life, necessarily leads
to?

"We ask ourselves this:--Though we increase endlessly the complexity
of our material possessions and our desires, does the human creature
who desires and possesses necessarily expand with them? And the answer
which comes back to us when we deeply consider this question is: No.

"There are times, when, looking carefully at this nineteenth-century
civilization of ours, it appears to us much like that concretion which
certain deep-sea creatures build up about themselves out of the sand
and rubbish on the deep-sea floor, which after a time becomes hard and
solid, and forms their grave. It appears to us that under this vast
accumulation of material things, this ceaseless thirst for more and
more complex material conditions of life, the human spirit and even the
human body are being crushed; that the living creature is building up
about itself a tomb, in which it will finally dwindle and die.

"We vary endlessly the nature and shape of the garments we wear; but
the bodies for which they exist do not grow more powerful or agile;
we multiply endlessly the complexity of our foods; but our digestions
grow no stronger to deal with them; we build our houses larger and
larger, but the span of life for inhabiting them grows no longer:
the Bedouin of the Desert inhabits his tent as long: our cities grow
vaster and vaster, but our enjoyment of life in them becomes no more
intense: our states expand, but the vitality of their component parts
rises no higher: we rush from end to end of the earth with the speed of
lightning, but we love it no better than men who lived in their valley
and went no further than their feet would carry them: we put the whole
world under contribution to supply our physical needs, but the breath
of life is no sweeter to us than to our forefathers whom the products
of one land could satisfy.

"For the life of the human creature is but a very little cup in
relation to the material goods of life; like the bell of a flower which
can hold only one drop of dew, all which you pour in after that can
only crush and drown it; it cannot contain it.

"You know, O Tante and Oom, that in South Africa your beasts suffer
sometimes from a disease, of which the leading feature is that, while
the creature eats more and more, it grows thinner and thinner. By and
by it dies, and when you cut it open you find fastened upon its vitals
a parasite, which consumed all its strength, which was never satisfied.

"Tante and Oom, it is a disease like unto this which eats deep at the
heart of our civilization. It is no new disease; nations and persons
have died of it before: the plains and riversides on this planet of
ours are studded with the mounds beneath which are buried the remains
of societies which once suffered from this disease. Some call it
degeneration; some decadence; some over-civilization; some excess of
luxury; some forgetfulness of God; it matters not what you call it:
though the external symptoms may vary, internally it remains always the
same.

"The horse-leech of our material civilization, in which endless wealth
and material luxury is thrown into the hands of one section of the
community at the cost of others, has three daughters which cry ever:
'Give! Give! Give!' They are fastened on to the very vitals of our
modern life, and they cry never--'It is enough.'

"Fixed upon us as individuals, we hunger for more houses, more clothes,
more furniture, more jewels, more shares, more dividends, whether we
can use what we already have or not; and we hunger and strive after
these things with as much passionate avidity as the savage after the
hare, which if he nets will save him from death by starvation.

"Fixed on us as nations we cry, 'More lands, more trade, more fruits
of the labour of other men in other lands, higher dividends drawn from
foreign countries; more--though our national skin should crack, and we
burst and die of it at last--more!--more expansion!'

"Oom and Tante, we beg of you, if you must partake of our
nineteenth-century civilization with us, examine it carefully, and see
what it is you are taking in. It is a brightly coloured flower, but at
its centre sits a little gilded worm: if you must eat of it, eat the
flower, but spew out carefully the worm, which spells death if once it
fastens and breeds inside of you.

"There are certain things indeed, good and fair, which have got
embedded in this nineteenth-century civilization of ours, O Oom and
Tante, like diamonds in a mud stream: which are in it, but necessarily
not of it.

"In the two centuries which have passed since you left Europe, certain
things became common property which you know little of, and which are
wholly good and fair; but we beg of you to understand they are not
the outcome of that which comes to you with so much blare and glitter
as 'nineteenth-century civilization'--the civilization of the bar,
the stock exchange, the gambling saloon, the racecourse, gorgeous
furniture, and ceaseless changing fashions; nor even of the railway
train and the national debt. Do not think, we pray you, when you have
grasped with both hands at the mud of our civilization, that you have
therefore grasped the gems that may here and there be imbedded in it.

"There is music which you have not yet heard--Beethoven's; and there
is Mozart's, as sweet as the twitter of the birds when you wake up in
your wagon in the early dawn and hear them in the bushes round you in
the veld, and as gracious as the sound of the raindrops falling on
your roof after a long drought; but do not dream that the man who made
it had any relation with the speculators whose loud talk overpowers
you with its smartness, or the gorgeously dressed women who make you
ashamed of your old black skirt. Believe me, it was made by a man
leading a life poor and simple as yours, and who lies in a nameless
grave; in poverty and loneliness the music came to him, and he made
mankind for ever richer by it; and you can hear it as well in fustian
and serge, on a wooden seat as from the king's box, with a band of
diamonds above your forehead.

"We have also what you have not yet seen, a Moses, cut in stone. When
you look at it you are conscious of strength and joy such as you have
when you look up at one of our flat-topped African mountains, with
the krantzes on its head, casting a deep blue shadow in the early
morning;--it is well to look at it; but do not believe that all the
millionaires of all the states on earth if they pooled their wealth
could ordain that one line of that great figure should have been
created: it was shaped by a man who, seeking after beauty and truth,
found his God: a man who so lived with his creation that for weeks
together he forgot to remove his boots, so that when he did so the
skin came off with them: the fine gentlemen of the boulevards and the
parks who talk of their superiority to you because they 'possess art'
(meaning that they have made money enough out of other men's labour to
buy the works of dead great men) would hardly have cared to walk down
the street with him; his rough, strong face would have befitted better
a Boer laager than a circle of modern fashion.

"There are books, O Oom and Tante, other than the one great book
which you took into the wilderness with you; books which so widen
the soul of the man who makes them his that he might, when dying,
well thank the power behind life that he had been made man, and lived
to read them: but, do not believe that they are the products of any
trade demand, or have any relation with the wealth and luxury of the
modern world. Rich men may buy them and bind them in vellum, and put
them in their libraries; but that gives them no hold upon them. In
simplicity, and often in solitude and in poverty, the great souls of
earth have secreted that immortal honey of thought on which the soul
of humanity feeds. And whether it be the wisdom of the great Greek who
lay in the Agora in his coarse mantle, instructing without pay the
youth of Athens; or the vision of the Puritan Englishman which visited
him in poverty, blindness, and old age; or the immortal dream of the
Italian exile; or the deathless trill, sweeter than the song of his
nightingales, of the young English apothecary who died in Rome; or the
philosophy of the great German who lived for thirty years in a little
house in the little street of a little German town, desiring no more;
or the human cry from the heart of the Scotch ploughman; or the sweet
musings of the modern American who communed with his God at Concord for
many years--there is no message of beauty or wisdom which it has been
given to the soul of men to propound for its fellows, for which luxury
or material complexity of life were necessary. There is no message of
wisdom which has ever been uttered which you may not as well absorb,
seated on the kopje behind your square mud-house, as in the velvet
armchair of a duke's palace, with lackeys waiting your commands and
the spoils of the universe gathered round you. Two narrow shelves of
dingily-bound books will contain more of the world's true intellectual
pabulum than a man has time in sixty years to absorb and make his own;
and he who at the door of his hut in the veld has spelt out the book of
Job and the chants of Isaiah, till he knows them by heart, may have a
firmer hold on the world's loftiest literature than if he had hired a
librarian to tend his ten thousand costly volumes. Let no man deceive
you, O Oom and Tante, nor make you believe that literature is a grand
thing, only to be enjoyed by men eating several courses at dinner and
dwelling in capacious houses, nor that it can only be produced by
men who have consumed thousands of pounds of the world's labour. The
world's literature has been produced in simplicity and in poverty, and
often in suffering; and that which was good enough for the men who
wrote, is good enough for the men who would absorb it. They lie, Tante,
they lie, Oom, who tell you that literature is dependant on luxury, or
the material complexity of life, for its existence, or is in any way
related to it. It is from the barren heath, not from the drawing-room
carpet, however many coloured, that the wild bee extracts its honey.

"Even that knowledge of the conditions of existence which governs
the relation of matter with matter, and which yields what is called
scientific knowledge, and in a manner seems to mark what is called
modern civilization, has yet no causative relation with the greater
part of its material phenomena. It does not depend in any way upon
the enormous amount of material luxury and wealth concentrated in a
few hands which marks our material civilization. It was the Chaldean
shepherd watching his flocks at night under a sky as clear and
white-studded with stars as that which bends over the Karroo, who
first noted the times and seasons of the heavenly bodies. It was the
chemist labouring amid the painful fumes of his laboratory with hands
as stained by contact with matter as are your sons' to-day when they
come in from shearing who first discovered those combinations of atom
with the atom, and the reactions of substance on substance, which are
letting us slowly a little way into the secret of nature's workshop. It
is the mathematician, oblivious of all externals, pondering year after
year in his dingy study, with his outlandish garb, who masters at last
those laws of relation, the knowledge of which gives to man half his
mastery over matter. It is not even the man with the padded shoulders
and gilt ornaments upon his dress, who boasts so loudly to you of the
superiority of his nineteenth-century weapons of death, who ever made
one of them, or even understands how they were made: nor does he always
know how to use them! It is not the gaudily dressed man or woman who
travels in the first-class compartment of an express train, and looks
with wondering contempt at the slow-rolling old ox-wagon which your
grandfathers made, who ever made or comprehends one crank or one piston
in all that wonderful creation of human labour and thought in which
they are luxuriously borne along; or who could invent or shape even the
round solid wheel of a primitive donkey-cart. These wondrous material
objects have been the outcome of the work of the labouring brains
of the ages, and of the toil of hard-handed mechanics more roughly
clothed and simply fed than you who have toiled beneath the earth,
and in the fetid workshops, that those things might be. Our little
long-tailed African monkey of the bush, if he should see one of his
captured brothers, gorgeously arrayed and dancing on a barrel-organ,
might well think what a wonderful brain his brother must have, and how
much superior to himself he must be in mechanical skill to have made
all these things. But in truth we know he made neither the clothes he
wears, nor the organ: nor can he even turn the handle; he only dances
to the music another makes. It is the little wild monkey out in the
woods who has to find food for himself, to know which nuts to eat and
where to find them, and who can choose his own pool to drink and dabble
his hands in, who has to exercise brain and arm. It is not the jackdaw
with the peacock's feathers tied on to his tail, who flaunts them round
so overpoweringly, on whom they ever grew.

"Let no man deceive you, O Oom and Tante; it is not the men and women
revelling in a surfeit of the material products of the labour of
others, and scorning you because you have them not, who ever made the
very material civilization they boast of. It is not the people scorning
your little simple work and life, who could do even that which you can
do. It is not the woman lolling back in her double-springed carriage
who has the knowledge or invention or perseverance to originate or
manufacture one of all those endless materials which cling about her;
it was the Hindoo with a cotton cloth about his loins toiling at his
loom for twopence a day who made the diaphanous muslin she wears; and
the loom on which it was woven and the thread of which it is made were
invented by his swarthy-skinned ancestors generations ago. The fairy
frill upon her petticoat was sewn on by a needle-girl between snatches
of weak tea and bread and butter and fits of coughing. It is not the
general, gorgeous in gold lace and trappings, who could make even the
jacket he wears; the fine steel dust from the sword at his side cost
the life of the man who made it; it is the general's to sport, nothing
more. It is out of the labour of hands grimed and hard as yours, and
the toils of brains more weary than yours have ever been, that this
material civilization is built up. If you accept it for you and yours,
know what it is you are accepting. _Do not mistake the cat that laps
the milk for the cow that gave it._ When you open a wild bees' nest
and find inside a Death's-head moth, you are never fool enough to
believe it had anything to do with the making of the honey: you know
it is there to feed and--destroy. O Oom, O Tante, do not mistake the
Death's-head moths of our civilization for the makers of its honey, or
for the honey itself.

"Art, literature, science, the mastery over material conditions,
whatsoever there is in this nineteenth-century civilization that
strengthens the arm, or widens the heart, and broadens the intellect,
and makes fuller the joy of life--extract it and make it yours.

"In our nineteenth-century civilization there is a little kernel of
things rare and good and great, that have come down to us through the
centuries, and that brave souls of labour have added their little
quota of matter to even in our day. If you must crack the nut of our
nineteenth-century civilization, we pray of you eat only this little
kernel and throw away the great painted shell. For God's sake, do not
try to eat the shell and throw away the kernel.

"You know, O my Oom and Tante, that, when the Jew smouses go round the
country selling their goods, they sometimes sell to you clocks that
glitter like gold; and you give for them your best sheep and oxen.
But, when you take them to be tested by the town jeweller, you find
they are not gold, but tin, gilt with brass; and they will not go.

"There is much, O Oom and Tante, in our civilization that is like
to the Jew smous's clock! We warn you, be careful how you exchange
your good old African wares for our modern merchandise. There is much
brummagem about.

"For, believe us, Oom and Tante, there are some of us who have
travelled the world round; we have seen and handled this thing, called
nineteenth-century civilization. We have lived in vast cities, a few
unconsidered streets in which contain as many souls as your whole
land. We have seen half their population labouring continually without
sunlight or fresh air, and, by a labour that knows no end, producing
material things they never touch. We have seen white-faced children,
who shall be the thinking, labouring, fighting men and women when we
shall be in our graves, suck their white crusts dipped in tea, and
look up at us with famished eyes: we have seen old men, after a long
life of toil with no fireside to sit by, creep into the cold shadow
of the workhouse, to die there. And we have seen also other sides of
nineteenth-century civilization. We have been in the houses that are
palaces, which all the world labours to make full and fair; we have
pierced to their centres, and found there fair women surrounded by all
earth yields, wearing silks which the Indian made for twopence a day,
with which he bought a handful of rice and melted butter to keep him
alive, and laces bending over which human eyes grew dim, and beside
them in delicate cups stood tea which Tamil women near their hour of
labour may have plucked with quivering fingers; and they have sat up
on their sofas and looked at us with weary eyes, and asked, 'Is life
worth living?' We have watched the fevered faces of men in the world's
great stock exchanges, till pity seized us, and we could have cried:
'Is there no antifebrile that will slow this pulse and give these souls
rest and peace?' We have stood at Monte Carlo, and seen prince and
millionaire throw down coin as though it were not the life-blood of the
peoples. We have seen lock-hospitals and the men and women that are in
them, and also those who fill it but never come there; we have seen
the parade, where human slaughter hides the dirt and ugliness of its
trade behind plumes and gilt: we have seen the ballroom and the regal
procession. We have seen, on the other hand, what is fair and beautiful
in art and wonderful in science; we have seen brave and rare spirits,
even amid the rush and dross of our civilization, walking peacefully on
their own lofty little path, absorbing little, and imparting much. Yet,
believe us, that in the still night we lie awake, and all that we have
seen rises up as in a picture before us,--from Ratcliffe Highway with
its drunken sailors and hopeless women, to Monte Carlo with its princes
and prostitutes; from the Champs Elysées to the Karoo; from Grosvenor
Square to Bethnal Green,--there yet rises up no picture of life more
healthful and full of promise for the future, more satisfying to the
whole nature of man on earth, than yours in the wide plains of South
Africa. We know all its deficiencies, its lack of a certain variety,
the absence of certain brilliant elements which the human spirit may
feed on elsewhere; and, yet, it rises up before us as something wholly
strong, and virile, and full of promise. There are even times when
we have felt we would rather be the little naked Kaffir children who
play, fat and shining, with the kids on your kraal walls in the African
sunshine than be most of the modern men and women we have known; for
the life is more than meat and the body than raiment.

"Hold fast, Tante! Hold fast, Oom! You have much to lose. Be careful
how you exchange it. Cling to your old manners, your old faiths, your
free, strong lives, till you know what you are bartering them for.

"Tante, dear Tante, be not too anxious to change your old, straight,
black skirt for the never-ceasing vagaries of modern fashion, that sap
at the life of the modern woman as an open running tumour saps at the
strength of a body. Do not be too anxious to change, for a pile of
gauze or straw and textile flowers, that old black kappie of yours,
that has shielded you for so many generations from the African sun and
the African winds, in peace and in war, on kopje and on plain.

"Believe me, if some great artist should see you as you sit there by
your out-spanned wagon, in your old black dress with your infant at
your breast, and the African sky above you and the still veld round
you, and should paint you as you are, you would hang in the world's
great galleries, and generations to come of men and women would say,
'How strong, how harmonious!' For your old black dress, and the veld
and the sky, and the baby at your bosom can never go out of fashion, as
the hoop, and the patch, and the tilted hat, and fashionable furniture,
go; for they have that eternal dew of the morning upon them which rests
on all things growing up out of nature and necessity, for use and not
for show. And if it should have happened that, in the sterner moments
of your life, one should have depicted you truly when, in laager
or beside wagon, you stood side by side with the man who was your
companion, to defend that you prized, then, believe me, that old black
kapje of yours would have become a helm, and men in future generations,
looking on, would say 'There were giants in those days.'

"Tante, we, the newest of new women, stretch out our hands to you,
the oldest of the old, in the African veld: and we pray of you, stay
where you are, and hold fast by what you have, till we come and meet
you. We are coming to you in our own way. Stay where you are till we
can join hands. In your life of fellow-labour with man, in your social
productiveness and activity, you have realized much of that which we
are seeking. Do not force your great, free, labouring-woman's foot into
the gegawed shoes of the parasite female, from which we are striving
to withdraw ours; do not compel yourself to accept those insignia of
degeneracy, whether in clothing or bearing, from which we to-day are
so passionately striving to free ourselves. Hold by your simple brave
life a little longer, produce your many children, guide your household,
share man's burden with him, peace or war, till in a new social
condition you pass without enervation or degeneration to new labours,
and to a companionship with man in new and intellectual fields of toil.
Do not, we beg of you, believe that, when you wear a French bonnet and
have an eighteen-inch waist or trip to tennis in patent shoes, you have
come any nearer to grasping the good, the true, or the beautiful that
may be embedded in our nineteenth-century civilization. Feel no shame,
we pray you, for that strong capacious form of yours; from that strong
untrammelled body of yours shall yet spring a race strong to do or
dare, such as grows not beneath the waistband of an enervated parasitic
womanhood.

"Tante, wait for us, we are coming; you have something to teach us,
we have something to teach you; and it may be that when we have met
and joined hands we will work out something fairer and better for our
people and the world than has often been. Only do not decay from your
ancient simplicity of living and toiling before the time is ripe and
you can move forward to new labours. It would have been better that you
should have fallen in your early conflicts with savages and beasts,
and that nothing were left of you now but a name and a heap of stones
on the African plains, than that you should absorb the diseases of an
enervated and voluptuous modern womanhood--for then you would only have
died and not rotted.

"Oom Piet, we pray of you, be not anxious to adopt the fashions of
the nineteenth-century gentlemen of the club and front stalls in the
theatre. Be not too ready to discard your velschoens and your moleskin
trousers and your short jackets. In these things your fathers did
gallant deeds and loved freedom. Any coat that a brave man wears is
fashion enough: and the world comes to recognize that in the end.
Cling to your independence; and the day will come when your old round
felt hat will hang on the walls of the African houses of the future as
Oliver Cromwell's ancient hat hangs to-day in an English mansion; and
men of the future generations will say, looking at it reverently: 'Such
wore our fathers in the days when they did great things!'

"Do not think too lightly of your own knowledge; nor dream that the
man who knows well the path to the brothel and the bar, and knows how
to bear and bull the share-market, or who gains in one night's play as
much as your farm yields you in a year, has any advantage over you. It
is better to know how to find your way without a guide over hills and
plains of your native land, and to be able to sleep well out under the
stars with your head on a saddle, and when necessary to die for freedom
on your kopjes, than to know all the paths of the modern city. Hold by
your past; and the day will yet come when, instead of following the
fashion, you will set it.

"South Africa has still need of her old African lion and lioness. Hold
on a while longer; let your past die hard!

"Is it a wholly unrealizable dream, that, if you could but cling
for a while longer to your own simple healthful forms of life and
gold-untouched ideals, you might make it possible for us in South
Africa to attain to a fairer and more healthful form of civilization
than has elsewhere been reached? Is it wholly unrealizable that you
might help us to escape in their worse forms the diseases of modern
life, and attain to its good: while eschewing its evil? That we might
arrive at that condition of simple living and high thinking, under
which alone the spirit and body of man attain their full development,
and continual progress is possible? Or must you, too, fall before the
molten calf, and worship it?

"Does it seem strange to you, O Oom and Tante, that we sometimes think
of you as an antidote? That in the heart of this nineteenth-century
civilization we remember you sometimes, with your simple, free, strong
lives, as a man living in some torrid valley, where all around him were
fever-smitten, might remember a hardy mountain plant which he had seen
growing on the hill-tops in his youth, and cry: 'Ah, could they but eat
of it they might yet be saved!'

"Therefore we ask of you, _not_ to accept too readily all that the men
of this generation offer you, nor to be dazed by the glitter of our
wares; but to select slowly and carefully, if you must select at all.

"For this nineteenth century is not the last century; nor is its
civilization the last civilization; nor its ideals the last ideals! The
twentieth is coming! And before it ends, it may be that this nineteenth
will seem strangely distant! Men may then look over its mental wares
as, after twenty years, one might look over a box containing the
clothes of a dead elder sister, saying: 'This bit of real lace is still
good, and that silk scarf; but the rest is all brummagem and long out
of date.'

"For we, to-day, O Oom and Tante, with our new-found mechanical
inventions, and our accumulations of material goods, are like little
children who have just been given a rattle, and who spring it, till it
deafens themselves and every one else besides, and can hear nothing
else. We are like little long-tailed monkeys, who having found a bag of
sugar think that there is now nothing left in life but to sit round it
and eat it till they die.

"We are like to the children of Israel, when they built themselves the
golden calf and then danced about it, saying: 'Thou art the Lord our
God, and there is none like unto thee! From everlasting to everlasting,
thou art God, and thy years shall have no end!'--till a Moses, it may
be, shall come, and smite it into powder: and of that powder, mingled
with the waters of life, shall all the nations that worshipped drink,
and they shall call it Marah. And then it may be that they will seek
for a new God.

"We say it, well knowing the soft burst of laughter which will arise
now to-day, when the door is not yet closed on the nineteenth century,
and its ideals are yet dominating the men and women of the age--that
the time may come when even men of the world, those who live in the
present, who labour not for the future nor learn from the past, will
recognize that man is a complex creature, and that material wealth
satisfies only a moiety of his nature, and that material goods
possessed in excess by one portion of the community and lacking wholly
to the other, mean a condition of disease--that the time will come when
men will profess it in order to be called sane; that the railway-train
which brings the prostitute, the stock exchange, and the foes to
the freedom of a people, into the heart of its land, had better for
humanity have been the slowest ox-wagon crawling across the plains;
and had it taken two million years to come, so much better for the
nation and the world; that the value of a species of conveyance whether
for men or goods depends entirely to mankind on the nature of what it
brings; that even that Ark of the Covenant of the nineteenth century--a
new railway run by a joint stock company--is worthy of adoration, or
is not, entirely by the increased strength of body, width of sympathy,
clearness of intellect and joy in life it tends to confer on the folks
among whom it runs; that a submarine cable used to whisper lies from
land to land, and stir up the hearts of people against people, and to
urge on the powerful to attack the weak, is the devil's own tube and
has a connection direct with Hell; that a daily paper, not based on an
earnest determination to disseminate truth, is a cup of poison, sent
round fresh every morning to debilitate the life of the people; that
the man who from his place in the national assembly rises and states
the increase in his nation's imports and exports as though he were
describing its entire weal or woe, without consideration of the human
suffering and degradation or joy and good it may have cost to produce
them, or without calculation of the benefit or disease to be caused by
their consumption--is a fool; that it is more disgrace to a land to
have in it one hungry, work-crushed soul than to have no millionaire;
when it shall be recognized that the greatest nation is not that which
numbers most bodies, but most fully-grown free spirits, and fewest
crushed and broken; that an empire over human flesh and lands, and not
hearts, is an empire of disease; that a central power which cannot
propel the blood of sympathy and a common fellowship to the remotest
member of its group is on the path to cardiac failure and a sudden
death.

"We know that thus to speak is to enter into the Holy of Holies of the
nineteenth century, and therein to blaspheme. Nevertheless, O Oom and
Tante, it is possible that the day is coming when the stock exchange
and the share market, in which the men of this generation worship the
Lord their God, may pass away as the gladiatorial shows of the Roman
Empire and the rule of the Inquisition, so mighty and overpowering
in their days, have passed: it may be that a new Telemachus will yet
leap down into the arena where men traffic with the life-blood of the
nations, and, torn to pieces by the howling crowd, it will yet be said
by future generations, 'From that day there were held no more share
markets after the old fashion!'

"For this nineteenth century is not the last century! Nor are its
institutions the last institutions! Nor is its God the last God!

"Therefore, seeing that these things are so, O Oom and Tante, and that
we know not what part of our nineteenth-century wares shall be consumed
up as stubble, be cautious how you traffic with us. Do not barter your
old seventeenth-century wares, poor and simple as they may be, for
that which you may have to part with again the next day. The twentieth
century is coming: and it may be that, before it has reached its close,
it may be found nearer the seventeenth than the nineteenth.

"_Remember the Jew smous's clock!_ There be many Jew smouses going up
and down in this civilization of ours; and they deal in other things
besides clocks. They will traffic with you for your land, your freedom,
your independence, your very souls--for they hold that '_every man has
his price!_'--and they will give you in exchange that which will not
wear--a gilt-lined robe, which, soon as you wear it, will eat the flesh
of freedom from off your bones and lick up the blood of liberty within
your veins. Therefore, beware how you deal with them! That little which
you have, hold fast till you see what shall come to pass.

"The last Belshazzar's feast has not been held! Be careful that, when
the finger appears writing on the wall, you be not found also sitting
at that table.

"Hold fast a little while longer, we pray of you, by your old ideals,
your old manners, your simple old-world life. We--South Africa--the
world, have need of you!"

So, were it possible that our words should reach him, we would
fain apostrophize our old-world Boer and his wife. For our fear
indeed is, not that he will exhibit any incapacity for accepting
nineteenth-century ideals, but that he may swallow them too readily;
and that South Africa, whose backbone he forms, may also suffer from
that curvature of the spine, brought on by an excessive addiction to
luxury and an ill-distribution of wealth, from which certain other
peoples are dying.

       *       *       *       *       *

To the other indictments which have been made, by those who have not
understood him, against the Boer, it would seem hardly worth now
referring, yet before we finally turn from him we may glance at them.

       *       *       *       *       *

It has been said that he is priest-ridden.

It is undoubtedly true that the clergy of the Dutch Reformed Church
held in the past, and still to a limited extent hold to-day, a unique
position among their people as compared with the mass of modern clergy.

We in the heart of the nineteenth-century civilization regard, and most
rightly, with an almost unqualified scorn the modern man or woman who
submits to priestly dictation. Where the priest has no means of gaining
information, experience of life, or abstruse knowledge not shared by
other members of his society, submission to his dicta or dependence on
his advice can spring only from two causes--an intellectual feebleness,
which prevents the use of the man's reason, or a moral cowardice,
which causes him to shrink facing the responsibility of dealing with
the moral and spiritual problems of life, and renders him desirous of
having them dealt with vicariously.

But it has not always been so. In the middle ages, when war and the
struggle with crude material conditions of life occupied almost the
entire bulk of the population, the clergy, as the one class exempt from
these labours, and therefore leisured and with facilities for travel
or abstraction in study, were of necessity much more than clergy. They
absorbed in themselves several now wholly distinct social functions.
Their monasteries were the repositories of learning; they themselves
were the guardians of national tradition, law, and history; their
knowledge of plants and leisure to study disease made them the healers
of the folk; experiments and improvements in agriculture were made in
their grounds; born of the people, they were naturally their political
as well as moral and intellectual guides, and it was to them that the
oppressed people turned everywhere for advice and leadership. In such
a social condition, every individual born with unusual intellectual
aptitudes or inclinations was almost inevitably bound to gravitate
towards the Church; and the priesthood therefore were, not merely
through training and position, but by a species of natural selection,
the intellectual leaders of the folk. Therefore, for some centuries
the inclination towards culture and progress in a monarch, a nation,
or an individual might be measured, strange as it now seems, by their
esteem of and devotion towards the clergy. It was under the influence
of the clergy that those Gothic churches rose which are the glory
and incarnation of their age; and it was round the monastery and the
church that the intellectual and socialized life of the people centred.
Incidentally, it happened that those who were the ghostly guides of the
people were also at the same time the leaders of the people in learning
and the upholders of their human rights.

On a minute scale, and under very different conditions, the clergy of
the Dutch churches have for nearly two centuries fulfilled the same
complex functions towards their people in South Africa. They have, it
is true, been the sacerdotal consolers and guides of their folk; but
they have been infinitely more. They have been the representatives of
that higher learning and culture which circumstances denied to the mass
of their people; the parsonage and the church have been the social
points round which the national life centred, and from which have
radiated whatever of culture and social organization was attainable.

It has often been scornfully described how when, in some remote Boer
farmhouse, one son showed unusual mental alertness, he was predestined
for the Church; how often, by rigid economy on the part of other
members of the family, the money was accumulated to send him to college
in Europe, and how on his return Mynheer was regarded with profound
reverence and almost awe, even by his aged parents and the boys with
whom he had minded lambs in childhood. This is true; but to suppose
the feeling took its rise merely in a superstitious reverence for the
black coat and ghostly prerogatives of the preacher would be to err
profoundly. The man who returned from his studies differed materially,
in the extent of his information and in his grasp on many aspects of
life, from his brothers and companions who had remained tending the
paternal flocks, or labouring in the family vineyards; and he had
therefore necessarily certain social functions to perform, which could
be performed by no other members of his community, and this apart
entirely from his priestly office. The feelings with which he was
regarded combined, with relation to one person, the feeling which the
modern man entertains for his skilled lawyer, his family physician, his
favourite writer, and his political leader. For years the clergy of
the Dutch Church formed of necessity the connecting link between the
Boer, widely scattered through remote districts, and the outer world.
They were his advisers, often his representatives when he entered into
contact with keen social and political elements of the hungry modern
world. It was largely through them that such conditions of culture and
knowledge as he had brought with him into the desert were maintained
and enlarged; and they formed the channels through which were conveyed
to him whatever influence of the modern world reached him. And nobly,
on the whole, have they performed their task.

We believe that no one who is aware of our attitude towards
sacerdotalism generally, to dogmatic theology everywhere, will accuse
us of any undue bias in favour of the Dutch Reformed clergy on account
of their function or abstract theological views, when we say that not
only the Boer but South Africa generally is under debt to them.

Undoubtedly there must have been cases of self-seeking and
self-assertion; and a certain narrowness is perhaps inherent in _all_
forms of sacerdotal rule; but, viewed as a whole, their influence
must be pronounced as having been beneficial, and this far beyond
the ordinary mean. They have striven manfully to introduce both
in education and social life much of what was healthiest and most
vitalizing in our modern civilization, and to exclude much of that
which was lowest and most sordid; and with singleness of purpose,
with but few exceptions from the days when Erasmus Smit followed the
fortunes of the early fore-trekkers and his aged wife harangued the
British Commissioner at Maritzburg, they have stood faithfully by and
headed their people in all times of oppression and need.

The time is very rapidly approaching when the unique relation between
the Dutch pastor and his flock will finally have ceased. For the last
twenty years the intellect of the Boer race has rapidly been finding
openings for itself; the bar, the side-bar, the medical profession,
the professor's chair, administrative and political life are absorbing
the brilliant youths. The time is very rapidly approaching when the
minister will differ from his flocks only in the fact that he has gone
through a course of dogmatic theology, and when he will be equalled or
excelled in general culture and knowledge of life by the large mass of
his congregation; and, with this change, he will take his place side by
side with other clergy, whose usefulness is confined to the performance
of their ghostly functions; and, with this change also, the Church will
cease, save in exceptional cases, to draw the best intellects of the
people, as it has done in the past. But we believe that in the future
no impartial survey will be possible of the history of South Africa
during the last two hundred years without it being perceived how large
is the debt which, not the Boer alone, but South Africa generally, owes
to the clergy of the Dutch Reformed Churches.

Not only does it imply a curious miscomprehension to state that the
rule of the clergy has been autocratic and oppressive, but it has been
his Church which has formed for the Boer his most valuable exercise
ground in Republican Government, and his relations to it and to his
clergy exemplify markedly his curious inborn gift for self-government.
Not only have his pastors been men of the people, rising up from among
them and from no selected class, and imposed on him by no authority
from without; but in every case each particular congregation selects
its own leader, and frees itself of him when proved undesirable. The
submission with which, in a still largely oligarchically governed
country like England, a single individual is allowed to select, by
his own autocratic will, son, brother, or dependant, and place him in
control of a church and parish with all its inhabitants for a lifetime,
is a condition unintelligible to the free South Africa Boer, and one he
would not tolerate for an hour.

On the other hand, while he would not tolerate, and still less submit
to, or respect, or regard as valid, any authority imposed on him
from without, having once for himself selected an individual in whom
he reposes full confidence, he is peculiarly willing, not merely to
support and follow him, but to submit to his administration of the
law, provided it is a law which he has at first agreed to recognize;
and this is equally true whether the case be that of a pastor,
field-cornet, commandant, or the president of a state. It is this
inborn peculiarity which yields to the Boer his remarkable aptitude
for Republican Government, and prevents him from being amenable to any
other form of rule.

It is often objected, when one questions the wisdom of that unwritten
law which ordains that, in the English Army, out of an empire of
countless millions, all its officers should yet practically be selected
from a comparatively small knot of wealthy families known as Society,
and that such a process must hopelessly cripple the army; that the
English nature is so addicted to oligarchic rule that the bulk of men
born in England could never be made to respect, follow, or submit to,
one of themselves; that the fact that a man was born in their street,
shared the conditions of their daily life, and belonged to their own
class, would cause them to look down upon and despise him. Whether
this be true of the English or not, with the Boers exactly the reverse
is the case. It is precisely the man of the people, growing up among
them, sharing their life and social condition, whom, when he has won
their confidence and they have selected him to his post, they are
willing to follow and support with a whole-heartedness seldom accorded
to rulers or leaders of men.[75] They submit to the man because they
regard him as the incarnation of their own will.

     [75] It is clear how large an advantage this gives the
     Boer in case of war. A Boer nation containing 30,000 adult
     males has the entire 30,000 from whom to select its most
     efficient generals and leaders; while in a vast Empire
     like that of England the choice is confined to so small a
     body as to be absolutely minute when compared to the bulk
     of the people. What Oliver Cromwells, Cronjes and de Wets
     there may be slumbering among the hard-handed farmers and
     working-men of England no man knows or ever will know. The
     strength of the dominating oligarchy is too great.

It is further often said, when one animadverts on the fact that
members, connections, or, worse still, dependants of those small
circles of families forming the administrative oligarchy in England,
are almost always sent out as Governors to the Colonies of Canada and
Australia and New Zealand, that the English-speaking people of these
countries would not respect men chosen by themselves, and that no
successful form of government would be possible were not foreigners
sent them. Whether this would be the case in Canada or Australia we
have not had personal means of judging, but in South Africa the very
reverse is true. Were a prince of the Guelph family or a Duke's son
sent out, though loaded with wealth and oligarchic honours, he would
never have one half of the influence over or submission from the
majority of South Africans that a man born among them, growing up among
them, and selected by themselves, would readily obtain. "_He is our
man, who knows us and whom we know; we have chosen him, therefore we
will follow him!_"

It is the complete failure to understand this ineradicable instinct
on the part of the African Boer which has caused so many of those who
have attempted to interfere in South African affairs so grievously to
fail. With a race in which this instinct is so inborn that it manifests
itself in all the relations of life, towards pastor, magistrate, and
general; with an individual instinct for not obeying any person to whom
it has not first consciously and deliberately delegated its authority;
and then an instinct for following and supporting that person,--the
South African nation, in which the Boer element predominates, is bound
ultimately to become free, self-governing, independent, and republican.

       *       *       *       *       *

It has been said of the Boer that he is bigoted and intolerant in
religious matters. That this accusation should ever have been made
has always appeared to us a matter of astonishment. It can only have
been made by those who either know little or nothing of the true
up-country Boer, or who confuse intolerance with the totally distinct
attitude of a peculiar steadfastness to your own forms of faith.
When we remember that it is not much over a century since the last
execution for abstract opinion took place in Europe; when we recall
the fact that within the memory of those still comparatively young, in
the most enlightened community (or that which so considers itself),
a man cultured, able, and public-spirited, was excluded from the
performance of his legislative duties, imprisoned, and befouled by
the Press and the nation on account of his view with regard to the
nature of a first cause; when we mark that, in the same community, it
was only the other day that Christians holding one form of shibboleth
were with difficulty, and after fierce struggles, brought to admit
brother Christians using another closely-allied shibboleth to any
participation in public life or honours; when we consider the fact that
to-day a Roman Catholic or a Jew is still in England excluded from the
highest offices of State on the ground of his abstract views, and is
on that ground regarded with scorn and disgust by the large mass of
his fellow-countrymen; when we recall the fact that it is not twenty
years since a book speculating on the abstract grounds of religion was
refused at the bookstalls of the United Kingdom, and publicly destroyed
in several cases; when we note the contemptible and grotesque riots
which to-day occur in the heart of our most modern cities over the
cut of a cassock or the burning of a pitiful pot of scent; when the
gift of a work of art representing a mother and child to a board school
is sufficient to rend an Anglo-Saxon community with fierce and brutal
passions; when these things are considered, it is surely unintelligible
that a charge of religious intolerance should be made against the
South African Boer. With every excuse for an exceptional intolerance,
a large portion of his ancestors having come to South Africa to escape
religious persecution in Europe, he yet compares favourably with other
nations in this respect, and the burnings of Quakers and witches which
disgraced even New England have never been known in Africa. No man has
ever suffered death for his religious views on these shores.

Firmly wedded to his own faith and not readily allowing any
interference with his own attitude, he is yet singularly willing to
abstain from interference with the abstract views of others. With
regard to the up-country Boer of the present day, we are personally
exceptionally qualified to pass an impartial judgment, having through
life held views on theological matters not shared by the bulk of the
societies about us; and we can unqualifiedly assert that it is not in
the true primitive Boer farmhouse that an inquisitorial intolerance,
or the desire to suppress the right of the individual soul to its own
convictions, will ever make itself felt. There is far more bigotry
and inquisitorial interference with the right of free thought in the
English parsonage and the nineteenth-century drawing-room than in the
primitive up-country Boer farmhouse. Wherever bigotry and intolerance
make their appearance among the Boers, they will always be found to
take their rise among the more cultured nineteenth-century part of
the population. Many years ago a Boer woman once inquired of us how
it was we never went to any church. We replied that our religion was
not at all the same as hers, and that according to our view it was not
necessary to go to church. She asked us whether we could explain to her
what our religion was like. We replied that we could not, each man's
religion was his own concern: and she dropped the matter, nor referred
to it again till nearly two years later, when she said: "You told me
once that your religion differed from mine; but the more I know you the
more I begin to think we must have the same religion. When I sit alone
with my sewing I think very far away sometimes; and sometimes it occurs
to me like this: If I had many children, and each one spoke a different
language, I would try to talk to each child in the language it
understood; it would be always me speaking, but in a different language
to each child. So, sometimes I think, it is the same God speaking, only
He speaks to you and to me in different languages."

When it is remembered that this remark was made by an unlettered Boer
woman, who could neither read nor write, I think it will be allowed
that the learned, philosophic, modern thinker may sometimes not have
much to teach "the ignorant Boer" with regard to the true basis of
philosophic religious toleration.

       *       *       *       *       *

The third indictment which is made against the Boer with regard to
religion is that he is superstitious, that he allows his religion
to dominate every concern in his life, instead of confining it to
that small sphere in which alone in modern life conformably with
respectability its influence is allowed.

It may be at once stated that, in a certain sense, the statement that
the African Boer is dominated by his religion is true, but in how
far this indictment is one from which he suffers will vary with the
standpoint of the individual considering it. We, in this latest phase
of the nineteenth-century civilization, are so habituated to seeing men
and women walking about, carrying with them wholly dead or more or less
moribund religions which, like decaying flesh, corrupt the atmosphere,
and render putrid the whole environment of those who bear it, that
large numbers of us have reached a point at which we are unable to
conceive of religion as anything but dead, a thing to be restricted
within the narrowest possible limits, if life is to remain livable.

But the difference between a dead and a living religion is vital; the
first weighs down the man who carries it; the living religion up-bears
him. There is perhaps no life quite worth living without a living
religion, under whatever name or form it may be concealed, vivifying
and strengthening it. The Boer's religion is alive, it is in harmony
with his knowledge, his ideals, and his aims. Therefore it is his
strength.

Theoretically, so far as its dogmatic clothing is concerned, his
religion is a form of Christian Protestant Calvinism, and differs in
no way from that still professed by the majority of Scotchmen, from
the Aberdeen grocer to the Edinburgh professor. Actually, it differs
very materially from that held by the large bulk of any truly modern
population.

It is often said of the lives of men congregated in vast cities, under
more or less completely artificial conditions, that they suffer from
these or those disadvantages--that the de-oxygenated air of cities
retards muscular development, that it renders persons continually
exposed to it anæmic; that the continual noise, vibration, and lack
of direct sunlight have an injurious effect upon the nervous system
and that a debilitated physical condition is bound to arise. But the
most serious loss entailed by life in vast cities under artificial
conditions, whether in the modern or the ancient world, is seldom
directly referred to.

The story of the small modern child, born and brought up in a modern
town, where her father, an electrical engineer, had installed all the
lights in the street and houses, and who, when at four years old was
taken to the country for the first time and allowed to see the stars,
said: "Did my father set them up too?" may or may not be true; but it
illustrates with force the terrible vacuum in knowledge and experience
of the most profound aspects of existence which a life walled in amid
artificial conditions tends to produce. That which the Buddha left
his kingly palace and sat beneath his Boh-tree to seek; that which
Zoroaster found in his solitary sojourn on the mountain top, and
Mohamed in his secret cave, which the Hebrew leader discovered in the
deserts of Sinai, and the teacher of Galilee in the wilderness and
on the mountain tops; that which, having perceived, they strove to
give voice to in the world's bibles, and which has become symbolized
in the world's temples, from the rock-hewn cave temples of India to
the Holy of Holies of the Jew; from the Greeks' Parthenon on the
hill-top bathed in light and air, to the Gothic cathedral with its
forest of shafts--that of which all the religions and all the dogmas
are but the tentative attempts of the struggling human spirit to give
voice to--this reality is not easily perceived as present and always
over-arching when the individual is swathed in by conditions of life,
the result of man's small labours, and seemingly having no root beyond
his own will; and when the tumultuous sounds and minute details forced
on it at every moment almost blind and deafen the individual to the
consciousness of anything beyond the fragmentary and present.

This is the serious danger and almost certain loss to which the spirit
of man exposes itself, when he severs himself from all contact with the
living and self-expanding forms of nature beyond himself, and surrounds
himself purely by those which have a relation to himself, and have
been modified by his action. It is an inverted view of the universe,
with accompanying narrowness and blindness, which, far more than any
danger of physical asphyxiation and nervous muscular deterioration,
constitutes the evil attendant on the ordinary life of men in great
cities, or wherever immersed in purely artificial conditions.

Undoubtedly there are lofty and powerful spirits who have reached
a deep and calm clear-sightedness which no aspect in the world
immediately about them can obscure, to whom the city and the petty
sights and sounds of our little human creation are seen abidingly to be
as much the outcome and mere passing development of the powers beyond
and behind them as the silent plain and the mountain top--

    "And what if trade sow cities,
      Like shells along the shore;
    And thatch with towns the prairies wide
      With railways ironed o'er?

    They are but sailing foam-bells
      Along thought's causal stream,
    And take their shape and sun-colour
      From that which sends the dream."

No doubt the Jew of Amsterdam in his small room grinding his lenses,
living on milk-soup and a few raisins, found his piercing mental
vision no more shut in by the city-roof above him than had he slept
with Jacob's desert-stone for a pillow; and no doubt there are as rare
souls, immersed externally in the very noisiest civilization about us,
who yet see serenely over and above it. But, with the mass, this is not
so; we cannot see past the little material conditions that press on us.

When one bends over an ant-heap on a vast plain, that ant-heap with
its little millions of existences toiling there are to the one bending
over it but an infinitesimal part of the vast landscape, where a
hundred other ant-heaps, broken and new, lie around, and over which
the sun shines and about which the mighty mountains rise; but to the
ant, down in the ant-heap, it is the universe; he does not even know
that his ant-heap was heaped out of the red sand and will return to it
to-morrow; he knows nothing of the fallen ant-heaps or of the great
human eyes looking down at him; were it possible for him to climb to
the top of his ant-heap and raise himself up on his tiny legs, and once
to look round, he might know something of what the ant-heap was.

Most of us in our human ant-heaps are unable to lift ourselves out
of them; we mistake the handful of dust we have accumulated round
us, and which we call our cities and civilization, for the universe;
and the noise we make in gathering it we think is the sound of
eternity. Were it not for two things which we cannot obliterate in our
civilization--the wail of the newborn child, and the long straight,
quiet figure, knowing nothing and seeing nothing, which the hearse
carries away--it might well be that we should sink into a state of
ignorance and superstition so profound that we should believe, not
merely every day but in our sanest moments, that the will of man was
the ruling power of life, his work the end, and we ourselves the
universe, and beyond us, nothing!

From this form of ignorance and superstition our primitive Boer is
saved, assuredly not because of any superior wisdom and insight
inherent in him, but by the conditions of his life. For the average
human creature reads life as it is continually presented to him. The
Boer has not willed to go into the wilderness and the desert to seek
for wisdom with the teacher of Galilee or the sage of India; but
for the two hundred years of his South African wandering that which
prophet, seer, and poet have in all ages turned to for wisdom has
been laid open as a book before him, whether he willed it or not; so
that he too, however slow or dull his individual intelligence, has
been compelled by the daily conditions of his life, with more or less
clearness, to decipher it. Dark and blinded beyond the average of human
souls must have been the old fore-trekker, who, as at sundown his wagon
crept for the first time into some vast plain where no white man's
foot had ever trod, and as the blue shades of evening fell across the
countless herds of antelope, and the far-off flat-topped mountains
stood sharp against the sky, could cry "I, _I_ am the centre of this
life! The earth is mine, and the fulness thereof!" And the solitary
African youth who has been out in the veld looking for his father's
sheep all day, over kopjes and through dried-up watercourses, and who
walks home in the starlight, and hears the jackals call, and pauses,
listening silently to hear if it be not the young lions crying for
their food, has been exposed to educative influences totally distinct
from those which he would have been subjected to had he spent the day
in a factory amid pulleys and wheels and a crowd of labourers, and
had walked home at night through a gas-lit crowded street, past bars,
music-halls, and policemen, to his garret. The last music-hall air,
the picture of light streaming through the public-house doors, the
whirr of the machinery, and a thousand minute complex sense-impressions
springing immediately from the action of man, the one, of necessity,
carries home with him. The other has none of these complex man-related
sense-impressions; he loses much which the other wins, but he also has
something of his own. Whether he will or no, however dull his ear and
dim his eye and torpid his intellect, he carries home with him pictures
of the colossal things which he has seen, things which the son of Jesse
beheld when in his youth he tended his father's flocks at night, to
guard them from the wolf and the bear, and which, when King of Israel,
he reproduced in that chant which has gone down the ages: "When I
behold the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars
which Thou hast ordained--what is man that Thou art mindful of him!"

The African woman on her solitary farm may have no inherent power for
grasping large wholes, or seeing behind small externals to the moving
cause beyond; yet when she sits all the morning sewing in her still
front-room, while the children play out in the sunshine by the kraal
wall and the flies buzz round, and she sees wherever she raises her
head, through the open door, twenty miles of unbroken silent veld with
the line of the blue mountains meeting the sky, she is exposed to eight
hours of an educative influence entirely distinct from that she would
have undergone had she sat in a tenement-room in a city court, and
heard her neighbours tramp to and fro on the stairs, and the omnibuses
crash in the street, and seen only from her window, when she looked
out, the red-brick wall opposite. No man, be he hunter, traveller, or
trader, or who or what he may, who has ever been exposed to both orders
of influences, will say that their educative effect is the same, or
that a man can remain long exposed to either set of influences, the
artificial life of cities or the solitude of the desert, without being
profoundly modified by it, above all, as to his view of existence as a
whole, which is religion.

The Boer, however blind by nature he may individually be, has always
open before him the book from which the bibles were transcribed--and it
has been impossible for him to fail wholly to decipher something from
it. Therefore, even his dogmatic theology (and it is wonderful how very
little real dogmatic theology the true primitive up-country Boer has!)
lives, animated by a great, direct perception of certain facts in life.

That which the Essenes sought in their rocky caves, which the Buddhist
thinker to-day immures himself on his solitary mountain peak to find,
which the Christian monks built their monasteries and cloisters to
acquire; to supply men artificially with the means of partially
attaining to which dim-aisled churches and pillared temples have been
reared in the midst of dense populations; which the old Dissenting
divine was feeling after when he said: "Spend two hours a day alone
in your room with the window open if possible, in quiet and thought;
your day will be the stronger and the fuller for it"; and which the
Protestant hymn aims at when in its quaint doggerel it says--

        "Night is the time to pray;
          The Saviour oft withdrew
        To desert mountains far away;
          So will his followers do.
    Steal from the world to haunts untrod,
    To hold communion there with God."

--that which religious minds in all centuries and of all races have
sought after, has been strangely forced on the African Boer by his
silent solitary life amid vast man-unmodified aspects of nature. And
with all that he may lack in other directions of knowledge and wisdom,
of keenness and versatility, that which the conditions of his life had
to teach him, he has learnt. Therefore, though his dogmatic theology
is in no sense higher or different from that of others, his religion
oftentimes lives when theirs is dead.

We are aware, it may be said, that all this is purely a misconception;
that the man of unusual intellect seeks nature and solitude merely
that his own large mental powers may unfold themselves unhindered;
that what the saint, the philosopher, the poet, and the prophet find,
they take with them; that to the mere bucolic mind the midnight sky
studded with stars is but the covering of the plain where sheep feed;
and that the most infinite sky over him when he off-saddles alone at
midday in a vast plain is but that to which he looks up in order to
find the time. But this is not so. The great analytical reasoner may
find, labouring in his laboratory, the great thinker in his study,
watching the processes of his own mind, may discover, that which the
vast man-untouched processes of nature testify of; it is exactly on
the simple purely receptive mind that the silence and solitude of vast
unmodified natural surroundings have the most educative effect.

Driving on a hot summer's day in a cart across a great African plain,
with the light pouring down on the brak bushes and karroo, till it
seemed to shimmer out of them, the Boer who drove us was, as usual,
silent. He was a man six feet in height, large-boned and powerful, with
a still blue eye, an iron will, and indomitable persistency. Living in
a remote part of the country, he seldom went to church more than once
in the year, and could with great difficulty read a chapter in the
Bible. During the years we had known him we had never heard him refer
to anything more profound than his sheep and cattle, and the habits of
tiger-leopards, upon which he was an authority. After driving about two
hours, the horses' feet sinking into the sand and coming out again with
a sucking sound, but no movement breaking the hot stillness, he looked
round at us, with that peculiar shy glance which marks men who live
much alone, and do not often try mentally to approach their fellow-men,
and said slowly in the Taal: "There is something I have long wanted to
ask you. You are learned. When you are alone in the veld like this,
and the sun shines so on the bushes, does it ever seem to you that
something speaks? It is not anything you hear with the ear, but it
is as though you grew so small, so _small_, and the other so great.
Then the little things at the house seem all nothing. Do you hear it,
too--you who are so learned?"

We are aware of the guffaw of laughter which would greet such a
statement from souls on the stock exchange, in drinking-bars and
fashionable clubs, and perhaps the national assemblies where the
representatives of civilized nations meet. This man, it would be said,
had lived so much alone with nature that he had become a fool. If he
had been fifteen years in the share market or the diplomatic service,
and had lunched at his club and spent his evening at the theatre or the
café chantant, he would never have felt himself or his affairs small,
nor would he have perceived anything greater than himself. It will be
said it was all ignorance and superstition.

We reply: "This may be so; but if it is, then burn your world's
bibles, and destroy your world's temples, for that which the world's
bibles were written to express and its temples built to symbolize is
an 'ignorance and superstition.' Yet, before we accept your verdict
finally, answer us these two things: Where were you and I eighty
years ago? Where shall we be eighty years hence, when this throbbing
hand that writes to-night is a handful of dust, and your mouth that
smiles is quiet beneath six feet of earth? Answer these questions
without 'ignorance and superstition,' and we, too, will allow that the
man--who, in the presence of the vast life of nature which existed for
ages before he was and will continue for millions after he has ceased
to see, which waxes and wanes without regard of him or his ends--is
a fool, when he feels himself less than a fine grain of sand in the
mighty circle of that life in which we live and move and have our being
and are continually sustained."

The day may come when, with changing conditions of life, the Boer will
no more live in the presence of these large realities, and then his
religion will be dead; whatever external form it may take.

It may be, that then he will have much of the learning of the schools,
and his own material life will have become infinitely complex, and his
knowledge how to govern the powers of nature for the gratification of
his own instincts almost unlimited; he may have luxuries, comforts,
amusements he knows not now--but it may not be so well with him.

It may be, the day will come when he shall rear for himself vast
cities, and walk, with the kings that have been, upon their walls,
crying, "Behold this is Babylon, my great city, which _I_ have
built"--and know not that the sands of the desert shall cover it, and
the little shrew-mouse build her nest there.

And, if that day come, when the desert shall hold no more for him any
burning bush, and no spot on earth be longer sacred to him; when, with
increased external knowledge and material wealth, the little _I_ grows
always greater and greater for him, and the universe beyond less and
less, then he will no longer fight so bravely on his kopjes or live so
peacefully on his plains or fall asleep so quietly when the time comes
to lie beneath the sand and bushes--and it will not be so well with him.

When the day comes, when he exchanges the voice of the desert for
the ignorance and superstition of the city, then, however vast his
expansion in certain directions, the secret fountain of strength of
this strange little people will have dried up, and they will be even as
others.

       *       *       *       *       *

Finally, it has been said of the African Boer that he does not
regard the African native as his brother, nor treat him with that
consideration with which man should treat his brother man.

The consciousness of human solidarity, with its resulting sense of
social obligation, has in all ages developed itself in proportion
to the nearness of man to man. Initiated in the relation of mother
to child, where the union is visible, physical and as complete as
is compatible with distinct existence, it has spread itself out
successively, as the sentient creature developed, through the relations
of family and the tribe to that of nation, and has extended, even
though in a partial and undeveloped condition, to the limits of race;
but here, almost always, in the average human creature as up to the
present time evolved, the growth has stopped. Even the most ordinary
man or woman, in the bulk of the societies existing on the earth
to-day, is conscious of a certain union with, and more or less strong
social obligation towards, the members of his own family; most men
are conscious of some sense of solidarity with, and of some social
obligation towards, the members of their own national organization; and
probably few are wholly unconscious of a certain dim sense of identity
with, and a vague (though it may be very vague) sense of obligation
towards, men of their own colour and racial development. But only
the few, and they the very few, most fully evolved and exceptionally
endowed humans have been in the past or are even at the present day
capable of carrying the sense of solidarity and social obligation
across the limit of race. Nor, when we consider how intermittent and
often feebly active is the social instinct even within the domain
of the family, the nation, and the race, is it to be wondered at
that its action should cease almost entirely when the vast chasm of
racial distinction is reached. While humanity as a whole is still
in so primitive a condition that even the bonds of family kinship,
the close interactions of a common nationality with common language,
common tradition, and common institutions, the similitude which binds
nations of a common race, are yet continually inoperative in insuring
any approach to truly socialized action; when nations as closely knit
by ties of physical resemblance, common racial habits of thought and
ideals, as are all the European nations, are yet continually animated
by the bitterest antagonism; while Frenchman hates Englishman and
Englishman German and German Italian, it is assuredly in no way to be
wondered at, that, when humans are brought into contact with those as
widely dissevered from themselves, not merely in colour and external
configuration, but in the much more important matters of anatomical
structure and the racial ideals and habits of life, the results of
countless ages of growth, as are Mongolian and Aryan, European and
African, that social instinct should become in the main entirely
inoperative.

Ignorant persons may suppose, when they hear to-day of Americans who
belong to what is probably, on the whole, the most enlightened and
humane state on the globe, first mutilating and partially dismembering
the Negro, and then applying the fire gradually to parts of his body
that he may roast the more slowly, that the men performing such deed
must of necessity be cut off from the rest of their race by a fiendish
ferocity peculiar to themselves and an anti-social structure of mind.
Such ignorant persons also undoubtedly picture to themselves the owners
of the English slave-ships (who have perhaps inflicted a larger amount
of suffering on the human race than any other body of men of equal
number in the history of the race) as persons wholly devoid of human
sympathies, who could not be trusted to deal justly or generously
with their own wives or children, and possessed of no sense of social
obligation. But we, who have obtained a sorrowful knowledge through
personal experience of racial problems, we know that this is not so.
We know well that a man may bristle with all the ordinary domestic and
private virtues, may be a loyal husband, a devoted son, a thoughtful
father, a citizen who abides within the law and would give his life
for his nation, and may even be a man who would not easily inflict an
uncalled-for wrong or wanton cruelty on any man of his own race and
colour, though divided from him by national and lingual differences;
and yet, when the limit of racial continuity is reached in this same
man, there may be a sudden, complete and abysmal hiatus in the action
of the moral sense and the socialized instincts. (Strangely enough, in
our own personal experience, several cases of the most painful cruelty
and injustice, on the part of white men towards black, have been cases
in which the white men concerned were exceptionally good-hearted,
generous and open-handed men. In one instance of particular cruelty,
where two white men were concerned, upon seeing our manifest discomfort
at their action, they were sincerely distressed. "If I had any idea you
would take on like that about a miserable nigger, I would never have
touched the wretched beggar!" remarked one. Persons ignorant of the
racial problem may regard it as improbable, if not impossible, that men
who could perform acts of ruffianly brutality towards an African should
yet be so sensitive as to be deeply concerned that they had momentarily
distressed a looker-on, whom they hardly knew and had no personal
friendship for, but who was of their own race. Yet, persons who have
practically no knowledge of inter-racial relations know that not merely
is this psychologic attitude possible, but that it is a matter of
universal occurrence.)

Social instinct has never in the past, and does not to-day, except in
a few and exceptional instances, spontaneously tend to cross the limits
of race.

The sooner this truth is recognized as axiomatic by all who attempt
to deal with problems of race, the greater will be the possibility of
dealing with them in a spirit of wisdom.

To blind our eyes to this fact, and then attempt to comprehend or deal
rationally with race-problems, is to act as would a schoolboy who sets
himself to solve an arithmetical puzzle in which he had failed to set
down the leading term. The sooner it is recognized as axiomatic that
the distinctions of race are not imaginary and artificial, but real and
operative; that they form a barrier so potent that the social instincts
and the consciousness of moral obligation continually fail to surmount
them; that the men or the nations which may safely be trusted to act
with justice and humanity within the limits of their own race are yet,
in the majority of cases, wholly incapable of so acting beyond those
limits; that only in the case of exceptional individuals gifted with
those rare powers of sympathetic insight which enable them, beneath
the multitudinous and real differences, mental and physical, which
divide wholly distinct races, to see clearly those far more important
elements of a common humanity which underlie and unite them, is the
instinctive and unconscious extension of social feeling beyond the
limits of race possible; that, for all others, wholly just and humane
action beyond the limits of their own race, can be only attained as the
result of a stern, conscious, unending, mental discipline; and that
perhaps no individual man or woman is at the present day so highly
developed as regards social instinct as to be certain that they can
at all times depend on themselves to act with perfect equity where
inter-racial relations are concerned; that no individual is so highly
developed morally as to be able wholly to dispense with a most careful
intellectual self-examination when dealings with persons of alien race
and colour are entered on; and, finally, that the great moral and
intellectual expansion which humanity has during the ensuing centuries
to undergo, if harmonized human life on the globe is ever to be,
is in the direction of extending the social instincts beyond those
limits of the family, the nation, and the race, to the humanity beyond
those limits:--the sooner we recognize as axiomatic these truths, the
quicker will be our progress towards the comprehension and satisfactory
solution of racial problems; and, failing to recognize these truths, it
is perhaps wholly useless for anyone to attempt to deal with the moral
and social aspects of inter-racial questions.

With perfect uniformity throughout the whole history of the human race
in the past, we find strong anti-sociality appearing at the point where
the light Aryan race comes into contact with darker races; and it
appears to make little difference which nations are concerned.

We Anglo-Saxons have the unhappy priority of having caused to the
natives of Africa, in our functions as slave-traders, slave-owners,
and explorers, probably more than fifty times as much suffering as
any other European nation. It appears, indeed, to have been our
unhappy prerogative to have been born to be the perpetual scourge
and torture of this vast, wonderful, attractive continent and its
interesting children. Probably at least fifty Africans have perished
under the lash, have borne the manacles, or been shot by the guns of
Anglo-Saxons, for every one that has been lashed, manacled, or shot by
a Frenchman, German, Spaniard, or European of any other variety; but
this has arisen, not at all because other nations were more socially
inclined towards the African, but because the love of material wealth
being dominant in us and trade our speciality, the African, whom all
white nations have regarded as mainly a means of producing or procuring
wealth, has naturally fallen most into our hands. Where Spaniard
has dealt with Indian, German, Frenchman or Dutchman with African
or Asiatic, exactly the same lack of lofty social feeling, and the
same mental attitude regarding them merely as means for production of
increased benefits for themselves, and not as individuals who are ends
within themselves, has prevailed.

Irrespective of nationality or time, the line at which light race meets
dark is the line at which human sociality is found at the lowest ebb;
and, wherever that line comes into existence, there are found the
darkest shadows which we humans have cast by our injustice and egoism
across life on earth.

       *       *       *       *       *

If then, when the statement is made that the South African Boer has not
treated the South African native as it is desirable man should treat
man, it be meant to imply that in his treatment of the dark races his
conduct has been at one with that of all other European races, and
that he has not entered on that loftier and more socialized course of
action toward subject and dark races, to which it is our hope that
the humanity of the future will attain, then the statement is wholly
and unmitigatedly true. But if, on the other hand, it be intended by
the assertion to imply that the South African Boer, in his treatment
of the dark races with whom he has been thrown into contact, has been
less governed by just and humane instincts than men of other races
under like conditions, that the English slave-trader or speculator, the
Portuguese adventurer, the Spanish conqueror, the Jamaica planter have
treated the African native better, then the statement is wholly and
unmitigatedly false.

As the student of racial problems has continually occasion to repeat,
there has been no wide difference between the attitude of different
white races when brought into contact with dark, whether in Asia,
Africa, or America; but on the whole the relation of the African Boer
with the African native, sorrowful as are all inter-racial relations,
has yet probably tended to be rather slightly more and not less pacific
than those of other races. This results in no way from the higher
humanitarian standpoint of the Boer, but from his circumstances.

Firstly, from the fact that his numbers have always been small and
insignificant as compared with those of the Bantus, the African
people with which he has mainly had to deal, and that the Bantus,
being one of the most virile and powerful of all dark races, it has
not been possible for him to dominate them as he might have done a
feebler people. (Were the natives of India of the same independent
and resolute spirit as the Bantus of South Africa, England could never
have subjected and held them down, as she has done at the point of the
bayonet, for sixty years.)

Secondly, the African Boers are a peculiarly pacific and even-tempered
people, not quickly roused to anger or any other emotion, though when
roused yet difficult to appease; and, as acts of violence towards
subject people are most often the results of sudden outburst of
passion, the native has probably fared somewhat better at their hands
than in those of a more quick-blooded race.

The strange, gentle, slow and somewhat dreamy element, which forms so
important a charm in the character of the Boer, is by no means peculiar
to the Dutch South African. It is a quality which is found almost
quite as markedly in the grandsons of the British settlers of 1820 and
other South African born men of English descent, and is especially
marked in many of the young English farmers in the Eastern and Frontier
districts, who form the flower of our English population, and who are
often South Africans of the third generation. It is by this peculiar
mental attitude more even than by their muscular build and prominent
bony structure, that one tells almost invariably and without fail
the South African born man of whatever descent from the foreigners
and newcomers who fill our seaports and mining centres. It has in it
something slightly reminiscent of the Italian _dolce far niente_, and
partly finds expression in the Dutch motto of the Free State: "_Wacht
een bietje: alles zal recht kom_" (Wait a little: all will come
right); but it differs wholly from the Italian quality, in that this
gentleness and slowness covers almost invariably a power of stern,
persistent, concentrated emotion which we have not found equally common
in the Italian. It takes on the average five times as long to rouse
the African-born man into action and powerful emotion as the average
foreigner of English or any other nationality; and it takes ten times
as much to pacify him again!

Speaking once to a noted American traveller and military man, who had
journeyed all over the world and noted keenly, we asked him, after
spending two years in South Africa, what had most struck him in the
country. He replied: "The strange gentleness of the African men. I
hardly knew whether to be most surprised or touched by it when I first
came. I have seen nothing like it in the world."

When we ourselves returned to South Africa after ten years' absence
in Europe, and were therefore able to view our birth-fellows almost
impartially, the true born South African man, whether Dutch or English,
reminded us of nothing so much as those huge shaggy watch-dogs, which
lie before their masters' houses placid and kindly, whom you may
stumble over and kick, almost with impunity; but when once you have
gone too far and he rises and shakes himself, you had best flee.
There is little doubt that, in the great blended South African nation
that is coming to its birth, this mental attitude will be a leading
characteristic; exactly as quickness and alertness is a distinguishing
mark of the Americans of the Northern and Western States. It appears
probable that exactly as we shall be marked by our large, powerful
bony structure and heavy muscular strength, we shall be marked by a
certain gentle passivity, covering immense emotional intensity and
dogged persistency; that the great men we shall produce will not be so
often keen financiers and speculators as artists and thinkers; that
our national existence will culminate, not in producing versatility
and skill, but persistency and depth, in our most typical individuals.
We shall probably always be a people more easily guided through our
affections and sympathies than almost any other, and more impossible to
subdue by force.

Whether the cause lie mainly in the nature of the Boer or the Bantu,
this is certain, that the African native has not tended to melt away
with anything of the rapidity with which the Indian was exterminated
by the English American in the north, and by the Spaniard in the south
of the American continent; nor in the two hundred years the Dutch have
been in South Africa is any incident so painful recorded as that which
is universally accepted, and has not, we believe, been authentically
denied, with regard to the treatment of the natives of India, when men
who, however brutally, had been fighting in defence of their native
land, were, before being blown from the gun's mouth, compelled to lick
up the blood of the persons they had killed, in order that the fear
of eternal damnation might be added to the other horrors of death. No
analogous incident, sinking civilized man so far below the level of the
wild beast and the primitive savage, has we believe ever been recorded
of the African Boer, even when his women and children have been killed
and mutilated by scores.

The same equality in the treatment of the dark races, whichever may be
the white race concerned, is illustrated when we consider the condition
of the African native in the different States into which South Africa
is divided.

In the Cape Colony, where the majority of the white inhabitants are
Dutch, though at present a British Colony, the position of the native
is more favourable than in most other states. Theoretically the
aboriginal native has in the Cape Colony almost the same rights as a
white man; he is allowed to vote at elections, and theoretically he
is allowed to sit on juries; though practically were he to attempt to
substantiate his right to try cases in which white and black men were
concerned by sitting on a jury he would probably be lynched; and in no
case has a native ever been returned for Parliament. Yet his position,
in spite of past laws and recently introduced laws--that he may not
walk on the pavement, etc.--is far more satisfactory than in any other
state.

In Natal, another British Colony, where the majority of the white
inhabitants are English, the position of the aboriginal native is far
less satisfactory, and that of the Asiatic as intolerable as it well
can be. Large numbers of Indians from India have been deliberately
imported on the plantations; but they are both hated and feared, and
vigorous endeavours are made to prevent their trading or acquiring
property in a land into which they have been deliberately introduced.

In the two Republics of the Free State and the Transvaal, the native
has not the same theoretic rights as in the Cape Colony. He has
neither the theoretic right to sit on juries or become a member of
Parliament, which in theory, though not in fact, he has in the Cape
Colony, nor is he recognized by the law as the equal of the white man.
Practically, in the Transvaal he increases and multiplies as fast as
elsewhere, if not faster, but his condition is in many ways far less
desirable than in the Cape Colony.

On the other hand, it is in the purely British possessions of Matabele
and Mashonaland that his condition is worst. Probably a larger number
of natives have been exterminated in these territories during the last
eight years than throughout the whole of the rest of South Africa by
Dutch and English together in any like period. And it is here that,
during the last few years, a determined and practical attempt has
been made to introduce a modified form of slavery under the name of
compulsory labour. The unhappy condition of the natives in these
territories rises, however, not at all from the fact that the men
dominating them are English, nor at all from the fact that the few
genuine white settlers in the country are of a lower stamp than those
elsewhere in South Africa, for this is emphatically not the case; but
to the form of government.

A body of speculators, mainly non-resident in the land, chartered for
commercial purposes and given despotic rule over a vast country and
its people, must always be the form of rule most productive of evil to
the subject people, whether the speculators so incorporated be French,
Jewish, English, Belgian, or German. The rule of such a speculative and
commercial body must necessarily be devoid of those personal sympathies
with the ruled which may soften even the government of an individual
tyrant; the conscience of such a body, if in its collective capacity it
may be said to have one, must of necessity exercise itself merely in a
conscientious striving to extract the largest possible percentage of
interest for the corporate shareholders from the land and labour of the
subject people. Under no possible circumstances can it exhibit those
virtues of consideration and self-abnegation for the subject peoples
which even a purely military conqueror might exhibit; and the rule
of such a body must always remain the most oppressive for the ruled
and the most demoralizing for the ruling people. To blame, primarily,
the men who are the mere instruments in carrying out such a form of
government would be unjust in the highest degree; and even these
speculators and adventurers who form the ruling chartered body can
only be blamed in a secondary degree, having but obeyed the instincts
of their kind, which compels individuals of a certain class to employ
their lives on earth in seeking to attain the largest amount of profit
with the smallest amount of outlay to themselves. The primary blame
must rest with that people which at the end of the nineteenth century
can allow so hoary an anachronism as a commercial chartered company to
usurp its place in the government of primitive peoples, and, from under
the ægis of its flag, to stretch forth in safety the long, grasping
fingers and the grotesque, greedy face of a Financial Chartered
Company, which should long since have been relegated to the past among
the extinct evils of the human race.

The native is best off and happiest in South Africa where, as amid
the mountains of Basutoland, he still maintains a semi-independence.
Both Dutchmen and Englishmen have carried on bloody wars against
this people, but neither the Boers nor the English have been able
wholly as yet to break up their tribal organization; and, guarded by
their mountains and their courage, they are slowly absorbing modern
civilization, in a manner more healthful than would be possible under
a sudden dislocation of their social and moral system. How long this
interesting phenomenon in national African development will be allowed
by circumstances to continue, it is difficult to say. Should gold or
precious stones be found in their territory, it would then be worth
while expending many millions in destroying the people and taking
complete possession of the land.

Thus, viewing the South African states as a whole, we find that
the question of the condition of the native does not depend on the
nationality of the governing power, or of the majority of the white
inhabitants, but on other and more intricate causes.

The question is frequently asked one when visiting in Europe: "Which
treats the African native the best, the Dutchman or the Englishman?"
It is a question which awakens a certain silent amusement. It is as
though, after spending ten years in Europe in the study of labour
problems, one had been asked on one's return to South Africa: "Who
treats his employees best, a Scotchman or an Englishman?" The true
answer is, that the relation of white man to black, as of employer to
employed, depends on far deeper and more complex conditions than any
racial variety of the white man or the employer will explain.

The individual equation always tells for much; but, roughly speaking
(one can but deal roughly with the delicate, complex, organic
intricacies of social life), there are in South Africa, as a whole,
four attitudes among white men as regards the native, which attitudes
have no causative relation with the matter of race.

Firstly:--There is the attitude of the farming population who, more
especially in frontier districts and to the north and east, are,
and have been for generations, thrown into close contact with the
aboriginal native in his most crude and primitive form, and who are
compelled by the conditions of their life to live in close relations
with him, and to act upon and to be re-acted on by him. These men and
women, whether Boer fore-trekkers and their descendants, or British
settlers of 1820 and their children and grand-children, have borne, and
to a certain extent still bear, the crude brunt of the first impact
between light and dark races, with their widely opposing ideals,
manners of life, and physical differences. These people and their
ancestors, whether Dutch-Huguenots who landed in Africa two hundred
years ago, or British settlers who came eighty years ago, have in
almost all cases passed through a life-and-death struggle with the
natives for the possession of the land, a struggle which, even in the
case of the British settlers who were backed by the soldiers and the
power of the British nation, was bitter enough; and this struggle has
left behind it in many cases that intense, curious bitterness which
is engendered by a race feud. Further, it is these folk who to-day are
brought directly face to face with the difficulties which must arise at
the point where the divergent ideals, social, ethical and racial of the
Aryan and the African, are first brought into contact.

Generally speaking (and allowing for the many exceptions which will
always occur where men are spoken of in large masses), there is,
in this class of the population, a strong tendency, not so much
towards scorn and indifference towards the native, as of keen, bitter
resentment, which can sometimes not be described otherwise than as
hatred: a feeling which is not generally found in any other large class
of the community. Nor is this in any way to be wondered at, when we
recall the century-long bitterness between folk so closely allied as
are Highland Scots and Lowland English, and the deathless feuds of the
border, and, above all, when we recall the fact that in modern times
a whole civilized nation has howled frantically for the blood of a
brother nation, to avenge defeat sustained by superior numbers of its
own men, fighting against inferior numbers, inferiorly placed, of the
fellow nation.

With the wild-beast cry of "Avenge Amajuba" still ringing in our ears,
it appears rather wonderful than otherwise that so much of pacific
human feeling should prevail between frontier farmer and fore-trekker
and the aboriginal races as still does exist.

There are few old frontier families in Dutch or English in the Cape
Colony, Transvaal, Free State, or Natal, who, if their past family
history were written, would not have to record hair-breadth escapes of
women and children who have fled for miles at night to avoid sudden
attacks, of farm-houses destroyed, of men coming home to find the women
and children killed and mutilated; this in addition to the record of
countless open battles in which their ancestors or they themselves took
part. And, on the native side, are even bitterer memories, and the
consciousness, in many cases, that the land on which the white man now
lives, and where he dominates, was once his father's. Alike among Dutch
and English, these memories have left their bitter mark. We have never
heard the natives so bitterly and fiercely denounced as by descendants
of English settlers whose ancestors had suffered racially from them.
"I almost hate you," has cried a friend belonging to one of the most
cultured and intelligent of our English Cape families, "when you talk
of raising and educating the natives. Hewers of wood and drawers of
water they shall be to us to the end, in spite of you." "I feel a
shudder of hatred go up my spine when I look at a Kaffir," said another
refined and, in many respects, noble frontier English woman to us once;
"I feel as if I could just put out my foot and crush them."

On the other hand, it would be very easy to exaggerate the universality
and intensity of this antipathy. We have known, not isolated instances,
but scores of cases, where both English and Dutch farmers have
entertained the kindliest feelings towards natives generally, and their
own servants in particular. We have known intimately an unlettered
Boer, so innately gifted with the power of ruling wisely that for
fifteen years, during which time he had always from fifteen to thirty
natives on his farm, he had never found it necessary to punish, or even
to threaten, one, and who was so beloved by his servants that, during
a long illness, when he was obliged to leave his farm for months in
the care of his Kaffir servants, he found on his return not one head
of stock missing, and the farm managed as though he had been there
himself. We have known both English and Dutch farmers who have kept
their servants twenty years, cared for them in old age, and aided them
in illness. We have known a Boer woman, herself an invalid, who would
go evening by evening to the hut of her sick servant to comfort and
help her; we have seen a whole Boer family gathered weeping round the
grave of a black Bantu; we have known both English and Dutch farmers
who have treated their native servants with far more consideration and
kindness than the average English landowner shows towards the labourers
on his estates; and, on the other hand, we have known both English and
Dutch farmers with whom no native would willingly remain in service;
who were as cordially hated as they hated; and whose whole relation
with the native was a series of petty oppressions, with occasional acts
of gross injustice or cruelty. But we believe that every one who has
attentively and impartially studied this matter on the spot will allow
that it is a question into which the Dutch or English extraction of the
farmer does not materially enter.

In the notorious Hart case of a few years back when, in the Cape
Colony, an English farmer of that name flogged a Bantu to death in cold
blood, they were English and not Dutch farmers who offered to subscribe
to pay the small fine inflicted on him, and who resented his being
punished at all. The most hopeful sign with regard to this feeling of
"race feud" is that, on the whole, it is a decaying feeling. To find it
in its full intensity among Dutch or English one must always go to the
older men and women of forty, fifty, seventy, or older, who in their
youth went through bitter experiences of conflict with the native, or
remember the experiences of their parents. It is far less intense among
the younger men and women of from twenty-five and under, now growing
up, and in another generation it will probably be all but extinct in
the form of a true race feud.

We would not, however, for a moment have it understood that an
anti-social attitude towards the native is peculiar to the African-born
farmer. So far is this from being the case, that, where men newly
arrived from Europe are thrown into the same close contact and come
into conflict with aboriginal natives, their attitude is generally
far less human, _and has in it an element of complete callousness and
cold contempt_, seldom or never found among men born in South Africa,
who have grown up among the native races. This may appear strange, but
an analogous phenomenon has often been noted in America, where it has
been observed that the slave-owners in the Southern States, in spite
of their dominance over the slaves and occasional acts of brutality
and oppression, really regarded them more as fellow humans and were
emotionally nearer to them, than were, in many cases, the Northerners
who came to live in the South, and who, on first meeting them, were
often filled with shrinking and disgust.

The African-born farmer, Dutch or English, who has grown up among the
natives, has been nursed by them in childhood, often speaks their
language, and knows something of their manners and ideas, may hate
them; but always, in his heart of hearts, he recognizes them as men;
and his very hatred and bitterness is a kind of tribute to the common
humanity that he feels binds them. Man only hates man.

To the newcomer from Europe, on the other hand, who becomes a farmer,
or is otherwise thrown into contact with the aboriginal native, he is
often an object, not merely of hatred, but of contempt and sport; there
is no mere assumption of cynicism when he speaks of the native merely
as an object of the chase; he has often no other view with regard to
him. We have heard a brilliant young English officer, who had only
been a few years in the country, but had been employed in what is
called a "Native War," dwell with manifest and almost boyish delight
on the pleasures of Bantu-hunting. He described the curious delight
you feel in finding the mark of a naked foot and tracing it down. "It
is," he said, "like the pleasure of the hunting field--with something
added!" We have also known a skilful English doctor, a man of singular
tenderness and generosity towards persons of his own nationality, who
had been only eight years in the country, but had served in two native
campaigns, remark that the only two purposes for which natives were
of any use were to serve as targets for rifle-shooting and as good
subjects for vivisection; while his inhumanity towards wounded and
other natives was a matter of common remark among the South African
burghers. And a fine young English trooper who had been two years in
the country, after hearing our view on the native question, remarked
thoughtfully: "Well, you know, all this is quite new to me; I have
never regarded the nigger as anything but something to shoot." To the
South African-born man this light-hearted, callous, sporting attitude
is quite foreign. He may take the life of a native, but he takes it
sternly, bitterly; it is something much more than hunting down the
indigenous black game of the country; he knows in his heart of hearts
that the thing he hunts is a _man_, and a strong man; and in his
hatred of him there is even an element of fear as well as revenge. This
attitude forms a far more promising field for the growth of possible
socialized feeling, than any attitude of callous contempt can even do.
Hate is nearer to love than scorn can ever be; and, paradoxical as it
may seem, we hold strongly that if, in South Africa to-day, sincere
personal affections and sympathies are to be found crossing the line of
race, they will be found most often between the African-born farming
population, Dutch and English, and their domestic servants. The warmest
expressions of affection towards individual natives which we have ever
heard have been expressed by English and Dutch farmers towards their
old servants.

Secondly:--There is the attitude of the townsman, Dutch,
South-African-English, or Newcomer, who most often never comes into
any contact with the aboriginal natives at all, and whose employees
or domestics are all more or less civilized natives or half-castes.
Here, as a rule, the element of intense racial bitterness is wholly
lacking. The townsman treats his civilized servant very much, in the
main, as men of all European nationalities treat their domestics and
dependants. As far as wages, food, and the amount of labour expected is
concerned, the civilized domestic servant and town labourer is rather
better off than in most European countries. On the other hand, there
is always a hard-and-fast line, dividing the white man from the dark,
which is never overstepped. The only real drawback to the condition
of the civilized native in towns lies in the fact that, the moment he
attempts to transcend the limits of domestic servitude, he is met by
a stern barrier, socially obstructing him; _a barrier raised quite
as much by the instinct of the descendant of the Anglo-Saxon as the
Dutch-Huguenot_. At present this matters little, as the attempt is
seldom made; but in fifty years' time this harmonizing of black and
white men in the higher walks of life will probably form a great part
of the South African problem. It is not, however, a problem which
the question of the descent of the white South African from Dutch
or English ancestors will in any way affect. Every one who has any
knowledge of South African life will allow that at the present day it
makes not the slightest difference in the condition of the civilized
servant in towns whether the doctor, lawyer, or merchant who employs
him be of Dutch or English descent. We have, indeed, sometimes been
inclined to fancy that there was a tendency, as between women, for a
slightly more friendly and harmonious condition to be common between
the mistress of Dutch descent in towns and her domestic, than between
the English woman and hers. The Dutch descended woman is often more
easy going and has less of that curious reserve which marks the
attitude of the Anglo-Saxon towards his dependants, and even his
equals, but there is probably no material difference along racial lines
in the treatment of civilized domestics and employees in town and their
employers.

Thirdly:--There is what, for want of a better name, we may define as
the financial and speculative attitude towards the native. This is
the attitude of the great labour employers. These in South Africa
are practically never individuals but great syndicates, companies,
and chartered bodies, the individual members of which are seldom or
never brought into any personal contact with the natives whose lives
they control. In the majority of cases they are non-resident in South
Africa, wholly or for the larger part of their lives. For them the
native is not a person hated or beloved, but a commercial asset. To
these persons the native question sums itself in two words "cheap
labour." Their view of the native question is as clear-cut and simple
as the outline of a gallows. There is no intricacy or sentiment about
it. The native is the machine through the action of which companies and
speculators have to extract the wealth of the South African continent;
and the more the machinery costs to keep at work, the smaller the
percentage of South African wealth which reaches the hands of the
speculator.

For them the native problem is in a nutshell: "In how far, and by what
means, can the rate of native wages be diminished, so raising profits?"

It must be remembered that the natives form almost the entire body of
the true wage-earning labouring class of South Africa. The European,
working in mines or elsewhere, becomes almost at once in the majority
of cases simply the overseer or guider of the native labourer; and
in mining and other fields of labour natives are rapidly fitting
themselves for even the more skilled forms of manual labour.

The question of the relation between the great foreign syndicates
and companies and the native races of this country is thus the great
labour-question of Europe and America, but complicated enormously by
two facts.

Firstly, by the fact that the mass of speculators, company-controllers,
and their shareholders are Jews, Englishmen, Americans, or
Continentals, wholly non-resident in South Africa, or residing here
merely while they make sufficient wealth to ensure their retirement
to a life of ease and luxury in Europe, or, in the case of ambitious
Englishmen, till they are enabled, by means of their wealth, to enter
the English Parliament or obtain titles. From this fact it follows
that a decrease in the wages of our native labouring-class and an
increase in dividends, while it makes larger the number of yachts on
the Mediterranean, the palaces of Jewish and other parvenus in London
and on the Continent, and while it increases the gains of the tables at
Monte Carlo and of the racing grounds of England, and replenishes the
purse of debilitated and degenerate English aristocrats, yet not only
adds _nothing_ to the material wealth of South Africa, but positively
diminishes those very small returns which, under existing legislation,
is all she receives from her mines. European skilled miners and
overseers, as a rule, take their extensive earnings back to Europe
with them; and, with the exception of what the Government railways may
earn, it is mainly through the wages of the native labourer, expended
in buying the necessaries of life, and to no inconsiderable extent in
supporting his schools and churches, that the legitimate commerce of
the country and its general population are benefited by its mineral
wealth. Thus, on this all-important point, our native problem, which
is also our labour problem, differs materially and most essentially
from the labour problem of Europe, in that it is not merely a question
of dividing the wealth of the country between one class or another (as
is generally the case in Europe and America), but of retaining the
products of the land in the land of all.

It has been said by a leading speculator and millionaire in South
Africa that, if the States of South Africa could be broken down and
crushed into one, a united and uniform labour system might then be
adopted, and the wages of natives brought down; and he has held up
as an ideal for imitation the condition in India where natives are
supposed to labour for twopence a day, living therefore so closely
upon the border of starvation that the slightest rise in the price of
foodstuffs renders them liable to widespread famine and destruction,
and therefore also eager to accept the smallest amount of remuneration
which will maintain life.

To this end the Speculator and Capitalist, among others, have sought to
enter political life in South Africa, and in order that, by the passing
of laws dispossessing the native by indirect means of his hold on the
land, and breaking up his tribal tenure, and by the making of direct
wars upon him, the native, at last being absolutely landless, may be
unable to resist any attempt to lower wages, and may then sink into the
purely proletariat condition of a working class always on the border of
starvation, and therefore always glad to sell his toil for the lowest
sum that will maintain life.

Were this plan entirely successful, South Africa as a whole would lose
all the native now gains, the increased profit going to enlarge the
wealth of the foreign Speculator and often aristocratic shareholder;
and South Africa would then be saddled with a proletariat class of the
very lowest type. For, the only hope of the African native's rising,
and becoming a valuable and intelligent labouring class, lies in his
receiving such remuneration for his labour as shall enable him to grasp
at least some of the subordinate advantages of civilization, along
with those of its evils which are necessarily forced on him. If the
South African native is not in the position to obtain primary education
and in some measure to grasp such advantages and privileges as there
are in our modern civilization, then, as his old tribal ideals and
institutions are destroyed, he must inevitably sink into a condition
lower and more terrible than that of the lowest proletariat in Europe;
and, as he forms (and must do for generations, in a land where white
men refuse to perform the bulk of physical labours) the major part of
the population, South Africa will permanently be weighted and degraded
by the degradation and degeneracy of the great bulk of the inhabitants.

To the Company Director, Capitalist, or Speculator who never visits
South Africa, or remains here only while financial reasons make it
desirable, it can matter nothing what becomes in the present or in
future generations, morally or intellectually, of the native. But to
those of us, to whom South Africa is a home, to whom not only the
present but the future of this land is our most intense human concern,
and who with our descendants have got to sail with the African native
permanently in the same ship across the sea of time, it matters
everything.

The second, and even more important point, which differentiates our
labour problem from that common in Europe, is that our labouring class
is divided sharply from the employing class by the line of colour. Even
in European countries, where employers and employed are of one race and
physically identical, divided merely as being for the moment the haves
and have-nots, the adjustment of the labour problem presents sufficient
difficulty. But in South Africa, where racial and physical differences
divide employer from employed, the difficulties are immeasurably
and almost inconceivably increased. Any attempt on the part of our
labouring class to better its position or resist oppressive exactions,
being undertaken mainly by men of one colour against men of another,
will always immediately awaken, over and above financial opposition,
racial prejudice; so that even those white men, whose economic
interests are identical with those of the black labourer, may be driven
by race antagonism to act with the exactors.

The complete failure to grasp this aspect of our South African problem
leads to much of the inability in other lands to comprehend the South
African situation as a whole.

Thus, it is often said, "Why should the speculator, monopolist, and
millionaire loom so large in South African life? Why should he be so
much more of a bugbear and threaten all free political and social
institutions in South Africa in so much greater a degree than in other
lands where he also exists?"

Our answer is, that, wherever in Europe or America the great
millionaire and monopolist, Jewish or Christian, is found, with the
pluto-aristocratic speculators and shareholders who draw their wealth
through him, there also is found a great equipoise to their powers of
exaction or aggression in the great more or less organized masses of
the working classes. The limits are very sharply set, beyond which
the greatest Jew or Christian speculators backed by the most powerful
princes or plutocracy cannot go. We have no such counterpoise in South
Africa. Owing to the difference of colour and race, our great labouring
class dare not organize itself and use its strength; and we dare not
organize and use it, for fear of awakening the baneful flames of
racial antagonism. South Africa is the heaven of the Speculator, the
Capitalist and Monopolist. Here, alone, the opposing forces which meet
him in every European and civilized country do not exist.

The labour of resisting his endeavours to gain possession of the whole
mineral and landed wealth of the country and its public works, and
with them the exclusive control of the political machinery, lies with
the necessarily small middle class section of the community, mainly
farmers and small landed proprietors with a handful of skilled workmen.
These have not only to act for themselves, but for the entire labouring
class, which, on account of its difference in race and colour from the
rest of the community, cannot act for itself.

Any one who has given thought to the study of modern social phenomena
will understand at once how enormously our labour and racial problem,
being interlaced in this way, complicates our whole social condition,
and how almost helpless it throws South Africa into the hands of the
Jew or Christian foreign speculator. Let us give a concrete example.
In a town called Kimberley there is the richest diamond mine in the
earth, once the property of South Africans and belonging to multitudes
of them, but now fallen into the hands of a powerful syndicate of Jews,
Englishmen, and others, who, with the exception of a couple of South
Africans, all reside wholly or mainly out of South Africa, and whose
power is so enormous that they are able, by a mere expression of their
will, to return eight or ten men to the Cape Parliament, irrespective
of the wishes of the community. The action of this powerful syndicate
has long formed a source of disease and corruption in South African
public and social life, and the question is often asked, why the
working men and other inhabitants of Kimberley and such places as
the company dominates submit to this dictation? It is not so, as is
sometimes supposed, because the skilled workmen and overseers in the
great company are inferior to their compatriots in Europe in their
love of freedom or independence; for they are, on the whole, picked
men, and many of them are strongly democratic and freedom-loving;
it is certainly not because the inhabitants of Kimberley are more
indifferent to their manhood, or more willing to deliver up their right
to exercise the franchise into the hands of a small knot of Jews and
Speculators than other men; but because the forces opposed to them are
so overpowering compared to their own that they feel crushed.

Were the thousands of working men labouring in the mines white and
not black, and could they freely combine with the skilled European
overseers and the townsmen, the monopoly of the power would be snapped
in twenty-four hours. They would refuse to go into compounds, they
would demand higher wages and the right to spend them where they
pleased, and to vote for their own representatives, and the power for
evil of the great company would be broken.

But the bulk of the workmen being black, and any attempt to organize or
combine them being at once met with the cry "Black-men combining," the
handful of skilled English workmen and townsmen are powerless.

Our situation is very grave, and differs radically for the worse from
that of all other lands where kindred problems have to be faced. We
have nothing to fall back upon but the fierce and indomitable love of
freedom in a certain section of our farming population.

If it should be possible for the international Speculator and
Capitalist to carry out his dream, to break down the autonomy of the
different African States, each one of which is a kind of redoubt
behind which our African freedom is ensconsed, and, crushing us into
one structureless whole, to introduce "a uniform native policy,"
dispossessing the natives wholly everywhere of their lands by means of
labour, taxes and other devices, and bringing them down to the lowest
wages on which life can be sustained; then, when we shall have inured
the Bantu to the evils of our civilization, its drinking bars and its
brothels, but have left him no means of attaining to the higher forms
of knowledge or the fields of skilled labour, then we shall be left
with a great, blind, stupefied Sampson in our midst who will assuredly
some day stretch out his mighty much-wronged arms, and bring down upon
our descendants the social structure which we are to-day with so much
labour attempting to rear. Our gold and diamond mines may by that time
be exhausted, and Jew and Speculator, and foreign Shareholder will long
have carried off their gains and be here no more to feel the shock.
Upon us whose portion of earth to inhabit this land is, and upon our
descendants, will fall the blow.

This question of the relation between the foreign Speculator,
Capitalist, and Shareholding class, and the black labouring class, is
the very core within the core, and the kernel within the kernel, of the
South African problem.

The old race-feud attitude of the farming population, whether Dutch or
English, toward the native, embittered by the memory and tradition of
old wars and early struggles, will tend to die out, and even now is
softened by personal relations; the attitude of the employer towards
his civilized native domestic has in it little that is detrimental to
either, and suggests in itself no great coming evil. But the financial
attitude is one which will increase in its importance and in the
virulence of its evil effects with every year that passes. The small
cloud upon the horizon, to-day no bigger than a man's hand, will in
forty years have overspread the whole of our African sky, unless some
great and at present unforeseen revolution should occur. It is upon
the skill with which white man and black man combine to avert the
threatened evil, that the fate of Africa in the middle of next century
will depend. It may be easy to break down and demoralize our great, and
at present noble, Bantu races; but it may be very hard ever to build
them up again.

For the moment the men holding the purely financial attitude towards
the native happen mainly to be English or Jewish foreigners; but there
is really nothing racial in this attitude. Were the Hollander or the
Italian head of a great gold-mining, railway-building, or diamond
syndicate, there is not the very slightest reason to suppose that he
would regard the native South African less purely as a "commercial
asset" than his brother, the English financier, does.

The more profoundly one studies the question of the relations of the
white man to the black in South Africa, the more clear it becomes that
the determining factor in that relation is something far other and
deeper than the mere fact that the white man belongs to this or that
European variety.

Fourthly, and finally:--There is the attitude of a body of persons,
small in number, of no invariable occupation, sex, nationality or
creed, but gathered from every part of the white community. So small in
number is this body of persons holding this attitude, that again and
again have men and women belonging to it felt inclined to draw aside,
and in bitterness of spirit to cry with the ancient Hebrew at the door
of his cave: "I, only I, am left." Yet this body has never been wholly
extinct in South Africa, and, we believe, never will be. As we hope
later to deal exhaustively with the aims and attitude of this section,
it is not now necessary to do more than passingly to glance at them.

This attitude cannot be better summed up than by saying that it is the
extreme antithesis to the financial attitude. The man compelled by his
mental organization to take this view is of necessity obliged to regard
the native not merely as a means to an end, but as an end in himself.
Consistently with his whole view of life, he cannot regard the native
merely as a "commercial asset"; he is compelled to apply to him the
categorical imperative: "Deal with thy fellow man as, wert thou in his
place, thou wouldst have him deal with thee." He does not write up as
the motto which is to govern all the relations of black men with white:
"Cheap labour," but rather: "Noblesse oblige." He is compelled always
to see before him the moral fact that, if the native be his equal in
mental power and moral vigour, his place is beside him; but, if the
African native be _not_ his equal in mental power and moral vigour,
then there rests upon him the mighty obligation of all strength towards
weakness, of all wisdom towards ignorance, of the God towards the man:
"Rank confers obligation."

To the man holding this view the African native always presents
himself as the little dark brother of the great family-human, who
stands looking wistfully through the open door into the great hall of
the nineteenth-century civilization in which we fair-skinned Aryans
disport ourselves; and we are compelled to go to the door and say:
"Come in, little brother, come in; there are many better things out
there in the open where you have been than we have here; yet, if you
must enter, give us your hand, and we will try to show you what in this
great carnival of ours is best, and what most to fear. Walk in, little
brother, this hall was built for the sons of the children of man."

It is manifest that men holding such a view must ever be in deadly
conflict with men holding the financial view. The future of South
Africa depends largely on the result of this struggle. If the financial
attitude predominate absolutely, and the native be dispossessed of his
land by wars and the skilfully devised legislation, which, breaking up
his tribal tenure everywhere, throws him and his lands entirely into
the hands of the financial speculator, and if low wages at the same
time deprive him of the means of education, he must become a helot,
having no stake in the general welfare of the land of his birth--always
its menace, and at length its downfall.

If the other attitude prevail to any large extent, and the men holding
it are strong enough to set their mark on legislation and institutions,
the native may morally and intellectually survive the shock (as he
certainly will physically) of sudden transplantation from his moral
and social atmosphere into ours. He may grasp what is great in our
civilization along with its evils and may yet become the most valuable
element and the ablest defender of a social organization in which he
has much at stake. But even were this not so, the stern demands of
human obligation towards human would yet compel an uncompromising
justice towards him.

It will be obvious, to any person skilled in the study of human nature,
that persons, compelled by their mental organization to assume this
attitude towards the African native races, are not of necessity of any
particular European race, sex, or social condition. In the past some
of the men who have the most courageously and persistently upheld this
attitude have been Englishmen. More notable than all was Sir George
Grey, most gifted and most farseeing of all the Colonial Governors
whom England has ever sent out, a man of whose type it would appear
a country can only produce once in a century. There has also been
Sir William Porter, a great Irishman, whose name still recalls noble
ideals and generous performance to South African hearts, and who
during his stay exemplified the fact that the greatest gift which the
old European lands can send the new is one of their great sons, a man
with a heart large enough to be able to wrap itself about the people
and institutions and things in a new world, and, through loving, to
comprehend them. Another man who in the past has been noted for this
attitude was Saul Solomon, a man of brilliant gifts, said to be of
Jewish extraction, who through a long life amid endless difficulties
fought an heroic battle and never fell from the side of justice and
generosity towards the African native, and who has left a permanent
mark on the legislation of South Africa.

On the other hand, were we called upon at the present day to mention
the names of two public men who might be counted always to make
their stand and raise their voice where any action of injustice or
repression towards the native was concerned, we should give the names
of two men of purely Boer extraction, with no drop of English blood
in their veins. If during the coming century South Africa is to be
preserved from that doom which we sometimes see hovering in the dim
future before her; if her native races are to be transformed from dumb
brooding enemies, borne within her bosom, to citizens who shall be the
joy and strength of her commonwealth, it will not be through the action
of Dutchmen or Englishmen alone; but of brave souls irrespective of all
descent--"God's-Dutchman" and "God's-Englishman"--hand in hand.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Boer will pass away. In fifty years the plains of South Africa
will know him no more. A mist gathers in the eye and a thickness in
the throat when one realizes that the day will come when that figure
which made for us so much of the charm and beauty of our African land
will have passed away for ever! When no more will the great ox-wagon be
drawn out to crawl slowly along the boundless plains, and Oom Piet sit
on its front-box with his great felt-hat drawn low over his forehead,
watching with keen still eye the wide veld, while Tante Annie looks out
from behind him as they move forward on their long march in search of
the Promised Land.

The little brown house on the plain, where the stranger met so stately
and so kindly a welcome, and the young South African grew up between
his parents' knees, loving South African plains and kopjes dearer
than life--will have passed away for ever. It will have gone with the
springbok and the koodoo and the eland and the lion, with all that made
the charm and poetry of this South Africa of ours, that we have loved
so. The old krantzes will still look down from the flat mountain-tops,
and the blue sky stretch above all; but the Africa we have known will
have gone for ever. Men will not know, then, what it was we loved so.

The Boer will pass away! He will pass away, not supplanted by the
stranger and the alien, but by his own cultured, complex, many-sided,
twentieth-century descendants.

If the men of that generation, bearing his blood in their veins, love
freedom as he loved it and hold resolutely by the best attainable by
them as he held by it, then the future of the great South African
Nation, as far as its strain of Dutch blood is concerned, is assured.




CHAPTER VIII

THE ENGLISHMAN


In south Africa he bursts forth in all his multifarious shapes. Now
he is the little liquor seller, braving full rivers and prohibitive
legislation, with a wagon full of bad brandy made by the Boers, to
sell to the natives and return to the Colony with a pile. Then he is
a female missionary, buried in a remote native village to instruct
heathen girls and women, with the enthusiasm of a St. Catherine. Over
the way he is running guns and selling powder and shot which will be
taken from the natives as soon as we have made our full gain in selling
them. Now he is a cultured, sympathetic, freedom-loving man, talking
humanity and consideration for the weaker classes; and then he is a
Hart, tying up and flogging to death his black brothers. To sum him up,
to say what he is and is not, would be as futile as to sum up the Jew:
"We are anything, so please your worship; but we are a deal of that."

Probably no country in the world to-day gives more scope for individual
action; therefore our extremes and intensities show themselves on a
large scale. We are not weighted by traditions and the growths of an
old society. If we speculate, pray, preach, or farm, we do it in our
own fashion; the assertion which holds of one does not of another.
Nevertheless, broadly speaking, one or two things may be postulated of
us as a whole.

One is, that we in South Africa represent the modern nineteenth-century
element, with high material development and complex wealth of
ideas, as compared with the primitive savage and hardly less simple
seventeenth-century Boer. Whatever is evil in modern civilization is
ours, and also whatever is good.

In the complex problem of South Africa--the welding together of its
peoples--we have the leading part to play; we are at least the cement
which must bind into a whole the separate stones. And the main question
before us is--how is this to be done?

For the moment, the incomparably more important question, involving,
as it does, the world's greatest problem of how the primitive and
aboriginal peoples are to be wrought into our social system, is almost
obscured by the smaller and comparatively simple problem of the union
of the two European folks of the country. That it is desirable may or
may not be certain, but that it is inevitable and will take place is
certain; how and when are the only questions left open to us.

We have before shown how mixed and interblended already are the two
races throughout South Africa. Our so-called English colonies are
largely peopled, and in parts almost exclusively, by Boers or their
descendants, and the so-called Boer Republics, daily and hourly
becoming more densely peopled by English and the nineteenth-century
folk who come under their flag and speak their language, till the
leading cities of these states are more intensely and really English
than the majority of towns in the English colonies. Further, every week
and month, as the descendant of the Boer obtains nineteenth-century
culture, he learns the English speech, he adopts English methods of
dress, and above all he imbibes English ideas. So that to-day in a
South African drawing-room you are already unable to tell whether the
grandfather and mother of the well-dressed English-speaking man or
woman beside you were living on a Yorkshire moor or a Lancashire fen,
or trekking in their ox-wagon across South African plains. Already, so
mingled are our peoples, that the Free State Boer is often born and
reared in the Colony;[76] his parents or his wife's live there; his
children are being educated there; while his eldest son is studying
medicine in Edinburgh and his daughter married to an Englishman. An
English Johannesburg merchant, often born in Europe, may have taken
a wife from Natal, have his children at school in Cape Town, and
his business connections with the farmers of the Free State. Ten or
fifteen years ago, the Boer and the Englishman, though living side by
side, kept almost distinct in breed; to-day, throughout the colonies,
Free State, and Transvaal, there are few large families some of whose
members have not married into families of the other race.

     [76] That is, the Cape Colony.

This amalgamation is proceeding always with increasing frequency. In
thirty years half the men in South Africa from the Transvaal to Cape
Town would have to fight against their own parents in any war of race.
And there is no prospect of this process of amalgamation being stayed;
it must go on with always increasing velocity as education draws the
races together.

In answer to the question, then, how are the Boer and English races
to be amalgamated? we would reply: By one who in this case will work
unfailingly and without fail--by Time! In fifty years, fight and
struggle against it as we wish, there will be no Boer in South Africa
speaking the Taal, save as a curiosity: only the great English-speaking
South African people. This movement cannot be hindered, it cannot be
stayed, it is inevitable.

But it may be said, "Of what use is this amalgamation which may take
place only when we are in our grave? The average adult man cannot
safely reckon on ten, much less on fifteen or twenty, years of life,
and, if we wait for the natural process to complete its work, what
chance is there for us to gain the kudos, fame and immortal honour
which we desire to make out of the amalgamation of these peoples? Is
it not a great chance thrown away? Must we not amalgamate them now--by
force, by--well--diplomacy, by anything! You can't lose such a fine
chance as this."

To which we would reply: "Yes, the life of the individual is short,
but the life of the nation is long; and it is longer, and stronger,
more vigorous and more knit, if it grow slowly and spontaneously than
if formed by violence or fraud. The individual cannot afford to wait,
but the nation can and must wait for true unity, which can only come
as the result of internal growth and the union of its atoms, and in
no other way whatsoever. For ages England has tried to fasten Ireland
artificially on to herself, and after four hundred years it still hangs
at her side a dislocated arm, almost as ready to drop off as when four
hundred years ago Oliver Cromwell tried to plaster it on with blood
and sword. A nation grows, but it cannot be manufactured. Were there
no inherent mixture and tendency to sympathy in the different parts
of our community, not only would it be impossible to unite them, but
it would be undesirable. Were we divided into separate well-organized
states without intermixture of peoples, and without that curious racial
sympathy which _does_ unite Cape colonials of the old and new races
when they are brought together, they would be better left separate;
would grow into healthier, stronger and truly greater communities,
because they were separate, because they were able to develop their
individual genius and gifts untrammelled by alien influences. Mere
increase in size never means necessarily increase in vitality and
beauty, as little with a country as with an individual man who, as
he grows in bulk, so it be only an accretion of superficial adipose
tissue, diminishes in vigour and vitality. The world's great nations
have never been large; England, Greece, Rome, Holland, Switzerland,
have all been nations, minute in territory and small in comparative
numbers, and the hour of external expansion is often the hour of
internal death."

The reason why the conception of the union of South African peoples
is forced on us is that no germs of separate organic national life
exist among us (except among the native states). The composition of
our states is common, and the little walls that divide us are nothing
when compared with the identity of the substance of which we are all
internally composed.

If it be suggested: "But if there is so much internal unity, why
should we not just hasten on the consummation of the unity by a little
external and artificial welding together of the states, so gaining
great honour ourselves and helping on a good, at least an inevitable,
end?" our reply is that all vital union must be spontaneous and
natural, and by attempting to hasten it by a year you may defer it for
a century or altogether.

The half-grown youth and maiden, who are slowly and coyly being
drawn together, must be left severely alone and untouched if their
undeveloped inclinations are to grow into the interknitted sympathy
and interest which make the adamantine and indestructible basis of a
union that is vital and life-long. Kind aunts and mothers may wish to
hasten the matter; _they_ wish to have the pleasure of forming the
match; they may even die without seeing the consummation they desire
if they let it grow on along nature's delightful lingering ways; and
they may succeed--either in rupturing the union altogether, and turning
what was still a dream into the revolt of forced inclination--or they
may succeed in what they wished, and may wed the still immature boy
and girl, whose affections are not yet ripe and who physically are not
yet strong enough for union; and the great, healthy fellowship of the
ripe man and woman rejoicing in the fulness of freedom in a relation
that was their own spontaneous choice, may be supplanted by the sickly
fellowship of two souls who never forget that theirs was not a free
choice and who, in place of a vital healthy offspring, bear the puny
descendants of a premature mating.

When we are ripe and ready we will wed state with state, people with
people; and not before. The attempt to wed us sooner by force or fraud
will result in possible loss to the match-makers, and in certain loss
to us.

Once already we have been interfered with, and the result has sent
union back twenty years; and if to-morrow it were effected by external
force, the blow at our internal and vital unity would be almost
irrecoverable. If the external union comes without the internal, it
will be to the irreparable loss of South Africa. If at any time in
any of our states the people themselves change in their composition,
and those who were in the minority should become the majority, let
them do justice to themselves in their own state and demand their own
independence; and not only will they succeed, but they will succeed
backed by the conviction of even their opponents that they are in the
right.

"_Wag 'n bietje, als zal reg kom_" ("Wait a bit, all will come right").

Time is on our side in this South African difficulty. What to-day might
be effected with blood and tears will come with little trouble in five
years' time, and be inevitable in ten. "_Wag 'n bietje, als zal wel reg
kom._" Let us remember that the oak that grows the slowest outlives the
most centuries; _and that peoples are not made but grow_.

We as English have above all least to lose by waiting. Every hour
that passes, the descendants of a thousand Boers are learning the
English speech, are adopting the English dress, are absorbing through
literature and social intercourse our nineteenth-century ideals; every
month that passes is landing on our shores scores or hundreds of
Englishmen to inhabit the land and mingle their blood with the great
South African people of the future. "Wait a little," and in this matter
"everything will come right." When that time comes, when common ideals
animate us, and common blood runs through us, we will be absolutely one
folk, but not before; and time is labouring for it.

But it may be said: "If we cannot by force, or by that subtle series
of deceptions which in public matters we call policy, bring about this
external union, at least we are bound to labour vigorously for internal
union between the races if that will help forward our designs. At all
costs and at all prices we must keep the Boer pleased with us, that we
may carry out our plans with his consent."

Now, to this we would reply: "Union is a very beautiful thing whether
between races or persons--but the most ideal marriage that ever was
conceived may be bought too dearly; there is a price too high even
for union, the price of the integrity of the parties composing it.
As in the world of individuals, the union between a man and woman
otherwise most desirable, may become a crying evil and a living death
when, to attain to it, it is necessary for either or both to sacrifice
that which is of more value than any union--their own integrity. If
union be not possible while each holds to what he or she believes to
be best, if it be purchased at the price of whatever is highest in
either character, then, however desirable such a union would on other
terms have been, it becomes an unmixed evil, a prostitution and not a
marriage. Only those souls united by what is greatest in each, not what
is weakest and lowest, and reserving their integrity and independence,
can form an enduring and noble union. Where this cannot be, it is
better to wait, so by chance the day will come when both will see eye
to eye; even if, as the lives of individuals are short and growth slow,
the waiting for them should be eternal."

It is sometimes said: "We must pander to the Boer. We don't, of course,
agree with his views on this and that matter, but union, you know, we
are working for that! We don't believe that the quickest way to raise
natives, and the best way, is to flog them; it's an antiquated idea;
but the Boer likes it and we must vote for it for the sake of union.
The Boer likes us so much if he thinks we share his little follies."

The native tribes have trusted us, have _given_ themselves up to us;
we pass them over to the Boer, for the sake of union. And so we barter
point after point on a matter infinitely more important to the ultimate
destiny of the country, for the sake of settling the difficulties of
the hour. We barter our birthright of free, open speech and the frank
defence of the lines which we rightly or wrongly believe to be those of
justice and mercy at the shrine of a political chimera.

It is not by watering down our civilization and robbing it of its most
developed attributes, it is not by affecting to sink to his level in
the matters in which he is behind us, that we shall draw him into a
great and ennobling union or that we shall in the end win his trust and
confidence.

It is by standing firmly and serenely by our own highest traditions
of development, it is by wisely and generously seeking to understand
him, and in the end by infecting him with all that is best and greatest
in ourselves, not by selling our birthright for a mess of pottage,
that the great and royal union of the two South African stems will be
effected. It is not by the reckless bartering, on either side, of that
which our convictions hold as best that any ennobling cementing between
us can ever take place.

The seventeenth-century Boer has hardly less, perhaps much more, to
teach us than we to teach him; let us each hold by our own till we have
convinced and enlightened each other.

The one great lesson of a broad humanity, and the rights of man as man,
which, amid fields of war, the European family has learnt in the last
two hundred years, and which we, without any inherent virtue, have
learnt from our fathers and imbibed from the life about us, we have to
teach him. It is our contribution to the solution of the problem of
our land; amid all the noise and hurry and fœtid decay which underlies
much of our nineteenth-century civilization this knowledge is our great
gain, and to betray ourselves on this matter is to rob our fellows of
almost the only truly great and noble attribute we have to bring to our
union, to which he brings much.

For the child of the seventeenth century, if he will but be true to
his traditions and convictions, has much to bring to the union and to
transmit to the people of the future. The seventeenth century, too, has
its message for the nineteenth, a message which it needs not less than
the seventeenth the nineteenth.

In the whirl and din of our material advancement, in the fierce
struggle for external gains and progress, there is a side of life we
have well nigh forgotten, and the Boer on his solitary South African
plains has saved up a tradition we have forgotten and for need of which
we may yet die. To a curious extent Boer and Englishman, if they will
be faithful to their profoundest convictions, seem fitted to complete
and complement each other's growth and make possible a people rarer
than either might have produced alone.

While we bring to the Boer the doctrine of a higher humanity, the
external literary culture which enlarges the power of the man, he has
his own lessons for us. While we have set gold on a pedestal and dance
till we are drunk around it like the Israelites about their calf, the
Boer, nurtured in his primitive solitude, still knows there are things
our god cannot give us, and that material luxury and wealth are not
the beginning and end of life, that the man is not greater because his
name can stir three millions in the bank, that the cut of a coat is an
accident, and that a man sees God as nearly face to face from the front
box of his wagon as from the steps of a queen's palace.

A broad, simple conception of human life and its relations, without
varnish or finesse, is, if he remains true, his contribution. And if
through what is still, in many houses, the impenetrable wall of the
Taal, our cry could reach him, we would adjure him, "_Hou maar vas, Oom
Piet; hou maar vas, Tant' Annie!_ We have one great lesson to teach
you, but you have more to teach us! We will not pander to the one
weak spot in your soul, where the trouble and conflict of ages and of
tradition has made a gangrene; but, if we hold out firmly and teach you
our lesson, teach us yours. Do not let yourself be blinded and misled.
All is not gold that glitters. Our trains and our large houses and our
grand French clothes, they are all very well; but the greatest men the
world ever knew trod the sand with bare feet or rode upon an ass; and
a train is better than an ox-wagon only when it carries better men;
rapid movement is an advantage only when we move towards beauty and
truth; all motion is not advance, all change is not development, and a
train full of soldiers bent upon an inhuman attack is a more ghastly
sight than a squad of Indians with their scalping knives and arrows
on their prairie horses, in so far as the one mode of progression is
more effective than the other. The size of our houses and the labour
of a thousand weary hands upon our walls do not necessarily give us
the happiness you would think. Believe us, the kiss of the man on
the lips of the woman he loves, and the joy of the mother over her
babe, can be as intense in the little house your own hands built as
in a mansion raised and decorated by the hands of others. When a man
accumulates too much about him he gets buried under it. Our French
clothes are very well; but do you know that in forty years time your
portly figure in its black skirt and white kappie, if painted as they
are to-day, would seem to the men of that time more things of beauty
than the misproportioned productions of the fashions of the day. Hold
but fast, Tant' Annie! Under that capacious waist of yours lie sleeping
the ancestors of heroes of a larger, freer mould than would ever have
sprung from you if the iron band of fashion had compressed you to a
point. Hou maar vas! We have need of your simplicity to save us from
the disease of our artificiality, we have need of your faith in the
value of things that cannot be bought and sold, to save us from the
terrible scepticism that is creeping over us, that perhaps there is
nothing worth living for but success, and that success means wealth.
Hou maar vas, Tant' Annie! Hou maar vas, Oom Piet! And if we will
faithfully teach you our lesson and you will teach us yours, the day
will come when we will build up between us a people of whom the world
will not be ashamed. We will try to heal you of the disease that exists
in your condition; we look to you to save us from the disease that
battens on ours."

The question of the relation of Englishman and Boer differs from the
question of the relation between Caucasian and African races in this,
that, while our problem of relation to the Boer tends to simplify and
finally to dissolve itself as the mere result of the course of time,
the question of the relation of African and European races does not so
tend to dissolve and solve itself.

When any two peoples inhabiting one country are so physically related
that they have a powerful sexual attraction for each other, and that
individuals brought face to face are unconscious of racial difference,
the problem of union can be one of great moment, but cannot be one of
permanent difficulty. Wait, do nothing, and in time, literally and
not figuratively, love finds out the way, smoothes away difficulties,
and makes of the two races one. Where races are so far removed that
they are more or less sexually repellant to one another, that not
difference of speech and training divide them, but marked differences
of physical and mental conformation, of colour and build, then,
if these two races are obliged to inhabit the same territory, the
difficulty of arranging for their happy and useful interaction becomes
steadily greater as time passes, _and does not tend to solve itself_.

All thoughtful trainers of young children are aware that there are
certain faults or defects extremely troublesome and unpleasant for
the moment, but over which no wise elder ever seriously troubles
themselves; they are aware that time will heal these things and of
necessity do away with them; while there are faults, for the moment
far less inconvenient, which every wise trainer regards as of infinite
import because they are exactly those which tend to grow with years,
and the teacher or parent who should devote all his energies to
training down the boisterous noise and roughness of childhood which
must naturally cure themselves with adolescence, and regarded with
indifference the germs of selfishness or cruelty, which tend to ripen
only with adult years, would be universally regarded as unfit for his
labour.

Yet such often appears to be our action in South Africa. To render
smooth our trivial and momentary difficulty with the Boer, which time
will inevitably remove and smooth out, we are willing to complicate
and make more difficult a problem which in thirty years' time Boer
and Englishman's descendants will alike have to face in its huge
proportions.

Every step in civilization, in education, in approach to the European,
which the African makes, will render the problem more difficult, not
necessarily more easy, of solution.

What we consider the attitude of the Englishman in South Africa should
be to the alien, and especially the African, races beneath him, depends
mainly on the view we take of his nature and his world-wide functions
in the unfolding of human life on the globe generally.

There are four views on this matter.

Firstly, that of the average Englishman who has no view in the matter
at all, who eats, sleeps, begets children, and accumulates as little
or as much wealth as he is able without ever reflecting that he forms
part of a great people, or considering the future of the organism of
which he is part. The views of these persons, by the _vis inertiæ_ that
they impart to the whole body of which they form part, are not without
their powerful practical influence on the actual condition and action
of the race.

There is a second view, held with more or less clearness or mental
confusion, but with a great deal of vivacity and sometimes emotion, by
a large number of Englishmen.

It is difficult to represent with justice and exactitude ideas that
are held somewhat vaguely and with varying degrees of intensity by
the individuals holding them, but we believe we most accurately sum
up the views of this party by stating that they more or less vaguely
hold that the whole world was made for the Englishman, much as in our
childhood we were taught that the sun and stars were created to give
light to the earth, which probably came into existence a few trillion
years after many of the youngest of these. This party has a very vague
but vigorously held conviction that at some time or in some way, which
they do not specify, the English inhabitants of the British Isles
invented all that is known as modern civilization; we have never heard
it directly asserted that literature, art, science, and religion took
their rise on the globe eight or nine hundred years ago in Britain, but
it is tacitly assumed that it was so, if any logical structure is to be
placed on the assertions made; in right of this inherent superiority
over all earth's people, the same party assumes, still with a certain
vagueness but with intense warmth, that the English race is destined
ultimately to possess the whole planet and people it. How this is
to be done--whether all earth's multifarious peoples, compared with
whom the Englishmen on this earth are to-day but a handful, are to
be exterminated by means of fire, of sword, of poison, or simply by
infection with the diseases of our civilization, with our liquor and
kindred institutions--is not often, perhaps ever, clearly stated. The
strength of this party lies not in clear and lucid thought, but rather
in somewhat florid assertion which, questioned, leads quickly to
irritation and warm blood.[77]

     [77]  One skinny Frenchman,
           Two Portugee,
           One jolly Englishman,
           He lick all three!

     We remember in our childhood to have heard an improved
     version of this statement to the effect that one Boer might
     equal four niggers, but one Englishman would lick fifty
     Boers. We remember lying in our bed at night and pondering
     over this problem--why with such terrible partiality the
     God who loves all equally, should have confined all courage
     and fighting power to the inhabitants of Great Britain--and
     we had before us a vivid picture of the one solitary
     British soldier standing on a kopje waving his gun, while
     before him fled frantically fifty powerful Boers armed
     to the teeth but making no endeavour to secure him. The
     adventure of Majuba Hill came strangely to terminate this
     vision, nor have we ever been able to recall it save as an
     exploded nightmare.

He takes it as understood that the Englishman is to dominate and
populate the entire globe, and the descension to the questions of how
and when, and the grounds for the desirability of such an occurrence,
he regards as unpatriotic and childish.

This theory, in its most developed form, may be described as the
upas-tree theory, which regards the inhabitants of the British Isles
as a kind of growth which is bound to kill out and destroy by its mere
existence all the other infinitely complex interesting forms of human
life on all earth's vast continents, and to exist alone monarch over
a bared earth, like a colossal upas-tree under whose shadow or among
whose branches, according to the old fable, it was impossible for plant
to flower or beast or bird to breathe.

Impossible and repulsive as this conception would appear to many minds,
there is no doubt that, held more or less constantly or vaguely, it
does colour the actions and thought of large numbers of folk and is a
force to be reckoned with.

Thirdly, there is the view which is, generally, that of all non-English
nations and peoples; not only do they not share the upas-tree theory
with regard to the mission, the future, of the British people, but it
is difficult to make them conceive that it is held by any wholly sane
persons. To these non-English nations and peoples, the English are
an energetic folk, shrewd even beyond the Jew in business matters,
and with a subtlety which in every civilized country has appended to
their name the adjective "perfidious." To men, French, German, Russian,
Dutch, who have grown up from childhood to adult years surrounded by
the arts and civilization that are the common inheritance of the modern
world from the ancient, and whose religion and history have never more
than incidentally mentioned the name of Britain to them, there is
something not merely astonishing but ludicrous in the conception that
earth's vast millions, civilized and uncivilized, Asiatic and European,
black and white, are to be swept away by this trading fragment of the
race; nor is it possible to adduce logical grounds on which to convince
them that it will be so. How the Englishman is going to crush out and
annihilate the countless millions of China, India, Russia, Japan and
Europe, and people the earth they now occupy with the descendants
of his body, so that Englishmen may be all and in all on the earth,
is inconceivable to those who consider that in the space of some
hundreds of years the Briton has not been able to annihilate or gain
racial possession of the little island at his side, that Ireland still
contains as many Irishmen as it did a thousand years ago; that America,
their earliest founded colony, is largely filled by Germans, Swedes,
Jews and Irish; that India, though the wealth, wrung from its poverty,
flows into English pockets, and affords a noble exercise ground for
the sons of the upper English classes, still is as thickly inhabited
by men of the darker races as it was before the Englishmen landed.
Looking at these facts it is indeed difficult to maintain the position
which implies, if it does not assert, that the earth of the future will
be peopled by the fruit of British loins, and, when looking round and
inquiring, "Where are the descendants of all the races of earth?"--the
reply will be, "Gone!"

There is, however, yet a fourth view with regard to the functions and
destiny of the English race in the future. It may be that those of us
who hold it are, unknown to ourselves, still blinded by that mist of
race prejudice which, hanging before our eyes from the first moment
of our birth, is perhaps more difficult for even the greatest and
strongest man to brush aside than the obscuring vapours of personal
egoism; nevertheless, it seems to some of us, looking at the matter
with what impartiality we are capable of, that it is a view which
is capable of being defended by logical argument, and that the hope
founded on it is not wholly chimerical; moreover that it is a view, did
they but give themselves time to contemplate it, that would win the
assent of many who now seem to hold untenable views of the Englishman's
upas-like powers.

We who hold this view are perfectly willing to allow that there have
been, are, and will be races as great as and greater than ourselves in
many if not in all respects. We not only know, but hold in mind the
fact, that not much more than a thousand years ago our fathers were
barbarians scarcely higher than the Kaffirs of to-day in the stage of
culture and civilization they had reached; that even religion and the
art of letters and of material civilization were brought to us by the
higher barbarians of the Continent, who had received it as a relic from
super-nations of antiquity, who in turn had received it from those wise
small Semitic and Egyptian folk to whom mankind owe almost all they
are; we did not receive it much more lustily than the Kaffir of to-day.
And Alfred, like some white-skinned Khama, led or strove to lead his
savage children to accept and prize a civilization and a learning they
would never have invented and could hardly grasp.

We are aware that we have not been the leading race of the world in
arts and science; that as those ancient fellow folk of ours, who are
lost in the dawn of history, invented the alphabet and the art of
inscription, and reading, and astronomy, and reared mighty palaces and
wove rare garments when our fore-elders were dancing in hyperborean
forests, or on Asiatic mountain peaks; so later all that the cultured
man of to-day prizes in plastic art, philosophy and literary art was
brought to a perfection in Greece which no people since has ever
surpassed; and in Rome the arts of war and civil life were perfected
and the colossal buildings and paths which we have never even equalled
were laid down while, naked barbarians, we still hunted and drank.
We know that even in the last thousand years we cannot set our names
higher than our fellows in the regions of art and learning. Beside the
Euclids, the Copernicuses, the Galileos, Theophrastuses, of the old,
and the Herschels and Keplers of the modern, world, we have indeed
the superb name of Newton to set down, but it cannot out-glitter its
compeers; nor can even our prince, Shakespeare, outweigh the names
of Dante, Goethe, Voltaire; nor have we, till Charles Darwin of
this century, ever possessed a man who in the world of thought has
transformed it, as Luther or the French thinkers of the eighteenth
century transformed it, great and beloved as to many of us of to-day
are the names of our J. S. Mill and Spencer. In the lower world of
military art we have produced none of those men of genius before whom
the whole civilized world has trembled, Tamurlane, Alexander, Cæsar,
Napoleon; even Alaric and Attila have had no counterpart among men of
our blood. And perhaps no serene and impartial intellect can look at
the history of the race and say we have ever produced a man who, in
fame and extent of influence on the race, has equalled Moses, Jesus,
Buddha, Confucius, Mohamet, Socrates and Plato, or even Paul. Even
in the arts and mechanical inventions on which we so pride ourselves
to-day, we start back with astonishment when we begin to examine how
and when we came by them. While our fathers in skins or clotheless
wandered in the wilds, the fertile brain of the Chinaman had not only
invented the coarser or thicker woven fabrics, but had made from
the thread of the silk-worm such silk as the most skilled looms in
England can hardly yield to-day, and had formed porcelain of which
our creations are a humble imitation; our savage forefathers, if they
could have penetrated to the villas and cities of the Roman Empire,
would have found them filled with articles of art and luxury, and of
delicate manufacture, which he was slowly to be taught, and which
to-day he often only imitates with difficulty. Our woollen manufactures
were brought us from Flanders and Holland, our silk from France, our
muslins from India, our carpets from Persia, and even to-day there
is scarcely a manufactured article except in iron work which is not
manufactured better in some other country than with us, in spite of the
vast bulk of shoddy work we produce for sale. Even in dress to-day we
are not only unable in many instances to equal the delicacy and finish
of foreign fabrics and ornaments, but we are absolutely dependent on
the brains and taste of a foreign people for the cut and manufacture
of our clothing, and the direction which our manufacture of textiles
and fabrics shall to a large extent assume. Hardly any free savage or
civilized people in the world has not been able to invent and determine
for itself what class or shape of clothing is suited to its needs, but
the great English people hangs with a servility, which would excite
our ridicule were it not a matter of national shame, on the breath
of the Frenchman's lips and the throb of a French man or woman's
brain to determine how it shall clothe itself and what materials
its manufactories shall produce; and one French woman, she may be a
prostitute, or a public dancer, or a woman of fashion, hitches her
dress at one point or wears a protuberant sleeve, and five millions of
English all over the earth, with patient zeal and much labour, cast
aside their old skirt and sleeves and strive to do as she did; and a
few throbs of the brain of a French man milliner will determine that
hundreds of thousands of English hats and bonnets are to be thrown
aside, while with abject servility five millions of English women seek
to cover their heads with what he has invented.

Such abject dependence on the thought and guidance of another people
in a matter of daily concern can only be ascribed to the profound
conviction of the whole people of the Frenchman's superiority to
himself in this direction, and the conviction of the English woman
that she is not, in matters of taste, the equal of the French woman,
a humble conviction which reduces the English folk to a species of
buffoonery, when, in the simple wild suburbs of Cape Town or amid
the dust storms and heat of Johannesburg or Kimberley, they persist
in following the Frenchwoman and donning the garbs she with taste
invented to harmonize with the artificial surroundings of a Paris home
on the Champs Elysées!

Whether we allow it theoretically or only in practice, it is
undoubtable that in the plastic arts we not only do not surpass,
but cannot readily imitate other nations, ancient or modern. We
have not only never produced a Phidias or a Praxiteles, but we have
no Michaelangelo or Raphael or Tintoretto, like the Italian, no
Albrecht Durer with the German, or even, if we except Turner, a man
who can stand as a national representative beside Holbein and Rubens,
and national painters of the Dutch and Flemish schools; and in the
nineteenth century, great as has been our awakening in this respect, it
is still to foreign schools that our artists go for instruction.

If we except our superb old abbeys and Gothic relics, which we share
with the rest of Europe, our architecture is imitative, and, in the
case of such buildings as St. Paul's, shows the grotesque folly of a
people who, in an unsuitable climate and spot, will attempt in their
search of the beautiful and harmonious to imitate the growths of other
climates and conditions. The appalling hideousness of our cities when
compared with those of any country in Europe, their grim indifference
to harmony and beauty, and yet more appalling attempts to gain them,
oppress the new arrival heavily.

In music we have produced no genius and no noble work; the Bachs,
Mozarts, Beethovens, Mendelssohns, Wagners are Germans, and we have
no men who can approach the lesser but great Italians, or even the
Chopins and Meyerbeers. Our music, like the Elgin marbles and the
divine gods in the British Museum, is all imported; and when we would
raise a monument to our own glory, we rob Egypt of one of her obelisks
which, as a ruin among desert sands, was divine, and plant it in damp
ugliness on the oozing bank of our mercantile river to proclaim to all
the world, "Here is a people with money to import anything; but not the
skill to raise their own monuments!"

In the modern arts and manufactures, we have during the last century
taken a place in the front beside other peoples in right of a discovery
hardly, if at all, less important in its practical effects than
the electrical discoveries which in their inception we owe to the
Italians and others; and in the daily and hourly small inventions
and improvements in manufacture and the domain of practical science,
England, if she holds her equal place, does no more than hold it beside
the laboratories and workshops of France, Germany and Italy.[78] In the
world of art, in those arts in which _language_ is the medium, we are
alone able to hold our heads proudly beside the best of modern peoples,
not only because we possess a Shakespeare or a Chaucer, but because our
literature as a whole is a noble accretion of the beautiful and great.

     [78] It is remarkable that Edison, the great American, who
     has so perfected electrical invention, is, like Whitman and
     Bret Harte, largely Dutch in his origin, his forefathers
     having come from Holland a hundred years ago.

In that great and beneficent give and take which binds and has ever
bound the children of men together, as the blood which flowing through
the organs of the body blends and identifies it, we have received, like
our fellows, all that humanity has thought or found, from the first and
greatest discovery of fire by our prehistoric and perhaps Bushman-like
ancestors, to the hardly less mighty invention of letters and arts,
and we have also brought our quota to the common stock. But when we
look at the matter impartially, the conviction must be forced upon
every mind that, in arts and sciences, in manufacture and inventions,
in spite of the contributions we have made, we are far more receivers
from the common stock than contributors to it; that the world could
still get on as far as religion, science, art, philosophy and material
inventions are concerned without the Englishman, or were all he has
contributed taken away; but the Englishman, if he lost all that in the
last thousand years he has gained from Europe, and through it from all
the earth, would be again a savage in aboriginal wildness.

And the question then suggests itself to us: Have we really so little
to give to the common stock of our fellows? Are our assertions of our
own greatness and importance brought down to the fact that, while the
majority of other nations owing to their continental position have been
obliged to employ the mass of their folk as soldiers, and suffer in all
ages from the devastations of war upon their own soil, we, guarded by
our island condition, have been able to employ the mass of our working
class and to use our abundant coal and iron to produce a larger bulk of
a less finished quality of saleable articles than any other civilized
people, whom we are therefore able, at the price of the health and joy
of our working classes, to undersell in the nineteenth century? Is
this the fact, that the narrow and fixed limits of our island home did
not admit of our retaining all our population within its limits, and
has compelled us to send out swarms of folk to America and all vacant
or savage-peopled parts of the earth? Are these accidents our only
claim to greatness and to the respect of mankind? When we are called
perfidious and money-wringing from our own poor and the weak of all the
peoples, is our character summed up, and is our function no higher in
the modern world, no higher than that of the Phœnicians in the old, to
be the carriers and traders of the race while the world has need of us
and then to pass away when our work is done, leaving hardly a trace?

We believe that it is not.

When our wild German forefathers, Saxon, Danish or Frisian, landed in
Britain and mingled their blood with the remnant of wild Britons who
inhabited the fastnesses of the land, there was one great treasure
common to all the barbarian peoples of Europe and Central Asia which
they carried with them, the tradition and fact of personal freedom.
The Greeks and the Romans believed themselves free; it was the freedom
of an enfranchized minority reigning despotically over a vast body of
women and slaves, and Athens, in her noblest days, contained thirty
thousand free adult males, while her population numbered hundreds of
thousands.

In Eastern civilization the proportion of free men was generally
smaller, and the absolutely free and independent individual in the
nations was sometimes only the solitary despot who ruled. This is
never the case with a nomadic people who, if they take captives, have
no land for them to labour on, and no dungeons in which to confine
them, and whose women and captives of war are therefore always more or
less independent. Most of all was this so with our German ancestors,
whose women were the most honoured part of the nation, supposed to
possess a knowledge and insight which made their advice necessary on
every great national question, who accompanied their husbands in peace
and war, who gave them as wedding gifts no rose or lock of hair, but
a sword and shield which were the man's most precious possessions
throughout life, whose scorn and reproach were what the coward most
dreaded, and who again and again led the tribes to conflict and
victory, as when Velleda, the white-haired priestess, led the Germanic
troops to Italy; and whose captives, when by rare chance they kept them
alive, were in turn incorporated in the general body.

This absolute freedom and independence of almost a whole society was
not peculiar to those northern races who conquered and peopled England,
but to that profound consciousness of the necessity and importance of
the preservation of individual freedom and the liberty of uncoerced
personal action, so wholly distinct from that sometimes misnamed
freedom in which the individual is bound to sink his individuality
and personal inclination in that of the class or state to which he
belongs and to submit abjectly to _its_ rule--this freedom was not
originally peculiar to the English, nor has it alone been kept by them.
The Swiss in their mountains have preserved the blood and the speech
of personal freedom of the Germanic races more pure than anywhere else
on the surface of the earth, and nowhere, where that free barbarian
blood spread itself, has the instinct and aspiration towards freedom
become absolutely extinct. It has lived on in our brothers, the Dutch
and French, and turns up again in their descendant, the African Boer;
but when the matter is looked fairly in the face, we cannot avoid the
deliberate conviction that, among great and dominant civilized people,
the English race has kept more unsullied and borne highest, though
often half furled or drooping for a time, the flag of individual
freedom, which our barbarian ancestors handed down to their European
descendants. England has not been free from foreign conquest; she bent
beneath the heel of the Conqueror nine centuries ago; but she forced
on her conquerors her speech; she has not been without her serfs, but
early they became freed men; she has not been without her tyrannies of
kings and nobles, but always her people have risen up against it and
in time asserted their liberty of action; the masses of her people may
have seemed to be flat on their bellies under the feet of rulers as
under the early Stuarts, but it was only to rise more resolute than
ever under Cromwell, and to rebel against his form of tyranny, too,
when his dictatorship promised no increase of freedom.

To-day, when the strife is between wealth, which in skilful hands has
usurped a power over men's lives and national destinies which was not
contemplated when the laws of property were framed, the men of England
will amend these laws as they before amended the laws with regard to
kings, so that the power shall be broken and the individual be free;
but if they are true to their tradition of the past they will stop
when the power of a class to diminish freedom has been broken, and, as
the rule of the king or baron was never allowed to become an absolute
tyranny, so the yet more powerful rule of the many will not be allowed
to become the slavish submission of the few, and the right of the
individual to do as he pleases while his act does not hurt his fellow
will be as of old the goal at which we shall aim.

The majority of Englishmen love freedom, but they love it in three
different ways. The majority love it as a possession for themselves
alone; they will not be interfered with, nor will they have their
freedom of action barred by any one or any thing; they are not careful
of the freedom of others, nor are they at all reluctant to sacrifice
and annihilate it entirely if it increases their own; but to their own
they cling with tenacity.

This love of freedom the Englishman shares with most savage and nomadic
barbarous peoples; it is found in almost the highest perfection in
the South African Boer. As a first step towards something higher it
is invaluable; in its highest development its mere intensity makes it
almost sublime, as is the attitude of the eagle when, having devoured
all the lambs and rabbits it can find, it sails alone in the blue; it
is an immensely higher quality than a mere servile submission in a
people or an individual, and it is necessary as a foundation to the
higher developing of the same feeling; but in itself it does not raise
the nation or the person feeling it higher than the level of the noble
savage.

There are a large number of us, though small compared to the first
class, who love freedom for ourselves but also do not desire to grasp
our liberty at the cost of others. We love liberty so dearly that we
would not willingly inflict an injustice or a wrong on another, and
we respect the freedom of others while we venerate our own. This love
of freedom we share with all the great and noble souls that have ever
existed, from the Persian prince, called the Lover of Justice or the
Even-Handed, to the wise and just and far-seeing folk of every land
to-day. It is a high and great, a noble, quality, but I do not think it
makes us unique among the peoples of the world.

But there is yet a third way in which some of us love freedom. I do
not know that any large and strong section of any people has ever
loved it so before, though isolated individuals, Chinese, Indian,
Jewish and Greek, have been irradiated by more or less of the glory of
this passion; it is peculiar as a large racial and worldwide acting
phenomenon to the English race and people. We love freedom not only for
ourselves, but we desire with a burning passion to spread it broadcast
over the earth; to see every human being safeguarded by it and raised
to the level at which they may enjoy it; we desire freedom not only
for ourselves but for humanity; and we labour to spread it. _This_ I
hold is the one great gift which England and England alone possesses;
this is the quality which makes us unique among the nations of the
earth; this is the gift which we have to contribute to the great common
offertory of humanity.

The Greek has art and philosophy, the Jew religion, the Roman high
civil organization; each nation and people of the past throws in its
offering to the collection of humanity's common possessions. Even the
Bushman, if we will keep him a little longer, will creep up and drop
in his mite, if it be only by the light with which when, well studied,
he will illumine the past, and the hope he gives us of the future of
the race when we see what it has already risen from--but the Englishman
puts in, I think, the noblest gift of all.

It is a rash hand that dares to lift itself to set the crown on its
own head, yet more on that of its own nation; but I believe that, in
virtue of this one quality and lacking so much else, we stand to-day
the first race on earth, and that we dare to thank the fate that we are
Englishmen.

We are not unaware of the objection that may be raised. All Englishmen
have not this love, nor does our past or present history always
exemplify it. All Greeks were not philosophers; they poisoned Socrates.
All Jews are not religious geniuses; they drove Moses half mad, hanged
Jesus and excommunicated Spinoza. Yet the one is the most philosophic
and the other the most religious people that ever existed. It is not
by the attitude of the lower mass (lower in development, however high
in wealth or authority) that a people can be measured or compared with
others; the most developed and highest growths must be compared as,
when we seek to classify plants, we compare their flowers, not their
roots. We know that the mass of our people allow and have allowed
that love of wealth and luxury, which is the national disease of our
people, to sap all other considerations. We know that for years we,
the great apostles of freedom, were the slave dealers and breeders of
the world, that thousands of folk among us have to-day their wealth,
power, culture and freedom from material cares, because their fathers'
ships were loaded with men and women between the decks, one half to die
there of heat and filth, the others sold at a lordly profit. We too
have had our thumbscrews, our dungeons, our wars for lust of gain and
power. We know that for years our sugar, cotton and coffee were wrung
out of men's hands by the application of Englishmen's whips to their
backs--but this too we know, that a time came when, as in times past,
the leading section of the nation rose and did away with thumbscrews
and dungeons and Star Chambers, so again it rose and declared the trade
at an end; so too we know the world saw what it had never seen before
(but what may be hoped will be seen many times again in different
forms), part of a branch of the English speaking people, dominated by
English ideas arise and pour out its blood like water, not for its own
freedom, not for the freedom of its kind, but for a despised, scorned
and feeble people. Some nations have set their slaves free, but only an
English race speaking the English tongue and imbued with English ideals
has shed its blood for them! This is a new thing under the sun. Many
things have happened, but this never happened before. It is a new era.
We know, none so well, how stained is our African record; we know with
what envious eyes the government of English Ahabs eyes the patrimony of
black Naboths and takes it, if necessary, after bearing false witness
against Naboth; we know how Englishmen have crossed this continent and
left behind them a trail of slime and gore such as few Arabic slave
caravans leave; but we know that, with hearts full of soft concern
for its inhabitants, and all the tenderness of strength and wisdom,
Englishmen have trodden this continent and laboured among its lowest
people; not Livingstone alone but a great corps of lesser unrecorded
Livingstones whose names will be forgotten, but the fruits of whose
lives will abide. And it was in South Africa that the English nation,
when, in 1833, they voted twenty millions for the emancipation of
slaves, expended over one million in buying freedom for the black man
and Half-caste; and at the same time was promulgated in South Africa,
by the will of the English people, the Magna Charta of the black man,
which put, in the eye of the law, every free man, Hottentot or Kaffir,
throughout the country, on the same level as the white.

In India our rule has been largely one of greed and self-seeking; we
know that at Cawnpore, when an army of brave men, in making a last
heroic stand for national freedom, killed a handful of white women and
children, we, to be revenged on them, fell into inhuman and fiendish
barbarities, which, if practised to-day by Boers or Kaffirs or by
Frenchmen attacking Englishmen, would in our eyes brand them for ever
as creatures beneath the human; we are silent about those horrors when
with the fiendish savagery, not of Christians but of wild beasts, we
made man after man, before we shot him, kneel down and lick up blood,
so that to the horror of death might be added the horror of the fear of
eternal damnation. I know no place in human history where barbarities
more hellish are recorded, and when in drawing-rooms delicate-lipped
women sing of Brave Havelock and his Highlanders, we see suddenly the
sheen of the blood of a people fighting on their own soil for the
freedom of their race, and we wish the delicate ladies could find
something else to sing of.

All this we recognize, and we are willing to look the facts fully, if
not unblushingly, in the face; but when all has been seen and said,
this also must be allowed: that, though we have set our feet on the
land over a hundred years, there are as many or more people of the
aboriginal races in the land than when we came, and, if we should pass
away from them to-morrow, all we shall have left them as our main
legacy will be a certain knowledge of our language and laws, and they
would not be a less free, rather a more free, people than when we found
them. We have not been to them at least the upas-tree, killing out
the race from beneath us, and if at times we have been conquerors and
oppressors, and if more often we have made blunders, this one thing is
certain, that perhaps not the majority of us, certainly not all of us,
yet still a certain body of us, have meant well by them. We have meant
to aid and raise them, to put them on an equality with ourselves, and
the thought they were being crushed or murdered would be a blow to the
most earnest sensibilities of our natures.

It may be replied: "Yes, that is your English cant; you alone of all
people in the world have always a psalm in your mouth as you crunch the
bones of your enemies, and, while you are putting the bread of the poor
and needy in your own jaws, your eyes are turned upwards."

And this is to a certain extent true. Cant lies across our national
character as a hideous deformity, peculiar to ourselves. As we have
one virtue, so we also have this vice which is ours and ours alone;
but is it not the shadow of that very virtue? The disease which is an
indication of its opposite? There are times when our heart sickens that
we are English, and the meanest and most brutal nation seems great when
we compare its attitude with that greasy whine of affected sanctity and
humanity with which, often as individuals and continuously as a people,
we try to gloss over our acts of greed, injustice and self-seeking.

The Boer, if he wishes to annex a Native territory, says: "The damned
Kaffir; I'll take his land from him and divide it among my children."
The Frenchman says, if he wishes to possess a territory: "I shall take
it for the glory of France and keep it for her honour." And this is
noble, direct and manly, if perhaps cruel and unjust.

But the Englishman speaks not so. When he desires an adjoining Native
territory, he sighs, and folds his hands; he says: "It's a very sad
thing the way these Natives go on! They believe in witches and kill
them. I really can't let this go on! It's my duty to interfere. I can't
let these poor benighted people go on so!" He says nothing about the
coal mines he wants to work in their country or the rich nature of
their lands of which he has already got vast grants; so he turns on
the Maxim guns, and he kills a few thousands to save the ten witches;
and witchcraft is put an end to--but he has the lands and mines, and
dishomed and beaten Natives work them for him. How much nobler is the
Boer's attitude is obvious. When we want a territory on a larger scale
we do not say we are stronger than those people, let us go and kill
them and take command of the land for the glory of the Englishman
and the benefit of his trade.[79] We first send some Englishmen there
till the people, knowing our character and that where one locust comes
there come others, grow a little restive and show some displeasure at
our fore-runners; then we draw ourselves together and say: "It is our
duty to defend innocent men and women trusting to us who have ventured
into a strange land" (how and why they came there we don't inquire),
and so we draw out our guns in the name of a wronged humanity--and
so conquer a new land; or we encourage our citizens to buy shares in
a commercial enterprise, lend money may be, and then say: "It is our
duty to take the management of its finance, and eventually of its
government, because it is our duty not to allow innocent speculators
to suffer." Whether the folk in the land will suffer we leave out of
view for the moment, but we dwell on that great duty--till the land
is ours. In the history of the world there was never a people whose
record of relations with other peoples showed so hideous a record of
falsehood and self-deception; other peoples have lied to each other;
but that immeasurably more hideous lie, the lie told to oneself, has
not been common. And we carry this hideous attitude into the relations
of private life; it is the distinctive mark of the lower type of
Englishwoman (often one of culture and philanthropic and religious
inclinations) that she cannot speak the truth to herself, much less
to others, with regard to her motives and actions. When she envies
another and seeks to win her friend or lover from her, she does not,
with the frank wild truth of the Italian or French woman, say: "I will
undermine their friendship. I hate her. She has done me no harm but I
will triumph over her." She says to herself: "It is my _duty_ to show
that man what that woman is," and so, in the performance of her duty,
she saves her conscience and attains her end. We cannot look fairly
or frankly at our people in their private or public capacity without
allowing that that is our deformed feature, our hideous and unique
characteristic.

     [79] He does not add: And so did my fathers two hundred
     years ago, and all Europe and the Bible expresses faith in
     them; "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, says God";
     for this kind of Englishman is not of a discerning and
     analytical disposition. He never goes farther than the
     matter in hand; and the matter in his own hands seldom
     stretches farther than the length of his own nose.

But what does it mean when we come to analyse it? Is it not simply
that deference which the less developed and more brutalized part of
our nation, aye, and of the separate individual himself, pays to the
higher? Is it not that the English nation and English individual, bent
on an act of injustice at variance with the most deep-lying conviction
of its nature, is obliged to gloss it over or it could not attain its
end?

If the French or Chinese or Russian Government is not obliged to gloss
over the fact to the mass of its people that in undertaking a certain
war it is thinking nothing of justice or injustice, not the benefit
of the conquered, but simply of itself; is it not because there is no
large body of the people strong enough to hamper it and perhaps tie its
hands altogether if it did not cozen and blind them?

What is the action of the English Government under such conditions,
when Pitt drags in the words justice, right, mercy, to shield itself,
but a covert assertion that such a feeling does exist, which would not
stand by it if it did not believe that the freedom and emancipation of
others would be aided by its action?

Nay, in the meanest souled Englishwoman, when she dare not say to
herself openly: "I hate that woman and I will wrong her," but is
obliged to bring in the blasphemed words duty, right, justice, to
soothe her own soul--what is it but a testimony that, even in that
poor specimen of the race, there lurks somewhere a feeling that right
must be done, that for no gain to _yourself_ can you take an unfair
advantage. It is the low, insincere element in the woman striving to
justify itself before the profound English conception of the absolute
necessity of justice and fair play between all men. She _dare_ not
slander her fellow unless she has first silenced this.

An Englishman going to sit on the same jury with Boers to try a white
man for killing a Kaffir dares not say frankly and openly to himself
before he goes in or has heard the evidence, as the old Boer does
frankly and truly: "That man is not guilty; no white man shall be
punished for the death of a black"; but he says, when he hears the
evidence: "After all, one can never be certain that evidence is true;
why should I set myself up to condemn a fellow man, perhaps to lifelong
imprisonment, when it may be unjust? And is it not my duty to avoid
stirring up ill-feeling between Dutch and English by bringing in a Boer
guilty?" And he votes with the rest. But what is this hideous fraud but
the cringing of the man's lower nature before the higher element in
himself? If he dare once, only once, admit frankly in his own heart:
"That man committed murder, but I am going to bring him in not guilty
because these Boers buy in my shop," he would not _dare_ to give the
verdict, and, if he did, something even in that low groping nature
would rise up and say: "You are not worthy to be an Englishman," and he
would know the agony of remorse.

The Boer does not need to lie to himself because there is nothing in
him that would rise up to reproach him if he did not. This hideous
fraud in the nation and individual is evidence that there _does_ exist
a part which follows after justice and freedom for all men and which has
to be blinded and silenced before wrong can be done; it _does_ testify
that. Even in the lowest English-speaking man or woman, somewhere,
tucked away in the background of their being, is that awful and almost
mysterious instinct of our people: "You can't wrong a fellow human
being; a man is a man; and what is right for you is right for another.
All men have a claim to fair play." And before this whisper the meanest
man or woman of our race squirms when he tries to evade it, and, unable
fully to understand it or explain it, it lives in the heart of our
people, growing louder and stronger as the ages pass. We can no more
tell you how and why we have it than the Greek can tell you why he had
to make statues and love them; or the Roman laws and roads; or the
German music. It seems it is inborn in us. We may try to annihilate
it by argument; we may try to cozen it by lies; but in each one of us
stands this instinct pointing with its upraised finger the path we have
to walk in. It is the mysterious birthright of every English man and
woman. We may call it the love of freedom, of justice, but neither of
these quite defines it; it is something more; it is the deep conviction
buried somewhere in our nature, not to be eradicated, that man as man
is a great and important thing, that the right to himself and his
existence is the incontestable property of all men; and above all the
conviction that not only _we_ have a right and are bound to preserve
it for ourselves, but that where we come into contact with others _we
are bound to implant it or preserve it in them_. It is a profound
faith, not in the equal talent, virtues, and abilities of men, but in
the equal right of the poorest, most feeble, most ignorant, to his own
freedom and to a perfect equality of treatment.

In all or almost all of us it is faintly present, and in the master
minds which express our race it becomes a passion which in a thousand
directions manifests itself, as the German instinct for music making
now a Mozart and then a Beethoven, and the Greeks' artistic power
making now a Phidias and then a Praxiteles. It is this which we believe
and hold to be the peculiar attribute of the English people, our one
gift which we have to contribute to the general sum of humanity's
wealth--the desire not only to be free, but to make free--the
consciousness of the importance of the individual as individual apart
from any attributes of sex, nationality, talent or wealth. To us it has
been given first among all peoples to perceive, though still dimly, the
unity of all human creatures, and as a nation to endeavour to realize
in our legislation and institutions and our relations with weak peoples
our perception of the fact.[80]

     [80] It is perhaps not only by good fortune that among us
     should have arisen Charles Darwin. Those who study his
     early work, the _Voyage of the Beagle_, when as yet he
     was only perceiving faintly the relation of things which
     he afterwards so clearly grasped, will see, curiously
     manifest in almost every page of that work, those great
     English qualities of love and freedom and human equality
     in freedom. Neither does it seem anything but fitting and
     natural that the man who first brought evidence to convince
     the world of the identity of all life, seen and vaguely
     indicated by the world's poets, from Lucretius to Goethe
     and Shelley, should have been an Englishman. It is not
     wonderful that the man who, in his youth, felt so keenly
     the pain of seeing the savage ill-treated or the coloured
     man slighted, should have been he to whom the mystery and
     meanings of the humblest forms of life should have been
     made clear and that, from the stripes on the wing of the
     bird and the life and motions of the worm, he should have
     read the open lessons that others had overlooked. Foreign
     peoples often wonder that he should have appeared among
     us, but he appeared in our own line of growth; he is an
     efflorescence that naturally and rightly belongs to us. He
     was our Englishman at his highest.

To those of us who hold this view of the past history of the English
race, of its present position and of the characteristic which
constitutes its peculiarity and strength among the peoples of earth,
the upas-tree theory with regard to its future growth is not only
inconceivable but, could we conceive it as possible, we should hold it
undesirable. And there is nothing from our point of view either in its
past history or present condition to support the theory. The Spaniard
attempted the upas-tree form of colonization and empire, but he has
not succeeded. No nation who has produced any approach to a permanent
organization has followed that line and succeeded by following it. The
Roman, the Great Mogul, attempted, where they conquered, to spread the
benefits and rights of their own organization to the affiliated people;
it was not the number of her slaughters that made the Roman Empire
the greatest the world has yet seen or her rule the most enduring;
the conquests of Rome, when she had attained her widest empire, had
not cost so many lives as many a barbarian conquest which depopulated
whole territories and passed like a smoke or a pestilence leaving no
mark behind; the Roman Empire attained to that endurance and power
it held because Rome was not a upas-tree to the races she came into
contact with, but because, if in a partial and incomplete manner,
yet more than others, where she planted her standard, she sought to
raise and instruct, not to exterminate. No one can study the history
of that great folk in imperial growth without feeling that behind all
lay a dim perception of something higher than mere national expansion;
and in those wise methods, which in the hour of her greatness she
ordained, through which men of all nations and creeds might in time
and by merit become Romans and by her medium spread everywhere the
arts, the knowledge and the advantages peculiar to herself, we see the
germ of the true idea of universal empire fitfully trying to incarnate
itself. Rome fell because she herself became corrupted by wealth and
the inequality of possession, but it took her three centuries to die,
and it must never be forgotten that there were Gauls, Spaniards,
Asiatics and Germans who fought as desperately in her cause at last as
the children of the Seven Hills: so real a fact had been her empire,
so true was her absorption of all peoples into herself. The Gaul, the
Thracian, the Illyrian died generation after generation fighting for
the Roman flag because it had conferred on them something that they
valued, and rather than lose which they would die. It is not because
she slaughtered but because she raised, not because she crushed but
because she protected, that Rome reigned; and she is to some extent
immortal and among us to-day still, not because of the men she
slaughtered, which any savage or wild beast might have accomplished as
well, but because she had something new and large to teach mankind, and
she taught it to the race. There is not upon the earth to-day one pure
blood Roman any more than there is one pure blood Greek, but Rome lives
still in our institutions, in our learning, in our habits of thought;
she has her part in every civilized individual; and, while the race
continues on the planet and continues to grow, she will have her part
in that growth, because, like Greece, she was one of the early forces
which fed and shaped it; and her language, spoken by none, is still
preserved because of the treasure imbedded in it; and in that large
ultimate race of humanity she also will have her share because, while
her blood will be fractionally represented in it, her thought will have
played a large share in its creation.

Such empire and such immortality, only infinitely wider, deeper, and
more indestructible, is that which we desire and hope for the English
race, and language. We believe that we also have our contribution
to make to the growth of humanity. We believe that our sense of
the importance of individual liberty, irrespective of individual
conditions, is a larger contribution to the wealth of the race on earth
than any folk has yet made; and we believe that our desire to impart
it is a more potent means of extending our true empire, and with it
our speech over the surface of the globe, than any mere strength of
arm or valour in slaughtering. We believe that it is not impossible
that the day will come when from north to south, from east to west,
over the globe, our English spirit will have spread; when, as the art
of reading and writing which was once the discovery and possession of
some prehistoric race but which is to-day becoming the property of the
globe, so that in a hundred years' time no child on the globe will be
without it, so our English freedom will spread and the day will come
when in that large united people of the future every man will say: "In
that I am free I am English," and the language, when even possible
freedom has been preached all the world over, may form the foundation
of the world's speech.

We look forward to no time when our brilliant little Japanese brother
with his love of flowers and beauty and simplicity and his keen
intellectual insight, when our Russian mate with his idealism and grim
intensity of emotion, and even the Kaffir with his high sense of honour
and justice and his almost abnormally developed sense of social unity
and obligation, shall have passed away for ever from among the things
of earth and when we shall reign in his stead. Our dream of the future
of our race is of no John Bull seated astride of the earth, his huge
belly distended with the people he has devoured and his teeth growing
out yet more than ever with all the meat he has bitten and looking
around on a depeopled earth and laughing till all his teeth show and
the peoples' bones rattle in his belly: "Ha! I reign alone now. I have
killed them all out!"

If such a consummation were within the remotest grasp of possibility,
the best thing the peoples of earth could do would be to combine
and kill the ogre while there was yet time. But no such consummation
of his fate is conceivable. The North American has indeed died out
before us as the Bushman almost died out before the Dutch and will
utterly die out, unless with great care and at much expense we have
the taste and the wisdom artificially to preserve him for future ages
and to complete as far as possible the links in the chain of life; but
we have not really killed them, they had not the power unless they
were artificially preserved to grasp the conditions of a more complex
existence. Negro, Indian, and even Irishman, they all tend to increase,
not to die out, under our rule. Our dream of the future empire of our
race is not of an empire over graves but in and through living nations.
The future of our race is never prefigured in our minds by the upas but
as a huge tree, among whose shelving roots and under whose protecting
shadow, endless forms of life may spring up and flourish that might
otherwise be destroyed, and in whose wide umbrageous branches every
form of bird and creature shall find resting place and nourishment, a
tree of life and not of death. We do not dream of our language that
it shall forcibly destroy the world's speeches and all they contain,
reigning in solitary grandeur, but, as gold in a ring binds into one
circle rare gems of every kind and some of infinitely greater beauty
than itself, so we dream that our speech being common may bind together
and bring into one those treasures of thought and knowledge which the
peoples of earth have produced, its highest function being that of
making the treasures of all accessible to all.

We think of the great race of earth, which shall be in the future,
not as composed of English blood with all the beauty and strength of
other races and peoples excluded; but rather we figure it as a great
temple reared up of material of every size and colour, from marble and
alabaster to ebony and starred porphyry, but in which every stone and
doorpost shall be cemented with the freedom that is the gift of our
people. We look for the future growth of England not as the result of
the merciless slaughter of mankind or the use of force, but because,
as time passes and we become freer ourselves, we shall spread our
freedom wherever our foot touches, and whoever is trampled, oppressed
or feeble on earth will gather to us and grow up under our shelter to
strength; we look for the spread of our language, not because it is
of necessity the finest and most complex and expressive instrument of
thought, though, after our instinct for freedom, it is the noblest
outgrowth of our race, having perchance not the music of the Italian,
the exact brilliance of the French, the ready power of expressing
deep and powerful emotion of the German, or the multiple advantages
of other forms of speech, yet, like some great and complex organ with
understops and pipes which skilfully managed may produce almost any
effect, being fitted to equal and perhaps surpass any language in its
breadth of power,[81] but because in this tongue will be preached the
most valuable lesson humanity has yet to learn; because, wherever a
people has come into contact with it, it has meant for them freedom and
advance.

     [81] How far does the passion of a workman for the tool he
     works with speak in us here?

There is an old saying that a slave cannot breathe in the air of
England because the moment his foot touches the shore he is freed. We
look for an enlargement of this old parable in the future. We look for
the time when it shall be said: "Slavery, injustice, the oppression of
the weak by the strong, cannot exist in any land where an Englishman
breathes; the moment his foot touches a shore, they pass away before
him." And in this will lie the Englishman's power to dominate and his
claim to immortality.

In the great nation that shall govern and cover the whole earth there
may be found not one pure-blooded Englishman, any more than there is
to-day one Greek or Roman on earth. He will as little be found in three
hundred years' time in London or New York, as in Pekin or Yokohama.
But what was great in him we believe will have encircled the globe;
and English freedom will extend from Greenland to Borneo when the
Englishman shall have melted into something larger.

We know that this consummation is not inevitable or certain; dreams as
large as this have been dreamed by races before and come to nought.
We are not unaware that to carry this conquest out the English race
must first free itself before it can consciously or unconsciously
accomplish its missionary enterprise. During the last years there seems
a pause in the generous outflow of English inspiration, and, where we
appear to be bent on suppressing a slave trade, it will be manifest
to the least observant looker-on that our Government is merely making
that project a shield for financial and national aggressions. The
truth is that all English-speaking countries are in the throes of a
great effort demanding not less of the vital energies of our people
in England, America and the Colonies than the old internal struggles
which resulted in the freedom of Barons as opposed to the Monarchy, the
freedom of the men of the middle class as opposed to the hereditary
powers. What the future of the English race will be depends on the
result of that conflict. If it results as we who share in its struggles
believe, it will show the world when the strife is over, for the first
time, a perfectly free land in which the superficial differences of
sex and class shall be sunk in the greater personality of the human
creature, in which every creature from its birth shall stand free and
untrammelled and the inequalities between men shall not be those of
artificial construction but of inherent deficiencies or powers; in
which a new aristocracy shall be formed out of the great labour of the
head or hand and not of those of great possessions, of those who give
much to their fellows and not those who receive; when the child will be
told to take off his hat and bow to the labourer who for sixty years
has worked in the field for the community, or has thought for it in his
chamber, and not to the woman who lies back in her carriage, consuming
and having consumed without return the labour of hundreds, or the man
who, in the gambling of the roulette table, the stock exchange or the
share market, has made his millions. It may be that the arrest in our
outward efforts to extend our freedom and humanity's may be the result
of this internal trouble and that when, before the race is exhibited
for the first time in the history of the globe an absolutely free
civilized people in which the individuality of the male and female, the
powerful and the weak, are respected, we shall take up our work with
renewed ardour, and, almost whether we will or no, the freedom we have
attained for ourselves will infect all the race and constitute us its
leaders. This may be; this is what there is some promise of ultimately
being--but it may also not be. We may have become so much degraded by
the ideal of existence which has been held before us, that the strife
of our women and masses, which now seems an ennobling strife for more
and nobler fields of labour, shall degenerate into a demoralizing
strife after universal inaction and that our ideal as a race will be
what is now merely the ideal of a class, existence on the labour of
others without exertion--and then the English race will be degraded, as
many have been before it, and the Russian, the Japanese and even the
Kaffir must lead the world's people in their march; we cannot. We do
not pretend there are not certain signs which suggest the possibility
of ultimate failure, and make us fear for it. In a country like South
Africa we see that, where the English and in truth any branch of the
white race comes into contact with a more primitive dark, there is a
hideous tendency at once to degenerate. We will not work. The most
feeble and unrichly brained man or woman who could be worth their
keep to humanity and perhaps as richly productive as a hand worker,
but never as anything else, refuses the one order of labour he is fit
for, and prefers a hideous dependency on society, which in Africa is
ultimately a dependence on the dark races, rather than to undertake the
one form of labour for which nature has fitted him. We see a hideous
tendency to leave all the work of life to the dark races; for the
moment this seems to leave us free for higher efforts, but as time
passes surely it will enervate; like a rotten aristocracy we shall die
out, and the hands which for generations have made our roads, planted
and reaped our fields, built our houses and tended our children, will
at last be united to the brains that make the laws and govern the land,
and we shall fade away. That the day may be far distant does not make
less clear and painful the first symptoms of the disease of which all
great conquering nations of the past have ultimately died. Again our
hope, that the English working man and the woman when freed will impart
their gain to all the world and so rule over life, is belied at least
by two symptoms--that the man who is trying to free himself from the
tyranny of class still does in certain instances strive fiercely to
maintain that of sex, and that, as he gains or thinks he is gaining
his own freedom, he strives jealously to exclude men who are not of
his blood from sharing it. These are perhaps the two ugliest symptoms
in the modern movement; and if it means anything but the action of a
man who, nearly drowned, wrings the hands of his fellow off him and
throws him back into the water, only that he may be able to gain the
shore and return with a rope for his fellow--it is the most hopeless
symptom that has appeared in our social growth for many years. In
South Africa, where our national English greed for speedy wealth
without exertion has made us, not satisfied with the dark labour of
the country, introduce yet more from Asia, then when they have served
us and filled our pockets, we attempt to refuse them the rights of
citizens and labourers, the English love of freedom and fair play does
not seem growing. There are countless other symptoms which give us
cause for consideration and most anxious doubt. We are going to spread
freedom and justice over the earth, but in Africa at present our doom
seems to be to drag its natural wealth from its bowels, and to expend
it in intensifying the luxury of the old world. We prefer, as a great
South African millionaire once said, "the land to the Natives," and for
a time that part of us which seeks to rule over nations and permeate
the peoples seems silenced by that part of us which desires to fill its
hands with the fruits of the land and the labour of its people--and
then desires nothing more.

All this we see and see clearly. That a tree is full of buds does
not prove that there will ever be fruit; that a child moves beneath
its mother's heart is no certain promise that there will ever be a
man; and, seeing clearly many conditions which may check its progress
and even symptoms of conditions which may ultimately terminate its
existence, nevertheless, while the buds are on the tree, we do not fail
to dig and water, and, while the child is in the womb, we do not cease
to prepare for its coming because of the possibility of its abortion.

To those of us who take this view of conditions, functions,
difficulties and possible future of the English race, it is not very
difficult to determine what in the little South African world our
relations and course of conduct towards the black man and the alien
races should be. The man who holds to the upas-tree function of the
English race and the possibility and desirability of our exterminating
and using entirely for our own advantage all the peoples of earth is
not more confident as to what his line of action should be than we.
Nay, we believe we are a little more confident, because we believe
there lies in every Englishman, behind his philistinism and jingoism,
something that makes the upas-tree line of action a little difficult to
him.

We are not unaware of the difficulties and complexities of our position
in this country, but upon all matters small and large we know our
course. We are asked sometimes: "Well, but what do you intend this
country to be, a black man's country or a white?" We reply we intend
nothing. If the black man cannot labour or bear the strain and stress
of complex civilized life, he will pass away. We need not degrade and
injure ourself by killing him; if _we_ cannot work here, then in time,
wholly or in part, the white man will pass away; and the one best
fitted to the land will likely survive--but this we are determined to
do: we will make it a free man's country. Whether the ultimate race
of this country be black, white or brown, we intend it to be a race
permeated with the English doctrine of the equal right of each human to
himself, and the duty of all to defend the freedom of it.

If it be suggested to us that the Natives of the land are ignorant, we
have the reply to make that we are here to teach them all we know if
they will learn--if they will not, they must fall.

If it be asked whether we think them our equals, we would reply:
Certainly in love of happiness and their own lives--perhaps not in some
other directions; but we are here to endeavour to raise them as far as
it is possible; we are determined to make them a seed-ground in which
to sow all that is greatest and best in ourselves.

If it be asked whether we are negrophiles, we reply: "No--we are trying
to be but we are not yet. The white man in us yet loves the white as
the black man loves the black. It would be a lie to say that we love
the black man, if by that is meant that we love him as we love the
white. But we are resolved to deal with justice and mercy towards him.
_We will treat him as if we loved him_: and in time the love may come.
When you pick up a lost child in the streets covered only with rags
and black with dust, you have first to take it home and wash and dress
it and then you want to kiss it. When we have dealt with the dark man
for long years with justice and mercy and taught him all we know, we
shall perhaps be able to look deep into each other's eyes and smile: as
parent and child."

If it is said to us that our idea of the function of the English
race is all very well, but in reality all that races seek is
self-aggrandisement, we reply that we are fully aware of this tendency
to the most blatant self aggrandisement in our people, but we know
also other tendencies; and Washington, Lincoln, John Brown, Florence
Nightingale, Josephine Butler, John Stuart Mill, Howe, Livingstone,
Moffat, and the multitudes who harmonize with and follow them, are not
less truly English. In every land where the English race is growing, in
Australia, New Zealand, America, England and even South Africa, side by
side with its less specialized elements we have this broad humanitarian
element, as surely and unfailingly developed in every land, and on this
we build our hope. This element, which we believe to be ultimately
the dominant and vital element in our people, is animated entirely by
one instinct and works to one end. We do not follow ultimately either
the Union Jack or the Stars and Stripes. Over our heads waves always a
larger and wider flag, inscribed with that one word, "Freedom," which
being fully interpreted means justice and liberty for all, or, being
yet more simplified: Do unto all men as you would they should do unto
you. Under that standard we range ourselves to conquer. We regard it
as the true flag of our race, beneath which we are willing to die,
but which, British, American, Australian, New Zealander or even South
African, we are never willing to see fall. It is this English standard
which alone we would see planted in every country of the earth. It
is this unseen flag, waving over our heads, which stimulates us to
persevere in our course; it is this which we believe constitutes the
ultimate glory of the English people.

If we are asked how we can expect any folk ever to dominate in the
world as a power everywhere spreading freedom and imparting its
benefits to all, when in all the history of the past such a thing is
not recorded of any people, we reply that it is useless to talk to us
in Africa of what has been, as though it of necessity limited what
shall be in the world of human growth. Outside our doors, even as we
write and think, sits cowering the little human ape Bushman, and, when
we turn from him to the Kaffir working in our kitchen and the bust
of Shakespeare on the mantleshelf, we do not only hope and believe
but we see physically before our material eyes the infinite growth of
humanity, the unmeasurable power of change and the arrival of entirely
new traits which is possible in the human creature. You may as well
try to stop a great people on its line of growth by telling it that
no people has ever done before what they are attempting to do, as you
could stop the creative mind of a genius in its labour by telling it
that work had never been done before. "Exactly so," replies the artist,
"I know man has never seen the face I see and am trying to paint or
the fact I see and am trying to record; that is my joy, I am doing
an entirely new thing and through me humanity grows a little in a new
direction."

It is exactly because we believe no nation on the earth has ever
manifested just this desire, not only to be free, but to make free,
that we are filled with an almost infinite hope as to our function and
future. This is why we value it more highly than all the qualities
we share with other peoples. It is our stroke of genius, our new
contribution to human growth.

If we are asked how, looking round on the little world of South Africa
to-day, we dare to entertain such lofty conceptions of the function
and future of our race, we reply: "Yes, we dare." We are not blind
to the self-seeking and injustice which surround us on every hand.
We are not for a moment blind to the fact that sometimes, where we
seem to be defending the Native, we are merely using him as a rod
with which to strike our white brothers of another speech; we do not
forget that English hands have in this country flogged men to death
and that, because the man killed was of a dark race, we as an English
community have not dared to do more than inflict a fine. We are aware
how devoid of any consciousness of large racial function are a mass of
our English-speaking folk and how completely devoid of any aim but that
of self-betterment are numbers of our units; but, looking these facts
directly in the face and allowing all they mean, we yet do not give up
hope.

Is it absolutely nothing that in this country there are to be found
men who, whether as judges or when serving on juries, are not only
incorruptible before the forces of gold or personal interest but before
the much more terrible corruption of racial prejudice and passion?
Is it nothing that there are men among us in whose hands the most
miserable feeble Bushman or Hottentot is as sure of rigid justice as
though he were a royal prince or millionaire? Is it not something
that there is throughout the length and breadth of the land hardly an
Englishman who dares to use the power of a dominant people without
making for himself a screen of lies, behind which to hide from his
conscience when she comes to seek for him, that there is hardly a
man or woman among us who dares to act to one of the subject races as
they could not be acted to without first shielding themselves behind
an excuse? Is it nothing that, poor as our rule is, at least while the
people of England have still held rule in the land, the Native races
have drawn to our standard, and at least, comparing us with others,
have recognized that our flag meant justice and freedom for those
who stood under it? Is it nothing that in the space of fifty years
England has sent out to us at least once a man who in his capacity
as ruler bent with an unfeigned solicitude over every element in our
complex people and endeavoured to tighten the reins of sympathy between
Englishman, Boer and Native, and to see, unblinded by that intense
passion for their own people which all deep natures feel but which high
natures control, the needs and the failings and the sufferings of each
section and sought to remedy them? Is it nothing that, at least once,
we have had an English ruler who possessed all passion for impartiality
and humanity which characterizes a race fitted to rule over empires
of varied peoples, and that among men more closely South African we
have one who, though a Jew by name and descent, was an Englishman by
language and education, through a long life consistently and without
intermission sought to enforce practically the ideal of English rule
as a great freeing impartial force? Is it nothing that, in addition
to the names of such men as Sir George Grey and Saul Solomon upon our
South African record, and with the story of such lives as Livingstone
and Moffat mingled with that of our English occupancy of the country we
have also the names of at least a few hundred individuals less known
but following in their steps and animated by the same principle?

Have we not heard it said again and again by the Boer: "You Englishmen
know no difference between one man and another; you treat a black man
as if he was yourself"; and in that one saying have we not ground for
hope?

But it may be asked us whether we do not see a possibility of our
hopes for the English race and its future falling to the earth; we
reply: "We do; we recognize that it is possible that we may not even
kill out the black races of Africa but that, a seething and ignorant
mass, they may live under us, at last infecting us and dragging us
down to themselves; we know it is possible that our conception of the
English race, as possessed of a vast fertilizing and liberating power
which shall spread from it till it permeates the whole race, may be
mistaken and the result of national egoism and mental refraction; we
know that the twentieth century, instead of being, as we dream, the
great blossoming time of the English race, as the fourth century before
Jesus was of the Greek, may be the century of our decay; that the
spread of the consciousness of the unity of all men and the importance
of their individual freedom may be not for us to spread but for some
other people; and that when we have shown the world how lucifer matches
can be made for one penny the gross by girls who work for three
shillings a week; and that, if you can make guns which discharge so
many bullets a minute, you can bring down so many unarmed black men
in a minute; and that, if a few men can gain a grant of the mineral
wealth of half a continent, they can buy mistresses, palaces, titles,
governments, and roll in gold as if it had been water--then our work
will be done. We know that this is possible, and I suppose there are
moments of horrible bitterness when to all of us it has seemed almost
more than possible."

If it be asked us: Even if our view be true and the function and
destiny of the English race be what we hope it, what after all is the
use of our striving to bring it nearer; may we not in our individual
action be mistaken, and, where we believe ourself to be helping a great
race to walk in the path which shall serve all humanity, we are simply
sacrificing ourselves to no purpose? we reply: "We know this. Under the
sea millions of insects work, and, as the ages pass, they raise at last
a bank that in time becomes an island on which great trees grow and
the sun shines. The work of no one insect is necessary to the growth;
the almost invisible speck of coral he makes may be broken off and
crushed to powder, and the work yet grows; but by just such an infinite
accretion of specks the island rises, and the wide instinct which
compels all to contribute their part builds at last the island.

"So we work, only _not_ quite unconsciously. If our individual addition
be worthless and be broken off--well--we are obeying the deepest
necessity of our being; we are working on in the only direction we know
of, and, unlike our fellow insects of the sea, we, where we work, have
dreams of the future land, not that will be, but that _may_ be--and
which we believe we are building."

A man far out at sea on a dark night, struggling with the waves in his
small boat, sees far away a light he thinks to be the harbour light and
strikes towards it; knowing he may be mistaken, and that long before
daybreak man and boat may be engulfed, he still strikes towards it,
labouring without certainty of ever reaching it but with unalterable
will and determination, because it is the only light he sees.

So we, realizing the possibility that we are mistaken, and knowing
the chances of failure, yet strike for what seems to us the largest
possibility open to our race and to ourselves as part of that race.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the South Africa of to-day the three varieties of Englishmen, those
indifferent to the future of their race and those consciously labouring
for it, with opposing ideals and conceptions of the ends to be sought,
are working out, whether we will or no, the future of the land, and
dealing with the vast twentieth-century problem of the mixture and
government of mixed peoples; the verdict upon our solution of which
cannot be pronounced by the men of this age, but only by the future.




NOTE A

THE SOUTH AFRICAN NATION (1900).


The events of the last nine, and especially the last seven, years have
thrown a curious light upon two statements in Chapter I, written in
1892:

Firstly: the statement that the political division of South Africa
into separate and self-governing states are divisions "_of immense
importance and by all means to be preserved_."

Secondly: the statement that there does exist a subtle internal union
between all African states, which causes them to be, in spite of their
complex and mixed structure, in a profound sense, one, and makes it
impossible to attack and injure any one state without injuring all.

South Africa forms naturally one national and distinct entity, widely
dissevered from any other national entity, European or otherwise. It
may be said that Australia, Canada, and New Zealand contain also the
germs which will ultimately develop into distinct national entities;
and this is undoubtedly true. As no sane man supposes that an infant
will remain perpetually unweaned, or that a healthy sapling will not
ultimately form its own bark, so it is inevitable that all healthy
off-shoots from European peoples must ultimately form independent
nations. But the position of these young countries is not analogous
with that of South Africa; and as regards Australia, and especially New
Zealand, it is in some respects fundamentally unlike our own.

This difference lies in the groundwork of our national structure, and
must be manifest to anyone who has given a few years to the impartial
study of the problems which beset European races planted in new lands.

One is probably not very far from the truth in stating that, roughly
speaking, out of every thirty men and women born in Australia and
New Zealand, from twenty-five to twenty-eight will be found to be of
purely or almost purely English descent--using the word English as it
is popularly, though misleadingly, used to include Keltic Irishmen and
Scots.

In South Africa, from the Zambesi to the mouth of the Orange River,
southward to the sea, there are roughly calculated to be about
8,000,000 (eight millions) of souls. Now, out of this population,
about 800,000, roughly speaking, are whites, about 400,000 being
Dutch-Huguenot, about 260,000 British, and about 100,000 of other
European nationalities. As regards persons of unmixed English blood,
this is probably an over calculation, as a large number of persons
popularly passing as "English" in South Africa are of blended French,
Dutch, German and other extractions. But, accepting the persons of
Irish, Scottish and English descent even at 300,000, they comprise
about one-and-one-eighth of an Englishman in each thirty of the
population. Or, to put the matter in another and more obvious light:
Were to-morrow the entire population of purely or mainly British
descent to leave Australia and New Zealand, those lands would at once
be almost wholly depopulated. A few Maoris and quickly dwindling
Australian aborigines, with a handful of Frenchmen, Germans, Swedes or
Italians, and a sprinkling of Chinamen and other Asiatics, would be all
that would be left. Practically, the lands would have been transformed
into almost primeval solitudes. The working man, who forms the bulk
of all nations, would have disappeared, and with him the farmer, the
merchant, the professional man and the speculator. There would be no
Australia and no New Zealand in the social sense, were all men of
British descent suddenly to leave those lands.

In South Africa, on the other hand, a condition entirely the reverse
would be maintained. Were every man and woman of pure British descent
to disappear to-morrow, no vital diminution in the entire bulk of our
population would have taken place. The vast labouring classes who build
our roads and bridges, cultivate our fields, tend our flocks, perform
our domestic labour and work in our mines, would be left here almost
entirely untouched in the persons of our dark citizens, who form an
element in our population rapidly and always increasing, and of primary
importance. From the Malay fisherman, cab driver, or washerwoman,
to the Bantu herdsmen and mining hands and domestic servants, our
labouring class, save in the person of a few skilled overseers and
workmen, would still be here untouched. Our large white farming class
would be but little reduced, while more than half our professional
class, our doctors, lawyers, judges and civil servants would be left in
numbers amply sufficient for the needs of the country; and while, in
our seaport towns and mining centres, a large number of those engaged
in commerce and speculation would be gone, at least 100,000 Jews and
Europeans of all nationalities engaged in these occupations would still
be left, in addition to a good number of Dutch-Huguenot descended
inhabitants so employed.

An element of importance, indeed, would have been abstracted from
our complex communities, an element containing much of that which is
noblest and most valuable in our national life, and also much that
is sordid and unhealthy--but the South African people, the seed-beds
of the great South African nation of the future, would still remain,
as far as mere numbers are concerned, practically undiminished and
untouched. The removal of the Anglo-Saxon element would affect South
Africa as the sudden abstraction of its Jewish inhabitants of Great
Britain would affect that land. The nation would be left intact, though
an important and powerful element had disappeared.

In eighty years' time, when New Zealand and Australia are powerful
and independent nations, probably infinitely exceeding in health and
virility the inhabitants of the little islands in the North Sea, from
which the first white Australians and New Zealanders came, their
inhabitants will differ profoundly from the inhabitants of Ireland,
Scotland or England, in manners, in appearance, and in tastes, habits,
and political and social institutions. They will certainly no more
dream of having their policy of peace or war dictated to them nor their
governors forced upon them by any of the electors of Great Britain,
than a healthy and sane man of forty allows his great grandmother to
dictate to him the hour of his retiring or the way in which he shall
spend his pence (even now an Australian-born man may be distinguished
almost at once from an Englishman born in Britain, and a spirit of
independence and self-respect has grown not only in Canada, but in
Australia and New Zealand); yet the population of these countries
may quite possibly, even in eighty years' time, bear rather more
resemblance to the inhabitants of the British Isles than to any other
folk.

In South Africa, on the other hand, in eighty years' time there will
also be a great and independent nation, but it will be unique. It will
be wholly unlike any other in the world. It will not be French or
Dutch, though a large proportion of the blood in the veins of its white
inhabitants will descend from these races; it will not be Russian nor
Jewish, though Russian Jews are plentiful here; it will not be German,
though German merchants, missionaries, doctors and agriculturists are
to be found in every corner of the country; it will not be Scotch nor
Irish, and assuredly it will not be English, though the blood of all
these nationalities, Keltic and Teutonic, will be blended in the veins
of the white South African of the future--it will be simply SOUTH
AFRICAN.

So also our vast dark South African race will not be wholly Negroid.
The blood of the brave Bantu folk may predominate, but it will be a
race largely blended of Asiatic and other peoples; there will be
strains of Dutch and French blood through the slave, of English blood
through the English soldiers, and the Malay, the Indian, and even the
Hottentot will have place in it. It will be simply the great _South
African Dark Race_, and assuredly _not_ English. These two great
blended varieties, dark and light, will form the South African nation
of the future, their two streams of life, keeping, it may be, racially
distinct for ages, but always interacting side by side and forming our
South African nation.

Our South African national structure in the future will not and cannot
be identical with that of any other people, our national origin being
so wholly unlike that of any other; our social polity must be developed
by ourselves through the interaction of our parts with one another and
in harmony with our complex needs. For good or evil, the South African
nation will be an absolutely new thing under the sun, perhaps, owing to
its mixture of races, possessing that strange vitality and originality
which appears to rise so often from the mixture of human varieties:
perhaps, in general human advance, ranking higher than other societies
more simply constructed; perhaps lower--according as we shall shape it:
but this, certainly--it will be a new social entity, with new problems,
new gifts, new failings, new accomplishments.

To-day, the different white elements of the South African nation are
already entering upon a stage of rapid combination; South Africans
whose ancestors were of English, French, German, Irish or Dutch
descent are so rapidly intermarrying that, not in eighty, but in sixty
years' time, if a man should pass through South Africa calling out for
Frenchmen, Englishmen, Dutchmen or Germans, he would hear hardly a
voice answer him; the reply will then be,--"_We are all South Africans
here_."

That we cannot be an English nation is certain; but in the past there
has appeared no reason why we should not ultimately be a nation bound
by ties of friendly feeling to England--as America might have been, had
England left her internal concerns untouched a hundred years ago; as
Australia and Canada may yet be, if she abstains from interfering with
their internal affairs and does not shoot down the men born on their
soil.

Personally, we have always desired that this should be so.

While it has always appeared that the first and most pressing care
of the far-seeing and balanced South African statesman must lie in
seeking to maintain the integrity and cultivate the individuality
and strengthen the internal organization of each of the separate
states, in order that each might have an individuality and an internal
organization strong enough to make local self-government a sufficient
counterpoise to the central power whenever federation was attempted;
while, on the other hand, the hardly, if at all, secondary obligation
upon the far-seeing South African statesman must lie in the direction
of labouring to produce such co-operation and friendliness between the
different South African states as might, at the end of another forty
or sixty years, find them in a position naturally and spontaneously
to federate upon equal terms: to federate, as in the case of the
Swiss cantons, where the different divisions are not necessarily of
one language or even race, but their geographical position and their
interest make them, as regards the outer world, essentially one people.

The federation we desired to see would then have been of a nature not
strong enough to produce the incalculable evils of an over-centralized
and universal government extending over a vast and diverse territory
and over large numbers of diverse peoples, while yet it would have been
strong enough to have united the different South Africa states against
external aggression, to preserve internal peace, and to have formed a
powerful central court for arbitration on all interstatal differences:
a national structure which would combine as largely as possible the
advantages of large and small states.

All nations, all those organized bodies of men which have contributed
greatly to the advance of humanity, have been organized in
comparatively small numbers, and have occupied geographically small
spaces. To this rule there appears to have been no exception in the
past; and its cause is to be found deep in the psychologic structure of
the human creature.

Greece, which has probably on the whole contributed more to the fund
total of the human race on earth, intellectually and spiritually
than any other individual folk, was, even were all its states taken
together, not so large as a minute fragment of South Africa. And even
Greece was only Greece and enabled to accomplish that which she did by
the intensely individual and autonomous development of minute separate
parts. Athens, which territorially and in numbers was hardly larger
than the Cape Peninsula, and Sparta, no larger than a small English
county, have yet left the whole world immortally richer for their
individual existences, in a manner which would not have been possible
had they been more merged under one rule or forced into a common form
of organization. The Jews, while that religion and literature were
developing which has transformed Europe and reacted on the whole
world, were but a small closely inter-bred tribe inhabiting a few
stony valleys and plains. Holland, when she took the lead for civil
and intellectual freedom, and won it, crushing to earth the unwieldy
bulk of the Spanish Empire, was a tiny folk buried among a handful of
sand-dunes in a remote corner of Europe, her whole territory so minute
it might be carved out of Russian or Chinese Empires to-day without
sensibly abridging them. England herself, when in Queen Elizabeth's
reign she had already produced that noble language which is one of
her greatest productions, and was developing those representative
institutions and that literature which are her pride, when she had
produced Chaucer, Shakespeare and Bacon, _that_ England possessed
neither an Ireland nor a Scotland nor any spot of earth beyond her
own borders, and her entire population was no greater than that which
to-day may be found diseased, ragged, and on the border of starvation,
inhabiting the back slums of a few of her great Imperial cities.

What humanity has attained in culture, in virtue, in freedom, in
knowledge, and in the fullest development of the individual, it
has owed to small, close, natural and spontaneous organizations
of men--small tribes, small states, and, oftenest, to mere cities
organized on a natural basis, with but a few miles of territory
beneath their walls, owning their sway. Great empires, which have
always originally sprung from such an individual, strong and
healthful, national organization, but which have finally begun
extending themselves by force over alien territories and over peoples
not organically and spontaneously or even geographically bound to
themselves, have always spelt decay and disease, not merely to
themselves as larger social organizations, but to the very individual
human creatures comprised within their bulky, unwieldy and unnatural
entities.

Rome, indeed, in the inflated and diseased days of her Imperial
expansion, produced a Marcus Aurelius, as an unpruned and dying rose
tree may produce one last gorgeous bloom; but, at the very time she
held within her city walls the vastest hybrid population which had ever
been gathered into one spot on earth, and her enervated limbs stretched
across the world, it is doubtful whether she contained one-tenth as
many individuals of civic virtue and intellectual and moral virility as
were once to be found within her when her body social consisted of the
small city on the seven hills and the plains and hills about it, which
a man might walk across in a day.

An empire based on force and controlled from a centre may indeed
best be likened to an individual, naturally healthy and virile, who
at a certain stage in his existence absorbes more nutriment than
he requires, and who lays on a vast mass of adipose tissue, more
especially abdominally, thus weighting the centres of life, leading
to disease in the extremities, and finally ending in the death of the
whole organism through heart failure.

Mere size and weight, whether in the world of animal organization or
social structure, is never necessarily indicative of vitality and
longevity. The antediluvian creatures, whose bones alone are now left
us in the earth's crust, infinitely exceeded in size any extant forms
of life, but have had to give place to the more concentrated birds and
beasts of our day, as the hippopotamus is to-day passing while the ant
and the man remain. No madness more complete can possess a human brain
than the conception that mere accretion in size and weight, whether
in the individual or national organism, is necessarily an increase in
strength or vitality, unless there be an increased interaction between
all parts and an increase in the central vitality. One jelly-like
tentacle of the deep sea octopus measures twelve feet, but the whole
creature is lower in the scale of life, and probably expends less
nervous force, than the bee or the humming bird. Increased size may,
under certain conditions, spell increased strength; it may also spell
death.

Had it been possible, for example, in the days of Charlemagne for one
central power permanently to crush the diverse individual nationalities
which Europe has tended to divide herself into; had England, France,
Holland, Germany, Switzerland and Italy been dominated over and crushed
by one central power, so that their individual course of evolution
along diverse lines had been stayed, and had they been forcibly bound
under one rule into one large organism; the loss to the human race on
earth would probably have been incalculable.

Europe during the last thousand years would probably not have
contributed much more to the sum total of human advance, in the
direction of freedom and many-sided intellectual growth, than the vast
Chinese Empire has contributed during the same period, or than the
Roman Empire contributed during the last long centuries of its bloated
existence.

The national organization, controlled from one point and comprising a
too vast multitude of humans, must, from that mere fact of size alone
and apart from any other defect, tend to become inert. Even supposing
free representative institutions universally to prevail, as they never
have in any empire, past or present--(for in the British Empire of
to-day a few million voters control the entire central government
of Great Britain, while in India alone there are over two hundred
millions of British subjects who have no representative institutions
whatever and who are dominated over by the central body of voters)--and
supposing each individual within a vast empire to be endowed with
a share in its government, the share of power and control would be
exceedingly minute and infinitesimal as regards the central power,
and the bulk of citizens would be, of necessity, so far removed from
that centre that that intensity of civic life and consciousness of
responsibility, which alone makes democratic government healthful, and
which exists easily in a small state or a tribe, where the government
is as it were under the eyes of all and where each individual tells
sensibly on the body politic, _cannot exist_.

Yet further, the inertness caused by mere excess of numbers under a
central rule is but one cause of the inefficacy and unhealthiness
of all vast empires. A central government, extending its sway over
widely severed and diverse parts of the earth's surface and therefore
over bodies of humans in diverse social and physical conditions, is
a yet more fertile source of social disease and of enervation and
deterioration to the individuals comprised in the body. The very fact,
that the government and institutions of a wide empire are exactly
suited to the wants of the original central dominant body, makes it
impossible that the same government and institutions should be equally
suited to peoples geographically remote and under socially diverse
conditions. Each shell-fish lives best and healthfully only in the
shell it has itself secreted; the cuttle-fish glides through the
sea better in its own coarse chalky shield than were it forced into
the most elaborate and gorgeous mantle that was ever developed by a
nautilus: and human institutions or governments are good or bad exactly
as shells are, not abstractedly, but as they harmonize with the wants
of the living creatures they are bound to. As even the hermit crab, who
makes his home in the shells he has not secreted, can only live and
develop on condition of his choosing his own shell; forced between the
pearled valves of an oyster or a mussel he will die miserably; so even
a noble and virile alien people, when compelled to adapt themselves to
the institutions and government developed with regard to the needs of
humans in other lands and under distinct conditions, is bound miserably
to decay if not to become extinct.

The central government of a vast empire, if it spreads its control over
diverse or unlike territories or peoples, spells death and disease to
them, not necessarily because it is evil in itself, but because it has
not been gradually and spontaneously evolved with regard to the needs
of the diverse units themselves. The better the shell fits the form of
the creature who secreted it, the more deadly it may be when forced
artificially over another.

Freedom and health for a folk desiring a tribal head is the right to
possess him and to live and die for him; for a people with republican
instincts is the right to republican institutions; for folk with an
inclination towards monarchy, a monarchical rule; national slavery is
the compulsory participation in alien institutions. Were an empire
based on force yet ruled entirely by a desire to govern for the benefit
of the subject nations and not for the subject powers (as none up to
the present has ever been), it would still be a disease-producing,
freedom-limiting institution; but, based as all empires up to the
present have been, on self interest, Imperialism spells the death of
all healthful human readjustments and developments.

Even where the parts of a large body social are _not_ held together by
merely external force, where a very great degree of real homogeneity
_does_ exist between all its parts, the evils of a much centralized
rule are always manifest. It may be questioned whether even France,
which is essentially one entity in many respects, has not suffered
during the last century, and does not owe many of her difficulties and
political perturbations, to that system of over-centralized control
and uniformity of local institutions introduced by Napoleon, which
has not left sufficient autonomy and self control to the really, in
many minor respects, distinct provinces of France; and it is more than
open to question whether Germany, almost compelled as she has been in
self defence to sacrifice the independence and individuality of her
component states during the last twenty years, has not intellectually
and morally lost almost as much as she would by foreign domination, by
her more centralized government: while in England the attempt forcibly
to incorporate Ireland with herself, and govern a closely allied yet
differing people, though divided only by a narrow strip of sea, has
resulted in centuries of social disease and suffering for Ireland and
of moral disease and instability for England.

Imperialism is the euphonious title of a deadly disease which under
certain conditions tends to afflict the human race on earth. It
increases in virulency in proportion as it is extended over more
distant spaces and more diverse multitudes, till it becomes at last the
death shroud of the nations.

It is undoubtedly true that the existence of more rapid means of
intercommunication have, during the last centuries, made possible the
existence of larger health aggregates than were possible in earlier
times, when the small tribe and the city with a few leagues of earth
about it formed invariably the largest national organization which was
compatible with full social health and the highest human development.
To-day, New York and San Francisco are in fact almost as close to each
other as Athens and Sparta were two thousand years ago; but even to-day
no vast social organism, large both as to numbers and geographical
extent, such as the United States of America, could possibly exist with
even tolerable healthfulness, were it not for the fact of the complete
internal autonomy, individual organization and strength of its separate
component states; and, above all, for the important and controlling
fact, _that the bond between the different states is not Imperial,
is not the domination of one central state over others, but an equal
confederacy of all_.

Had the United States of America been united on the Imperial basis of
one state dominating and guiding others, not even the more or less
homogeneous nature of its peoples, or the internal autonomy of its
separate states, could have kept its vast masses in even that condition
of social health and freedom in which we find them to-day.

And further, were the separate states of America not conterminous, but
widely scattered over the earth, that powerful and vital confederacy as
it now exists would be impossible. If New Hampshire were in America,
Maine in India, and Virginia in Northern Russia, the band which to-day
naturally and strongly unites them could not exist.

       *       *       *       *       *

Few persons who have not given special study to the subject appear
to grasp adequately the extent of variation which mere geographical
division and the exposure to extremely unlike physical conditions
produces in human individuals and in human societies, demanding a
corresponding difference in government and institutions. Were two
infants removed from each other at birth, the one to be brought up
in Finland and the other in India, the mere climatic and physical
differences would, at the end of forty years, have rendered them highly
dissimilar both in physical constitutions and in many intellectual and
material wants, while their descendants at the end of six generations
would certainly represent distinct human varieties, for which distinct
laws and institutions would be requisite. The effects of geographical
severance, dissimilarities in climate and physical surroundings,
can never for a moment be lost sight of, in dealing with national
questions, without fatal results.

Even in the United States of America, in spite of its territorial
continuity and the more or less homogeneous nature of its mixed
population and the strongly autonomous structure of its separate
states, it is still almost open to question (though this is a matter
only to be dealt with by one who has long and closely studied the
constitution of the United States from within) whether the political
life of that vast mass of humanity might not be healthier, its
vitality greater, and the individuality of the separate citizens more
strengthened, if the whole were divided into two or even three federal
bodies instead of one. This at least is certain, that if ever America
be tempted to lay aside her great fundamental principle of Equal
Federation and geographical continuity, and to adopt in her corporate
capacity the principle of Imperial rule by dominating and subjecting
distant lands and alien peoples whom she does not absorb into her body
politic on equal terms, then she will have introduced into her national
life an element which will first morally, and finally materially,
disorganize her and in the end lead to the break-up of her great and at
present virile body politic; and the world will have to look elsewhere
for the most advanced type of social evolution.

Napoleon attempted to unite Europe by breaking down its states with
iron and re-cementing them with blood under the centralized control
of France. His attempt failed, as all Imperialistic attempts must
ultimately fail which seek to accomplish by force a union which can
only healthily come into being through internal necessity and the
gradual co-adaptation of ages. And if across the years the dim outline
of the Confederate States of Europe may already be seen looming by the
attentive eye, it is certain that not the Imperial nightmare, but the
noble dream of a free and equal union, will find its realization in
that confederacy.

       *       *       *       *       *

If one turns further from the consideration of the separate states and
organizations as they exist to-day to the far wider inquiry, what is
the desirable and possible ultimate form of organization for the entire
human race? it has always appeared to us that there can be but one
answer.

Probably no powerful and far-seeing mind entertains as possible, and
still less regards as desirable were it possible, the existence in
the future of a world in which all the interesting and many-sided
varieties into which the human race has blossomed during its evolution
on earth are cut down and supplanted by any one single variety, more
particularly if that variety be not one to which the far-seeing
and powerful mind belongs! A Frenchized, Germanized, Russianized,
Englishized, Chineseized globe is a nightmare, perhaps only seriously
conceived of as a possible reality in the mind of the ignorant man in
the street of all nations, eaten up, as such minds are, by a stupendous
national egoism, such as might be entertained by an ant who believed
his noble ant heap would ultimately cover the whole globe. The ideal
of a one-nation-dominated globe can as little satisfy a broad human
intelligence as the ideal of a zoological garden populated solely by
hippopotami would satisfy a broadly scientific one.

To ourselves it has always appeared inevitable that, if continued
growth and development of the race are to be maintained, and humanity
to blossom into its fairest and most harmonious development possible
on earth, progress must always necessarily be along two lines. On the
other hand, not only must the independence and freedom of the separate
individuals advance, but the independence and individuality of each
human variety must continue to increase; while, on the one hand, a
certain broad sympathy, rising from an interchange of material and
intellectual benefits and a perception of the profound unity which
underlies all human diversity, must draw together the different human
varieties and races; as to-day the recognized bonds of the family
and the nation unite diverse individuals. As the loftiest form of
individual relationship is not the forcible bond which binds the slave
and the animal to its master, nor even the relation of individuals
identical in blood or character, but the noble companionship of persons
wholly distinct, equally free, equally independent, complementing by
their diversity each other's existence; so the ideal of international
and racial relationships is not one of subjection and dominance or of
identity, but of complementary interaction.

The ultimate chant of the human race on earth is not to be conceived
of as a monotone chanted on one note by one form of humanity alone,
but rather a choral symphony chanted by all races and all nations in
diverse tones on different notes in one grand complex harmony. The
vision of the Hebrew prophet when he cried out that the lamb and the
wolf should yet lie down together and the weaned child put its hand
in the cockatrice's den is the negation of the desire that the lion,
having consumed the lamb, should lie alone switching his tail on his
sand heap, and the cockatrice, having stung the young child to death,
should peer forth from the door of its den on a landscape he had
rendered desolate. Not in the extermination of earth's varied races,
or the dominance of any one over all, or the annihilation of those
complexities and varieties in humanity which form its beauty, not in
a universal Imperial rule, but in a free and equal federation of all,
lies the ultimate goal of humanity, which, being reached, alone can its
fairest proportion be attained.

It is difficult to believe that the first twenty-five years of
the twentieth century will have passed away before that wave of
exploitation and destruction, vomited forth by the nations of
Europe, led by England in her drunken orgie of Imperialism, based
on capitalism, and which now threatens to sweep across the earth,
disrupting and destroying its peoples and their individuality, will
have met with the command, "Hereto shalt thou come and no further!" and
the drenched peoples of earth, after their blood bath, shall again lift
up their heads.

Already, to-day, he who notes keenly may feel faintly and from afar the
first suck-in which is ultimately to withdraw that wave and leave the
deluged and devastated earth to pursue its own slow complex path of
progress.

       *       *       *       *       *

To anyone holding this view with regard to the ultimate development of
humanity at large, one and only one attitude is possible in dealing
with the problems and questions concerning our own smaller South
African world. For one holding the view, it is impossible to regard
with other than sympathy each of our South African states, or to desire
anything but their strength and development, while at the same time he
desires a growing bond of sympathy and fellowship between all.

For myself, I have never been able to regard other than with deep
well-wishing the different political organisms into which South Africa
has more or less spontaneously divided itself; and have been compelled
to desire to see them each rather strengthened and individualized
than dominated and crushed by, or even merged into, another. I have
not only desired that the Free State and Transvaal might each grow
into strong, highly organized social entities, but one is compelled
to desire (though at present without much hope of realization) that
such small native states as Basutoland or even Pondoland might be
left for fifty or sixty years to pursue their own internal course of
evolution, and so enabling some of our native folk to attain to a
fuller and more natural development than is possible if they are all
forced into the vortex of our so-called modern material civilization.
I have regretted the annexation of Bechuanaland to the Cape Colony,
and should deeply regret the amalgamation of Mashona and Matabeleland
with any other African state, or the merging of Natal and the Cape
Colony into one; believing all these territories are quite large enough
ultimately to form healthy units: and I have been quite unable to go
with the monopolists and speculators in the past, who have desired
for their own reasons that English influence should be eliminated.
I have no more desired its elimination than I have regretted the
existence of the Germans in Damaraland or the Portuguese on the east
coast, believing that by the complexity of our elements was produced
a healthy friction, preventing that dominance of any one central,
overbearing power, which is the death of true freedom. I have never
desired for my birthland that all interstatal lines should be broken
down and the whole welded into one uniform mass with only a shadow of
self-government in its separate parts: an ideal so dear to the heart of
the autocrat in all ages, whether capitalist or military despot, who
recognizes in each strong interstatal line or conservative institution
a kind of embankment resisting his central despotism. Rather, if the
truth be told, I have nourished with regard to England's part in South
Africa a very lofty ambition. I have desired that my motherland might
play a very high part, such as perhaps some great people may in the
future play in the world's history at large. I have dreamed that it was
possible for the influence of England always to make itself felt as a
freeing, co-ordinating element among our varying states and peoples, an
element which made for the strengthening and protecting of all weaker
and smaller states and peoples; I have dreamed that England, desiring
nothing for herself, might be able to hold the balance between all
our states and peoples; I have desired for her an Empire, an eternal
Empire, not based on force but on the reverence and faith of all
peoples struggling for freedom throughout the earth. I have dreamed
that when, in forty or sixty years' time, South Africa, its states
grown internally strong enough, healthfully and without sacrificing
their different systems of internal self-government to federate,
federated, took her place beside the world's other large national
entities, though the majority of her inhabitants could never be English
in descent, and South Africa would be a nation as independent and
self-controlling as America or France, that yet a peculiarly close and
tender bond might for ever bind her to England.

Among human relationships there is one which, though not common,
perhaps few beings have been so fortunate as not once to have seen
realized, and which constitutes one of the bravest and fairest in the
whole domain of human fellowships. It is the bond which exists between
a large and generous woman, who, through marriage having thrown into
her hands children not her own by blood, yet through all their infancy
and early childhood guards and labours for as her own, asking nothing
for herself, giving all: desiring not to use her power for her own
ends, not favouring those of her own blood unduly, but seeking to aid
those in her power to attain most successfully to the freedom and
independence of adult life.

Those who have been so fortunate as at least once to have seen a woman
so nobly using her powers will also have seen her rewarded by a love
and devotion from the children not her own yet greater than that which
is often given to a mother by the children of the blood.

Such is the bond I have dreamed should permanently bind England to
South Africa.

One has indeed desired that a bond of good fellowship should bind all
nations to our own young nation at the South. We, here, guarded by
the vast expanses of our southern seas on every hand, with our wild,
tempestuous and rocky coasts and our few and easily guarded harbours,
are indeed singularly well situated by nature, when once internally
united, for living in peace and freedom, untouched by foreign strife.
But I, at least, have deeply desired that, with the men and women
in the little Island in the North, a peculiarly tender bond should
unite us; rising from the memory of great benefits conferred, without
self-seeking, when the people of Great Africa were small and young, and
England old and strong.

Even ten years ago it seemed to me not wholly unreasonable to hope that
this ambition might yet be realized.

True, there had been in the past even then terrible and grievous
mistakes on the part of England; the step-mother of the South African
people was, one knew, a step-mother with a not quite certain temper;
but when one remembered that England had in the past sent out to South
Africa such men as Sir George Grey, that fresh from Ireland came Sir
William Porter, and that in spite of astonishing occasional aberrations
there had frequently been a tendency on the part of the ruling power
in England to make for a course of rectitude in South Africa, I do not
think that dream was wholly unjustifiable, or that one who dreamed
it need necessarily have been deemed a madman. Even ten years ago it
still seemed within the range of possibility that, when the time came
for the official separation between England and South Africa (as it
must come between all lands and the old peoples on the other side of
the globe; as it will come to Australia and New Zealand and Canada),
that when that time came, little as was England's share in the blood of
South Africa, there might yet be a tough cable of affection stretching
across the six thousand miles of sea, and binding the hearts of South
Africans, Dutch, English, German, French or African in origin, to the
hearts of the people in the little Isles of the North.

To-day, England has made the realization of that dream an impossibility.

The first deadly blow was struck at its attainment when, by the
instalment of the Chartered Company and the lending of her flag and
her sword to a handful of wealthy or aristocratic speculators, she, by
condoning their actions towards the African native in Matabeleland and
more especially in Mashonaland, made it clear to the intelligent native
all over South Africa that from England, under the capitalist control,
and under the flag of England, when held aloft by speculators there is
nothing to be looked for: that tenderer were the mercies to be hoped
for from the roughest Boer or African-English Colonist than from the
foreign speculators who acted in England's name.

A little later, by countenancing the Raid made upon a European South
African state by the same corporation, England, through condonation
of their conduct by princelings and politicians, made it clear to
the bulk of the white Africans also that, however true to nobler and
older traditions might be the hearts of a large section of the English
people, the Union Jack was now fallen into the hands of those who had
made it dangerous to the peace of Africa; that the flag we had loved as
the flag of freedom was become a "Commercial Asset" and waved over the
heads of marauders.

I think this struck the death-blow to the noblest possibilities of the
English Empire over the hearts of South Africans; but there was even
then hope left.

To-day (writing in the last months of the year 1900), guided by the
hands of the same men, England is attempting to crush the independence
of our two Republican states. Whether for a time she will succeed or
not is still a matter of doubt. But that she has committed suicide in
South Africa is a matter for no doubt.

Should she succeed in carrying out the speculators' dream of breaking
down all the interstatal lines which have stood out as so many small
ramparts behind which freedom could hide and which broke into parts
the wave of capitalist aggression as it swept on; should England by
forcible means, succeed, violently and against their will, in combining
to-day all South African states under one central foreign government
and forcing them prematurely into a national union, she may indeed form
the United States of South Africa forty years sooner than they would
spontaneously have been formed--but it will not be for herself.

England should clearly understand: It is not for herself that she is
to-day attempting violently and by force to push open the rose of the
South Africa national existence before its time. She will never wear it.

We have not desired it should be forced thus. A flower pushed
artificially open by coarse fingers always has something ragged in its
appearance; its bloom is never so fair and harmonious as one that has
opened spontaneously under the influence of sun and air. We regret
the premature and violent opening of our South African rose. But, let
England mark this well; it is not for herself that she has torn and
forced it: it will never bloom on her bosom.

Among all the elements connected with our complex South African world,
England has had most to gain by its division into separate states.
She has had more influence in South Africa than in Australia or New
Zealand or Canada, simply because of its strongly politically divided
structure. Once break up these parts and cement them thoroughly with
human blood, shed on the battlefield and the scaffold, into one solid
whole, and South Africa can stand alone: it will have passed suddenly
amid the heat and anguish of battle and martyrdom through adolescence
on to manhood.

Should England succeed for a time in crushing the two Republics,
and, by means of keeping a hundred thousand armed men always on the
soil, and, through blood and fire, succeed in holding them down for
a moment, or should she not succeed--she has equally brought half a
century nearer the time when she will have in South Africa not the
hoof of one war horse, not the foot of one of her soldiers shall she
be able to land on South Africa's shores. Fate has allowed England to
make her choice between forming a fostering and sheltering element to
our national germ, to remain for ever bound by ties of affection and
gratitude to the great nation which in the future must rise from our
blended peoples, or being the dominator and oppressor of an hour: then
to depart for ever.

The lower element in the English nation has chosen, and by that choice
she and we must now abide.

Out of the whitened bones of the English soldiers who have fallen
bravely fighting in South Africa fate is rearing up a great cairn,
beneath which lie buried for ever the noblest possibilities of the
English people.

The regeneration of nations, as of individuals, is possible, and for
the English people there may still be a great and noble future, a
future which shall produce in the little Island of the North men worthy
to be successors to the noblest of her sons of the past. She may still
walk in the path of freedom and humanity, though she can no more lead;
but it can only be when, after mighty and agonizing social upheavals,
she has reorganized her own social structure.

What ails the race to-day in the little Island of the North is that
there has been an irruption of the lower and more sordid elements in
her body politic over its entire surface, where they have formed as it
were an upper crust: as over some green land there might be a physical
eruption of scoriæ and sulphurous lava forming a crust over what had
been once green fields and fruitful plains. Never, till the healthier
strata within the nation have arisen and cracked up and thrown off the
plutocratic crust which has caked over its national existence, will
vigour and health be restored to it.

The future may have a great task in store for that little Island of the
North we once loved so and towards which our hearts still call; she may
yet lead the world by showing how a community may so reorganize and
reshape itself that it may pass from death to life. But she will now
have to move along her own path; we on ours--till, it may be, across
the ages, we meet again, in the free confederacy of all the world's
peoples.

A terrible and irrevocable "Might have been" has been written by fate
over the possibilities of England in South Africa.

The little vessel of the North Sea may still be sound, but, while her
sails are manned and her rudder guided as they are to-day, she drifts
towards the rocks. It may be that after the shock she will recover
herself and re-man her vessel: for

    Her timbers yet are sound,
    And she may float again!

It may be that her flag washed from its stain will be no more a
"Commercial Asset," and that it may yet float free in the air, the
banner of freedom, peace and justice of our dreams--

    Our glorious Semper Eadem,
    The banner of our pride!

--but while it remains in the hand of those who hold it to-day she can
but follow the march of humanity, from its rear.

While England is given over to the hands of a plutocracy, she cannot
lead or guide other nations on the path towards freedom.

We are trying to save ourselves: let her try to save herself.




NOTE B

THE VALUE OF HUMAN VARIETIES (1901)


When chapter III was first published several years ago as an article in
an English review, slight and perfunctory as is its manner of dealing
with the vast question of the intermingling of distinct human breeds,
I was surprised at the number of letters I received from every part of
the world, written by persons themselves of mixed varieties. It was as
though the passing reference to a subject seldom dealt with had removed
a valve, allowing free utterance to much pent-up feeling. Had these
letters not been confidential, and therefore unpublishable, they would
have formed an invaluable commentary on the article.

"Why," writes in effect a cultured and intellectual man of mingled
race, the son of an English planter and a pure Negro woman in the
West Indies, but who had received a university training in Europe,
"Why should I have anything to do with that dark race which I hate
and loathe and despise, and not cling wholly to that white race which
I love and admire?" And yet he adds later, "There are moments of
bitterness when I feel I could break wholly with my father's people and
throw my lot in with my mother's, and live for them and with them. They
would not despise me. And yet the shrinking from them is too intense."

The first of these sentences throws a strong light on the mental
attitude from which arise the mingled sorrows and wrongs of the man of
dark and light blood at the present day, and which rises, as we have
said, not so much from the manner in which other men regard him as from
the attitude he assumes towards one part of himself; while the last
sentence indicates perhaps the only manner in which the inter-breeding
of widely distinct varieties might, even at the present day, become a
matter of great gain to humanity, were those of mingled blood large and
strong enough to expend themselves rather in aiding and leading the
weaker than in seeking to identify themselves with the, for the moment,
stronger of their two parent races.

Without exception the writers, from whatever part of the world,
understood from how profoundly sympathetic a standpoint their condition
had been considered. It was therefore the more surprising when one
Englishman in South Africa stated that the paper was intended as an
attack on the men of mingled colour.

So far from this being the case, it has always appeared to me that no
element in our complex South African community is under so deep an
obligation to any other as is the white man racially to the Half-caste.
The obligation to cultivate and aid him to overcome the difficulties
of his position appears to me morally imperative, and, if possible,
more so than in the case of the pure-bred natives. From my earliest
childhood a curious and almost painful sympathy has attracted me toward
this sad son of man, from the time when, hardly more than an infant,
I first heard pure-blooded Bantu servants laugh scornfully at their
half-coloured fellows; and yet more when I noted men and women of
refinement and culture insulted and made to shrink within themselves by
those immeasurably their intellectual inferiors, but who had no trace
of the blood of the African race.

To-day the question of the mixture of totally distinct human breeds
is one which practically touches South Africa as but a few other
countries. In the century which is coming it will be the world's
question. Already to-day the swift means of inter-communication and the
exploitation of Asia and Africa by European speculators and politicians
are breaking down all those walls which for ages have kept man of
distinct breeds more or less geographically distinct, and which through
the æons of the past have made possible that slow differentiation of
the different branches of humanity into stable and fixed varieties.
Before the twentieth century is half over, the Mongolian, the Aryan,
and the African will be found everywhere inhabiting the same laps
of earth and forming parts of the same bodies politic. The Chinaman
will be found in every land, the European will have interfiltrated
throughout Africa, and the question, which to-day is a practical
question for South Africa and a few other countries, will be the master
question of the race.

Is it possible, and, if possible, desirable, that the different
distinct human breeds, whom it has taken nature countless ages to
elaborate in her workshop and turn out in stable form, should, when
living side by side as parts of the same social organism, remain
distinct?

Is the race of man on earth, in the future, as in the present, to
consist of distinct types, or is the whole body of humanity to become
racially one fused uniform mass?

To these questions of so weighty an import to humanity, only the ages
that are coming can yield an adequate answer; but they are undoubtedly
questions of master import to the race.

This one thing at least is certain--that the conviction that it is
undesirable that any two distinct human breeds should mingle does not
necessarily imply superiority or inferiority in either.

In my kennels I may have greyhounds and mastiffs, poodles and lap-dogs,
bulldogs, St. Bernards. Because I desire to keep them distinct I do not
therefore hold one breed as superior to the other. My greyhound may not
be more interesting and valuable than my puppy lap-dog, or the poodle
than the bull. Each may have his own charm and purpose, and if I refuse
to mingle them recklessly, it is not because I value any so little,
but all so much. It may indeed be said that by mingling my greyhounds
with my bulldogs I might at last hit upon a new creature having virtues
possessed by neither parent form. This also is true. But shall I move
carelessly where my varieties are each so fair and desirable in my eyes
in their own way?

It may be that the ideal human creature, for whom the centuries wait,
may yet be found a human, half Chinaman, half Aryan, or African-Aryan
and Mongolian blend: but the more valuable and rare each human breed
is, the more does one shrink from destroying it where all is so dark.

Vandals may in a few hours wreck the Gothic cathedral which it was the
work of countless generations to raise; and the rare and multiform
human varieties, which it has taken nature countless millenniums to
elaborate and fix in her workshop, and which add so greatly to the
variety and charm of earth, may in a few generations be destroyed for
ever. It is ill destroying the artistic work of man or nature till we
know that from its destruction we are able to rear up something more
worthy.

The lap-dog who lies upon my knee, the mastiff who guards my house,
are both so wholly desirable that I desire to see neither of them
extinguished. Shall we value our human varieties less than my dogs?

Yet probably, and I should say more than probably, where nature herself
obliterates the distinction of race, and allows a mighty and permanent
affection between man and woman to cross its limits of race, then I
should be inclined to say nature herself gives a sanction which may set
the lesser utilities at defiance and consecrates the union of distinct
breeds; but without so mighty a permit it is perhaps well that we who
are but children in this matter, and cannot see farther than our hands
can reach, should pause and move with caution. For the future of the
race on earth is bound up in this matter.




NOTE C

THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE BOER (1899)


I have been asked to write an account on the domestic life of the South
African Boer. If the term "Boer" be used to signify, as it sometimes
is, the entire population of South Africa which is descended from the
early Dutch settlers of two or three hundred years ago, and of the
French Huguenots, who, driven from their native land in the seventeenth
century, landed in South Africa and mingled their blood with that of
the earlier settlers, the task would not be an easier one than to write
a description of the domestic life of the whole American people. For
the Africanders, as the Dutch-French-Huguenots descendants now call
themselves, are not at the present day less complex and many-graded
than the Americans themselves. In our cities and towns they form a
large proportion of our most cultured and brilliant citizens, whose
domestic life differs not at all from that of other cultured South
Africans, English, French, or Germans in descent. Many of our most
brilliant lawyers and able politicians and professional men are of this
race: and year by year the names both of men and women of this race
increasingly fill our lists of successful university students.

If, however, the term "Boer" be taken, as it should be, to signify
only that portion of the race who have remained farmers (the word
"Boer" literally means a farmer), and who in the outlying districts
of the Cape Colony, the Orange Free State, Natal, and the Transvaal,
have preserved unchanged the language, manners and ideas of their
forefathers of the seventeenth century, then the task is far more easy.
For this wonderful and virile folk--driven into the wilds of Africa a
couple of centuries ago--are not merely dominated in their domestic
and in their public life by old ideals and methods, but a strange
uniformity exists everywhere.

Whether we find the primitive Boer on the wide grass plains of the
Transvaal and the Free State, the Karoo plains of central and western
Cape Colony, or the bush lands nearer the coast, in appearance, ideas,
and, above all, in habits and the arrangement of his domestic life, a
complete and unique conformity exists.

The typical South African Boer lives on his own land, a farm, covering
a stretch of country; it may be six, twelve, eighteen or more miles
in length. On the spot where his homestead now stands, it may be that
a few generations ago his grandfather or great-grandfather, on his
first journey into the wilds in search of a new home, drew up his great
ox-wagon beside some slowly oozing fountain, or on the banks of some
stream with inexhaustible pools, which had never yet been visited by
the foot of white man, and determined here to fix his home. He called
the place perhaps "Jakals' Fontein," from the number of jackals which
came down to drink or watch for prey the first night; "Wilde Kats
Draai," from the wild cat they killed next day; or "Ti'er Kloof,"
from the huge tiger-leopard killed in the ravine beyond the fountain;
and there, after a longer or shorter struggle with wild beasts or
poisoned-arrow-shooting Bushmen, he built his house and kraals, and
settled himself and his descendants.

Here, as the years passed, and leopard, lion, and wild dog became
exterminated, and the wild bucks on whose flesh in early days he lived
became more rare, he raised his little square or oblong house of rough
stones or unburnt bricks; behind his house, surrounded by walls of
rough stone or high-piled branches of the mimosa thorn, he built his
kraals (or enclosures for the stock to sleep in at night), which were
always placed very close to the house, that they might be more easily
protected from wild beasts or savages.

By-and-by he generally built a dam, larger or smaller, as the case
might be, for catching the rain-water, which in rainy seasons floods
the plains, or which might be fed by his fountain if strong enough.
Here his stock came to drink at evening; and if the supply of water
were large enough, he often enclosed a small patch of land below the
dam with a stone wall, planted a few fig and peach trees, and made a
small garden.

Behind the house was built a large brick oven, often whitewashed on the
outside, where the good wife (who in earlier days had had to content
herself with a hollowed-out antheap as an oven) might bake her bread.
Behind the house was raised a large wagon-house, open on the side from
which least rain came, where the great ox-wagon and cart, if there were
one, might stand sheltered from sun and rain; and then the typical Boer
homestead, as we know it, and as it exists to the present day, was
complete.

As sons and daughters grew up and married, additional rooms were
often built on for them, to the old farm-house, or small houses were
built near, or at a few miles' distance on the same farm, where at
some other fountain the stock was watered. But in each case the new
homestead repeated the features of the old.

If one travel across some great African plain to-day, the hoofs of
one's horse sinking step by step into the red sand, or crunching the
gravel on some rocky ridge, far off across the plain one may mark some
distant flat-topped table mountains rising up against the sky on the
horizon; but for the rest, a vast, silent, undulating plain, broken,
it may be, by small hillocks, or "kopjes," of iron-stones, stretches
about one everywhere. After travelling five or six miles further, one
may discern, at the foot of some distant kopje, a small white or dark
speck; as one approaches nearer the practised eye perceives it is a
homestead.

As one approaches yet nearer along the sandy wagon-track, slowly all
the details of the place become clear--the house, the dam, almost or
quite dry, if it be the end of a long, thirsty season, the little
patch of dark green contrasting with the miles of red-brown veld about
it, the wagon-house, and the great dark square patches, which are the
kraals. And yet, so clear is the air, making objects distinctly visible
at a long distance, one may ride on for an hour before the road, which
has led straight as an arrow across the plain, takes a little turn, and
the farmhouse is reached.

If it be the middle of a hot summer's afternoon a great stillness will
reign about the place; not a soul will be seen stirring; the doors
and the wooden shutters of the windows will be closed; a few hens may
be scratching about in the red sand on the shady side of the house,
and a couple of large Boer dogs will rise slowly from the shadow of
the wagon house, and come toward you silently, with their heads down.
If a coloured servant should appear from the back of the house, or a
little face peep from behind the oven, it will be well to call to them
to call off the dogs, for the African Boer dog is a peculiar species
of mastiff, with a touch of the bull-dog, celebrated for his silent
savageness.

After the dogs have been called off, the servant or child will go into
the house to rouse the master of the house, who, with the rest of the
family, is still taking his afternoon siesta, made necessary to all
by the intense heat of summer and by the early rising, which is the
invariable rule on an African farm. Presently the upper half of the
door opens, and then the lower, and the master of the house appears,
his eyes a little blinded by the glare of the afternoon sun after the
cool darkness of the house.

He will step down from the low, raised stone platform before the door,
and come to meet you--a tall, powerful man of over six feet in height,
large-boned and massive, with large hands and feet, a long brown beard,
and keen, steady, somewhat deep-set eyes. He will extend his hand to
you with the greatest courtesy, inquire your name, and whether you do
not wish to off-saddle, and will call a servant to take your horse.

When you have entered the house with him, you will find yourself in
a square room, large as compared with the whole size of the house.
The floor is generally earth--soil forming the huge antheaps which
cover the plains being generally taken for this purpose, which, damped
with water, and well pounded down, forms an exceedingly hard floor.
In the centre of the room is a bare square table, neatly finished
off, but often of home construction, having been made by the father
or grandfather of the present owner. Round the sides of the room are
arranged some chairs and a long wooden sofa of the same make, the
seats of which are formed, not of cane, but of thin thongs of leather
interlaced.

At one side of the room against the wall stands a small square table.
On it stands the great coffee-urn, and the work of the house-mother.
Beside it, in her elbow-chair, in which she has hastily seated herself
to welcome the stranger, she herself sits, dressed in black, often with
a little black shawl across her shoulders, and a white handkerchief
round her throat.

At her feet is a little square wooden stove, with a hollow inside, in
which may be put a small brazier of live coals in cold weather, the
heat arising through small ornamental holes cut in the wood of the top.
Exactly such wooden stoves may be seen in the paintings of Flemish
interiors by the old Dutch artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.

The good wife politely extends her hand to you, asks you to be seated,
and you take your place on the wooden sofa. Except the tables and
chairs, the room contains little or nothing. On the wall may be a rough
gun-rack, containing half a dozen guns, from the old clumsy flint-lock
gun of a century ago--which may have brought down many an elephant and
lion in the old days and defended the lives of wives and children--to
the most elegant modern Mauser or Martini-Henry. But the guns are more
often kept in the bedroom, on the wall near the head of the bed.

One thing, however, is never missing. Either in a little closed window
with a crochet cloth thrown over it, on the housemother's little table,
on the centre table, or in a little cupboard in the wall, is always to
be found the great family Bible. It holds a place altogether unique
in the economy of the Boer life. It is not alone that on its front
pages are to be found solemnly inscribed the names of the ancestors,
the births, deaths, or marriages of his children, and often a brief
record of the date of the most momentous events in his own or his
family's history; it is not alone that for generations this book has
represented the sole tie between his solitary and often nomadic family
and the intellectual life of culture of mankind; it is not alone that
any culture or knowledge he possesses, other than that gained from
the material world about him, has been all spelled out of its pages,
but the visible external volume forms the Lares and Penates of his
household, the sacred central point.

It is treated with respect; no other book is ever laid upon it; it
is opened reverentially; it is carried wherever he wanders; it is
consulted not merely as a moral, but also a material guide. The pages
are solemnly opened and the finger brought down upon a passage, which
is spelled out, and recovery or death of a child, and even such matters
as the whereabouts of lost cattle, are believed to be indicated by its
contents; as Enoch Arden's wife believed, when she brought her finger
down on the passage about the palm-tree, that it indicated Enoch's
death.

After we have been seated for a few moments the other members of the
family will troop in, one by one, and shake hands, and seat themselves
on the chairs round the room; nine or ten children between the ages of
eighteen and two years, and perhaps a married son and daughter-in-law,
and an old grandmother, who has her own elbow-chair near the window.
For the Boer ideal of family life is patriarchal, and two or three
generations are often housed under one roof. Presently the eldest
daughter makes coffee in the urn, a little Kaffir maid bringing in a
small, brazier of live coals to place under it. Then coffee is poured
out in cups, or basins, and handed round to each person.

By the time the coffee has been drunk, the afternoon is beginning to
grow old; the heat is rapidly lessening, and the soft evening breeze
beginning to stir the air. The farmer lights his pipe, and invites you
to fill yours from his large tobacco-bag, made of cony's skin or little
kid's. Then he invites you to accompany him to the kraals, towards
which from different points on the plain the flocks may already be seen
tending. Then comes the busy and delightful hour--sunset on an African
farm. Everywhere there is bustle and stir; in the cow-kraals the calves
are bleating and putting their noses through the gate to get through to
their mothers as they are being milked; and one by one, the sheep and
the goats are being counted in at the gates of the great kraals.

The Kaffir maids are busy preparing the churn for the fresh milk,
and lighting the kitchen fire for supper. The children are romping
outside, inspired by the cool evening wind; even the old grandmother
seats herself on the back doorstep to watch the stir, and to see the
pink sunset slowly deepen into grey as the night comes down. The dark
gathers quickly, and soon the whole family are again gathered in the
great front room.

On really old-fashioned farms a little Kaffir maid then comes in with
a small tub of hot water and a cloth, and washes the feet of old and
young, after which the family sit down to the evening meal, generally
composed of boiled mutton, bread, and coffee. After supper, it is
not long before the whole family retire for the night into the small
bedrooms opening to the right and left of the sitting-room, and by
eight o'clock often the whole household is in bed and asleep, the old
Boer dog, stealing softly round the house, being the only creature
moving, and the occasional bleating of sheep and goats being the only
sounds that break the stillness.

At half-past three or four the next morning, however, you will be early
aroused by the sound of bustling and movement. Every one is getting
up. The Kaffir maid has already made the fire, and by the time you
enter the sitting-room the eldest daughter is already pouring out
coffee at the little table, by the light of a candle, although the grey
dawn-light is already creeping in at the door.

As soon as he has had his coffee, the Boer with his sons goes out to
the kraals to let out the stock. Long before the sun rises the flocks
are already wending their way across the plain to their different
pastures, with their Kaffir herdsmen behind them.

Then if you be the typical African traveller, anxious to get on his way
before the heat of the day rises, you will have another cup of coffee,
and bidding good-bye to your hosts, by the time the sun rises you will
be already on your way across the plain, and the farm-house with its
kraals and dam be already but a small speck behind you.




NOTE D

OUR WASTE LAND IN MASHONALAND (1891)


At the present day it is by no means uncommon for men to spend the
greater part of their lives and large stores of wealth in a sometimes
futile search for the scattered fragments of antiquity. A few broken
Greek marbles, or Nineveh mud tablets, or battered leaves of Egyptian
papyrus, are considered an ample return for half a lifetime of labour
and the expenditure of thousands. We are apt to regard with a scorn not
unmixed with malevolence the men of a bygone age who allowed treasure
of so priceless a value to humanity to be wantonly destroyed.

Yet, at the present day in South Africa, a destruction of materials far
more priceless and irrevocable goes on in our midst in the full light
of our nineteenth-century humanitarian culture. It is possible that in
the course of time a new Phidias may arise in our midst, and produce
statues comparable to, if not identical with, those of the old world,
and the learning and lore of the old Egyptians and Chaldeans lost in
their destroyed mud tablets or papyrus leaves may yet be re-evolved
from the human brain; but there is a reckless and callous destruction
now going on in our midst of that which can by no conceivable
possibility be restored to humanity when once it is destroyed from
the surface of the globe. Future generations will probably regard as
intelligent and wise benefactors of their race the men who burnt the
Library in Alexandria, and destroyed the Parthenon at Athens, when they
are compared, in certain aspects, with the inhabitants of Southern
Africa and the modern world.

For the moment we are so entirely bent on advancing the claims of
a material civilization, which we are inclined to regard as the
all-in-all of life, that more subtle, if equally practical, and
important considerations are apt to be forgotten.

This view is forced on us when we consider the reckless and entirely
wanton destruction of the one form of production for which the
African continent, and more especially its southern portions, stands
pre-eminent among the world's divisions--our astonishing fauna.

From gorilla and grey parrot on the east coast, and chimpanzee on
the west, to the endless varieties of antelope and pachydermatous
quadrupeds which at one time overran the south, no part in the globe
has been within the memory of man, and even still is, so rich in
beautiful and rare forms of sub-human life; no other presents the same
vast field for scientific research.

How quickly this condition of things is passing away the most rapid
glance at the present condition of South Africa will show. Hardly
a year passes away without some rare and interesting form of life
becoming extinct. The hippopotami, elephants, and antelopes which
once grazed on the shores of Table Bay have for a century not been
seen there, and the vast herds which covered our up-country plains in
the memory of those living have absolutely been extinguished, leaving
nothing behind but a few horns and skins, the few last wandering
individuals, who in the natural course of things will be exterminated
within the next few years. Before the middle of the twentieth century
is reached (probably much sooner) the rifle, the railway train and the
plough will so entirely have modified the conditions of existence that
not only all forms of life indigenous to Southern, but to Central and
Tropical Africa will have passed away.

From a sentimental and emotional standpoint this is to be regretted,
but there are deeper interests than the merely emotional and poetical
at stake. In an age when the study of a single small, deep-sea creature
of a form intermediate between the vertebrate and invertebrate orders
has thrown a flood of light on our biological knowledge, and when the
discovery of a few fossilized hoofs has helped to revolutionize our
view of vital phenomena; when even the man in the street, perceiving
the practical advantages which science has conferred on him, has
ceased to jeer, and regards it with a certain vague, if unreasoning,
respect, it is not necessary to dwell at length on the fact that the
loss of these multitudinous forms of life, by crippling and limiting
the field of scientific study, must inflict a direct and serious loss
on human knowledge and progress. But perhaps it is only the man more
or less interested in the results of scientific research who can fully
appreciate the importance of preserving for the future all forms of
natural life, from the lion and crocodile to the humblest wood-dove and
fly.

Some years back, finding it necessary to gain what information was
obtainable with regard to the domestic and social habits of the higher
apes, we found that all the information to be obtained from the latest
works on the subject amounted to little more than _nil_; and that for
a personal inspection of these creatures in their natural state three
distinct journeys into separate and most inaccessible parts of the
globe would be necessary.

We then proceeded to study the few isolated specimens to be found in
the Zoological Gardens of Europe. We found a few crestfallen looking
animals, transported at an immense cost from tropical Africa or
elsewhere, necessarily confined in small, comparatively dark cells,
kept alive by a continual expenditure of coal and artificial heat, and
then rarely saved from consumption, and requiring the constant care
and attention of an able-bodied man; they resembled as little, seated
on their heaps of straw and coughing, the creature in its natural and
active social condition amidst the sunshine of a tropical forest, as
a mummy represents an ancient Egyptian. After a vast expenditure of
money, less was to be learnt from them than might be gained with regard
to a troop of South African baboons when watched for a few hours from
behind the stones of a kopje.

Considering these things, the conclusion inevitably forces itself upon
us that our position with regard to the study of animal life is yet
far from an ideal one. With one-third the expenditure of energy and
money which goes to form our half-dozen small zoological collections
in Europe, a vast preserve for wild animals immeasurably superior
to anything which exists for scientific ends might be formed and
maintained in any tropical or sub-tropical country. Our small existing
collections may serve to bring curious specimens under the eyes of
scientific men, and subserve certain useful purposes; but for many
forms of study they are absolutely futile, and as a means of keeping
in existence specimens which would otherwise become extinct, they have
no claim to consideration. The ideal zoological garden would be a vast
tract of country in some tropical or subtropical region, where all
creatures but those habituated to extreme cold would freely exist in a
state of nature, limited only by mutual struggle; it should be a tract
diversified, if possible, by swamp, forest, and hills, and divided
as far as might be by natural features from the surrounding country;
and where no such barriers existed it should be as far as possible
artificially cut off. It should contain not merely the creatures
indigenous to the country, but should serve as a receptacle for those
which could not elsewhere be preserved from extinction. It should
form, so to speak, a vast natural preserve, existing not primarily
for the purposes of the sportsman, but of science, and in which the
rifle should be almost unknown. In connection with this might in time
spring up large zoological gardens in the narrower sense of the term,
where isolated specimens might be immured for the purposes of certain
studies; but for many years its far more important function would be
simply the keeping in existence a large number of forms of animal life
which would else become annihilated. Wildly Utopian as this scheme
appears at first sight, consideration will show it is not beyond the
range of feasibility, though beset with difficulty. The first, and for
many years the most insuperable, difficulty has lain in the fact that
no such tract as was necessary was obtainable anywhere. The existence
of a strong, civilized government would be necessary to guarantee its
retention for the desired purpose, and where a civilized government
exists, there, as a rule, is a more or less dense population. The
individual, as a rule, precedes the government, and apart from the
fact that land then becomes too precious to be appropriated for such a
purpose, both the land and the fauna have, as a rule, become so much
modified and destroyed that it would take half a century to reproduce
natural conditions. Such considerations have made in the past the whole
scheme appear purely Utopian.

At the present moment, however, there exists in South Africa, by a
rare and exceptional combination of circumstances, a condition which
removes it from the realm of the purely ideal to that of the remotely
practical. The sudden and unprecedented movement of the north-east of
Southern Africa, where a powerful and well-organized form of civilized
government is rapidly establishing itself in a vast territory, sparsely
inhabited by natives, and as yet little, or at all, by Europeans, and
where certain low-lying tracts are not at the present moment fitted for
immediate occupation or for ordinary cultivation, and will certainly
not be so used till the immense tracts of salubrious and valuable
land about them have been fully utilized, yields a possibility of
the realization of this plan, which has not occurred before and will
probably not occur again. Were a large tract of this country granted
or bought at a nominal price, and freedom from intrusion guaranteed,
and were the interests of scientific Europe and America aroused and
directed to this matter, and a body of scientific men and practical
travellers formed for the direction and management of the scheme, it
might pass into the region of the practical and obtainable. Innumerable
as the smaller difficulties of detail would be, they would probably not
be insurmountable. Such a subsidiary difficulty, for instance, would
rise from the fact that such a preserve should not border anywhere upon
a densely populated tract of country, and that it would be necessary to
leave a belt of country some miles in width around it, to be inhabited
on exceptional conditions. Were the interest of scientific Europe and
America fully aroused, and the feasibility of the scheme proved, money
would not be the thing wanting for its completion.

The sum now expended in warming the cell of one anthropoid ape in
Europe would build a stone wall a mile long in Mashonaland, and did
the contributions take the form of donations giving the donors a
permanent interest in the scheme and its management they might be
largely increased. Apart entirely from the noblest scientific aspect,
the undertaking might in the end prove itself successful in the purely
commercial sense. Not only would the existence of such a preserve
serve in time, as the creatures became extinct elsewhere, to attract
scientific visitors to the land; but (curious as such an idea now
appears, in a country, where for years our struggle has been to obtain
an initial control over the animal and vegetable productions of Nature,
and where all artificial productions are naturally valued at something
above their real worth) it is possible that the mere animals themselves
might, in the course of sixty or eighty years, prove as lucrative a
source of wealth to the scientific body to which they belonged as if
the original capital had been invested in gold mines or corn fields.
It is difficult at the present moment to realize that in a generation
and a half, when streams of immigration have swept east and west, north
and south, across the continent, the tusks of an elephant, the skin
of an antelope, or the body of a giraffe, or a live lion, may possess
a purely commercial value, which would cause them to equal in worth a
handful of Kimberley diamonds or a claim at Johannesburg. Apart from
the always increasing interest which would attach scientifically to
such a preserve of primitive forms, the vulgar curiosity which to-day
runs after the lion-van and stands gaping at the Zoological Gardens
on a Saturday afternoon, would find its gratification in the products
of the tract; and it is not impossible that in a future generation,
if the crude thirst for destruction remains unslaked in human nature,
Nimrods may be found who would gladly expend much of their superfluous
wealth in paying for attaining to the blissful consciousness of
having destroyed the life of a creature of whose kind only a few
score exist in the world. It may be objected that were such a scheme
workable, and however remotely a possible success, it would long since
in a commercial age have been grasped and carried out. But a scheme
whose monetary success cannot be looked for during the limits of a
lifetime is not one which presents seductive allurements to the purely
commercial investor. It is a scheme peculiarly fitted to be worked out
in the interests of science, which are practically indestructible and
in the presence of which a thousand years are but as one day.

In Central and Southern Africa to-day primitive nature is making its
last stand on the surface of the globe. It is here or nowhere that a
minute relic of it must be retained for the civilized world of the
future. If it be possible for any plan to be matured and carried
out for the preserving of our fauna, it will undoubtedly be regarded
by men of the future as action along that obvious, practical, and
rational line which it was impossible for us to avoid seeing, and
much as we should regard the action of men who had saved for us the
treasures of antiquity in sealed chest and buried chambers. If no such
plan is maturable and workable during the next fifty years, science
will permanently have lost great possibilities, and South Africa that
which constitutes its greatest attraction. It is certainly not by
persistently following in the steps of other divisions of the globe,
but by resolutely grasping our own opportunities and striking out her
own paths, that Africa can ever attain to her rightful position among
the world's divisions.

At the present moment in the low-lying districts of Mashonaland, which
till all the vast salubrious and productive tracts about them have been
fully peopled and cultivated, will lie waste, we have one of the last,
and probably the best, opportunities which will ever occur of finding
a field in which we may preserve our rare and wonderful fauna. But to
be successfully carried out the scheme should be worked on a colossal
scale, and by the international interaction of all interested in
science; our preserve should be the World's Zoological Garden.




_Printed in Great Britain by_

UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS

LONDON AND WOKING




      *      *      *      *      *      *




Transcriber's note:

Inconsistencies in hyphenation and punctuation have not been
corrected.

TRANSCRIBER'S CORRECTIONS

  page  original text                    correction
    33  is neither forest nor scrubb.    is neither forest nor scrub.
    54  into an incohate trading firm    into an inchoate trading firm
    56  nations should co-exist.         nations should not co-exist.
    92  the inacessible height           the inaccessible height
   121  the Spaniard or Enligshman,      the Spaniard or Englishman,
   126  the asthetic and intellectual    the æsthetic and intellectual
   152  the story of the fightng         the story of the fighting
   157  wherein out attitude differs     wherein our attitude differs
   192  a close intellectual fellowhip.  a close intellectual fellowship.
   201  and ill-important share          and all-important share
   236  the exception of Piet Retieff,   the exception of Piet Retief,
   267  than years have ever been,       than yours have ever been,
   268  tea which Talmi women            tea which Tamil women
   280  hopelessly cripple the arm;      hopelessly cripple the army;
   290  at midday in a vast plane        at midday in a vast plain
   321  the modern ninetenth-century     the modern nineteenth-century
   350  a part which follow after        a part which follows after
   362  and the bust of Skakespeare      and the bust of Shakespeare
   382  the English nation has chosem,   the English nation has chosen,

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 64520 ***