THE TRANSVAAL BOER.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 9120, 4 June 1890, Page 2

THE TRANSVAAL BOER.

(Pall Mall Budget.) What manner of man is the Boer of tho Transvaal—the burgher in whose hands at present lies tho political poxserof the Republic? He is a case of ‘arrested development. If he (or his father) had stoppedin Cape Colony he would bj6likeunto his Afrikander cousin. As it it?. he is an anachronism. His political ideas, his education—or lack of it—his nannerg and customs, are just where they were at Her Majesty’s accession—the period of the Greak Trek—with an even more primitive cast derived from the nomadic and patriarchal conditions of the Trek itself. Sitting in the steep, when I went to-see General Smit, was his mother a well-kept old lady, not even gray, who was one of the trekkers. She must have come in the train of stiff-necked old Pretorius, or brave, ill-starred Piet Eetief, or some other of the Pilgrim Fathers of t the TransvaaL She would hear the' prayers read morning and evening in the little camp; then at nightfall there might come the yell of onset from the savage tribes through whose midst they marched { then she may have helped to lash tho waggons into a laager, and ; handed the powder-flask to her good man with one hand while with the other she clasped her baby to her side —tho Amazon fashion which those epic wanderings compelled. She certainly must have drunk in the dogged spirit of those pioneers with their Bible in one hand, their roer in the other, and their herds at their heels—in whom there surely lived again the souls of Israelite judges, of Ayrshire Covenanters, or of Cromwell’s Ironsides. And she would be sure to teach her children to keep the traditions of them green in the Land of Promise to which they came. So, "the strong years conquer,” but tbo Boer anachronism dies hard. Here you may find still vigorous the rude old traits and customs which, in Cape Colony are fading out, save in some few remoter districts the intensely narrow Calvinism, the utter illiteracy, the bucolic grossness of the men, the nocturnal courtship, or “ upsitting,” the mud-floor of powdered ant-heap with a surface of ox-dung, the solemn greeting with fiat hand by every member, of the family, the use of “oom ” and “ tant ” as universal forma of address, and many other little primitive ways which I did not find in the Colonial Afrikander. He is lazy, this Boer of the Transvaal, not caring, while he can live on his cattle, to turn the rich soil at his feet, or to supply the markets that are springing up before him. He is hospitable, and loth to charge you after your night’s rest for anything but the horse’s fodder. He is clannish, and exclusive—loving the Hollander, and even the Colonial Afrikander, not a whit more than the Britisher, or the German, or any other uitlander. He has in theory a huge intolerance of the black man, coupled in practice with very decent common-sense treatment of him. To animals he is not kind: after a pleasant little contest of rival whips, I have seen the bellies of their mules dropping blood. He is pious, but will rise from his devotions with unction to overreach tho stranger in a bargain—at least, so says the stranger; giving him a character for hypocrisy snch as out kind French neighbours give ourselves. He is, in fact, like out own Hodge, like all sons of the soil, from tho French paysan to the Russian moujik , at once shrewd, simple, suspicious and untruthful. He will not as yet have a railway in the country. Bat call it a “ steam tramway,” and you may build one from Johannesburg to the Boksburg coal-fields with the identical gauge, cars, and engines of the colonial line. Of the opposite quality—auspicious sharpness—l had an amusinginstance. At a place where some fine oxen were “outspanned” I paused to take a sketch. The boy in charge thereupon began to tug at his beasts, shifted them about, and would not let them stand a moment. The questions of a Dutch speaking friend resolved the mystery. “If he wants to get up a ease,” said the boy, sulkily, “ho knows where to come. I tell you I’ve had these same oxen these three years.” The good fellow thought I was going to claim his trek-oxen as “ lifted.”

When all’s said, the Boer is notunlike a certain sort of Englishman, though wanting both in some of the virtues and in soma of the vices of the more complex nationality. I need not dwell on the good qualities to which Mr Fronde has had the courage to do more than justice. These people are peaceful, domestic, sober, faithful, patriotic, and brave. Cowards, some Englishmen still persist in calling them. Unjust before the war of independence, the taunt ia now less unjust than silly. They are better at defending their own homes than invading those of others; they prefer their own way of fighting to one which their antagonists might choose; they did not show before Sekukuni the resolution with which they met ourselves. But their forefathers ware no cowards When they built up the republic of which Motley tella; their fathers were no cowards when they broke up their homes to plunge into the wilderness; they were themselves no cowards when they faced our red-coats at Laing’a Nek or at Amajuba.