Boer Ignorance.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7545, 28 January 1896, Page 4

Boer Ignorance.

A wkitek in the Melbourne Age says : — Perhaps no people, as a whole, of European descent are so ignorant and narrowminded as the Boers. One or two instances may point the moral. In 1889 the writer was in the Volksraad (Parliament) at Pretoria during the discussion on the Bill to grant the Sheda G.M. Co. a concession to construct an aerial tramway, the same to be worked by a " limited company." Now all Bills have to be read in the official tongue, called Dutch, but which is really a patois. This dialect — for it is not a language— has no word to represent " limited," so the AttorneyGeneral, Dr Leyds, inserted the true Dutch Hollander's word. An honorable member rose and declared that the word was English, and its use an insult to the House. Other members assured him that the word was a real good Dutch word, but he would not credit it, and clinched the matter thualy :— " For thirty-five years I've read my Bible, every bit of it often, and I've never seen that word ; if it is a Dutch word it would be in the Bible, so you all lie." On another occasion an educated member cf Rand endeavored to induce his countrymen to establish State Schools ; but member after member rose, and thanking God solemnly that they could neither read nor write, and calling upon their brother Ms.P. to find better men than they, ended by declaring that education was only required by such fools and rogues as tho English. One more instance of the ignorance which existed even in high places not so many years ago. When England first recognised the Transvaal ns an independent Stato, she fixed the southern boundary as the 23rd parallel south latitude. A Boer commission was appointed to go out and look for this line and to mark it off. Some months afterwards the commission returned and reported that they could not find a line of any sort, and were quite satisfied that it was only another instance of English roguery ; so they had fixed on the Vaal river. They quite thought that-, they would find the visible presence of the line across the earth's surface.