PRESIDENT KRUGER.

Southern Cross, Volume 4, Issue 2, 11 April 1896, Page 7

PRESIDENT KRUGER.

The head of the Transvaal Republic, President Kruger, or “ Oom Paul,” as his own people call him, is thus described by a writer in the New Age“ President Kruger is a Strong man and a shiewd. He bas matched that strength and that shrewdness against English proconsuls and European statesmen, and for a time he did not come olf worst. A hale old man of between sixty and seventy; the long narrow head, the small shrewd eyes, deep set in furrow, the large nose and mouth, the straggling beard framing the face all these aie of the rough, coarse, strongly-marked old ‘Hopper’ type of Boer physiognomy. A stout man of his hands, even yet —in his greener days they tell me Paul Kruger was like Hereward the Wake’s man Martin ; he could keep pace with a horse. The lank hair, the top hat with its heavy band, rusty black suit, worn as Dr. Johnson wears his clothes in the familiar pictures, suggested the stamp of a Dissenting minister to whom the Dutch ‘ Dopper ’ is akin. I noticed on his left hand that the thumb was wanting. It seems it was shattered by a gun which burst when Kruger, as a lad } was out shooting. Surgeons there were none. Paul pulled out his pocket knife, and with the right hand coolly whipped off the offending member at the joint. It was characteristic of the iron resolution of the man.