WHO ARE THE BOERS?

Western Star, Issue 453, 15 June 1881, Page 3

WHO ARE THE BOERS?

This question is thus answered in the Contemporary Review by. Lieut.Colonel Butler: Two hundred years ago four ships sailed from Holland, carrying to regions that then lay at the uttermost bounds of the known world, certain French HuguOnots. /exiled by the Revocation of 'the Edict of Nantes. Those vessels carried altogether about 150 men, women, and children, all French citizen's. Among them there were many good names, names which little more than a cemnry later were figuring high; in that loflg ..tnll pt marshals and generals of France which the revolution and its 'great soldier gave to fame. Hugo tTouheft, Jourdain, Reteif, Arnold, He Villiers, Bertrand, Fouche, HuPlessy, Mouncy, Serruier, • Victor, and many other names appear in the list of those who selected the. distant Dutch colony of South Africa as their future home. ThetfO exiles brought to the little colony mental strength of a new kind. Fifty years later the French'laUgu'ago died out, the second and third generation had intermarried among the Hutch, and 'the all-conquering mothertongue had its usual triumph. But these 150 French Huguenots made a mark upon the Colonial communitythat has never been effaced from the national ‘character. It . was ft Retief who led the ‘‘ Great-, Trek ’ ’ into the northern wilds.’ IfWhsa He Marias who headed acfew ' hundred followers against the" hosts \b£ the, Matabele King in 1835T' It was ’a 'Cellier who read the service in-the laager on the Black TJmvolosi on the Sunday morq? ing When the 2ulU army, in that “ chest and horn formation,” so familiar to/Us years later, r to : the attack of the jDutch'carhp. “ It was a Joubert who covered the beaten wreck of ; the *-®oer •f 4^Qmn|aod<> ! ? *ftee/the disaster dn the TTmvolosi, and to-day’-Andtber d'diibert is : the moving spirit;in thu TrgnSvaal -revolt, i These' 'Huguenot^,.!,. ; and' ,th,e, -tunehr larger n^m t b.er.pf. Hutch, bmplpyees of tbe.rFast India Company, were the "of Ithtephobic wh6r|to-day we" calFßbeys—aphople slow to think; hut toot easily to be turned from their thought When once they have formed if; slow to-embark .in any movement, but certain to follow it to its extreme end when it has once ; b.een begun. A homely, sober,' virtuous/- quiet, dull race of beings, as- full of faith in God and of fair dealing between man and man as this world holds human 'sample'-of -fi L