DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN BOER,

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIV, Issue VIII, 24 February 1900, Page 363

DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN BOER,

(By

Olive Schreiner.)

I have been asked to write an account of 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 Afrikanders, as the Dutch-French Huguenot descendants uow 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 most 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. WHO THE REAL BOER IS? 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 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 thetaskis 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 Free State, the Karroo plains of central and western Cape Colony, or the bush lands nearer the eoast, 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, oi> his first journey into the wilds in search of a new home, drew up his great oxwaggon 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 “Jackals' Fountain,” from the number of jackals which came down to drink or watch for prey the first night; “Wilde Kats Draai,” from the wildcat which they killed the 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, surounded 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 and 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 Hoods the plains, or which might be fed by his louutaiu, ix strong enough. xiere his stock came to drink al evening; anil n tue supply of water were large enougn, ue oxieii enclosed a small patch oi laud below the dam with a stone wall, planted a few tig aud peach trees, anti made a small garden. Behind the house was built a large brick oven, often whitewashed ou tue outside, where the goodwife (who in earlier days had had io content herself with a liollowed-out ant-heap as an oven) might bake her bread. Behind the house was raised a large waggonhouse, open on the side from wnieh least rain came, where the great oxwaggon and cart, it 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 aud married, additional rooms were often built on for them to the old farmhouse, 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 •use 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 deep into the red sand, or crunching the gravel on some rocky ridge far on across the plain one may mark some distant flattoppedtablemountain rising upagainst the sky on the horizon; but for the rest, a vast, silent, undulating plain, broken, it may be, by small hillocks, or "kopjes,” of ironstones, stretches about one everywhere. After travelling five or six miles farther 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 nearer along the sandy waggon-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 redbrown veldt about it, the waggon-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, that 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 reigu 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, anil a couple of large Boer dogs will rise slowly from the shadow of the waggon - 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 out from behind the oven, it will be well to call to them to call oft' the dogs, for the African Boer dog is a peculiar species of mastiff, with a touch of the bull, 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 warmth of summer and by the early rising, which is the invariable rule on an African farm. Presently the upper half of the front 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. ami 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 ant-heaps which cover the plains being generally taken for this purpose, which, damped with water and well pounded down, forms an exceedingly hard Hour. 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, squaie table. On it stands the great coffee-urn. and the work of the housemother. 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 painting of Flemish interiors by the old Dutch artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The goodwife 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 a half-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. Tint the guns are more often kept in the bedroom, on the wall near the head of the bed. THE GREAT FAMILY BIBLE. One thing, however, is never missin,,. Either in a little dosed 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 <>reat. family Bible. It holds a place altogether unique in the economy of Boer life. It is not alone that on its front pages are to be found solemnly inscribed the names of his ancestors, the births, deaths or marriages of Ins children, and often a brief record of the date of the most momentous event, 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 cul - ture of mankind; it is not alone that ■mv 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, ft is treated with respect; no otherbook 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 as a. material o-uide. The pages are solemnly opened and the finger brought down upon a nassao-e which is spelled out. and recover! 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 l»een 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 <»T eighteen and two years, and perhaps a'"married son and daughter-in-law. and an old grandmother, who has her own ellxiwi 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 <>f live coals to place under it. Then coffee is poured out in cups, or basins. and handed round to each |>erson.

A BUSY AND DELIGHTFUL HOUR. Bv the time 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 yon to fill yours from

his large tobacco-bag. made of conysk’n or little kid’s. Then he invites you to accompany him to the kraals, toward which from different points on the plain the flocks may already be seen tending. Then comes the busy and dlelightful hour—sunset on an African farm. Everywhere there is bustle and stir; in the cow-kraal the calves are bleating and putting the r noses through the gate to get through to their mothers as they aie being milked, one by one; the sheep and goats are being-counted in at the gates of the great kraals. The Kaffir maids are busy preparing the churn for the fresh milk, ami lighting the kitchen fire for supper. The children are romping outside,.inspirited by the eool evening wind; even the old grandmother seats herself on the back door-step to watch the stir, and to see the pink sunset slowly deepen into gray 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 I'ttle Kaffir maid then comes in witii a small tub of hot water and a doth, and washes the feet of old and young, after which the family sit down to the evening meal, generally composed of ItoiMd muitton. lilread 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 e'ght 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 mivement. Every one is getting up. The Kaffir maid had already made the fire, and by the time you enter the sitting-room the eldest daughter is already pouting out coffee at the little table, by the light of a candle, although the gray dawn-light is already creeping in at the door.

\s 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 farmhouse with its kraals and dam be already but a small speck behind von.