Chapter Twenty One.
The language is the queerest jumble of Dutch, Kafir, and colonial war shouts, which, when spoken by a fluent Dutchman, sounds more like the tearing of strong linen than anything else. It certainly is a fine language with which to urge on the drooping spirits of a tired team of oxen. As a class the Boers are extremely strict in religious observances. The periodical “Nachtmaal,” literally “night meal” or “sacrament,” held every three months at the large and fine Dutch church, they attend faithfully.
The farmers will pack their whole families into a wagon, and leaving the homestead to take care of itself, will “trek” into town, where some of them will occupy little clay houses of two rooms, or camp outside until the services are over, when they will “in-span” and return home. They always take advantage of these visits to do their shopping. At such times the stores wake up and put out their smartest calicoes and their yellowest saddles with which to tempt the wary Boer and Boeress. It is interesting to enter the village at night where a Nachtmaal is to be held next day. There is almost a second village of tent-covered wagons all around it. The various fires have each a group of men and women sitting round it, while in the shadows lie the slumbering oxen and chattering “boys.”
After remaining at the hotel until we were tired of hotel life, we secured board at a farmhouse about two hours’ ride from Bloemfontein.
The owner of this farm worked incessantly to improve his several thousand acres, which included some very fine land. The land showed what industry can do by simply keeping on day after day. The farmer had no white help which could be depended on; there were many Kafirs, but none he could rely on.
Water is the great need, and although, by digging deep enough anywhere through the country, water is reached, not a single windmill did we see in factory or on farm to aid in pumping water. For months the dry season prevails, and our farmer, in order to be independent in his water supply for his many cattle, sheep, and Angora goats and ostriches, had thrown up banks of earth around three large dams.
The wife was a large, comfortable woman, the mother of six children, the eldest thirteen years of age; when she sat down to rest they seemed to swarm over her, but they did not ruffle her temper any more than so many flies. She superintended and sometimes cooked all the meals; fourteen people often sat down to dinner, and three courses were served, usually by hideous Hottentot girls, dressed in bright calico dresses, coloured beads, and ribbons. These girls, dressed thus, consider themselves irresistible. The Kafir servants have to be told each day what to do; they have no memory for the simplest household duties. Their huts are some distance from the house, and if a notion seizes them to go to a wedding or a funeral, or to have a gossip with some stray Kafir, they will not come near the house, and the wife does the work alone. It was a wonder how she got through her work so easily, for she supplied a hotel in B—, which had thirty boarders, with butter, made the children’s every-day clothes, besides attending to many other household duties. Yet she was no light-footed woman, but had an avoirdupois of two hundred and fifty pounds, which is not an unusual weight for an Africander woman of thirty years.
When coming into the house on a visit, whether one is acquainted or not, it is the custom to shake hands with every white person present. An English acquaintance drove to the farm to call upon us, and in thoughtlessness left without walking to the barn to shake hands with the farmer. The farmer was so indignant at this affront that nothing would make him overlook it. We shook many a hard and horny hand of traders who passed that way and remained to a meal. Some of these never looked up from their food or made a remark until they took their departure, when they shook hands again and uttered some unintelligible Dutch word.
By living with such thrifty and pleasant people as this farmer and wife one learns what patience means with dumb, lazy servants, and how much can be accomplished by keeping steadily at work, doing little at a time. That is the way in which the Dutch people have made a success of their little republic. They are satisfied with small things, and move slowly. It thus happens that few mistakes occur in their governmental affairs, and that there are few bank failures and consequent suicides.
Their ancestors must have been splendid fellows, for their deeds proclaim it. But long years of inactivity and the habits of intermarriage have weakened the race sadly. The descendants of the men who were foremost in every land are now content to sit on the same farm from generation to generation, caring for nothing, and having no ambition beyond raising a larger family than their neighbour.
The “vrouws,” or wives, are either very thin and bony, or tall and “massive.” They dress in black, full skirts that skip the ground when they walk, and black poke bonnets with thick veils, which preserve the complexion from tan and freckle. They have really fine complexions. One farmer near Bloemfontein boasts of a family of twenty-three children, all by one wife. Fancy all the cousins and the aunts in the next generation! There will certainly be many marriages among these cousins. So much has there been of this habit of marrying in families that one frequently, especially in the older parts of the Cape Colony, finds whole districts where every farmer has the same surname, and is only distinguished by his given name. These so quickly give out that the good people are forced to adopt the old-fashioned way of coining surnames, and a man is known as Hans Meyer, C’s son, or Pieter Van Dyk, Karl’s son, and so on.
But there is a reverse side to the picture. We meet some fine men among the Boers, President John Brand being as fine a specimen of a pioneer statesman as any one would wish to find. The government of the republic consists of the President and the Legislature, called the Volksraad, elected every four years.
