South Africa, vol. II.

by Anthony Trollope

I travelled from the Diamond Fields to Bloemfontein and thence through Smithfield to the Orange River at Aliwal North. I also made a short excursion from Bloemfontein. In this way I did not see the best district of the country which is that which was taken from the Basutos,—where the town of Ladybrand now is,—which is good agricultural land, capable of being sown and reaped without artificial irrigation. The normal Dutch farmer of the Republic, such as I saw him, depends chiefly upon his flocks which are very small as compared with those in Australia,—three or four thousand sheep being a respectable pastoral undertaking for one man. He deals in agriculture also, not largely, but much more generally than his Australian brother. In Australia the squatter usually despises agriculture, looking upon it as the fitting employment for a little free-selector,—who is but a mean fellow in his estimation. He grows no more than he will use about his place for his own cattle. The flour to be consumed by himself and his men he buys. And as his horses are not often corn-fed a very few acres of ploughed land suffices for his purpose. The Dutch patriarch makes his own bread from the wheat he has himself produced. The bread is not white, but it is so sweet that I am inclined to say I have never eaten better. And he sells his produce,—anything which he can grow and does not eat himself. The Australian woolgrower sells nothing but wool. The Dutch Boer will send peas twenty miles to market, and will sell a bundle of forage,—hay made out of unripened oats or barley,—to any one who will call at his place and ask for it.

A strong Boer will probably have thirty, forty or perhaps fifty acres of cultivated land round his house,—including his garden. And he will assuredly have a dam for holding and husbanding his rain water. He would almost better be without a house than without a dam. Some spot is chosen as near to his homestead as may be,—towards which there is something, be it ever so slight, of a fall of ground. Here a curved wall or stoned bank is made underlying the fall of ground, and above it the earth is hollowed out,—as is done with a haha fence, only here it is on larger and broader dimensions,—and into this artificial pond when it is so made the rain water is led by slight watercourses along the ground above. From the dam, by other watercourses, the contents are led hither and thither on to the land and garden as required,—or into the house. It is the Boer’s great object thus to save enough water to last him through any period of drought that may come;—an object which he generally attains as far as his sheep, and cattle, and himself are concerned;—but in which he occasionally fails in reference to his ground. I saw more than one dam nearly dry as I passed through the country, and heard it asserted more than once that half a day’s rain would be worth a hundred pounds to the speaker.

The Boer’s house consists of a large middle chamber in which the family live and eat and work,—but do not cook. There is not usually even a fireplace in the room. It is very seldom floored. I do not know that I ever saw a Boer’s house floored in the Free State. As the planks would have had to be brought up four hundred miles by oxen, this is not wonderful. The Boer is contented with the natural hard earth as it has been made for him. The furniture of his room is good enough for all domestic purposes. There are probably two spacious tables, and settees along the walls of which the seats are made of ox-riems, and open cupboards in the corners filled not sparingly with crockery. And there is always a pile of books in a corner of the room,—among which there is never one not of a religious tendency. There is a large Dutch Bible, and generally half a dozen Dutch hymn-books, with a smaller Bible or two, and not improbably an English prayer-book and English hymn-book if any of the younger people are affecting the English language. The younger members of the family generally are learning English and seem to be very much better off in regard to education than are their relations in the Transvaal.

Opening out of the living room there are generally bedrooms to the right and left,—probably two at one end and one at the other,—of which the best will be surrendered to the use of any respectable stranger who may want such accommodation. It matters not who may be the normal occupant of the room. He or she,—or more probably they,—make way for the stranger, thinking no more of surrendering a bedroom than we do of giving up a chair. The bedroom is probably close and disagreeable, lacking fresh air, with dark suspicious corners of which the stranger would not on any account unravel the mysteries. Behind the centre chamber there is a kitchen to which the stranger does not probably penetrate. I have however been within the kitchen of a Dutch Boeress and have found that as I was to eat what came out of it, I had better not have penetrated so far. It will be understood that a Dutch Boer’s house never has an upper storey.

The young men are large strapping youths, and well made though awkward in their gait. The girls can hardly be said to be good-looking though there is often a healthy bloom about them. One would be inclined to say that they marry and have children too young were it not that they have so many children, and afterwards become such stout old matrons. Surely no people ever attended less to the fripperies and frivolities of dress. The old men wear strong loose brown clothes well bestained with work. The old women do the same. And so do the young men, and so do the young women. There seems to be extant among them no taste whatever for smartness. None at any rate is exhibited about their own homesteads. There are always coloured people about, living in adjacent huts,—very probably within the precincts of the same courtyard. For with the white children there are always to be seen black children playing. Nor does there seem to be any feeling of repugnance at such intercourse on the part of any one concerned. As such children grow up no doubt they are required to work, but I have never seen among the Dutch any instance of personal cruelty to a coloured person;—nor, during my travels in South Africa, did any story of such cruelty reach my ear. The Dutchman would I think fain have the black man for his slave,—and, could he have his way in this, would not probably be over tender. But the feeling that the black man is not to be personally ill-used has I think made its way so far, that at any rate in the Orange Free State such ill-usage is uncommon.

In regard to the question of work, I found that in the Free State as in all the other provinces and districts of the country so much of the work as is done for wages is invariably done by coloured people. On a farm I have seen four young men working together,—as far as I could see on equal terms,—and two have been white and two black; but the white lads were the Boer’s sons, while the others were his paid servants. Looking out of a window in a quiet dreary little town in the Free State I saw opposite to me two men engaged on the plastering of a wall. One was a Kafir and the other probably was a west coast Negro. Two or three passed by with loads on their shoulders. They were Bechuanas or Bastard Hottentots. I strolled out of the village to a country house where a Fingo was gardener and a Bushman was working under him. Out in the street the two men who had driven the coach were loafing round it. They were Cape Boys as they are called,—a coloured people who came from St. Helena and have white blood in their veins. I had dined lately and had been waited upon by a Coolie. Away in the square I could see bales of wool being handled by three Basutos. A couple of Korannas were pretending to drive oxen through the street but were apparently going where the oxen led them. Then came another Hottentot with a yoke and pair of buckets on his shoulder. I had little else to do and watched the while that I was there;—but I did not see a single white man at work. I heard their voices,—some Dutch, though chiefly English; but the voices were the voices of masters and not of men. Then I walked round the place with the object of seeing, and nowhere could I find a white man working as a labourer. And yet the Orange Free State is supposed to be the one South African territory from which the black man has been expelled. The independent black man who owned the land has been expelled,—but the working black man has taken his place, allured by wages and diet.

The Dutch Boer does not love to pay wages,—does not love to spend money in any way,—not believing in a return which is to come, or possibly may come, from an outlay of capital in that direction. He prefers to keep what he has and to do what can be done by family labour. He will, however, generally have a couple of black men about his place, whose services he secures at the lowest possible rate. Every shilling so paid is grudged. He has in his heart an idea that a nigger ought to be made to work without wages.

In the Free State as in the Transvaal I found every Boer with whom I came in contact, and every member of a Boer’s family, to be courteous and kind. I never entered a house at which my hand was not grasped at going in and coming out. This may be a bore, when there are a dozen in family all shaking hands on both occasions; but it is conclusive evidence that the Boer is not a churl. He admits freedoms which in more civilized countries would be at once resented. If you are hungry or thirsty you say so, and hurry on the dinner or the cup of tea. You require to be called at four in the morning and suggest that there shall be hot coffee at that hour. And he is equally familiar. He asks your age, and is very anxious to know how many children you have and what is their condition in the world. He generally boasts that he has more than you have,—and, if you yourself be so far advanced in age, that he has had grandchildren at a younger age than you. “You won’t have a baby born to you when you are 67 years old,” an old Boer said to me exulting. When I expressed a hope that I might be saved from such a fate, he chuckled and shook his head, clearly expressing an opinion that I would fain have a dozen children if Juno and the other celestials concerned would only be so good to me. His young wife sat by and laughed as it was all explained to her by the daughter of a former marriage who understood English. This was customary Boer pleasantness intended by the host for the delectation of his guest.

I was never more convinced of anything than that those people, the Dutch Boers of the Free State, are contented with their present condition and do not desire to place themselves again under the dominion of England. The question is one of considerable importance at the present moment as the permissive bill for the suggested Confederation of the South African districts has become law, and as that Confederation can hardly take place unless the Free State will accept it. The Free State is an isolated district in South Africa, now surrounded on all sides by British territory, by no means rich, not populous, in which the Dutch and English languages prevail perhaps equally, and also Dutch and English habits of life. It would appear therefore at first sight to be natural that the large English Colonies should swallow up and assimilate the little Dutch Republic. But a close view of the place and of the people,—and of the circumstances as they now exist and would exist under Dutch rule,—have tended to convince me that such a result is improbable for at any rate some years to come.

In the Orange Free State the Volksraad or Parliament is plenipotentiary,—more so if it be possible than our Parliament is with us because there is but one Chamber and because the President has no veto upon any decision to which that Chamber may come. The Volksraad is elected almost exclusively by the rural interest. There are 54 members, who are returned, one for each chief town in a district, and one for each Field-Cornetcy,—the Field-Cornetcies being the divisions into which the rural districts are divided for police and military purposes. Of these towns, such as they are, there are 13, and from them, if from any part of the State, would come a desire for English rule. But they, with the exception of the capital, can hardly be said to be more than rural villages. It is in the towns that the English language is taught and spoken,—that English tradesmen live, and that English modes of life prevail. The visitor to Bloemfontein, the capital, will no doubt feel that Bloemfontein is more English than Dutch. But Bloemfontein returns but one member to the Yolksraad. From the rural districts there are 41 members, all of whom are either Boers or have been returned by Boers. Were the question extended to the division even of the 13 town members I do not doubt but that the present state of things would be maintained,—so general is the feeling in favour of the independence of the Republic. But seeing that the question rests in truth with the country members, that the country is essentially a farmer’s country, a country which for all purposes is in the hands of the Dutch Boers, it seems to me to be quite out of the question that the change should be voted by the legislature of the country.