[12] (Footnote added in 1906.) This I wrote in 1892. I could not write it now.
[13] The permanent and fixed type of the Jewish variety of the human race, which enables it to transmit its physical and mental characteristics with perfect truth even when crossed with another race, was probably created by the fact that the Jews were all descended from one or a very small body of ancestors, and bred rigorously in and in. Their own very suggestive legend states that the original founder mated with his own sister, which would make it almost impossible for the true Jews to revert to any but one type. So it is possible to understand how the Boer, in the course of a few generations, has formed a type fixed and marked, both mentally and physically, only when we consider how small was the number of individuals from which he originally sprung, and how he must of necessity have bred in and in, cousin marrying cousin again and yet again. There probably often land in a large American and Australian port, on a single day, more European emigrants than the number which composed the whole original stock of the Boer, including all French additions; there is therefore no possibility of the average colonist forming so quickly an equally marked type. Even to-day it is not uncommon to find a Boer three times related to his own wife; she may be his first cousin on his father's side, his second cousin on his mother's side, a fourth cousin through a maternal grandmother, and there may have been antecedent intermarriages of which there is no record. The children of such a marriage inheriting an almost homogeneous blood from both sides, can hardly fail to be some fixed type. On the other hand, the Boer race has probably been preserved from the dangers of interbreeding by the fact that the small original stock were of such very distinct national types.
[14] Yes, we once all believed that.
[15] (Footnote added in 1900.) Yet England killed it in America a century ago, and she is killing it in South Africa to-day.
[16] Springbok-Fountain, Cattle Pen, Jackal's-Fountain, Cat's Head.
[17] Let it be remarked that this passage was written in 1892, and printed in England in 1894.
[18] Though the Scotch of Burns's best poems comes nearer to it.
[19] It must of course be understood that a great deal of real Dutch of Holland is used in South Africa. The Bible is written in it, the services of the church are more or less conducted in it, and students learn to speak it almost correctly.
[20] This view with regard to the possible origin of the Taal (whether it be of any or of no value) was first suggested to us by a somewhat curious case which came under our own observation. A young man from one of the German-speaking Swiss cantons arrived in South Africa, and immediately married a Dutch girl. Both parents could speak a little English. They went immediately to live in a remote and out of the world spot among the mountains, where they seldom came into contact with other Europeans. Here their children were born. Neither of the parents were educated people. When I came into contact with them a most curious phenomenon had developed itself; the whole family spoke a language which was not Dutch nor German nor English, but a most curious blending of all three, and the words, from whichever language taken, had exactly the same clipt form we find in the Taal. There was not one member of the family who could speak a single sentence correctly in any of the three languages. They had, in fact, developed a new language for themselves. No doubt their children learnt English and Dutch later when they went into the world; but, had the descendants of that family been preserved distinct for a couple of generations, a new and astounding variety of human speech would have been formed. One of the most remarkable points was that each member of the family spoke in exactly the same manner.
[21] This view was propounded and backed by the votes of a majority in the Transvaal Parliament recently.