Note added in 1898: As we were engaged in copying this article, it chanced business took us into the country. In the veld, some ten miles from the town, we saw approaching a large wagon with a team of ten donkeys. Before the donkeys plodded a small Hottentot boy of eight years. As the wagon approached we saw it was laden with wood and dried cakes of manure ("mest," kraal-fuel) for the next morning's market in the town; but what the figure was upon the front box (voorkist) we couldn't quite make out. Then it came nearer and we saw, in truth for the first time in our life in such a position, a huge Boer woman of perhaps forty. She wore a black dress made without regard to fashion with a full short skirt and short jacket. On her head she had a large white cotton kapje (sun bonnet), such as Boer women make, projecting far forward with white curtains hanging on to the shoulders. In her hand she had a wagon-whip made from a bamboo eight or nine feet long, with the plaited leather cord long enough to reach the front donkeys of the span. She sat massively upright on the front-box. We looked at her as we passed and she scowled at us from under her deep kapje with resentment which I knew meant, "Verdomde Engelse vrou, do you think I care for your ridicule!" She took her whip from her shoulder and gave a resounding clap in the air with it over the backs of the donkeys; and she went on one way and we another. But if she had known what was in our heart, we might have stopped and shaken hands. We found out afterwards that she had nine children and was the wife of a man, an invalid and too feeble to work, that they were what is known in South Africa as "bywoners," poor people living on the land of a richer farmer, and that she supported her family entirely. She would take her wagon of fuel to the next morning's market, and the little clerks and shopkeepers and women with flowers in their hats would laugh at her short black skirt and kapje and her resolute scowl. Had we but been able to sit beside her on her voorkist and been able to make clear to her our meaning, we would have said: "The new women from all the world over send you their greetings, Tante![63] In you and such as you we see our leaders, and we are following in your steps. For God's sake, Tante, hold fast your seat on the front-chest and your fuel and carry it to market in spite of all the fools. I see in you, Tante, something that harmonizes strangely with this great blue African sky above us and the little koppies to our right, and the great plain to our left, and the red sandy road in which your donkeys plough, and the thorn-trees here and there casting their shade. Like this wide plain, you wake in me an aspiration for freedom and independence which no woman in the town below us could awaken. For God's sake, Tante, never give up your wagon-whip for a mother-of-pearl card case, and your kappie for a straw hat with paper flowers, and, instead of digging up fuel in your kraal and cutting wood, take a croquet mallet for your weapon of toil! I see in you, Tante, the secret of many a brave fight that your race has fought for freedom, and many still to come. When you paste little black spots on your cheeks and pencil your eyebrows with black, and wear an eighteen-inch waist, and trip with high-heeled shoes with your head on one side, there will be no more Amajubas. Keep thy hard horned hands, Tante. The day will perhaps come when thy sons and daughters will grasp the artist's brush and the thinker's pen and the mechanician's tool in place of the spade and the axe and the driving-whip; but, till that time comes, labour on in thine own field. It is easier to pass from any one work to any other work than from parasitism to labour; and they will need work well, Tante, who will work more usefully, more bravely, than you. The working-women from all the world over, whether they toil with the head or the hand, indoor or out, send their greetings to you, Tante. You are not only the backbone of your race and of South Africa, but you and such as you are the backbone of the human race. In many an hour of weariness and doubt over the future of woman, of South Africa, and humanity, your sturdy figure on the wagon chest will come back to us. Sit fast, Tante! I see in you a promise of a great free labouring race of men and women for South Africa. The world is not played out while you sit on your wagon box and clap your whip. God bless you! The future is ours, Tante! Let the fools laugh. He laughs loudest, who laughs last!"
CHAPTER VI
THE BOER AND HIS REPUBLICS
Such is the life and such are the social conditions of the primitive Boer wherever he is found to-day from the Zambesi to the Cape.
In our cities and villages, the descendant of the Boer is found in wholly different forms. He is the law-giver, the magistrate, the successful barrister, the able doctor; everywhere children of the Boer fill our schools and bear away the prizes; and in the yearly university lists of successful candidates, the names of the Huguenot-Dutch youths, and more especially the girls, rank high, and often equal or exceed in number those of all other residents in the Colony.[64]
We have often been led to speculate on the marked success of the descendants of the African Boer in the purely intellectual walks of life, not only in South Africa, but also when visiting the universities of Europe. Race, and the healthful and stimulating climate of Africa, may have their share in the result; but it has sometimes appeared to us that, given these, a further explanation of the intellectual virility of the male and female descendants of the Boer may perhaps in part be found in the fact that for several generations the intellect of the race lay to a large extent fallow, and was not overtaxed or strained. Every noted judge or politician, every successful university student, male or female, is the descendant of men and women who for generations lived far from the fretful stir of great cities, where petty ambitions and activities and useless complexity in small concerns tend to wear out and debilitate the intellect and body. Vast cities, as up to the present time they have existed, are the hot houses wherein the human creature, over-stimulated, tends, unless under very exceptional conditions, to emasculate and decay. In the peaceful silences of the veld the Boer's nerve and brain have probably reposed and recuperated; therefore the descendant to-day, thrown suddenly into the hurrying stream of modern life, appears in it with the sound nerves and couched-up energy of generations; though whether he will retain these under modern conditions is to be seen.
The Boer has, as we shall see, founded two republics in South Africa. The first, the Orange Free State, has a most unique little history.
The earliest white men who crossed the Orange River, and made their homes in the high grass plains, were emigrant Boers who had trekked from the Cape Colony. Later, British Sovereignty over the country was proclaimed; but in the month of February in the year 1854 the British Government, desiring to restrict British possessions and responsibilities in South Africa, determined to relinquish the Free State and its inhabitants. So opposed were the indwellers of the State to this, that they sent home to England a deputation headed by the Rev. Andrew Murray, a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, to beg of the English Government not to give up the territory. But the English Government refused to entertain their request, regarding the country as a source of expense and responsibility, without any compensatory advantages. Diamonds were then undiscovered, and the mineral wealth of South Africa was unknown. The inhabitants of the territory therefore gathered themselves together, drew up a constitution and formed themselves into a republic, under the title of the Orange Free State. The first sitting of the first Volksraad of the Free State took place on March 28, 1854. From that time the little Boer republic has gone on increasing its property and multiplying its inhabitants, its educational institutions advancing and its agricultural capacities developing, till to-day it is allowed by all who have studied its conditions to be one of the most harmonious and well-governed little nations in existence.
In the year 1869, diamonds were discovered in the Free State territory, and England, naturally, immediately desired to obtain possession of that section of the country which contained the Kimberley mines. After much bitter discussion, the Free State authorities were compelled to accept ninety thousand pounds for the strip of land which they were not strong enough for the moment to defend by force of arms.
This loss of their richest diamond field (the Free State still contains some smaller ones) appeared a severe blow to the Free State, but by it they were saved from the misfortune which later befell their northern sister republic, when the discovery of vast quantities of gold made it an object of desire and almost unconquerable lust to the speculator and capitalist, Jew and Christian.