Emigration of white men and women to South Africa—how can we best secure this? The abiding difficulty at the Cape and throughout the states that will form the future South African Confederation is the colour question. The “colour” is not that of the gold to be found so often in many places, but the question of the white and the black races dwelling in the same country.
Dutchman and Englishman will in time form one race. There is nothing to part them. They are European cousins. They both come from North Europe. The blood of the Dutchman runs in the veins of the Englishman. The parent stock of the Dutch gave off many a swarm wherewith to people the East Anglian shores. England has been fed and fought by the Dutch since those old days. We have received many of their sturdy countrymen into London. Any one who does not know the number and influence of the Dutch in comparatively recent times in our metropolis should pay a visit to the Austen Friars, the place where the monks of St. Augustine had their headquarters in the city, and see the fine old church the Dutch built, and in which they still worship. We remember well the stiff battles of Charles II.’s time. We know the names of Van Tromp and De Witt as well as any Dutchman. We have learned to respect our Dutch cousins, both on sea and land.
And their religion? There is nothing there to separate us. Has the Presbyterian form of religion kept Scotland separate? No, save in the pride of her ancient history. No Scotsman has any objection to marry an English lass, especially if she has herself more than will give both of them something better than oatcake. And the Dutch Reformed Church is much like the Presbyterian. There is nothing that can in its tenets form any bar to the mixing of the British and Dutch people in South Africa. To be sure, a “nacht-maal” is not precisely a Church of England convocation or congress. It approaches much nearer to a Scottish communion service in out-of-the-way Highland parishes. There is nothing aggressive or exclusive in the staid and sober faith of our Dutch friends. And this being so, Scotsmen especially have intermarried often with the Boers.
As trustee of a Highland estate, some time ago my consent was asked to the granting of a leasehold to a Scottish gentleman, who had returned from the Transvaal. The only objection the lawyer who asked the question mentioned as existing against this man was that he was said to have married a native. Some canny objectors had written a letter saying that this ought to form a bar to any grant of land to the man, though he had originally come from the district. Who was the lady? was the next inquiry. Was she a Hottentot Venus? Did she “bang her hair” in too negroid a fashion? Would she introduce among the dim lights of the North the terrible practices of her people? Would the quiet village be scandalised by strange feasts and weird howlings? No, by no means. What was she, then? Why, nothing but a nice flaxen-haired, rather squab-featured, but withal comely Boer girl! So she entered into her Highland possession, had a door “stoop,” or something like a bit of raised verandah flooring put outside the entrance, but found, poor soul, that it was rather a dripping place of observation in her adopted climate. Nevertheless, the last news of her is that she is a happy, “sonsie” mother, and has some children, who don’t speak Dutch as their common language, but only a few low Dutch words, with very Highland accent.
But this is said to be only the case where a Scotsman marries a Boer. There is apparently something in the Scot that makes him look after his family more carefully than does the average Englishman or Irishman. It is therefore only the Scot, as it is said, both in Africa and in Canada, whose children, if he marry one of another race, do not desert the accents of their forefathers on the paternal side. As a rule the children become much what the mother is. I have seen the children of a naval man who had married an Indian woman on the Pacific Coast become almost like the small fish-eating savages around them. They were willing to do a little work for a spurt, and then relapsed into dirt and laziness. So in the north-west of Canada it is only an Orkney or Aberdeen east-coast Scot who can keep his family to civilised life, if he marry a Cree or member of any other Indian tribe. The Frenchman’s children, by an Indian mother, take to hunting only. Even with the Scots in Old Canada the same rule holds good, at least wherever a Celt has married a French Canadian. There are numbers of families below Quebec, on the north side of the river St. Lawrence, whose names are Highland. They are the descendants chiefly of Fraser’s Highlanders, one of the regiments employed during the war against the French in 1748-49. When the soldiers obtained grants of land on the conclusion of the war they married French-Canadian women. Their descendants now can seldom speak one word of English or of Gaelic. They speak nothing but Canadian French patois. It is the mother’s influence, with rare exceptions, that tells. So it is in South Africa. In some districts it is as with Fraser’s Highlanders, in Province Quebec. You may visit farm after farm, especially those whose owners have Irish names, and you will not find any person in the house, or on the land belonging to the farm, who can speak a word of either English or Irish! It may be doubted if there would have been much loyalty taught to any government by the use of the Erse tongue. The “Taal” may inculcate a certain amount more of respect for paternal and government authority. Yet if theory distinguishes between Briton and Boer, or Englishman and Africander, Nature does not, and you find that the mingling of the races is a practical principle acted on regularly wherever the races are brought together. We may congratulate ourselves that this is so. The mixed race will be a magnificent one, with the size, courage, and tenacity of the Dutch, and the gentleness, bravery, and power of government and of cohesion of the Britisher. There are no handsomer women anywhere than there are among the Dutch ladies of Cape Colony. Many of their sons are sent to English public schools and universities, and though there are, alas, only too many who live under British institutions and who do not become British, there is no reason why, in course of time, they should not become as good citizens of a British Commonwealth as have the Vanderbilts and Van Horns and Roosevelts, and many others of Dutch name and lineage in New York State, for New York was New Amsterdam, and a very flourishing Dutch colony. On the banks of the Hudson you may still see thoroughly Dutch houses, built in the old days. What New Yorker would now change his nationality, though of Dutch descent? The freedom they have in the United States their cousins will also have in South Africa. They will mix with the English, whose language most of them speak already. They will do so all the more readily as time passes, in that they can never feel themselves to be anything but the equals of the British in all save in numbers.
It was for the benefit of the union between England and Scotland that the Scots won Bannockburn and many another hard fight besides. They could point to their victories as the English could to theirs. And so with those of Dutch race at the Cape. They can point to famous names of good soldiers, who have inflicted defeat on the best British troops. And for this they will be all the greater friends hereafter. Unless each partner in business or in marriage can bring something into the common pot, there is not so happy a sense of helpfulness and mutual aid given, as there is when this union is a more equal one. There is another and a most weighty consideration which will tend to the union of the European races. This is the common necessity each has to strengthen the other against any possible predominance of the blacks. The danger in this matter will arise more in the warmer regions of the north of the future confederation than in the more temperate south. Time has proved that the white races can do well in the Cape. They increase rapidly. The climate is most favourable. The physical character of the races does not in any way deteriorate. On the contrary, it improves. They gain, as the Americans say, in “avoirdupois.” An “avoirdupois” Dutchman at the Cape, whose ancestors have been “avoirdupoising” there for two centuries, is a better all-round, and very round man, than is his compatriot in race at home among the canals and tulip gardens of Holland. But the black holds his own in weight and in numbers even in the temperate climate of the Cape Colony. Farther north, where the temperature is hotter, it is certain that he will be a better man than the white. The only exception to this can be in the mountain districts, where at high elevations in the plateaus there is probably a possibility that the white man’s children may thrive. In general, however, in all the low ground north of the Transvaal, and in many districts there, the “Kaffir” will be more favoured by the climate than will be the white invader. The Europeans will partially subject them, and partially they will remain, deteriorated in morals, but by no means likely to remain only the obedient servants that they are expected to be. There are many who now say that the next big trouble in South Africa will be with the blacks. This apprehension, if there be any reason in it, is another incentive for the whites to combine to make settlements secure and numerous, where they can defy any movement among the blacks. It is an additional incentive to us in the old land to see what we may do to make this union of the whites as British in feeling, as liberty loving, as British institutions can make it. The Boers in fighting have not lost their freedom. They have only lost one form of collective and separate independence. Individually their independence is far better guaranteed under British than under Dutch Africander forms of government.
But a great help to their seeing and understanding of this will be the predominance, not the domination, of the English language. In the schools English history and its modern expansion in the colonies should be taught. Half of the dislike of England shown in the Republic and among the people in the United States arises from the teaching of the school-books, which indoctrinates the young American with the idea that as all tyranny known to his American fathers was centralised and expressed in Lord North’s Stamp Act and the Tea Duties, so the modern Britisher must still be imbued with the ideas of Lord North, and taxation without representation must go hand in hand with British rule. The young Africander must be taught that we of the old country have learned our lesson. He must know that each of the British self-governing colonies is a separate nation in alliance of its own free will with the mother-land. He must know that even in the wildest dreams of Africanderism the most separatist of the separatists desired the naval stations of the Cape to remain one of the chief resorts of the British fleet. Now that Germany and France have their foot on South African soil, “marching” with the states of the new confederation to be, the youth of the states must be taught to know our forms of government and the history of them, so that they may judge if they would rather be under the German or French flag. To be under any separate new flag would of course be to court danger from the powerful countries, who could cut off their trade from the harbours, were it not for the protection afforded by the British fleets. Union and education are therefore the passwords to success.
How can we better help these forces than by well-devised emigration? Our Dutch friends have given us a good example. They imported in the eighteenth century 5000 children from Amsterdam. They knew what they were about. That was at a time when horses were sent round in a ring to tread corn, that the labour of threshing it might be saved. It was a time when, near the outlying settlements to which the children were sent, there were lions and elephants to be met with—real live animals—recognisable by the Noah’s ark toys of the children, whose delight at the sight of the creatures was not always shared by their parents! How different is all now! For thousands of miles, up and down the country, life is as safe as in most parishes in England. The only thing to fear is probably an enraged ostrich, and these can easily, even on an ostrich farm where the huge birds are reared for their feathers, be kept out of the children’s way. The little ones had a long time of it on board ship, three months in some cases; and glad they must have been to see the coast-line rising as they neared the Bay, and the long flat top of the precipitous Table Mountain, with a white wreath of mist looking like snow against the delicate blue of the sky, on its rocky summit level. They were not all kept in the white town at the base of the beautiful mountain whose ever-changing hues were a delight to them. The children were wisely distributed, that they might take a liking to the place where they were trained, and should have a feeling of home love for the part of the country they would know while yet young. And so it should be done by us in these later times when we have more need of the spread of our own tongue and traditions in this great land. Careful location is indeed necessary, but there are so many good locations, especially along the south coast, that we need not be too timid or too dilatory. Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, two good bays to the northward to which railways must ultimately come—more settlements again along the coast in temperate regions to the east, are wanted, where latitude 34 shows that no great heat can be feared—these are the “plums” for position. And when you turn the corner of that long stretch of coast lying along latitude 34, you must look out for higher sites than those on the sea-beach for the young people. And of these higher sites there are plenty. If Durban be too relaxing there is Pietermaritzburg inland, and so of most of the ports and bays. Leaving the coast and going inland by the railways into the “Orange” and Transvaal, we at once meet the main difficulty of “location” in the want of water. The Transvaal seems like a gigantic turtle-back, and whereas in Australia you may meet with water if you dig 1500 feet or more, where there is no appearance of it on the surface, we must wait for such revelations in the Transvaal. The territories are fed by few good rivers, and these are apt to be either raging torrents or dry gravel beds. But there are “fonteins” in many places, and there is no reason why a fair sprinkling of girls’ and boys’ institutions should not be comfortably located both in Transvaal and “Orange,” where along the river of that name there is a more certain supply of water. The Vaal is of course the largest stream for irrigation in the north. Very little has been done to husband the water of any of the African rivers; and the chief work to be done in matters of material improvement is the adequate damming and storing of the waters of all the principal streams. The winter floods, copious and overwhelming, have been allowed to run to waste. Water and wives must for a long time be the chief wants of South Africa.
Lucas gives briefly the main features of the country now under our flag. From the south coast to the Zambesi in the neighbourhood of the Victoria Falls is 1200 miles. The land rises steadily from the sea as you get into the Hinterlands, and the mountain ranges run parallel to the sea. Behind these ranges there is everywhere an elevated plateau, and the highest plains are in the east. There also the rainfall is the greatest. “It is from the south or east that men come into Southern Africa, not from the west, where stretch the dreary deserts of Damara and Namaqua Land.” North of the Karoo Desert the principal places are well situated for altitude. To the west Kimberley is 4000 feet above the sea. Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange State, is higher by 500 feet than is Kimberley. Mafeking has 4200 feet. Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal, is the same as Bloemfontein. Johannesburg, though so near Pretoria, stands at 5600 feet. In the north, Matebele Land has an average of 2500 feet. It is possible that deep borings may find water in the new states where there is none at present. These heights are sufficient to explain how it is that even far to the north of Cape Colony European settlement may thrive, and children grow up strong and healthy. But “location” is everything.
Now, what has been done to foster immigration and settlement up to the present? Hardly anything has been done by Government. Sir Harry Smith, who commanded in the fiercest of the Kaffir wars, and after whose wife Ladysmith received its name, strongly urged the policy of settling soldiers in the Colony. Between the Fish and the Keiskamma rivers “military villages” were encouraged, the settlers “being army pensioners liable to be called on for the defence of the frontier.” Then again in the Queenstown district Governor-General Cathcart proposed to settle two Swiss Regiments, but his plan was not supported. Then Sir George Grey, his successor, persuaded the home Government to send out 2300 of the Foreign Legion, as it was called, recruited for the Crimean War. They were to be called on for military service, if wanted, during a period of seven years, and they were to have pay for three years. Each man received his land free of rent, to become his own at the end of the seven years, if he had loyally fulfilled his engagements. The Government of the Cape helped by a grant of money. “At the beginning of 1857,” says Lucas in his Geography of the British Colonies, “the German soldiers arrived and were settled, some at existing towns or stations, such as East London and King William’s Town, some on selected sites, whose villages were yet to be built. Distributed through the eastern districts of the Colony, and through British Kaffraria, they held the lines of communication, as garrisons attached to, and having an interest in the soil. The divisional district of Stutterheim still bears the name of the officer in whose charge the soldiers came, and under whose immediate guidance they were settled on the land. The chief drawback to the scheme was that only a few of the emigrants brought wives with them. This defect Sir George Grey sought to remedy by proposing to import a number of German families to be located with and to supplement the military settlers. Some were brought over, but the total expenditure which was contemplated was too large to win the assent of the Imperial Government, and to subsidise an exclusively German immigration, seemed to the Secretaries of State less politic than to provide the existing German settlers with English or Irish wives. The Governor therefore sent on a thousand of the unmarried soldiers to India, and those who remained behind developed into Cape Colonists, and fell into line with the civil population.”