George Lacy

“ Hysterical or not, the Boer acts up to his belief. His God teaches him neither ethics nor morals; He is God the Warrior and God the Protector, and nothing more. He is the God of the Pentateuch and therefore the Boer ethic is the ethic of the Jews in the Wilderness, supplemented by additions resulting from his peculiar life in the midst of wild animals and wilder men. How far his fanatical belief that he is God’s special favorite enters into his life, apart from making him arrogant, is not easy to determine. ”

“ It is like a nightmare. The solemnity is so stolid, the tone so monotonous, sing-song and gruesome, and the whole function so lifeless and soulless, that it is impossible to believe that there is any real feeling in it. ”

“ He is so saturated with the conviction that he cannot be defeated that he is quite unable to appraise the facts at their true value. The conviction overrides all else, and in a mind capable of containing only one or two leading ideas, that of defeat can find no place. When he sees his dead and wounded strewn about the field, the sight does not convey to him any sense of disaster, for he is convinced that the loss on the other side must necessarily be three times as great. ”

“ The Boer is, in a way, a sociable creature, and a terrible gossip, and he is always glad of an opportunity of letting his tongue go, when he can do so without loss to what he considers his self-respect. A traveller who stops for an hour or two to rest his animals can always reckon on a cup of coffee and a good flow of words, or even a meal, if it should happen to be meal-time. Indeed, if he arrive in the evening he will be given a blanket and allowed to lie on the floor with the rest, if he is not with a wagon ”

“ The Boers of the Transvaal differ essentially from those of the Cape Colony; those of the Orange Free State lie, geographically and in the scale of civilization, between the two; and the Boers of Natal are readily distinguishable from all the others. I shall confine my remarks to those of the Transvaal and the Free State.
It is a common error to suppose that the Boers are a Dutch race. They are, strictly speaking, Dutch neither in descent, language nor manner of life. ”

“ If the study is to be of any value, one must carry it on through long years; must take part with the man who is the object of the study in all his pursuits, become one with him in his home life, his public life, his work and his play—not so much to listen to what he says, for the tongue is an unruly and unreliable member, as to observe what he does, and to probe into the root motives that prompt him in doing it. ”

“ It enters into their every transaction in life, from the smallest to the greatest. Whether it is in relating an experience in the hunting-field, in selling a horse, a wagon or a farm, in giving evidence in a court of law, or in an affair of state, it is always present, and always glaringly obvious to the outsider. ”

“ I have travelled as much as most men, throughout nearly every one of the Southern Colonies of Great Britain, in several European countries, and in remote districts of the British Isles, but I cannot call to mind meeting with absolute inhospitality anywhere, except from natives of what is now German East Africa, and, in lesser degree, in Gazaland. Will any one who knows both South Africa and Australia maintain that the Boers would for one moment tolerate the “sundowner,” and erect special buildings for his reception, as the squatters do? ”

“ He will say exactly what he conceives will best serve his ends in the matter he has in hand, without any reference whatever to what may happen to be the actual facts. Indeed, it is doubtful if his mind is able to take in the facts as they are. It is of that character that it colors the facts in accordance with his own desires and beliefs. The Boer has a habit of calling every defeat a great victory, and his doing so is not so much a deliberate attempt at deceiving, as it is the expression of a bona fide belief. ”

“ Rid the Transvaal of the incubus of its corrupt and incapable government, give it a well-considered constitution and supervision, and the Boer, though he can never rise very high among white races, will in the next generation be a very different man from what his circumstances have hitherto made him. ”

“ The most fruitful, and certainly the most fascinating, study of mankind is man—not man as a physiological unit; but man as a human soul, as an individual in his social relations, and as a collective entity. ”

“ Although so used to the healthy, open-air life of the wagon, Boers in their houses abjure the blessings of ventilation, and exist in an atmosphere which might be compared to that of a common lodging-house. At night, the men remove only their coats and waistcoats, and the women their cotton dresses, if even these. The houses of the less well-to-do, who of course were a large majority, often consisted of only one room, rarely indeed of three. ”

“ The Boer is absolutely callous to suffering, whether in animals or in human beings. When we remember that, until a few years ago, the whole male population was constantly engaged in killing animals and skinning and cutting them up—were, in fact, practically a vast community of professional butchers—one can scarcely be surprised that animal suffering raises no sentiment within them ”

“ He who relies upon the unsupported testimony of a Boer will most assuredly come to grief. It is not merely that the habit of exaggeration is a second nature to him, but that he has actually no conception of the nature of truth. ”

“ If he is assured of getting better country for his stock on easier terms, or preferably on no terms at all, he is as ready to desert his own for good and all as he is to eat his breakfast. What he is fighting for is liberty, and he interprets liberty as did Cicero: “The essence of liberty is to do exactly as one chooses.” ”

“ Neither lad nor girl has any education. In many of the well-to-do houses there was to be found a schoolmaster, who was invariably an Englishman or Hollander who had failed in every other pursuit—generally, indeed, a broken-down drunkard; but the great majority were taught neither to read nor write, and of the adults of the Transvaal to-day I should be surprised to find that twenty per cent. can do so. The younger generation are no doubt better looked after.
Among themselves, Boers are quarrelsome to the last degree. ”

“ The men were hostile, savage and ruthless, and they had to be ever on the alert—in the protection of their own lives. Completely cut off from the world, they wandered about in their wagons for years upon years, homeless and friendless, and forever fighting the savage foes who occupied the country. ”

“ Stead’s class, whose knowledge is apparently derived from a superfluous stock of sentimentality, try to persuade their readers and hearers that the Boers are a clean-living race, puritanical in their morals, and worthy on those grounds alone of our highest respect and admiration. ”

“ One can find in many books descriptions of their terrible savagery in the conduct of their wars with native tribes; but it is in the home life that they are seen at the worst, for there their cruelties are committed in cold blood. ”

“ No shame is evinced on detection; the matter is treated as a good subject for laughter. In purchasing horses and cattle, the greatest care has to be exercised. No London horse-coper could compete with the average Boer in the art of passing off broken-winded horses or sand-cracked trek oxen as sound animals. ”

“ In their intercourse with strangers other than fellow-Boers, they are extremely overbearing. In my rides in the Transvaal and Orange Free State in connection with the acquisition of farms back in the sixties, during which I visited more Boer houses than I can reckon up, I often had to submit to language and manners that made my blood boil. Their standard of civility is a graduated one. The man with a wagon or two would always receive outward consideration ”

“ From the time when, in Natal in 1838, Hendrik Potgieter quarrelled with the other leaders, Pieter Retief and Gert Maritz, and in the face of the enemy withdrew his commando from the operations against the Zulus, and when a year or two later, two, if not three, separate governments were set up by rival factions, it has been ever thus. In the hunting-field, quarrels as to the rightful ownership of animals killed are constant, and I have often seen them come to blows. ”

“ In fact, the amount of grime they carry about them is absolutely inconceivable to those accustomed to some of the minor refinements of life. In the days when the vast plains of the States swarmed with animal life, and the Boer was constantly killing, he was, indeed, a sight to see. ”

“ Perhaps the three commonest names in South Africa are De Villiers, Du Toit and Viljoen—all manifestly French. Besides this, there is a much larger admixture of colored blood in the Transvaal than is commonly believed; in the northeastern districts especially, I have seen scores of Boers who were unmistakably of mongrel descent. The Griquas, who number many thousands, and live in communities of their own, are, as every one knows, the offspring of Boer men and Hottentot women ”

“ Their life became a sordid fight against their environments. They intermarried until the whole state became one vast family, and with this intermarriage their intellects grew debased. And thus they gradually lost much that makes man manly and attractive. ”

“ Neither men nor women ever washed themselves, as we understand it, the extent of their ablutions being each morning to pour a pint or so of water into a tin basin and with the help of a foul rag daub their faces with it, all the inhabitants of the house using the same water. ”

“ The women, in fact, accept the position of inferior mortals to their spouses. So far is this carried that they do not even eat together, the wife meekly waiting on her lord, and taking her own meal when he has finished. ”

“ An adequate study of him in these phases cannot be made at second hand, by reading books or listening to the narrative of travellers who have known him only as a fleeting phenomenon among many others encountered in a rapid journey. It may safely be said that no estimates are so erroneous, indeed worthless, as those of the globe-trotter concerning the peoples with whom he is transiently brought into contact. ”

“ They are by nature a dissatisfied people. They left their original European homes because the conditions forced upon them were distasteful to them, and they left the Cape Colony because they could not endure the restraints advancing civilization imposed upon them. ”

“ Immoral relations with their colored female dependents—whether they call them slaves, indentured apprentices, or hired servants—whatever they may be now, were but a few years ago so common as to be practically universal. ”

“ Nor have they much apparent affection for their offspring. The women are careful enough in rearing them until they can toddle about by themselves, after which they are in receipt of more cuffs and shrill anathemas than demonstrations of affection. The men take scarcely any notice of their children until the boys are old enough to be of use, when they are speedily initiated into all that pertains to cattle, horses and wagons. ”