Boer

“ Again the Boers had to contend with the savages, wild beasts and starvation. Here they suffered terribly, hundreds of them died and hundreds of women and children were murdered by the savages. Yet they persevered and converted the desert into two of the richest and most flourishing little republics in the world. All this is as fresh as ever in the Boer memory, yet, after the late South African War, the English beg the Boers to forgive and forget. ”

“ The Boer type of countenance is not often handsome; frequently it is flat and expressionless, lustreless grey eyes with small pupils, and hair growing back from chin and lip. But it is almost always the embodiment of repose, and in the finer stock it sometimes reaches an archaic and patriarchal dignity. ”

“ The canard that the Boers go to bed without undressing is as absurd as the one of like origin that an entire family sleeps in one bed. Yet these fictions constantly appear, and frequently over the names of persons who have penetrated into South Africa no farther than Cape Town.
The Boer here depicted is the representative Boer--the one who shoulders his rifle and fights for his country; the one who watches his cattle on the plains and pays his taxes; the one who tries to improve his condition, and takes advantage of every opportunity for advancement that is offered. ”

“ The ideal Boer is a man with a bearded face and a flowing moustache, and in order to appear idyllic almost every Boer burgher, who was not thus favoured before war was began, engaged in the peaceful process of growing a beard. ”

“ A Boer may know you, but it will take you some time to know him, and when a certain stage in your acquaintance is reached, you may begin to wonder whether his real nature is penetrable at all. His ways are not the ways of other people: he is suspicious, distant, and he does not care to show his hand—unless, of course, there is some pecuniary advantage to be gained. ”

“ In outward appearance the Boer may be, and sometimes is, somewhat stern and uncompromising; but those who have gained his confidence and known him best have invariably discovered behind and at the bottom of this seemingly forbidding exterior a softness of disposition and a tenderness of heart which brooks no rivalry. ”

“ I will not declare that every Boer is a saint, or that every one is a model of cleanliness or virtue, but I make bold [11] to say that the majority of the Boers are not a fraction less moral, cleanly, or virtuous than the majority of Americans or Englishmen, albeit they may be less progressive and less handsome in appearance than we imagine ourselves to be. ”

“ There were the town Boers, smartened and perhaps a little enervated by prosperity and civilisation, men of business and professional men, more alert and quicker than their rustic comrades. These men spoke English rather than Dutch, and indeed there were many men of English descent among them. But the others, the most formidable both in their numbers and in their primitive qualities, were the back-veld Boers, the sunburned, tangle-haired, full-bearded farmers, the men of the Bible and the rifle, imbued with the traditions of their own guerrilla warfare. ”

“ In the early months of peace it was a common thing to come on a Boer family living in a hut of biscuit tins or a torn tent, with scanty rations and miserably ragged clothes. But those people, in most cases, set the little they had gladly before the stranger. The Boer, who will perjure himself deeply to save a shilling, will part with a pound’s worth of entertainment without a thought. ”

“ The most peculiar and characteristic type that the country has produced is the Boer of the eastern plateau, the offspring of those Dutch Africanders who some sixty years ago wandered away from British rule into the wilderness. These men had, and their sons and grandsons have retained, a passion for solitude that even to-day makes them desire to live many miles from any neighbour, a sturdy self-reliance, a grim courage in the face of danger, a sternness from which the native races have often had to suffer. ”

“ In peaceful times the Boer farmer rarely travelled away from his home unless he was accompanied by his family, and he would have felt the pangs of homesickness if he had not been continually surrounded by his wife and children. ”

“ The Boer farmer of the forties, therefore, had to work out his rescue, as he worked out every other problem of his existence, for himself, acquiring thereby, a supreme individuality and self-reliance in the presence of danger. ”

“ The trait that we admire and cherish most in the Boer character is their hospitality. We shall ever gratefully remember how kindly our burghers were received by many a colonial farmer, such as the Van der Merwes of Toutelboschkoek and Bamuur, Calvinia district, the Therons of Rietpoort, Richmond, the two Miss Van der Merwes of Badsfontein, Murraysburg, and a host of others whose names we cannot mention here, as well as non-combatant farmers of the late Republics. ”

“ The Boer, from having been essentially a sporting man and a free and a robust tiller of the soil, has come under the influence of schemers, who have played upon his natural avarice, and polished his inherent cunning, till these qualities have expanded to the detriment of those earlier qualities for which the Boer of to-day still gets credit, but which are fast dying out of the national character. ”

“ He must possess an unlimited knowledge, as well as stock of liquors; for the Boer, who is abstemious, as a rule, always expects the man who supplies him with his “voerchitz” and his coffee to provide him also with plenty of stimulants. He must know where to place his hands on any article wanted, and be as ready to buy your cart and horses, or span of oxen, as to sell you a can of sardines or a yard of tape. ”

“ Every young Boer must have his six or more thousand acres of land on which to lord it. It is his birthright, and if it is not forthcoming he goes and takes it by force from the nearest native tribe. Hence these continual complaints. ”

“ Boer simply means farmer, as a rule the proprietor of a farm of about 3,000 to 10,000 acres, who combines stock-breeding with a variety of other farming enterprises as well, according to the soil and locality. As a national designation, the term "Boer" conveys the distinction from the recently arrived Dutchman, who is called "Hollander." Hollanders, again, delight of late to claim the Boer nation as their kith and kin, but prefer to ignore the existence of the French Huguenot factor. ”

“ Every Boer has a solid belief in himself, to begin with, and every Boer has a profound belief in his brother. This characteristic has many advantages: it not only welds a people together, it is a sufficient guarantee of success in times of trouble and difficulty, and it has stood the Boer in good stead. ”

“ But the abodes of the Boers, and their manner of living, impressed the boys far less favourably. However extensive the possessions and numerous the herds of a Boer, he lives in the same primitive style as his poorest neighbour. The houses seldom contain more than two, or at most three, rooms. The dress of the farmer, wife, and family is no better than that of labourers; whole families sleep in one room; books are almost unknown in their houses, and they are ignorant and prejudiced to an extreme degree. ”

“ The Boer talent, according to the testimony of their lives, was in the multiplication of cattle, the shooting of wild beasts good to eat, occasional encounters with lions, and hunting parties that pursued the hippopotamus in the marshy lakes. ”

“ The Boer has rarely been understood by people who give their impressions to the world, but he has been very completely understood by plain men who have dwelt beside him and experienced his ways in the many relations of life. ”

“ And yet the phenomenon is perfectly normal. The Boer is a representative on a grand scale of a type which no nation is without. He is the ordinary backward countryman, more backward and more of a countryman than is usual in our modern world. ”

“ The power of a Boer over his sons and daughters is most unlimited, and he is the hardest and cruellest of masters to the unfortunate natives whom he keeps in slavery under the title of indentured apprentices, and whose lives he regards as of no more importance than those of his sheep, and as of infinitely less consequence than those of his horses or even of his dogs. To the unhappy natives the taking over of the Transvaal by England had been a blessing of the highest kind. ”

“ The Boer youth develops into manhood early in life in the mild South African climate, and the boy of twelve and thirteen years is the equal in physical development of the American or European youth of sixteen or seventeen. He was accustomed to live on the open veld and hunting with his elders, and, when he saw that all his former companions were going to war, he begged for permission to accompany the commando. ”

“ As a sportsman, then, the Boer is scarcely at his best. He has shown himself dull, sluggish, unimaginative, capable of both skill and endurance, but a niggard in the exercise of either, unless compelled by hunger or hope of gain. ”

“ They declare that the Boer of the past was a very much finer fellow than the Boer of the present—finer morally and physically; and that in his obstinate determination to resist the march of progress he has allowed himself to suffer deterioration. ”

“ During the several hot months we were there we had an opportunity of studying the characteristics of the Dutch Boer, who is met with in this part of the country in his primitive state. The Africander Boer is usually a tall, lanky, narrow-chested individual, with black hair, straggling beard and whiskers, cautious, suspicious, and undemonstrative, his countenance expressing little imagination and his body great physical endurance. He is never quarrelsome if it can be avoided ”

“ Put these animals on a bit of green veldt, and they do the rest themselves; they thrive and multiply, and enhance the position of their owner. But a plough! It means that he requires to take off his coat and stop doing nothing. The Boer would like to argue that if God had meant the soil to be disturbed by ploughs and such like, He would not have left the solution of this problem in the hands of mere inventors: He would have ordained a means whereby the soil would have of itself turned over once a year at springtime.
The Boers are a pastoral people—one can hardly say an agricultural people. ”

“ Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods?"
Another trait in the Boer character is his wonderful resourcefulness and his ability to cope with difficulties. It was as much this phase of his character as his patriotism, religiosity and valour which enabled him to continue the struggle so long. If the Boers had not been so wonderfully resourceful, and understood so well how to lighten their burdens and solve their problems, they never could have held out so long. ”

“ CHAPTER III THE COMPOSITION OF THE BOER ARMY
A visitor in one of the laagers in Natal once spoke of a Boer burgher as a “soldier.” A Boer from the Wakkerstroom district interrupted his speech and said there were no Boer soldiers. “If you want us to understand concerning whom you are talking,” he continued, “you must call us burghers or farmers. Only the English have soldiers.” It was so with all the Boers ”

“ The Boer is extremely sensitive, hence he is irritated at the civilized Hollanders, who smile at his rude African customs, and who reply, with apparent ostentation, in a pure language to the corrupt jargon spoken by the peasantry on the banks of the Vaal or Limpopo. ”

“ Now native labour is a necessity to the Boer, because he will not as a rule do hard manual labour himself, and there must be some one to plant and garner the crops, and herd the cattle. On the other hand, the natives are not anxious to serve the Boers, which means little or no pay and plenty of thick stick, and sometimes worse. ”

“ Abstaining from all manual labour, they devote themselves to their properties, sometimes as much as 5,000 to 6,000 acres in extent, and to the breeding of [Pg 7] cattle and horses. Beyond this, their object in life is hunting lion and big game. The Boer is essentially a man of war and politics. ”

“ The bucolic ambition of the Boer, which is to dwell in a house from which he cannot see the smoke of his nearest neighbour's chimney, can be satisfied in a flat country only when the house stands in the midst of a farm many thousand morgen in extent. ”

“ Many Boer sons do settle down on their fathers' farms forever. Many are born, live and die right here in the Transvaal. Neither my grandfather nor great-grandfather were ever outside of South Africa. They were too busy fighting the natives. ”

“ Boer families usually average up to a dozen. They stick together, and grow up on their farms, which are of enormous extent, and which they get to love with the instinctive force of people who have never seen any other place. ”

“ The Boers are frequently unmerciful to their horses, and I seldom rode a horse that had been very long in the possession of a Boer, but I found its mouth like iron and its temper none of the sweetest. ”

“ I cannot say that the simple Boer women seemed pleased to see us when we rode up with smiling faces and helped ourselves (with their permission) to oranges and tangerines, while one good lady gave me a couple of eggs, which I enjoyed later for tea. Then gaily bidding them Auf Wiedersehen we retraced our way and came to where the camp had been established. Arrived there, the stories we heard concerning the affair were, as you can imagine, marvellous. And, after all, what do you think the wily Boer bagged as the result of such a lovely death trap? Not a man. ”

“ To my dismay, the Boers had been quicker than I had given them credit for, and had, so to speak, shut the principal gate in the huge wall which in that particular part closed in their country from Natal. The man I had seen was doubtless one of their outposts, and for aught I knew to the contrary the pass might be held by hundreds of the sturdy burghers, every man a born rifleman. ”