B o b a W a g o n w i t h F i b e w o o d .
CHAPTER II.
THE BOER.
Where are the BoersF—The Boer a farmer—Grass-fires and their consequences.—
Habits of the farmer.—Peculiar theology of the Boer which
governs his life and action.—Boer relations to the Kafirs.— iolence of
Church disputes.—President Kruger.—Some causes of the Boer War.
—The Boers as soldiers.—Homely life of the President; his great
influence with the Boers.—Many farmers now wealthy men—Physical
characteristics of the Boers; their supposed dislike to the British; their
mistrust of the Hollanders.
O n e of the first questions I asked after residing a short
time in Pretoria, the capital of Boer-land, was, where
are the Boers % They are not to be found employed in
the Government offices, for here Hollanders are generally
engaged; they do not keep stores—at least, so seldom,
that the exception proves the ru le ; there are no Boer
clerks in mercantile offices, no handicraft or manufacture
carried on by them. British, Dutch, and German
are the nationalities which compose the population;
but where are the Boers 1 Beyond the farmers who
bring in their produce and firewood for sale, and can
be found at the early morning market, the Boer is a
visitor at Pretoria, and the same remark applies to all
the towns of the Transvaal.
The Boer is a farmer, or, more correctly, a dweller on
the veld—he loves solitude and cares nothing for the
outside world. I had frequent business relations with
one, which occasioned almost weekly visits, and as we
became fairly good friends, this farmer may be taken
as a typical example of the Boer. This man possesses
a tract of 2 0 , 0 0 0 acres, which is called a farm.
Scarcely any of this domain is cultivated; it embraces
part of a range of hills which forms a boundary, and
contains several isolated eminences as well, whilst in
most places its level' ground is strewn with rocky
debris. These hills are sparsely wooded and it is
from them that he obtains the firewood he sells at
Pretoria and Johannesburg. He lives in a small and
wretchedly kept and furnished house, the most conspicuous
articles of which are a small Dutch organ and
a large family Bible, for he is a conventionally pious
man. He cultivates a very small patch of his farm
and leaves the rest, as nature gives it, to grazing purposes,
and relies on his flocks and herds. Towards
the end of the winter he fires the veld, the withered
and dried grasses of which readily burn, and this allows
to the new shoots, that will rise after the rains, light
and air to commence growth. At that time of the
year the illumined horizon almost nightly denotes the
process of this primitive farming, and day reveals
dismal black areas which tell the same tale. The
young grass soon starts, and in a fortnight from the
conflagration I have .seen scattered and small patches
of bright green, even before the rains have commenced.
But these continuous fires help to keep the country in its
present treeless condition, for nothing but a few stunted
trees of the hardest wood can withstand the ravages
of the flames, whilst young seedlings have no chance of
surviving their first season’s, growth *. I believe the
* The same thing occurred in the early days of the settlers in North
America, when the Indians annually burnt the grass on their pasture-
grounds. “ The oaks bore the annual scorching, at least for a certain time,
but if they had been indefinitely continued, they would very probably have
been destroyed at last. The soil would have then been much in the
prairie condition, and would have needed nothing hut grazing for a long
succession of years to make the resemblance perfect. That the annual fires
alone occasioned the peculiar character of the oak openings, is proved by
the fact, that as soon as the Indians had left the country, young trees of
many species sprang up and grew luxuriously upon them.” See 'Marsh,
quoting from Dwight’s Travels (‘ Man and Nature/ p. 136).