THE MEN OF PRETORIA. 133 



anthropologist the Boer may be treated as a non- 

 resident factor altogether. Although Pretoria is the seat 

 of government which is Boer, and the residence of the 

 President who is a Boer, and the principal church in 

 the principal square of the town is a Boer church, yet 

 the Boer is still an emigrant, country-born Dutch farmer 

 from the colony, who has to rely for judges, clergy, and 

 civic administrators on the educated Dutch of the 

 colony, or, what is worse, imported Hollanders who have 

 neither the independence of the South-African spirit 

 nor the necessary knowledge of local customs and insti- 

 tutions. The Boer is a farmer pure and simple ; the 

 commercial prosperity of the Transvaal is a thing which 

 he has not created, and which it is just possible he does 

 not desire. The auriferous quartz of the Republic, 

 worked by emigrants from all parts of the world, but 

 principally by British, have filled the coffers of the Boer 

 Treasury, made the large towns of the Transvaal, and 

 brought the country to a position from which it must 

 either advance or retire. Had it not been for the mineral 

 wealth of the Republic, its exports must have princi- 

 pally consisted of wool, hides, and skins, and it would 

 have remained more of a large farming community than 

 an industrial and political organization. But the dream 

 of the early voortrekkers for a modern Palestine has not 

 been realized ; in a land of mineral wealth it could not 

 be ; they have many of them acquired wealth, but it 

 must in the end prove their political extinction ; their 

 only chance of permanency is to form one of the units 

 or component parts of a United South-African Con- 

 federacy, which in a hundred years they might influence, 

 but less govern than Cromwell's puritans do the 

 England of to-day. The Boer has only one chance to 

 prevent his relegation to oblivion in a country of which 

 he literally possessed himself, and which he secured 

 only by rough living and hard fighting. That last chance 

 is to immediately have his children properly educated ; 

 and, from what I observed, that course is not likely 

 to be pursued. What he won by the gun will be lost 

 by the pen, and the trade and actual government of the 



