THE BOER OF TO-DAY. 337 



peaceable and harmless enough, and, indeed, on 

 the whole, loyal subjects of the British crown, 

 and, although Majuba rendered them for a time 

 somewhat more aggressive than of yore, it is in 

 the last degree unlikely that our rule at the Cape 

 will ever be endangered by Dutch disturbance. 

 The vast extension of influence acquired last year 

 (1888) by the British in the Zambesi regions, and 

 the ever-increasing flow of British emigration to 

 the Transvaal, have happily put matters beyond 

 all possibility of doubt, and the British colonist 

 now sleeps with a far lighter heart than for the 

 few years immediately succeeding the miserable 

 Transvaal War. 



Mahomet has said that " Paradise is under the 

 shadow of swords." It may with truth be said of 

 the Transvaal Boers, as of the colonial Boers of 

 the Eastern frontier before the great trek of 

 1836, that, since that time, their paradise has been 

 beneath the shadow of their trusty rifles. With the 

 cumbrous elephant " roer " of a past generation, and 

 with the breech-loading Winchester, or Westley- 

 Richards, or Martini-Henry of the present day, 

 they have well-nigh exterminated the great game 

 of their country, have harried the native tribes 

 within and without their borders, and, lastly, 

 extracted from Mr. Gladstone, in 1881, a peace, in 

 all respects glorious to themselves, and inglorious 

 to the British. As I shall show hereafter, a little 

 tact, a little good management, might have saved 

 the Transvaal to the English without a blow, 

 without the loss of a single life, Dutch or British. 

 But the fates and Mr. Gladstone willed that a 

 surrender, the blackest and most disgraceful that 



22 



