28 A NATURALIST IN THE TRANSVAAL. 



allowed, the Psalms of the Old Testament alone being 

 sung. I could not help noticing that the Dopper 

 congregations were better and more neatly dressed, and 

 possessed that appearance of comfortable independence 

 as is observed among the Friends at home. 



President Stephanus Johannes Paulus Krliger was 

 born on the 10th October, 1825, in the district of 

 Colesberg in the Cape Colony, and is without doubt 

 the greatest and most representative man that the 

 Boers have yet produced. Uneducated or self-educated, 

 he possesses a very large amount of that natural 

 wisdom so often denied to men of great learning and 

 of literary cultivation. With many prejudices he is 

 fearless, stubborn, and resolute, and he really under- 

 stands Englishmen little better than they understand 

 him. In his earlier days he has been a somewhat 

 ardent sportsman and a good shot; he has been 

 engaged and honourably mentioned in most of the Kafir 

 fights of his time, and at the end of a rough and stormy 

 life he fills the Presidential chair of a country that has 

 passed Boer aspirations, and attained a financial 

 character and position due to its mineral wealth and 

 the energies of its Colonists, in which Boer industry 

 and Boer influence have played but a small part. 

 Socially he has always lived in a somewhat humble 

 position, and it is to the credit of his nature as a man 

 that he bears not the slightest trace of the parvenu. 

 Plain and undistinguished in appearance, he combines 

 the advantages of a prodigious memory with a remark- 

 able aptitude for reading his fellow man, and this last 

 quality would be more valuable were it not leavened 

 by a weakness in resisting flattery and adulation. He 

 is very pious and self-reliant, which is provocative of 

 bigotry and hot temper ; and surrounded and approached 

 on all sides by clever and often unscrupulous financiers 

 and speculators, his scutcheon has worn wonderfully 

 well, and his character and reputation passed through 

 many fiery ordeals ; he is also a rough diplomatist of 

 no mean rank. 



He has been twice married : bv his first wife he had 



