BRITISH SOVril AFRICA AND THE TRANSVAAL 87 



The South African Republic has an area of 119,139 square miles, 

 and in 1898 the po})ulation was estimated to be 1,094,156, of wliicli 

 345.397 were whites and 748,759 colored natives. The white popula- 

 tion, liowever, had been largely increased by the rush to the gold 

 fields, and the number of Boers included in the enumeration of white 

 inhabitants is probably less than 100,000. 



In the whole of South Africa, in the same year, the white inhab- 

 itants, excluding the Dutch, numbered 385,500; of Dutch descent there 

 were 431,000, making a total of 816,500 whites, while the native races 

 numbered fully 15,000,000; so that there were about eighteen natives 

 to every white inhabitant. 



This sketch of the physical character and resources of the Trans- 

 vaal is the stage setting of the theater, where a mighty human drama 

 is now being enacted. A just estimate of the actors cannot he formed 

 without considering the influences which have made the Boers what 

 they are, nor can any conclusion be reached as to the future, not only 

 of the Transvaal, but of the whole of South Africa, without consider- 

 ing the character and condition of the native population, a factor in 

 the proljlem which has been seldom touched upon Ijy writers of po- 

 litical and military essays on South African afiairs. 



The Boers are the descendants of the original Dutch and Huguenot 

 colonists. Severed from the civilization of Europe two hundred years 

 ago, they have not kept pace with the progress that has been made 

 there iind are intolerant and backward in their ideas, but they have de- 

 veloped into a sturdy, self-reliant people, well fitted to cope with the 

 savage animals and savage men with whom they have had to contend 

 in their colonization of the wilderness. They have been for the most 

 ])art stock-raisers ; tlie thinness of the pasture has caused them to 

 scatter over a wide area, and they have thus led a solitary and some- 

 what nomadic life. like all frontiersmen, they have developed re- 

 markable courage and an indomita])le spirit of independence; they 

 have also become imbued with a passion for solitude and isolation, 

 out of which has grown not only their impatience of control, but a 

 certain degree of neglect of the graces, amenities, and even the decen- 

 ciesofcivilized ]ife,showing few traces of theirdescent from the cleanest 

 and neatest peo[)le of Europe. Living in the open air, and mostly in 

 the saddle, they are strangely ignorant. Tiiey have no literature and 

 very few newspapers. Their reading is confined almost entiiely to 

 the Jiible. Their religion is the somber and stern Calvinism of the 

 seventeenth century, hostile to all new light, thoroughly imbued witli 



