CHAPTER III 



A JOURNEY of two days and nights brings the traveller to the modern Golden 

 City, Johannesburg. The route is at once wearisome and monotonous, as on 

 either side of the train there is nothing to be seen but apparently measureless 

 expanses of grassy flats, a class of scenery which interests only the man whose 

 heart is wrapt up in Boer meal and cows. To ordinary travellers the uplands 

 of the Orange Free State and the Southern Transvaal have nothing to say, for 

 there is a solemnity and a silence about them that palls on both eye and brain. 

 This is now the true home of the Dutch Boer, and long may he thrive and 

 enjoy it. A beautiful landscape does not appeal to him, unless there are many 

 fat sheep, oxen, and horses dotted over it, and nice spruits for the watering of 

 the same. With such possessions, and with 10,000 morgen of land that he can 

 call his own, he is indeed a happy man ; his ambition is satisfied and he ceases 

 to think of change. I like the Boer, and admire his free, independent spirit ; 

 and though amongst a certain class of Englishmen and Afrikanders in South 

 Africa it is almost looked upon as unpatriotic to vent such opinions, I must say 

 that the Boer is and has been much wronged. There are thousands of Boers 

 at the present day who are wishing to extend the hand of friendship and 

 comradeship to the English and South Africans, but their fears of being 

 swindled and imposed upon hold them back, their experience in days past 

 having lain only amongst Englishmen of an inferior type. All this is, of 

 course, only the result of ignorance. Some Boer farmer has been badly bitten 

 by a travelling loafer or rascal calling himself an Englishman (for till quite 

 recently men of this stamp swarmed in South Africa) with the result that the 

 Dutchman includes the whole nationality of that rascal in a sweeping con- 

 demnation, and hates them accordingly. He is never tired of telling the story 

 of his mishap to his relations, and at the same time he seems never to forgive 

 or forget an injury. He brings up his children to regard the Englishman as 



