96 KLOOF AND KARROO. 



approach them in a proper spirit, you may obtain a 

 store of quaint information, grim legends, wild 

 beliefs, and a fund of old-world hunting stories, 

 handed down from their fathers, who at the 

 beginning of this century hunted the elephant, 

 rhinoceros, lion, and other great game that then 

 abounded in the Eastern province. Too often the 

 Boers are laughed at and ridiculed by the English 

 settlers, and in consequence, they usually shut up 

 like a knife when in their company. My friends 

 here and at Riet Fontein pursued a different course, 

 I believe a good deal to their own advantage in the 

 long run. The Dutch are better as friends than 

 enemies, and there is nothing to be gained by 

 treating them as an inferior and even a conquered 

 race — which latter they are not, nor ever were. Of 

 late years, since they have discovered their political 

 power, and, too, since the Transvaal War, they have 

 become, even in the Old Colony, far more independent 

 and even assertive than formerly. The habits of 

 these strange people are wonderfully primitive. The 

 occupants of a neighbouring farmhouse in the 

 mountains are two brothers ; one of them is married, 

 but they have only one apartment, which is shared 

 in common by night as well as by day, by the 

 married couple and the single man. This is not an 

 isolated instance, or one thought at all extraordinary 

 among these simple folk. Father, mother, and 

 grown-up children not seldom share the same 

 sleeping room. In a subsequent chapter I have 

 given some account of the Boer of to-day, who, as 

 a matter of fact, resembles very much indeed the 

 Boer of 1789 or even i68g. It is possible, and 

 indeed I think highly probable, that the influx of the 



