38 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
I met other Boers while out hunting—Erasmus, Botha, 
Joubert, Meyer. They were descendants of the Voortrek- 
kers with the same names who led the hard-fighting farmers 
northward from the Cape seventy years ago; and were 
kinsfolk of the men who since then have made these names 
honorably known throughout the world. There must of 
course be many Boers who have gone backward under the 
stress of a hard and semi-savage life; just as in our com¬ 
munities of the frontier, the backwoods, and the lonely 
mountains, there are shiftless ‘‘poor whites’" and “mean 
whites,” mingled with the sturdy men and women who have 
laid deep the foundations of our national greatness. But 
personally I happened not to come across these shiftless 
“mean white” Boers. Those that I met, both men and 
women, were of as good a type as any one could wish for 
in his own countrymen or could admire in another nation¬ 
ality. They fulfilled the three prime requisites for any race: 
they worked hard, they could fight hard at need, and they 
had plenty of children. These are the three essential 
qualities in any and every nation; they are by no means 
all-sufficient in themselves, and there is need that many 
others should be added to them; but the lack of any one of 
them is fatal, and cannot be made good by the presence 
of any other set of attributes. 
It was pleasant to see the good terms on which Boer and 
Briton met. Many of the English settlers whose guest I 
was, or with whom I hunted—the Hills, Captain Slatter, 
Heatley, Judd—had fought through the South African war; 
and so had all the Boers I met. The latter had been for 
the most part members of various particularly hard-fighting 
commandos; when the war closed they felt very bitterly. 
