Thoughts on South Africa — Part Two: IV. The Wanderings of the Boer

* * * * * But the old Boers were not always nomads.

The course of their wanderings took the old fore-trekkers sometimes eastward and north-eastwards, to the more fertile parts of the Karroo, and to the luxuriant coast lands, where pasturage and water were abundant and permanent.

Here, where after long wanderings the ox-wagon drew up beside some strong fountain, the Boer surveying the land found it good, and often resolved to end his wanderings for a time.

He might call the place Matjesfontein, or Jackalsfontein, or Wildekatfontein, after the fountain he had outspanned beside and the reeds that grew beside it, or the jackals that howled round it, or the wild cats which he had killed among the rocks; and here he made his home.

As time passed, close beside the wagon rose a small square or oblong house built of poles and bushes, and plastered over with mud; and kraals with walls of rough stones or mimosa-branches were raised, and placed as near the house and water supply as possible, to save the stock at night from the depredations of Bushmen or wild beasts, and to facilitate their drinking in the day.

Here, as years passed, and his sons and daughters grew up about him, he raised a brick or stone dwelling, solid, square, unornamental, seeming to have as its prototype the old African ox-wagon taken from its wheels, and anchored to one spot of earth.

And as time passed, he also often made a dam, to ensure water supply in drought, and sometimes he planted a few willow trees on the wall, and made a small fruit garden below it, fenced round with rough stones.

But the beautiful homes of Bovenland, with their massively built houses, and polished wooden floors, raised by the hands of slave workmen, with their oak-avenues and vineyards and rose hedges, have seldom tended to repeat themselves in the more arid regions further north.

Without a superfluous detail, or an attempt at ornament, squatting in the red sand and sun of the up-country plains, these little buildings, with their coatings of red sand or hard whitewash, seem almost a spontaneous growth of the land, and, like the brown ant-heaps that dot it everywhere, are indigenous to the country.

The Western Boer built as if for his children's children to inhabit: the up-country Boer farm-house of the past, as of to-day, is essentially the home of a nomad;[47] of one who has anchored himself temporarily on a spot of earth, but who is ever ready at any moment to gather his household goods together and move onwards.

The typical up-country farm-house is the home of a man who, knowing that he or his children may at any moment leave, can waste no time in ornamenting it.

[47] We are, of course, speaking generally.

Within the house the same bare simplicity prevails.

To-day, as one travels on some high up-country plain, one sees across the flat at the foot of some kopje, or in the centre of a great level, one of these small brown or white structures, with square black patches beside it where its kraals lie.

If it be the noon or afternoon of a warm day, as one approaches one finds that all the doors and windows are closed, and nothing living or moving to be seen but a few cocks and hens scratching in the sand, or sitting in the shadow of the house-gable, or perhaps a little hand-lamb looking for a few blades of green among the dried-up bushes about the house, or a couple of great Boer bull-dogs lie in the shade of the wagon-house, and, rising up slowly, approach with heads down and eyes half closed.

The household are taking their midday siesta, and the green wooden shutters and door are closed.

But, as one dismounts, from behind the brick oven at the back one sees a little white and sandy head appear, and a little shoeless or vel-schoened urchin, who has escaped from the embargo of the midday siesta to play secretly in the sun, rushes into the house by the back-door, and raises the cry of "Mense!"

(people).

When we have dismounted and hooked our horse to a rail or the post on which a carpenter's vice is fastened, and are preparing to mount the little stone platform running along the whole front of the house, the upper half of the door opens slowly, and the Boer's head looks out over it, his eyes still dreamy with midday sleep.

If we are folk of respectable appearance, unmistakably white and mounted, he will open the lower half of the door and come out in his shirt and tan-cord trousers, and shake hands quietly, and having asked a few questions, will invite us to off-saddle.

And when we have removed the saddles from our horses, and, having first securely knee-haltered them, turned them loose to feed on the bushes, and replied to our host's inquiries as to our names, our business, and other small details, we follow him into the house.

The door is divided into two parts, partly because the upper half being left open, it admits all the air, and sometimes, if there be no window, all the light that gains accession to the front room--the windows being so made that they cannot open--and partly because the lower half, when closed, serves to keep the children in, and to keep the fowls and dogs out.

When we enter we find the front room of large size as compared to the whole building, and we are asked to take a seat on one of the chairs or the sofa, whose seats are composed of thongs of dried ox-hide skilfully interlaced.

The floor of the room is of hardened mud, worn here and there into inequalities by the tramping of feet; the walls are white-washed, and from the rafters or against the wall are rests for a couple of guns.

In the centre of the room is a square table, often with unturned legs of some Colonial wood, and generally of African contrivance; on one side of the room, opposite the wooden sofa, and made of the same curious old wood, stands a little square table, generally with a coffee-urn upon it, and sometimes a little work-box or a large family Bible; beside it is invariably an elbow-chair of the same make as the sofa, and with a seat of the same interlaced leather thongs; before the elbow-chair stands a little square wooden stove, such as you may see exactly portrayed in many an old Flemish picture of the seventeenth century--a little solid wooden box with a hole at one side, into which a brazier of live coals may be put, the top carved out into holes of a fanciful pattern, through which the heat may rise to the feet of the person using it.

Soon the door of the side room opens, and the mistress of the house, who also has been taking her siesta, appears in her dark print gown, and with a clean white pocket-handkerchief tied hastily round her throat in honour of the newcomer.

She silently shakes hands, and goes to her elbow-chair, placing her feet on the stove, which, in the summertime, is coalless, and serves merely as a footstool.

As she fans herself to drive away the flies, which in Africa and in the neighbourhood of stock kraals are numerous, she calls to the Kaffir maid in the kitchen at the back to make haste and let the kettle boil, or coaxes the three-year-old child, who stands pressing backwards against her knee, eyeing the stranger from under a mass of tumbled hair, with a finger in its mouth, to go and tell the elder sister to come and make the coffee.

Even in her youth the house-mother has been generally buxom, and, when past it, is often stout, as the result of a quiescent life and from the lack of open-air exercise.

[48] From time to time the elder children slink out of the side sleeping apartments, with little bare feet or with undressed leather shoes, and generally no socks.

They extend their little hands and say "Dag!"

[49] and seat themselves silently on the chairs with their little feet dangling down.

Presently an older girl, almost or quite grown-up, appears, who has been detained by some efforts at personal adornment; she has smoothed the top of her heavy, silky, dark or fair hair with a brush or comb, and has put a silk handkerchief round her throat, and perhaps has on her Sunday town-made shoes.

She shakes hands somewhat bashfully, and goes through to the back room, hurrying on the coffee-making, while we sit, and, with intervals of silence, discuss the weather and the health of the stock.

Presently one of the children, growing tired of its perch on the chair, goes out, and leaves the lower half of the front door open, and the hens enter, and the two large dogs slink quietly in and lie down under the table.

When the hand-lamb and a couple more fowls follow, the mother calls to one of the children to drive them out, but the dogs remain under the table, winking with their yellow eyes at us.

By this time the coffee has come.

It is placed in an urn on the little side-table with a brazier of hot coals beneath it, and the eldest daughter pours it out and hands it round.

In the wall of the room there is generally a small cupboard, the door of which is made with panes of glass, and which looks like a blind window.

Here are kept the spare cups and saucers, the black bottle of cocoa-nut oil with which the whole family oil their heads on Sunday mornings, and whatever else in the way of crockery and ornament, and not for daily use, the house contains; and, if there be not enough cups out, some are now produced for the use of the strangers.

Even the smallest child has its basin of coffee, and when the cups and basins have been used they are put into a brass dish of water and covered with a cloth, to be free from flies and ready for further use.

[48] That this, and more especially the absence of excitement and change, and not anything racial, is the cause of the large size and great weight, sometimes running to over 300 pounds, of Boer women, is certain, as their descendants, when leading the ordinary modern life, are in no way remarkable for size or weight.

[49] Dag = "Day."

If our horses are worn, and we meditate travelling no further that evening, we shall sit still discussing at intervals, the weather, the rains of six months ago, and between times the master of the house will offer us his tobacco-bag made of a "dassie's"[50] skin or of a new-born kid's, and filled with powerful Colonial tobacco, from which he fills and refills his own pipe.

At intervals cups of coffee are handed round again, the hot brazier keeps the urn boiling and fresh water is added from time to time.

As the evening approaches the farmer rises to go and see his stock, and we accompany him to the kraals, where the squares of dung cut out for fuel are drying on the tops of the stone walls.

As the sun begins to set the flocks come winding home, and pause at the dam to drink, though if there be a drought there may be little in it but a basin of baked mud, with a small pool of water in the centre.

We stand beside him as he counts in the sheep and goats at the kraal gates, while the Kaffir herds milk in the cow kraal, if the drought be not so strong that the cows yield no milk.

As the darkness settles down we go back to the house.

A tallow candle is burning on the centre table in the front room, and the mother is sitting in her elbow-chair; presently the children troop in and take their seats on the high-backed chairs, their heads hanging sleepily, their feet dangling, the dim light of the single candle making the sombre darkness of the room more visible.

[50] Dassie = coney.

Presently a little Kaffir maid comes in with a small wooden tub such as in other lands are used about dairies, the tub often having ears to hold it by, and it is filled with hot water; beside it she brings in a piece of white, home-made soap, and a little cotton cloth.

She kneels down before the feet of her master or mistress to take off their shoes, but is directed to go to the visitors first.

If you decline she then proceeds round the room from chair to chair, washing the feet of each member of the family.

When this is finished, the daughter announces that supper is ready, and, if there be a small back room to the house, all retire there; if not, they gather round the central table, where are spread some plates and knives and a few steel forks, and on which there is a large dish of hunks of mutton boiled in water, or more occasionally, fried in fat, and another dish with thick slices of bread; or, if meal be scarce or unobtainable, a dish of boiled mealies, crushed or uncrushed.

Each one of the adults helps himself from the great dish, while the children are served, and the meal proceeds more or less in silence, and the elder daughter, who seldom sits down till the meal is half over, pours out cups or basins of coffee, and stands them at each one's elbow.

The meal is concluded expeditiously in ten or fifteen minutes and then the whole family rise.

It is now half-past eight or nine; the sleepy children troop off to their beds; and after sitting a few moments in the great front room, the farmer looking out once over the half-door to see what the weather is like, and having a final smoke, you are asked whether you do not wish to retire also, and the host, taking a tallow candle in a flat candle-stick, leads you into one of the small side rooms, and hopes you will sleep well.

This room is generally a mud-floored apartment about one-fourth the size of the front room.

In one corner stands a bed, made often like the sofa and tables of the front room, of home-turned wood, its lathes being formed of interlaced thongs of ox-hide, and sometimes consisting of a veritable "kartel" taken from the ox-wagon, and placed on four rough posts.

On the bed is a wool or feather mattress and two quilts formed of blankets covered with carefully made patchwork, or chintz, and in the corner there may be a large wagon-chest, but generally the room contains nothing else, unless it is to be shared by some members of the family, who will occupy a second bed.

The long wandering wagon journeys have destroyed the sensitive objection to the sharing of a common sleeping apartment by persons of different ages and sexes.

In the wagon or tent, where each one, from the aged grandmother to the infant and growing-up youth, lay of necessity closely side by side for shelter and warmth, the habit of disrobing at night was also lost.

As they did in the old ox-wagon, so still to-day on every primitive, unmodernized up-country farm, adults and children simply take off their shoes, and removing the jacket or outer skirt they have worn during the day, sleep without further dismantling.

The grandmother, a young married daughter and her husband, and some of the younger children often occupy one room, while the parents, with perhaps a grown-up son and several children, occupy another.

As the windows are not made so that they may be opened, but are built fast in the frames, even in cold weather the need for much covering is not felt, but in hot weather the chambers become leaden and heavy to an extent which drives all sleep from the eyes of one unaccustomed to the atmosphere; and the stranger sometimes tosses about, wrestling all night without attempting to disrobe or sleep, and is glad when about four, or a little earlier, there are sounds of stirring in the house, and all arise.

[51] [51] Travelling in the north of the Colony along the banks of the Orange in our childhood, we were once compelled to pass the night in the house of a very wealthy farmer.

At bedtime we were shown into a room with three bedsteads.

In one slept the father, mother, and the young infant, in another the grandmother and two of the younger children;

in a large four-poster in the other corner were two girls of fourteen and sixteen and a youth of nineteen.

On this bed we were asked to lie down, and about one o'clock our company was added to by a huge Boer bull-dog, which lay at the foot, and successfully, even for a child, prevented sleep.

In the front room, as we enter, we find the father already up, leaning over the half-door with the pipe in his mouth to scan the darkness; the Kaffir maid has come and made fire in the kitchen, you can hear the crackling of the wood in the large room, and the eldest daughter slips out of her chamber and takes the tallow candle from the table to go to the back and make coffee.

Presently the house-mother and the younger children, the last still without their jackets and dresses, come in and sit about the room, some holding their vel-schoens sleepily in their hands.

Through the top of the open door you can see a streak of grey dawnlight along the far-off horizon and by the time the coffee comes it is almost light in the room; the tallow candle is blown out, and, except in the dark corner, you can see all the faces.

When you have drunk your coffee you go out; the Kaffir boy has brought your horses round from the kraal, where they have been all night; if there are mealies or forage your hospitable host may have had them fed, and when you have shaken hands with each member of the household, and thanked the master and mistress for their hospitality, for which they would be pained if you offered any recompense, you ride away.

By the time the sun rises, you are half a mile across the plain, and the farm-house is beginning to grow small behind you as you look back from your saddle.

[52] [52] See Note D, _The Domestic Life of the Boer_.

All day the same peaceful life will run on there.

When he has drunk his coffee, the farmer, with his sons, will proceed to the kraals to count out the sheep and goats; as he stands at the gate watching them the early sunbeams will glint on their damp fleeces as they walk down the sandy road, on their way to the veld, with the Kaffir herd behind them.

When the men return to the house it will be near eight o'clock, the sun already growing hot; the house-mother, from her elbow-chair beside the little table, calls out to bring the breakfast, and the children, who have been playing about before the door and on the kraal walls, troop in.

If a sheep or a goat has been killed, there will be fried liver and lights, and if there is no bread there will be roasted cakes, made of unleavened flour and water and baked on the coals, or if there be neither, each person will be given a cup of coffee and a biscuit, without gathering at the table.

By nine or ten, if the day be hot, the girl children are called inside, or told to play in the shade of the house, for fear of browning or freckling their skins; the shutters of the windows will all be closed, the front door alone letting in what light and air enters; the house-mother will sit suckling her baby, or making a little garment, and calling now and then to one of the daughters to make more coffee.

If there are no cattle to be rounded up, or any small farm duties to be performed, the grown or half-grown sons go and sit in the wagon-house, and smoke and talk, or make yokes or vel-schoens; or if there be cattle to see to, or out-kraals to visit, they or the father mount their horses and ride away into the veld, often taking their guns with them.

If there be no work, then the father sits on the sofa in the front room, opposite the house-mother in her elbow-chair, and folds his arms, smokes, and sighs, "Oh--ja"!

and stretches himself, and drinks his ninth cup of coffee, and smokes again, till at half-past eleven he goes into the bedroom to lie down for half an hour, having been up since half-past three.

At twelve the dinner is on the table: there are seldom vegetables, and often not bread, but there is always a great dish of mutton, and generally some boiled grain, and when the meal is over the Kaffir maids clean the pots, and the house-mother goes to the back door to see that they are not scratching in them with a spoon.

[53] When the maids have ended they go back to their huts, and every one goes to lie down, and the house is closed; and only the flies, and some recalcitrant little boys or girls who will not go to sleep, but creep out silently to play in the empty front room, or in the shadow of the house, are left awake.

The cocks and hens strut before the doors, the bull-dogs lie in the shade of the wagon-house, the little hand-lamb looks for a few blades of green among the bushes, and the story of yesterday repeats itself.

[53] The spoons being generally of very soft metal, are easily destroyed by rough usage.

But, quiet as is the every-day life of the unmodernized, primitive, up-country Boer homestead, it is not without its great events.

At intervals of months or years the "smous"[54] arrives, often a small Polish or German Jew, with his wagon or a couple of horses heavily laden with goods--tapes, needles, men's clothing, brass jewellery, cotton goods, and hardware--all that the farmer's household requires.

He asks leave to outspan, which is generally given him, though the farmer and his good wife declare they have need of nothing.

He then begs leave simply to unpack and display his wares, and, permission being given, the rolls are brought into the great front room, and soon tables, chairs, and sofa are covered with piles of clothing and trinkets, which the "smous" exhibits one by one, expatiating as he does so on the heavy loss he is bound to undergo, having given more for the articles than he fears he can ever receive for them.

In the end he succeeds in disposing of several items, clothing, groceries, and perhaps a brass watch or a German clock (such as one buys in Tottenham Court Road for three-and-six, but marked in large figures "Ten pounds ten," which after much haggling is reduced to seven!

) in exchange for a pile of sheepskins that have been accumulating in the wagon-house, or a horse, or even some of the treasured money from the old green wagon-chest.

[54] Smous = hawker.

But there are even greater events: sometimes an uncle or aunt from a distance comes on a visit; and there are the regular, recurrent excitements of shearing times, when the farm wakes up for a few days, there is a noise of bleating sheep, and Kaffirs are talking in the wagon-house, and there are extra rations to be given out, and the wool has to be trodden down into the bales; and at the end the great wagon has to be laden with the bags, which are carried away to the nearest town or village, if there be one within thirty or a hundred miles, or to a little country shop.

And there is the great excitement of the year, when the wagon returns with the stores and clothing for which some of the wool has been exchanged.

Then there are visits to the nearest church to take the Lord's Supper, coming once in two or three months, or once in two or three years, as the church may be thirty or three hundred miles distant: but above all, on the up-country farm as elsewhere, come the three momentous events common to all human existence--birth, death, and marriage.

Every year or two the good house-mother contributes a baby to the household, and her married daughter or daughter-in-law who may live with her, does so also.

And these events serve as a sort of chronological tablet, by appeal to which the exact date of past occurrences can be ascertained and are kept in the family memory.

The year of great drought was the year in which Pietje was born; the cows lost so many calves and had foot-and-mouth disease the year that Anna Maria came; Henrik Jacobus was born in the year of the great rain at the end of the long drought; the year when the still-born child arrived was the very year when the great dam was cleaned out and a new wall was put round the cattle kraal; and Willem Johannes Jacobus was born the same year that the patchwork quilt was finished, and Aunt Magdalena came for a visit.

And Death comes here.

The old grandmother goes from her chair in the corner, and her favourite great-granddaughter inherits her stove; and the stories she used to tell of the old trekking days, and her faint childish memories of the Bovenland where she was born, become matters of tradition; and the little children are carried out often enough from the close rooms of the house, few surviving who were not born very vigorous; and sometimes the great elbow-chair by the coffee-table itself becomes vacant, and the house-mother is carried away by an untoward child-birth, or a "hart-kwaal,"[55] which is generally dropsy as well; her chair is not long left empty; but when the time comes for her husband to be carried out feet foremost, he often asks to be buried beside his first wife; and they sleep peacefully together under the piles of rough iron-stones behind the kopjes.

[55] Hart-kwaal = heart-complaint.

But the great and exciting event, which takes place once at least in the life of every Boer man and woman, and not infrequently more than once, is marriage.

When the maiden is fourteen or fifteen, and the youth sixteen or seventeen, they turn their thoughts towards union.

Social and family feeling ordains that with puberty the married life should shortly begin; and this, under the circumstances, perhaps wisely--certainly inevitably.

For while, where the intellect is highly cultured, and the cerebral life composes the major activity of the individual, early marriage becomes generally the most dangerous of all experiments, and the fruitful cause of human anguish, or the yet more disastrous cause of human atrophy and non-development, it may, on the other hand, lose all its danger where the intellectual faculties are more or less dormant through non-cultivation, and where the action of the physical functions form the major activity of the individual concerned.

For, while the brain, in the mentally labouring individual often continues to grow and modify itself till forty, or in exceptional cases till much later, and while the psychic condition in the case of such persons tends completely to modify and change itself between the age of adolescence and the ripe adult maturity of thirty or thirty-five--so that the man or woman of thirty-three has often little or nothing in common with the youth or maiden of eighteen, or even of twenty-one, out of whose crude substance they have developed; and who therefore may have little or nothing in common with the individual whom that youth or maiden selected as a companion, and may therefore find, long before middle life, the continual union with that individual a moral deformity and a mental death--it is, on the other hand, probable that where the brain is not highly active, and under conditions of life in which (however great the natural intelligence) the intellectual faculties are kept more or less quiescent, where little mental stimulation is brought to bear on the individual between the ages of puberty and ripe adulthood, that little or no change or development takes place; and that therefore the person who is selected as an appropriate companion at eighteen or twenty-one will probably be quite as harmonious a companion at thirty or forty; and the danger of early marriage is non-existent.

The continuance of the power of mental growth and expansion, even to extreme old age, in such men as Michael Angelo, Goethe, Victor Hugo, and other men of genius, exemplifies the enormous power of persistent mental growth which is possible where the intellect is keenly active throughout life.

The man of unusual mental force and activity is often merely in his psychic adolescence at thirty or thirty-five, when his physical growth has already ceased, and when the mental expansion of even the ordinarily cultured and mentally active individual is generally complete.

And this fact, perhaps, largely accounts for the phenomenon, often remarked, of the evil almost always resulting from the very early marriages of men of genius, and the often exceeding happy results of their sex relations and companionships when formed more maturely.

And it may perhaps be set down as an axiom, that the greater the mental power and activity, the later should be the riveting of a life-long relationship; and the smaller the mental activity, as opposed to physical, the earlier may it safely be accomplished.

An analogous condition exists with regard to physical development.

The average man or woman, and more especially those leading sedentary lives and using the muscles little, develop little or not at all in muscularity after the ages of eighteen or twenty, while the dancer, the labouring man, or the athlete, who continually cultivates his muscles by use, continues to develop enormously; so that an iron band riveted round the arm of the blacksmith at eighteen would have eaten its way into the flesh almost to the bone by the time the man were thirty (if, indeed, it has not arrested all growth); while on the arm of the student it might still hang loose; and the athlete who at thirty should be compelled to use the dumb-bells he had used at eighteen would find them worse than useless.

Those who unqualifiedly condemn early marriage under all conditions, and those who fail to recognize the atrophy and evil caused by it under others, have probably failed to look at the matter from both sides.

There is little or no mental suffering or moral evil caused by the early unions among simple up-country folk, far removed from the stir of cities, and whose monotonous and unstimulating surroundings give scope for little intellectual activity, however great may be their natural mental powers and strength of will.

As to the material utility, under their social conditions, of these early marriages, there is no doubt.

Prevented by their isolated position from any companionship with those of their own age beyond the limits of their family, and shut off from those sports and amusements which in cities and even small societies draw the young of different sexes together in light social intercourse, and which satisfy the needs of youth as the games of childhood satisfied the child, and render the celibacy of early youth not only endurable, but often make those years the most joyful of life:--and shut out entirely as they are, in their really primitive condition, from all those intellectual enjoyments which are independent of actual society, and which, perhaps, are to be tasted to the full by the man or woman who lives alone with the immortally embalmed dead in books--a delight which, until under the pressure of overpowering personal affection, renders some men and women unwilling to give up their celibate life, fearing they shall be robbed of it!

--devoid of all this, the life of the young African Boer, whether man or woman, who has attained puberty, becomes inexpressibly empty, and probably physically and mentally unhealthy, if they remain single.

There is, further, an economic reason for these early unions: the Boer does not seek to make money that he may marry; he marries that he may make a start in life.

Not only is it impossible for the young man to trek away to some solitary farm without a companion who may cook his food, make his clothing, and attend to him when ill, but if he remain on his father's homestead it is impossible for him to start his own little household, and he remains merely a child in his father's house while he remains single; therefore, when he desires to attain to full manhood and begin life, he of necessity looks round for a partner in his wife.

And the maiden's life is equally barren of aim till she finds a husband.

It might seem that with his solitary environment this matter of finding a wife might be one of difficulty and almost of impossibility.

But the skill of the fore-trekker in accommodating himself to the conditions of his solitary South African life has invented an institution which does away with all difficulty.

When the youth arrives at the age of seventeen or eighteen, certain mysterious phenomena begin to take place.

When a "smous" comes round he barters the sheepskins his mother has given him for a pair of brass studs which the "smous" sells him for gold, or, with a certain part of his carefully saved small hoard, buys a white handkerchief and silk necktie; and when his father goes to sell the wool the youth buys for himself a pair of shop-made boots and a white shirt; and if his father has given him no horse he exchanges one of his cows for a stallion;

or if he be in a condition of too great shortness of cash, and his father has no horse suitable, he may even borrow one from a distant neighbour; but it is a point of pride under the circumstances to have one of his own.

His elder sister or his younger brother are usually his confidants, and he talks over with them his plans.

From ten to fifteen, or thirty or even forty miles off, there are various homesteads scattered about the country-side, and desolate indeed must that country be in which in some of them there are not marriageable girls.

He may have seen none of them face to face, but he has probably seen them at a distance when he went to church at Nachtmaal[56] with his parents, and may have even shaken hands with some of them; or he may have seen them when his father sent him to the neighbouring farms to seek for strayed cattle; or at some rare wedding dance or New Year's party two years before he may have seen and spoken to them; and even though he should never have met them, he is not wholly without knowledge of them.

From his mother and grandmother he has learnt all their descent and family history; his grandmother's brother was probably married to their grandfather's cousin, and the family diseases, failures, characteristics, and virtues are all known to him.

Further, he generally has a good idea of their worldly possessions, of the nature of their father's farms, of how much wool is sold at each shearing, and what horses and cattle their parents possess; and he is generally able to calculate what, considering the number of the children, the portion of each daughter will be.

He has also heard from young men whom he has met what is the appearance of certain maidens whom he has never seen; which are fair and which dark; which fat and which thin, which have the reputation of being sharp-tempered and which mild.

News of this kind circulates freely over the whole country-side.

He has long conversations with his sister, whose advice, however, he often neglects; and she irons up his white shirt and collar carefully for him in the back-room one night after the rest of the family have gone to bed, just "to prevent foolish remarks being made!"

There is a curious reticence preserved by the whole household on the entire matter as a rule.

He may discuss his plans with sister or brother, but is seldom questioned directly, nor are his plans publicly referred to in the household circle: though his mother takes many an opportunity of allowing him to know her view of all the girls on the country-side.

If a son of _hers_ were to be married to such and such an one, she should never set her foot within her doors, and such an one she knows to be a lazy slut, her mother was so before her, and the daughter was sure to resemble the mother.

As to such and such an one, she would rather see her son dead than married into that family; they have all bad tempers.

With regard to another family, they are so poor that they don't see a piece of fat meat twice in three years' time.

Now so-and-so, she has never seen her, but should not object to such a girl in her family; her father was a third cousin, they may be considered near relations, and all the family know how to conduct themselves with dignity.

On another occasion, when the family are seated at table, she breaks out suddenly with regard to the daughter of a neighbour some fifty miles off, an only child.

She has seen her once in church, she says; she may not be very beautiful, but what of that?

--beauty fades.

Her father is an elder in the church, and her family have always been respectable; she has got her mother's portion already, and when her father dies she will have the farm.

She may not be very young, she is nearly nineteen, but when a girl has property she knows her own value too well to take the first young man who may come round just wishing to go through her things.

If _she_ (the mother) were a young man going out to court, that is the direction _she_ would look in; but young men must and always will run after the eye, they never know their own good!

She addresses these remarks to the father, who eats his dinner and quietly assents.

And the young man looks down intently at his plate, and the other members of the family exchange glances.

He knows accurately long before the time of his actual setting out what view is taken by his parents of his prospects, and who will and who will not be welcomed.

[56] Nachtmaal = Holy Communion.

On a certain morning he asks his father's leave to go visiting; and in the evening, when he has counted in the sheep, and attended to all his duties, or, if the place he intends visiting be at a great distance, earlier in the afternoon, he equips himself in his best attire, the studs are in the shirt, the gauze is arranged around his hat, he puts the white handkerchief in his breast-pocket, where, as he approaches his destination, it can easily be pulled up and made to hang out.

According to his means will be the quality and smartness of his suit, but his spurs will always be made to shine so that you can see your face in them, and if he has no ring he will sometimes borrow one from his sister or grandmother, which he forces on to his little finger.

His horse has been carefully polished up for days, if not for months.

If it be what it should be, it has very high action, raising its feet and playing its head as soon as the rein is drawn in, while it is all-important it should be a stallion--one with black body and white feet being absolutely ideal for this purpose--a man who went out courting on a mare would be the ridicule of the country-side.

There is much admiration and interest lavished on himself and his horse as he rides away from the homestead, the children having never seen him so accoutred before.

Everyone is aware what his object is, his destination having been generally imparted to his sister or brother, who are sure to repeat it to the mother, but as a rule no direct questions are asked.

According as that destination is distant, five, fifteen, twenty, or thirty or more miles, he has to time the hour of his departure, which is so arranged that just as the sun is setting and the sheep are coming home to the kraal he arrives in sight of the house he visits.

The children or little Kaffirs who are playing outside see him from the kraal, or someone catches sight of his approach from the house, and the cry of "Daar kom mense!"

(There come people!

) is raised, and the news flies round.

The house-mother, who has perhaps been sitting at the kitchen door to watch the maids take up the skins that have been nailed out to dry, and the daughter or daughters, who have been giving out rations or standing about in the cool, retire into the house.

It is quickly to be seen as the young man approaches what manner of visitor he is; and the mother seats herself in her elbow-chair, while the girls retire precipitately to their chamber to prepare themselves.

Then the young man rides round first to the kraals to meet the father, who, if he feel well-disposed towards him, advances slowly to meet him; he is always asked into the house; but in rare cases, where there is some strong objection against him or his family, he is not invited to off-saddle, and in that case he is bound to leave the same evening and find a night's lodging elsewhere; but usually, though his advances may not be desired by the parents, he is hospitably entertained; and the courtship is seldom arrested at this early stage.

When his horse has been off-saddled he is invited into the front room, and if his visit be much approved of his steed may be offered a feed of mealies or oats, an indication which he may accept as most favourable.

When he has seated himself in the front room, the house-mother in her elbow-chair proceeds to inquire after the health of his relatives, and if she now meets him for the first time inquires the number of his brothers and sisters, and questions him gravely on other points of personal and family history of the same nature, which is considered a polite attention.

There are from time to time slight creakings of the door of the bedroom in which the daughters are attiring themselves, as one or other attempts to peep through the crack in the boards, or to hold it slightly ajar.

If there be two of marriageable age, they both put on their best new gowns and tie fresh handkerchiefs round their throats; and if they be so fortunate as to remember to bring the cocoa-nut oil into the room, they heavily dress their hair with it.

Just as the Kaffir maid is bringing the lights into the front room they appear, and shake hands with the stranger, who silently rises and extends his fingers, and they both proceed about their evening duty, preparing the coffee and supper; but in doing so both find it necessary to return frequently to look for something in the little wall cupboard in the front room, or to fetch some article from the sleeping apartments which open out of it.

The young man sits on the sofa and turns his riding-whip round and round, answering the house-mother's questions or sitting silent, but keenly noting the differing figures or other points of resemblance or difference between the sisters.

By-and-by, when the family gather round the supper table, the elder girls, more especially the eldest, wait on them; the children keep their eyes fixed on the stranger as they eat, and the young man looks into his plate and eats silently, or answers questions from the house-father, but notes all that takes place.

When supper is ended the family return to the front room; and the young children troop off to bed one by one.

Then comes the hour of trial if the young man be bashful and unused to courtship: for having made up his mind which daughter he desires to pay his attention to, it is now necessary he should request the parents' permission to sit up with her.

If either the parents or the young lady object, which latter is seldom the case, there is a refusal and the courtship is nipped in this, its very first phase: if they consent the mother frequently gets out, or allows the daughter to get out, a couple of tallow candles, which are to be burnt during the night.

Then, when the rest of the family have retired, the maiden of his choice comes in and seats herself beside him on the sofa.

From time to time there are creakings at the different bedroom doors that open into the front room, as the children or other members of the family get out of bed to peep through at them, and the young maiden may even suggest their retiring to the back dining-room if there be one; but after a while the whole household fall asleep, the tallow candle burns dimly on the table, and the youth and maiden pass the long night seated side by side and conversing, the girl generally making coffee near morning, that they may keep themselves awake.

About four, or a little earlier, she gives him a final cup, and he saddles his horse and rides away; and when the rest of the family rise he is already gone.

To be found there when the sun rose would be a breach of etiquette.

If the youth and maiden have approved of one another they have made a promise to exchange rings, or have actually exchanged them, and have made an appointment for his next coming in a week or ten days' time.

If either has disliked the other, there is no necessity for him to return, and in no case is either bound by this first visit.

He may "ride round" and sit up with half-a-dozen maidens in succession, and this is not uncommonly done, though the young man who "rides round" too much runs the risk of acquiring a bad name, as it is supposed the girls have refused him, or that he is not serious in his intentions.

If all goes satisfactorily, he returns again in a week or ten days' time, and sits up once more.

And it is now necessary he should think very gravely of the matter, for the third or fourth time he comes, instead of riding away before dawn, it is understood that he will wait till the parents have risen, and he and the maiden of his choice will ask the parents' consent to the marriage; and it is also an understood thing that he would not have come the fourth time had his own parents not consented.

The elders are now formally asked to give their consent, this part of the proceedings being purely formal, as had all the parents not concurred, matters would probably never have reached this stage.

The wedding is supposed to take place about three weeks after this, the ceremony of "ou'ers vraag" (parents' asking): and it is either determined to fetch the minister from the nearest village where one is to be found, or a journey is undertaken to the spot where he resides.

The young couple generally, for a few weeks at least after the marriage, remain in the house of the bride's parents, though it is a matter of arrangement with which family they shall permanently reside, the rule being that the man lives on his father's farm unless there is good reason it should be otherwise.

The wedding is always at the house of the bride's parents, and accompanied by such rejoicings as their wealth and the size of their house allow; dancing is kept up all night, large quantities of mutton, milk-tart, and boiled dried fruit and coffee being served up.

About two o'clock the bride is taken to the bridal chamber and undressed by the bridesmaids; the bridegroom is brought to the door by the best man, who takes the key out of the door, if it have one, and gives it to the bridegroom, who retires, locking the door on the inside; and the dancing is kept up till after daylight, when the guests betake themselves to their carts and wagons and return to their homes, often a day's journey distant.

Then the great event of the Boer's life is ended.

After a while, it may be he takes his bride home to his father's house.

They share a room often with other members of the family, and the girl takes her place as an elder daughter in the household, and, especially if there be no grown daughter, makes coffee, gives out the rations, and attends to the maids.

After a while, perhaps, when she has had her first or second child, and the young couple are of an age to take care of themselves, they remove into two small disconnected rooms of their own built on at the end of the farm-house, or a little way off; and it is not uncommon, as sons and daughters grow up, to have three or four of these small dwellings on one farm; though some of the married children almost invariably remain in the large house with the parents.

Sometimes, after a few years have passed, the young couple leave the parental home altogether, and become part of the band of trekkers who are ceaselessly moving North in search of new pastures.

As the years go by the bride becomes the buxom matron of twenty-five or twenty-six with half-a-dozen children, and she not only has her own coffee table and chair and stove, but, as her eldest daughter soon reaches an age at which she can make coffee, and attend to the active duties of the household, the mother begins to sit sewing permanently in her elbow-chair as her mother and grandmother did before her, and the new generation repeats the story of the old.

In the old days (and still to-day wherever in the far northern territories the old conditions subsist, and the new have not rushed in) little or no instruction was of necessity given to the children.

Their mothers or grandmothers taught them the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer in Holland Dutch, as it had been taught to them, and related to them some little Bible stories; and occasionally some broken-down soldier or wandering tramp, who turned up, was hired for a few pounds a year to instruct the children.

Part of his occupation consisted in treading the wool down in the bales at shearing time, and performing other kindred duties, and if he was seldom treated with much respect he more seldom deserved it.

It was in the remote past, as it is in the remote northern districts to-day, an uncommon thing to find an up-country Boer who could read and write fluently, or add up a sum in simple addition exactly; and the flood of education which the exertions of the clergy, and the march of South African civilization is pouring in on them, is an innovation mainly of the last twenty or thirty years, which, rapidly as it is advancing, has not yet made itself felt among the quite primitive portions of the population.

(It may be superfluous, but it may here be convenient to reiterate, that in describing the Boer, we are not referring to the nineteenth-century descendants of the Dutch-Huguenots, but to the Taal-speaking seventeenth-century men of the same blood, who largely populate our remote colonial up-country districts, but who are perhaps found most perfectly preserved in the remote portions of their own states.

These folk have as little resemblance to the nineteenth-century French Dutchman of the Bovenland as the smooth-faced young clerk, who meekly measures you a yard of ribbon or velvet in a London shop, has to a wild Highland clansman, though he may have the true Macgregor or Campbell blood within his veins.

Not only the virtues but the vices of the one form an antithesis to those of the other.

There are thousands of cultured and intellectual English-speaking descendants of the Dutch-Huguenots, who not only have no trace of the virtue of the true Boer nor of his failings, but who know nothing of him and have never drunk a cup of coffee nor passed a night in a Boer farm-house.

) The children grew up with a great respect for the Bible that lay on the little table, but seldom with the power of studying it; with a knowledge that God made the world, that Noah and his sons were saved in the Ark, that the Jews were ordered to destroy the Canaanites; and that they, the Boers, were the chosen people, and South Africa the Promised Land: but of complex modern intellectual knowledge they possessed little, nor in their quiet and peaceful life did they feel the need of any.

To the outsider this life of the primitive Boer may appear monotonous and blank.

But it has aspects of beauty, and rich compensations of its own.

Is it nothing, that he should rise morning after morning, in the sweet grey dawn, when the heavy brains of the card-player and the theatre-goer are still wrapped in their first dull sleep, and watch the first touch of crimson along his hills--a crimson fairer and more rich than that of any sunset-sky--while the stars fade slowly up above;

that he should stand, drinking his coffee on the "stoep" in the sharp exhilarating air, as the earth grows pinker, till after a while, as he stands at his kraal gate and watches his sheep file out, he sees all his plain turn gilt in the sunlight?

Is there no charm in those long peaceful days, when hours count as moments; when one may hear the flies buzz out in the sunshine, and the bleat of a far-off sheep sounds loud and clear; when upon the untaxed brain, through the untaxed nerves of sense, every sight and sound trace themselves with delicious clearness and merely to live and hear the flies hum--is a pleasure?

Is there no charm in those evenings when after the long still day the farm breaks into its temporary life and bustle, and the sheep stream bleating home, and the cows come hurrying to the little calves who put their heads between the bars and over the kraal gate; and the Kaffirs come up to the house for the milking, and the children and dogs play about, and in the great still sky the stars come out one by one; while there is still light enough from the clear west for the house-mother to finish her seam of sewing, as she sits at the back-door?

Is it nothing that the competition, ambition, worry and fret, which compose the greater part of men's lives in cities, are hardly known here?

--that with untired nerves and untaxed brain man and woman may sink to sleep at night, and in the course of long years hardly know a night of broken rest or wakeful torture?

Are this man's pleasures smaller or less rational, when he breaks in his young horses or rejoices over the birth of a dozen white-nosed calves, than those of the man who finds delight in watching the roll of the dice at Monte Carlo, or who quivers with excitement as he determines whether he shall put his coin on this square or that?

Is he not a more rational and respectable object when with his wife and children behind him, he drives his wagon with his eight horses through his own veld on his way to church, than the man, who sometimes with the care of an empire on his shoulders, with all the opportunities for culture which unlimited wealth and unlimited opportunity can bestow at the end of this nineteenth century, and with almost unlimited opportunity for the exercise of the intellect in large fields for human benefit, yet finds life's noblest recreation in driving round and round in an enclosed park, with four horses, and a lacquey behind with a trumpet, and a red coat,--like a four years' child showing off his go-cart!

Is not his life, not merely more rational, but more rich in enjoyment than that of worldlings, over-gorged with the products of a material civilization?

For, it may never be overlooked, that the intensity of human enjoyment does not vary as the intensity of the stimuli; but with the sensitiveness and power of response of the nerves concerned.

As the youth obtains a more enjoyable exhilaration from his first glass of wine than the drunkard from his bottle, and the child from his sweetmeat than a gourmand from his dinner--so our African Boer, in common with all who lead a severely simple life, knows probably more of intense enjoyment than is compassed by a hundred men seeking always for new sensations and new stimulations.

Is not the human soul a string which may soon be strung so tight and struck so often that it refuses to vibrate at all and ends by hanging limp; and the human life is a very small cup, where all beyond a certain amount poured into it runs to waste?

Through the course of a long life, the man who employs himself on the race-course or on the Stock Exchange, and the woman who passes from theatre and ball-room to race-course and hunting-field in search of enjoyment, probably never truly enjoys what the Boer feels as he looks out over his door in the early morning, with his coffee cup in his hand, and sees the grey dawn breaking across his own land; nor knows what the Boer woman knows when she sits peaceful on the step of the door with her baby sucking at her bosom, and sees the sunshine shimmering over the bushes and landscape she lives with.

These things the worn dwellers in cities do not know of.

It may be asserted that our appraisement of the joys of Boer life is made from the standpoint of the much-cultured person whose highly active nervous system responds to a small stimulus, that in reality the South African Boer cares no more for the blue sky over his head than if it were a piece of blue rag pinned out above him; that the mysteries of the mighty daily cycle of nature which passes before his eyes, and which he has to watch whether he will or no, are no more to him than the lighting and putting out of candles; that the red sand and the brown stones of the kopjes and the little karroo bushes beneath which he will at last sleep have no value for him than as a substance he can walk over, build his house with, or give his stock to eat; and that Nature, with her complex and subtle speech, has no power of reaching his heavy consciousness.

But this is not true.

He has no language in which to re-express what he learns from Nature;

but he knows her.

The modern poetaster who writes volumes on the sea and stars, who would die of terror if left out alone for one night with those very stars and the God of stars that he adores in verse, and for whom the sea is only endurable seen from a fashionable parade with bands and much-dressed women to save him from the awful oppression of being alone with it; it is not _he_, but the Chaldean shepherd who rejoices when the night comes that he may lie beside his sheep, and with his head on a stone watch the hosts march past above; it was he who named them for us and loved them, as a man loves his fellows.

As it is the rough sailor, who amid all the joys of shore longs simply to be out again and to feel the night spray on his cheek, who loves and knows the voice of the sea.

And when the old Boer tells you simply how many a young porcupine has at birth, and which bird points the way to a honey nest, and gives you the names and uses of the bushes you walk over, his knowledge speaks of a closer union than the poetaster's words.

It is not the girl in delicate attire--such as takes its birth only in vast cities and as the result of much human labour and thought--who with attentive male companions waiting on her glances, climbs an eminence to exclaim loudly over the beauty of the view and the loveliness of nature, who loves nature--it is the man who silently has been contented to live and labour on that Alpine height all his life, and who would die of weariness and thirst if removed from it; it is he who loves it.

As the man who writes sonnets to a woman and throws himself in transports of passion at her feet for a moment is not the man who owns her, but he who firmly grasps her hand and walks shoulder to shoulder beside her through dark and light till death divides them;

so it is not he who praises Nature, but he who lies continually on her breast and is satisfied who is actually united to her and receives her strength.

No one with keen perception can have lived among the Boers without perceiving how close, though unconscious, is their union with the world about them, and how real the nourishment they draw from it.

The little karoo bushes, where they are shooting, the ironstones of the kopje with the sun on them, are beautiful to the Boer.

Standing at the back-door of a farm-house once, and looking out over a little flat filled with mimosa trees in full flower while the afternoon light was filling all the valley with a haze, a powerful Boer woman stood beside us watching the scene.

Not one of the most refined of her kind, sharp of tongue, and strong of hand, and unable either to read or write, the thought struck us how little of the infinite beautiful land was probably visible to her--when we looked round the woman was in tears.

"Ach," she whispered, "it is a beautiful land the Lord our God has given us!

When I look at it so, something swells up and up in my throat--I feel I never will be angry with the servants and children again!"

There is perhaps nothing which shows more the ignorance and limitations of those of us brought up under conditions of modern artificial civilization than the common impression that these silent persons living and labouring always in contact with inanimate nature cannot perceive or comprehend it as we with larger powers of expression are able to.

A man (not a Boer this time, but an English settler of the same type, a silent, uncultured hard-working man) who for thirty years had lived on the banks of a certain little stream, planting his fruit trees and ploughing his lands, was attacked at sixty by an incurable disease.

Placed in an ox-wagon to be taken to the nearest hospital, his friends and neighbours accompanied him for a short distance.

As the oxen's feet passed down into the little African stream which he had crossed and recrossed, and on whose banks he had laboured for thirty years, he passed his hard horned hands over his face and burst into tears and, to the astonishment of all about him, broke forth into the words of Tennyson's song:-- Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea, Thy tribute wave deliver;

No more by thee my step shall be For ever and for ever, repeating all the verses; a song which his children had doubtless sung about the house when they came home from school.

Finally: if absolutely happiness be held to lie largely in the unlimited control of a man over himself, and in the absolute right to do at every moment exactly that which is good in his own eyes, without being questioned or opposed, then the owner of an African farm is among the happiest of human creatures.

The limited monarch is hedged round on every side by the conditions under which he is allowed to reign; the despot, whether he rules over a savage tribe or is Czar of all the Russias, has ultimately to consider at every moment whether he may not outrage the most subservient of his creatures so far that they may depose him, while for the ordinary citizen, in the conventional civilized society, life is so walled about with trivial Thou-shalts and Thou-shalt-nots, that for some of us it almost ceases to be worth living; but the owner of a solitary African farm reigns over land, bird, beast, and man as far as his eye reaches; as a small god, without opposition and without fear.

Alexander Selkirk on his island was not more absolute than he.

And if we except the eagle when she builds her eyrie on the inaccessible peak of a mountain, and dwells there alone with her mate and young, no intelligent thing drinks more deeply out of the cup of personal freedom or reigns so dominant in its own sphere.