They are
descended from that race which so valiantly resisted and defied Spanish
tyranny and power for eighty years, and so achieved that freedom of
life, freedom of thought and freedom of belief, from which all Europe
and England herself has derived priceless blessings. They are sprung
from that stock whose courage was not shaken by the flames of funeral
pyres, nor by all the tortures the human mind could devise; men who at
the block betrayed no signs of fear, but faced death, as brave men
ofttimes do, with a beatific smile, to the utter amazement of such as
had to enact the cruel tragedy. These pioneers have in their veins the
best blood of European nations, and their traditions are such as any
nation might be proud of.

With such a history behind them, and descended from such ancestors, it
is not strange that the most prominent feature in the Boer character is
an intense and unconquerable love of freedom. His isolation, his large
farm with outstretched plains or rugged mountains, and his manner of
living, all tend to nourish that love of freedom in his bosom. Above all
things he wants to be free and independent. His history is one long
record of trekking away from British domination, not because he wishes
to be exempted from all control and thus indulge in a lawless life, as
some writers have erroneously maintained, but because he desires a
government of his own. The chief desideratum with the Boer, in regard to
government, is that it shall be his own, and not that of some other
power, be it never so excellent a form of government.

When the Republics were annexed the English thought and hoped that the
Boers would very soon take to the new Government, would be more than
satisfied with the new arrangements, and so forget the privileges which
they had enjoyed under the auspices of their own government. Those who
thought and hoped thus were sadly disappointed. That powerful sentiment
and that strong passion for freedom, seated deep down in the heart of
the Boer, sustained them in bidding defiance to fearful odds for almost
three years. That inborn passion enabled the Boer nation to sacrifice
their all, and to endure for freedom's sake indescribable hardships and
sufferings.

A Boer may not exactly know all that independence includes; he may not
be able to enumerate the benefits accruing from it, but instinctively he
covets it as a jewel of great price.

That this love of liberty and of country amounted to something