mper upon their military qualities by a dour fatalistic
Old Testament religion and an ardent and consuming patriotism. Combine
all these qualities and all these impulses in one individual, and you
have the modern Boer--the most formidable antagonist who ever crossed
the path of Imperial Britain. Our military history has largely consisted
in our conflicts with France, but Napoleon and all his veterans have
never treated us so roughly as these hard-bitten farmers with their
ancient theology and their inconveniently modern rifles.

Look at the map of South Africa, and there, in the very centre of the
British possessions, like the stone in a peach, lies the great stretch
of the two republics, a mighty domain for so small a people. How came
they there? Who are these Teutonic folk who have burrowed so deeply into
Africa? It is a twice-told tale, and yet it must be told once again if
this story is to have even the most superficial of introductions. No one
can know or appreciate the Boer who does not know his past, for he is
what his past has made him.

It was about the time when Oliver Cromwell was at his zenith--in 1652,
to be pedantically accurate--that the Dutch made their first lodgment at
the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese had been there before them, but,
repelled by the evil weather, and lured forwards by rumours of gold,
they had passed the true seat of empire and had voyaged further to
settle along the eastern coast. Some gold there was, but not much, and
the Portuguese settlements have never been sources of wealth to the
mother country, and never will be until the day when Great Britain
signs her huge cheque for Delagoa Bay. The coast upon which they settled
reeked with malaria. A hundred miles of poisonous marsh separated it
from the healthy inland plateau. For centuries these pioneers of South
African colonisation strove to obtain some further footing, but save
along the courses of the rivers they made little progress. Fierce
natives and an enervating climate barred their way.

But it was different with the Dutch. That very rudeness of climate
which had so impressed the Portuguese adventurer was the source of their
success. Cold and poverty and storm are the nurses of the qualities
which make for empire. It is the men from the bleak and barren lands who
master the children of the light and the heat. And so the Dutchmen at
the Cape prospered and grew stronger in that robust climate. They did
not penetrate far in