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Slagter's Nek marked the dividing of the ways between the British Government and the Africanders. And the separation soon became more marked. With vicarious generosity, the English Government gave very lenient terms to the Kaffir tribes who in 1834 had raided the border farmers.
The fat, slatternly, frankly dirty vrouws had not the remotest idea of sanitation; the Germans and Irish, blandly or doggedly impervious to savage smells, pursued their unsavoury way in defiance of the clamorous necessity for hygienic measures, until the majority of the pallid, untidy, scared Englishwomen, the energetic Americans, and the sturdier Africanders, after making what headway was possible against the ever-rising tide of filth, had yielded to the lethargy bred of despair and lack of exercise, and ceased to strive.
It was feared that the Africanders might buy the goods and throw them across the border; it had been done. But information in disproof of this was forthcoming when the story reached us that a number of the Cape Dutch had risen in rebellion and needed the weapons for themselves! Kimberley's voice at once favoured the extreme penalty death for high treason!
Fifteen or twenty Africanders who will end their voyage to-day and strike for their several homes from Delagoa Bay to-morrow, sat up singing on the afterdeck in the moonlight till 3 A.M. Good fun and wholesome. And the songs were clean songs, and some of them were hallowed by tender associations.
His pointing hand went southward until they saw the Africanders riding down to Windhuk. Two men, Boer farmers both, rode side by side and talked of the German officer they brought prisoner with them. He had put sheep-dip in the wells of drinking-water; his life was fairly forfeit, and he was not to be killed. "We want no more hate in South Africa," they agreed.
'This gang, which I wish to be clearly understood was spread over the whole of South Africa, the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, and the Cape Colony, used the Bond, the press, and the pulpit to further its schemes. 'Reitz, whom I believe to have been an honest enthusiast, set himself up as second sponsor to the Bond and voiced the doctrine of this gang: "Africa for the Africanders.
'This successful anti-British policy of Kruger created a number of imitators Steyn, Fischer, Esselen, Smuts, and numerous other young educated Africanders of the Transvaal, Orange Free State, and the Cape Colony, who, misled by his successes, ambitiously hoped by the same means to raise themselves to the same pinnacle. 'Krugerism under them developed into a reign of terror.
For a hundred more years the history of the colony was a record of the gradual spreading of the Africanders over the huge expanse of veldt which lay to the north of them. Cattle-raising became an industry, but in a country where six acres can hardly support a sheep, large farms are necessary for even small herds. Six thousand acres was the usual size, and 5l. a year the rent payable to Government.
His brilliant lectures were all read from manuscript, and he had never been in the habit of thinking on his legs. In 1874 he could at least say that he spoke only for himself. In 1875 he committed the Colonial Office, and even the Cabinet, to his own personal opinions, which were not in favour of Parliamentary Government as understood either by Englishmen or by Africanders.
Bah! they talk a great deal there in England, but, at the bottom of it, it is shop, shop, shop. They talk of honour, and patriotism too, but they both give way to the shop. And I tell you this, Frank Muller: it is the shop that has made the English, and it is the shop that will destroy them. Well, so be it. We shall have our slice: Africa for the Africanders.
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