During these months of incarceration the natives are separated from their women-folk and families.  The consequence is one of the most striking and shocking features of the compound system.  A number of the lowest, drink-besotted, coloured prostitutes, estimated at about 5,000, have collected at Beaconsfield, where, so to speak, they constitute a colony, occupying a revolting quarter of the township.  When the natives come out for a short spell these unhappy women receive them.  It is, no doubt, convenient from the standpoint of the company to have them there, for it probably prevents the natives from going away.  This moral cancer is one of the direct and inevitable outcomes and concomitants of the compound system.

(7) The South African Dutch contribute more money annually to native mission work than the South African English.  The English missions in South Africa are supported chiefly by funds from England.  The largest and most handsome churches for natives in South Africa are those built by the Dutch.  The Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa has more representatives in the foreign mission field than all the other English denominations in South Africa together.

If necessary, more facts bearing on this subject of native treatment could be adduced.  One could, for example, point out how the aboriginal Tasmanians and Australians have been almost completely extirpated; how, in the name of civilization, thousands of Dervishes have been mowed down in Egypt, and how South African soil itself has been stained from time to time by the blood of Zulus, Basutos, Matabeles and other coloured races, who became the victims of British, and not Boer, arms.  Remembering all this and much more, we claim that England has no right to cast the first stone at the Boer in regard to the treatment of coloured races.

The Boer’s nature does not admit of such tyrannical actions of which he has constantly been accused.  His native servants are treated almost as members of his own family, and often serve him voluntarily for several years in succession.

[Illustration:  THE LATE COMMANDANT DANIE THERON.

Photo by Duffus Bros., Capetown.]

Mr. Chamberlain in a Parliamentary Debate has expressed himself on this matter as follows:—­

“Members of Parliament appear to be under the impression that the Boers in the Transvaal were fierce and unjust aggressors, and that they dispossessed the natives of their territory and brutally ill-treated them afterwards.  I wish honourable members would read the papers before they came to this rash and inconsiderate conclusion.  The absolute reverse of that was the fact.”

The Boers, as a people and as individuals, are thoroughly hospitable, indeed we do not hesitate to affirm that no nation is more hospitable.  To meet them, dwell in their midst, associate with them and know them, is to like, if not to love them.