The respectable traveller that lights on a Boer farm will invariably receive a cordial welcome.  The farmer will politely invite him to his house, and will try to make his guest feel quite at home.  Should it be late in the day, the guest will be expected to stay the night.  A plain but substantial supper will fall to his share.  The best bedroom and most comfortable bed will be at his disposal for the night, while his horses will receive every attention.  In the morning he will be invited to breakfast before setting out on his day’s journey.  Should the traveller, on leaving, offer to pay the farmer for the night’s accommodation, the latter will, as a rule, decline to accept any payment, nay, will regard it rather as an insult to be offered payment for his hospitality.  Callous and unappreciative characters have abused such hospitality, and construed it as a mark of ignorance on the part of the Boer.  He is, so they say, hospitable and ready to entertain because he is so stupid and ignorant.  There may be a grain of truth in this assertion, but to attribute Boer hospitality exclusively to this is as false as it is mean.

“...  I never want to meet kinder, more hospitable, and more comfortable people than the Boers.  True, some of them are poor and ignorant, but the general run of them live comfortably, rear their families well and with fair education.  They are the reverse of what we have been taught to consider them.  It will be a happy day for Australia when our pastoral country is settled by as fine a class of people.”

Thus wrote a Queensland officer, Major Spencer Browne, while Mr. R.H.  Davis, an Englishman who had resided for some time in Pretoria, offers the following testimony:—­

“I left Pretoria with every reason for regret.  I had come to it a stranger, and had found friends among men whom I had learned to like for themselves and for their cause.  I had come prejudiced against them, believing them to be all the English Press and my English friends had painted them—­semi-barbarous, uncouth, money-loving, and treacherous in warfare.  I found them simple to the limit of their own disadvantage, magnanimous to their enemies, independent and kindly.”

The trait that we admire and cherish most in the Boer character is their hospitality.  We shall ever gratefully remember how kindly our burghers were received by many a colonial farmer, such as the Van der Merwes of Toutelboschkoek and Bamuur, Calvinia district, the Therons of Rietpoort, Richmond, the two Miss Van der Merwes of Badsfontein, Murraysburg, and a host of others whose names we cannot mention here, as well as non-combatant farmers of the late Republics.  Weary and worn out by the fierce and unequal contest we were often refreshed at their tables, and were so invigorated by their kindness and hospitality that, after a brief respite, we could once more resume the struggle with fresh determination and revived energies.