the truth in regard to them?  During the Bishop’s absence his residence was specially guarded by order of the Government.  The punishment meted out to some who remained in Johannesburg without permits exceeded in no case a higher fine than L3 without lashes.  As to the Boers’ intention of decoying the Doctor to stay, and then hold him at mercy, we need only remark that he must have thought more about his own importance than the Boers ever did.  His assertion that the Boers threatened to kill everybody, including women and children, and that some of them are bad enough to do it, needs no refutation, for it merits silent contempt.

A feeling of sadness, if not pity, lays hold of one to think that ministers of the Gospel could actually draw up large petitions, urging the British Government to prosecute the war vigorously until the complete subjugation of the Boers was accomplished, which meant either their entire extermination or the sacrifice of their sacred rights.

There were, however, several notable exceptions, men who were not afraid to speak the truth about their enemies or their country’s enemies, regardless of what others might think or say of themselves, regardless whether they would be called Boer-sympathisers or pro-Boers.  Such men we shall ever revere and hold in estimation because they dared to speak the truth, cost what it would.

Thus far we have depicted the Boer character negatively in denying the unjust and unfounded charges brought against them by callous and misinformed minds.  We do not hesitate to state that they are not a race of inferior beings, savage and uncivilized.  They are not as good as some have presented them, they are not as bad as others have pictured them.  Who, then, are these men and women who so stubbornly resisted British power and supremacy for such a long period under such great disadvantages?  What are their main characteristics?

The Boers are the descendants of those pioneers who, for various reasons, left the Cape Colony between the years 1834-39.  These emigrants or pioneers inspanned their large ox-waggons, bade farewell to their homes and farms in the Cape Colony and trekked across the Orange River.  They traversed the wide plains of the late Orange Free State and proceeded to the Drakensberg Mountains.  These mountains they crossed and settled down in Natal.  How they were attacked and massacred by the Zulus, and how they, in their turn, defeated the Zulus and broke their power, how Natal became a British colony, all this is ancient history.  The pioneers, objecting to English rule, quitted Natal.  Some of them forded the Vaal River and they founded the Transvaal or South African Republic.  Others settled west of the Drakensberg Range and founded the Orange Free State Republic.

These states were then infested by wild beasts and uncivilized native tribes.  Against these the sturdy pioneers had to contend, and only after years of suffering, hardship, and bloodshed did they succeed, by their indomitable spirit, in vanquishing all foes, and so made habitable and opened up for commerce and civilization the Republics, which the late war has laid in ruins and ashes, indeed, converted into a howling wilderness, a land of desolation.