drudgery. Often absent from home on hunting trips and sometimes on
commando, the men entrust their work on such occasions (as is now the
case during the present war) to the care of their wives and daughters,
assisted by some younger sons, if the family includes any, or else
simply with the aid of Kaffir servants. Sometimes they are without any
such help, when they take a pride in doing it alone.

Girls as well as boys learn to ride on horseback when quite young. It is
quite a usual thing to see women riding astride fashion, collecting
sheep and cattle, or driving their horse carts and spiders (carriages),
unattended by males, over distances of over twenty and thirty
miles--women spanning in ox-teams to their travelling wagons, driving
them with long whips on journeys occupying one or more days. During the
Kaffir wars the Boers used to trek (travel) in bodies with their wagons,
which would serve to form a laager or fort, their families and
belongings being placed in the centre. During an attack the women would
attend to the men's wants, reload their rifles, and even take a more
active part in repelling the enemy, many of them being also crack shots.
The above-stated efficient and hardy habits with men and women apply
more to the people in the two Republics, and particularly so to those of
the Transvaal, while the Colonial Boers on the whole have had no such
experience, but instead have lived in uninterrupted peace and comfort
for generations, and may be classed with farmers of any other
well-governed and protected country or colony. The Boer farmers in the
northern portions of the Cape Colony, however, approximate to those of
the Orange Free State in hardy habits and ability to fend for themselves
when in difficulty. But with the Transvaal Boers the training incident
to wars, hunting, and nomadic movements has been more sustained, and
they are thus in best form and fitness of efficiency compared with all
the rest.