speak, that every Boer in the Cape had packed wife, children, and goods
into ox-wagons and had trekked north. As a matter of fact, the greater
proportion remained behind, and their descendants formed the majority of
the 376,000 whites enumerated in the census of 1891. The Great Trek was
really composed of various detachments which started one after another
in 1836. Statistics of the numbers of trekkers vary from 5,000 to
10,000. I have not been able to trace whether these figures refer only
to adult males, or whether they include the women and children. In any
case, when discussing South African affairs, we must always bear in mind
the small number of persons concerned, in comparison with the vast
extent of the area in question.

Not only these trekkers, but all who, from the period of the seventeenth
century onwards, had had the tendency to wander from the Cape, belonged
to the most adventurous and warlike portion of the population. They had
spread themselves over an enormous tract of country, and were in close
touch with kaffirs and bushmen, cattle-lifters using poisoned arrows.
Living in isolated families, they acquired, in the course of their
unceasing struggle with their savage neighbours, not only their
qualities of daring and warlike skill, but habits of cruelty and cunning
as well.


3.--_Essentially a Man of War and Politics._

Between the Dutchman of Amsterdam, Haarlem, the Hague, or Rotterdam,
installed in his comfortable dwelling, cultivating his tulips, priding
himself upon his pictures, and drinking his beer, and the Boer, pure and
simple, there is not the slightest analogy.