Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE BOERS This country of the Transvaal, which is approximately the same size as Great Britain and Ireland, somewhat larger than Italy, and but little smaller than Prussia, and which is, as we have just seen, admirably adapted for colonisation, abounding in gold and in addition possessing a practically inexhaustible supply of coal and all the possibilities of a great iron industry, is at present inhabited by a black population of about three-quarters of a million (the approximate population of Calcutta) and by a white population of a quarter of a million (about the same as that of Bristol). Yet it is actually governed by a small minority of even the white inhabitants; and the President of the South African Republic has at his back to support him in controlling and developing the country a number of subjects which would be exceeded by such provincial towns as York or small counties as Westmorland. The Boers of the Transvaal number no more than 70,000 or 80,000; yet they rule twice that number of white aliens, and ten times that number of black inhabitants: and, as the future of the country must in a large degree depend upon the character of the people who rule it, I will devote this chapter to a consideration of the leading characteristics of these Boer rulers of the Transvaal. The story of how—some in the pure colonising spirit and some to avoid religious persecution—a party of several hundred of Dutchmen and French Huguenots came to settle at the Cape of Good Hope with their wives and families is now well known. These men were of the same blood as those who had withstood the great power of Philip of Spain, and were prepared to risk life itself rather than forgo any portion of their liberty. Arriving at the Cape towards the end of the seventeenth century, t...