OTHER BOOKS BY OLIVE SCHREINER STORIES, DREAMS AND ALLEGORIES DREAMS DREAM LIFE AND REAL LIFE TROOPER PETER HALKET WOMAN AND LABOUR T. Fisher Unwin Ltd London THOUGHTS ON SOUTH AFRICA BY OLIVE SCHREINER T. FISHER UNWIN LTD LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE First published in 1923 ( All rights reserved ) To MY HUSBAND THESE STRAY THOUGHTS ON THE LAND WE BOTH LOVE ARE INSCRIBED BY HIS WIFE OLIVE CRONWRIGHT SCHREINER Hanover, Cape Colony , October 11, 1901 . "Stray thoughts on South Africa, by a Returned Sou

These articles were written four years ago; the first, a description of South African scenery, appeared in The Fortnightly Review at that time. The rest did not follow. This was owing to the fact that there were at the Cape at that time certain parties and persons who, using the Boers of South Africa for their own purpose, yet pandered to them that they might ultimately more successfully obtain their own ends. These papers, written by one who had for years lived among the Boers, sharing their da

Therefore these papers, which make an attempt to delineate him in such guise as he lives, are now printed. They have been left as they stood save for the addition of a few foot-notes. OLIVE SCHREINER. As a rule, the book which requires a preface of explanation is a book better not written, and better not read. But certain parts of this book have appeared in periodicals and have caused, no doubt owing to the fragmentary nature of their publication, some misconceptions which it might be worth whil

This little book is the gratification of that wish. It is not a history, it is not a homily, it is not a political brochure—it is simply what one South African at the end of the nineteenth century thought, and felt, with regard to his native land: thought and felt with regard to its peoples, its problems and its scenery—it is nothing more than this; but it is also nothing less. I do not think, simple as such a book is, it need be necessarily quite without interest for any but the writer. I mysel

Nevertheless, there is a sense in which the people of a country are justified in their contempt of the bird's-eye view of the stranger. There is a certain knowledge of a land which is only to be gained by one born in it, or brought into long-continued, close, personal contact with it, and which in its perfection is perhaps never obtained by any man with regard to a country which he has not inhabited before he was thirty. It is the subjective emotional sympathy with its nature, and the comprehens

For our purpose, it is possible only to note shortly a few of those points in the early conditions of the Boer which bear most strongly on his later development, which have shaped his peculiarities, and made him what he is. The history of the Boer begins, as is well known, in 1652, when Van Riebeek landed at the Cape with his small handful of soldiers and sailors to found a victualling station under the shades of Table Mountain, for the ships of the Dutch East India Company as they sailed to and

At the same time they possess a curious imitative skill, and under shelving rocks and in caves all over South Africa their rude etchings and paintings of men and animals are found, animated by a crude life and vigour. Their powers of mimicry are enormous. We have known an old Bushman, living in a place where there were a dozen Europeans; the old man could by a few contortions of the face and figure represent each one, bringing out even their subtle peculiarities of appearance and of character, w

And so began, one hundred and fifty years ago, that long "trek" of the Boer peoples northward and eastward, which to-day still goes on with unabated ardour and quiet persistency; and which in its ultimate essence is a search, not for riches, not for a land where mere political equality may be found; but for a world of absolute and untrammelled individual liberty; for a land where each white man shall reign, by a divine right inherent in his own person, over a territory absolutely his own; uninte

What the young man desires in a wife is a female companion who will bear his children, suckle them, attend to the servants, and make his moleskin clothing for him, and who will always be sitting in the chair opposite when he comes into the house, and be ready to pour out his coffee for him until his daughter is old enough; and who will save him from that feeling of weary solitude he would be oppressed by if he sat in the farmhouse quite alone; further, who will, if possible, bring as much to the

This loss of their richest diamond field (the Free State still contains some smaller ones) appeared a severe blow to the Free State, but by it they were saved from the misfortune which later befell their northern sister republic, when the discovery of vast quantities of gold made it an object of desire and almost unconquerable lust to the speculator and capitalist, Jew and Christian. The history of the northern republic, known as the South African Republic, or Transvaal, while resembling that of

For the African Boer there has never been this meretricious tinsel pasted over the ghastly reality of war. His training for two hundred years has been in a wholly different school. For generation after generation the Boer has gone out with his wife and child into the wilderness, and, whether he wished it or no, the possibility of death for them and for himself, by the violence of beasts or men, has been an ever present reality. Night by night, as he has gone to sleep in his solitary wagon or dau

This amalgamation is proceeding always with increasing frequency. In thirty years half the men in South Africa from the Transvaal to Cape Town would have to fight against their own parents in any war of race. And there is no prospect of this process of amalgamation being stayed; it must go on with always increasing velocity as education draws the races together. In answer to the question, then, how are the Boer and English races to be amalgamated? we would reply: By one who in this case will wor

In South Africa, on the other hand, a condition entirely the reverse would be maintained. Were every man and woman of pure British descent to disappear to-morrow, no vital diminution in the entire bulk of our population would have taken place. The vast labouring classes who build our roads and bridges, cultivate our fields, tend our flocks, perform our domestic labour and work in our mines, would be left here almost entirely untouched in the persons of our dark citizens, who form an element in o

Is the race of man on earth, in the future, as in the present, to consist of distinct types, or is the whole body of humanity to become racially one fused uniform mass? To these questions of so weighty an import to humanity, only the ages that are coming can yield an adequate answer; but they are undoubtedly questions of master import to the race. This one thing at least is certain—that the conviction that it is undesirable that any two distinct human breeds should mingle does not necessarily im

As sons and daughters grew up and married, additional rooms were often built on for them, to the old farm-house, or small houses were built near, or at a few miles' distance on the same farm, where at some other fountain the stock was watered. But in each case the new homestead repeated the features of the old. If one travel across some great African plain to-day, the hoofs of one's horse sinking step by step into the red sand, or crunching the gravel on some rocky ridge, far off across the plai

Some years back, finding it necessary to gain what information was obtainable with regard to the domestic and social habits of the higher apes, we found that all the information to be obtained from the latest works on the subject amounted to little more than nil ; and that for a personal inspection of these creatures in their natural state three distinct journeys into separate and most inaccessible parts of the globe would be necessary. We then proceeded to study the few isolated specimens to be