themselves by working for only a short time during the year. Why should they not force these people to labour for them? The Dutch had guns. They were clever strategists. They knew how to tame human beings like other animals and they believed that their religion did not object to their doing so. In this way they commenced agriculture with the labour of the South African ‘natives’ with not a single doubt as to the morality of their action.
As the Dutch were in search of good lands for their own expansion, so were the English who also gradually arrived on the scene. The English and the Dutch were of course cousins. Their characters and ambitions were similar. Pots from the same pottery are often likely to clash against each other. So these two nations, while gradually advancing their respective interests and subduing the Negroes, came into collision. There were disputes and then battles between them. The English suffered a defeat at Majuba Hill. Majuba left a soreness which assumed a serious form and came to a head in the Boer War which lasted from 1899 to 1902. And when General Cronje surrendered, Lord Roberts was able to cable to Queen Victoria that Majuba had been avenged. But when this first collision occurred between the two nations previous to the Boer War, many of the Dutch were unwilling to remain under even the nominal authority of the British and ‘trekked’ into the unknown interior of South Africa. This was the genesis of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
These Dutch came to be known in South Africa as Boers. They have preserved their language by clinging to it as a child clings to its mother. They have an intense realization of the close relation between their language and their liberty. In spite of many attacks, they have preserved their mother tongue intact. The language assumed a new form suited to their genius. As they could not maintain very close relations with Holland, they began to speak a patois derived from the Dutch as the Prakrits are derived from Sanskrit. And not wishing
