Rip Van Winkle started forth at the Cape
to justify in the public prints the deeds of blood and slave-hunting
in the far interior. It is therefore not to be wondered at if the whole race
is confounded and held in low estimation by those who do not know
the real composition of the Cape community.
Population among the Boers increases rapidly; they marry soon,
are seldom sterile, and continue to have children late.
I once met a worthy matron whose husband thought it right to imitate
the conduct of Abraham while Sarah was barren; she evidently agreed
in the propriety of the measure, for she was pleased to hear the children
by a mother of what has been thought an inferior race address her
as their mother. Orphans are never allowed to remain long destitute;
and instances are frequent in which a tender-hearted farmer has adopted
a fatherless child, and when it came of age portioned it as his own.
Two centuries of the South African climate have not had much effect
upon the physical condition of the Boers. They are a shade darker,
or rather ruddier, than Europeans, and are never cadaverous-looking,
as descendants of Europeans are said to be elsewhere.
There is a tendency to the development of steatopyga,
so characteristic of Arabs and other African tribes; and it is probable
that the interior Boers in another century will become in color
what the learned imagine our progenitors, Adam and Eve, to have been.
