Another Adverse Influence With Which The Mission Had To Contend
Was The Vicinity Of The Boers Of The Cashan Mountains,
Otherwise Named "Magaliesberg".
These are not to be counfounded
with the Cape colonists, who sometimes pass by the name.
The word Boer simply
Means "farmer", and is not synonymous with our word boor.
Indeed, to the Boers generally the latter term would be quite inappropriate,
for they are a sober, industrious, and most hospitable body of peasantry.
Those, however, who have fled from English law on various pretexts,
and have been joined by English deserters and every other variety
of bad character in their distant localities, are unfortunately
of a very different stamp. The great objection many of the Boers had,
and still have, to English law, is that it makes no distinction
between black men and white. They felt aggrieved by their supposed losses
in the emancipation of their Hottentot slaves, and determined
to erect themselves into a republic, in which they might pursue,
without molestation, the "proper treatment of the blacks".
It is almost needless to add that the "proper treatment"
has always contained in it the essential element of slavery,
namely, compulsory unpaid labor.
One section of this body, under the late Mr. Hendrick Potgeiter,
penetrated the interior as far as the Cashan Mountains,
whence a Zulu or Caffre chief, named Mosilikatze, had been expelled
by the well-known Caffre Dingaan; and a glad welcome was given them
by the Bechuana tribes, who had just escaped the hard sway of that
cruel chieftain. They came with the prestige of white men and deliverers;
but the Bechuanas soon found, as they expressed it, "that Mosilikatze
was cruel to his enemies, and kind to those he conquered;
but that the Boers destroyed their enemies, and made slaves of their friends."
The tribes who still retain the semblance of independence
are forced to perform all the labor of the fields, such as manuring the land,
weeding, reaping, building, making dams and canals, and at the same time
to support themselves. I have myself been an eye-witness of Boers
coming to a village, and, according to their usual custom,
demanding twenty or thirty women to weed their gardens,
and have seen these women proceed to the scene of unrequited toil,
carrying their own food on their heads, their children on their backs,
and instruments of labor on their shoulders. Nor have the Boers
any wish to conceal the meanness of thus employing unpaid labor;
on the contrary, every one of them, from Mr. Potgeiter and Mr. Gert Krieger,
the commandants, downward, lauded his own humanity and justice
in making such an equitable regulation. "We make the people work for us,
in consideration of allowing them to live in our country."
I can appeal to the Commandant Krieger if the foregoing is not
a fair and impartial statement of the views of himself and his people.
I am sensible of no mental bias toward or against these Boers;
and during the several journeys I made to the poor enslaved tribes,
I never avoided the whites, but tried to cure and did administer remedies
to their sick, without money and without price.
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