WHO ARE THE BOERS?

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3860, 13 May 1881, Page 3

WHO ARE THE BOERS?

Two hundred years aco four »hip» MUed from Holland, oarryinjf tore«on» that then lay at the uttermost bounds of the known world certain 'PrenehH^enot. exiled by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. We re«el« earned alto«ether about 150 men, womenjjind children, all French citizens. Among them there were many good ■■»"»» which little more than a century ater were ffimiwr M*h » *•* Ion« ro» f marihais and generals of France which the Berolution and its great soldiers gare to htae. Hngo, Joubert, Jourdain, Jtetief, Arnold, De Villiers, Bertrand, Fonche, Dv Plessy, Mouncy, Serrurier, Victor, and many other - names appear in the list of these who selected the distant Dutch colony of South Africa as their future horne 1 These exiles brought to the little colony strength and mental power of a new kind. Fifty years later the French language died out, the second and third generation had intermarried among the Dutch, and the all conquering mother tongue had its mual triumph. But thene 150 French . Haguenots' made a mark upon the colonial community that has nerer been effaced from the national character It wasaßetieffiholed the "Great Trek" into the northern wilds. It wag aDe Maras . who headed a few hundred followers against the l>ost,s of the Matabile King in 1837. It ,. was a Ceillier wBo read the service in the laager on the Black Umvolosi on the Sunday morning when the Zulu army moved to the attack on the Dutch camp. It was a Joubert who covered the.beaten wreck of the Boer" commander " after the disaster . on the White UmTolosi, and today another Joubert i« the moving spirit in the Transraal revolt These French Huetienots, and s much larger number of Dutch employes of the old Fast India ■"''Company,"'we're'the"ancestors of the people whom today we call Boers—a people ■low to think, but not easily be turned from., their thought when once they have formed" it; slow to embark in any movement, but ceriaiii to follow to its extreme end when it has once begun. A homely, sober, virtuous, quiet, dull race of beings^ as full of faith in God and of fair dealing between man and man as this world holds human sample of.—LieutColonel Butler, Contemporary Tteview.