The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-07-08

consists Of low. rambling tenement of sun-dred brick, with a mud floor. If the homestead be located in the neigh porhood Of spring, few green trees or weeping willows grace the front ex- terlor; but the planting of trees neces- sltates some little work, and the aver age sheep farmer holds manual labor or any kind in supreme contempt. Ills habits are unspeakable. Personal cleanliness is a. lost art; but this Is as- cribed to the scarcity of water and the consequent inability to obtain a daily bath. He has a habit of gathering all hls falnily-grown-up sons and daugh- ters, and sometimes his sons and hters-in-law-into the same bed- room with him: but this Is accounted for by the fact that the nights are cold on the high plateau. and that the bed rooms have no fireplaces. The sleeping Boer lacks not wakeful company The belated traveller who accepted the hospitality of a bed might be excused the impression that he had stumbled across a Coptic monastery
 1 Living away in the weld the Boer has little need of advanced education
 Able to read his Bible, and to spell out his sedition-preaching newspaper, and to scrawl his name upon a ballot pa per, he considers himself perfectly equipped in an educational sense. All else of learning he regards as supertlu- ous and unnecessary. The length of the school life of the average Boer child is six months. The government reports show that in some districts tNy- nf ha yty1,t Ia | (Boer) children of school age never at tend school. The answer to this-actu- ally given in the Cape Parliament this very session--is that the father teaches his son to read. and the minister pre- pares him for church membership. By
 the way the chief qualifications for membership in the Dutch Reformed church are the ability to read the Bi- ble and to sign the name. Happily. in
 the better-t to-do families the daughters are better taught, some being sent to | the seminaries at Cape Town. In this circumstance lies the hope for the re- i generation for the Karoo, for women
 do not. as a rule, put their pianos on the mud floors of ill-constructed dwell- ! ings.
 l The Boer had ample time for contem- plation. Seated on his stoep Ga raised 1 platform in front of his house) with his abominably filthy sheep-kraal but
 a very few yards away, he has leisure
 to turn over in his roomy mind one or 1 two questions of great national inter- est. His favorite study Is natural his i tory. He sees his scabby sheep rub ping themselves against the dung brick walls of the kraal, and he con- 1 tinually revolves in his mind this
 mighty problem: Does the insect ] cause the scab, or does the scab pro- duce the insect?
 l Chancing to call upon a farmer So engaged asked him if he ever solved the problem of the origin of the scab? |? He replied that he was aware that scab was an insect, and that the in-
 sect was caused by scap. He was con vinced that scab simply came '' Asked whether he knew of any other insect bred from nothing, he instanced fteas. He had, he said, known a house 4 to be thoroughly cleansed, but within , two days it was full of f1eas again 1 This is the type of man which pos sesses very large portion of the sur face of the Cape Colony. It would be uncharitable and unfair to stigmatiza all Cape Boers as conforming to this
 standard; but the fact that the politics
 of the country have to be shaped so as to catch the votes of the representa-
 tives sent by the Karoo farmer indi-
 cates the power of prejudice and ignor- ance No wonder thar with such a type nationality comes before loyalty
 and that the Boer reading nothing of a ! Coo ha bon poison supplied by certain class of Dutch newspapers, should regard the claims of the Transvaa1 upon his sym Ipathy as paramount to those of Great Britain.
 Apart from these considerations the
 Karoo Boer is good stamp of man With all his conservatism In his reli- zion and in his social habits he bears
 the reputation of being good, kind and hospitable. He welcomes the stranger
 and should the stranger be able tc
 speak the language of the country he
 may count upon the best the farme,
 has to offer.
 With the increasing inclination of the
 Boer population to send their daugh.
 ters to Cape Town for their education
 there would seem to be some grounds
 for the nope that a generation hence
 may witness the disappearance of the
 appalling ignorance and bigotry whict
 prevail in the extensive back country
 known as the Northwestern province
 But there is always the Dutch Re
 formed parson to be reckoned with
 Truth to tell, the future of South Afr ca lies largely in the hands of the
 Dutch Reformed clergy.-Cape Towr
 Correspondence of the London Mail. LEGS LOST IN BATTLE