The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-09-20
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 90, 1899.
TWELVE PAGES.
The Beers in Fact and Fiction.

I tween England ana the trans
vaal, Americans who have read
that sad, strong, vivid novel, THE
Story of an African Farm" will be
swayed consciously or unconsciously by
the opinions of the author Olive
Schreiner, who, according to an asso-
ciated press dispatch under London
date, espouses the cause of the Beers
The STORY of an African Farm" has
been called morbid and pessimistic-
and rightly so viewed from the stand
point of the Christian religion. But
Olive Schreiner was the first to describe
the strange country of the Transvaal-
she brought a terra incognita to the at
tention of the civilized world, and to
her, it is said by those who ought to
know, more than to any other person is
due the great immigration into the
country of Outlanders. What a mastery
description, for instance, is this:
The full African moon poured down its
light from the blue sky into the wide,
lonely plain. The dry, sandy earth, with
it's coating of stunted karoo bushes a few
inches high, the low hill that skirted the
plain, the milk bushes with their long
hngerlike leaves, all were touched by a
weird and an almost oppressive beauty as
they lay in the white light.
At the foot of the kopje lay the home
stead. First the stone-walled sheep
kraals and Kaffir huts; beyond them the
dwelling-house, a square red-brick build
ing with matched roof. Even on its bare
red walls and the wooden ladder that led
up to the loft the moonlight cast a kind
of dreamy beauty and quite etherealzed
the low brick wall that ran before the
house, and which inclosed a bare patch
OF sand and two struggling sunfiowers.
On the zinc roof of the great open wagon
house on the roofs of the outbuildlngs
that jutted from its side. the moonlight
slittered with quite peculiar brightness
till 1T seemed as If every rib in the metal
was FURNISHED silver.
1t was these vivid glimpses of Boer
life that stimulated the Britisher's i'm
agination, already inflamed by the re-
ports that came from the Transvaal Of
gold and silver and precious stones.
Olive Schreiner is an intense partisan of
the Beers; she knows the country and
its conditions thoroughly: but. woman
like, she is emotional. prejudiced and
bitter. The Outlanders' side of the case
has been presented in fiction by Rider
Haggard, but with nothing like the
charm, the imagery and picturesque
ness found in The Story of an African
Farm"
The situation in the Transvaal is
complex, and it is not easy for an
American to form correct opinion as
10 which of the belligerents is right and
which is wrong. As usual in such cases
each is partly right and partly wrong.
TO- n OF a,,th
the New Haven Register. of the three
classes Of people composing the pop
ulation-the Beers, the Kaffirs and
the foreigners or Outlanders-the first
class, who are the descendants of the
original Dutch settlers, control the gov
eminent and are rigid in their monopoly
of the public offices. They are described
as degenerates and inferior in mental
calibre to their ancestors, and there
fore less likely to conduct successful
war than were the former. This esti-
mate differs decidedly from one with
which we have become familiar Of late
which rates the Beers as accurate
marksmen and reliable soldiers and
likely to prove formidable antagonists
in the event of war. This new authority
credits the Beers with greater capacity
for brawls and street fighting than for
the conduct of real war in the open
country
The Kaffirs are the original natives
of the country who are introduced in
large numbers from the lands on the
north, to toll in the gold mines that are
managed by the foreigners. These KAT
fir drudges are a degraded class. The
Beers do not allow them to walk on the
sidewalks of their cities; they must
stay in the street or pay a heavy pen
atty for infraction of the law. The I'M
fortunates are treated to frequent doses
of Imprisonment and stripes; and it is
common occurrence that they are
killed for resistance to the inflction of
punishment.
Foreigners in the TransyaaI are said