The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1904-09-03
The Grand Old Man ofoSouth
! Africa kSketehed.
Admirable Traits Possessed by
the Sturdy Boer.


in quality, is near in date to our own.
Such was Paul Kruger. He came
down to this twentieth century-with
all its complex system-from period
in the history of his country which
in some respects is as remote as the
epoch in which the Israelites wandered
through the desert toward the Prom
Used Land, says T. ?. O'Connor in NJ.
A. P.
What strange contrast it was-this
old man, with such an origin as his,
and with history behind him, which
in some respects might have been the
history of Abraham or Moses, walking
into the market place or bourse of
a city like johannesburg, where every
tendency and trait of modern civili-
zation were roaring all around him. 1t
was this contrast between him and the
later condition of his life which ac-
counted largely for the tragedy in
which the Independent existence Of his
country went down, and in which he
himself foundered after a long career
of almost unbroken prosperity.
Paul Kruger told the story of his life
himself in two volumes, which were
published few years ago. The style
was clumsy and cumbrous; but amid
all it's waste of words one found GER
tain splendid gems Of thought and GER
tain imperishable pictures of life as it
used to be in the old South Africa.
The beginning of Paul Kruger is un-
adulterated romance-it might even be
described as more melodramatic than
the most daring Drury Lane produc-
ton.
He was but 10 years of age when,
with his parents, he abandoned British
territory in Cape Colony and set out
on an expedition which is almost as
curious and romantic, and sounds to us
almost less real than the story of Rob-
inson Crusoc. For what these settlers
had to do was to make a path through
trackless and untrodden desert, and in
doing so, to find themselves constant
ly confronted by the twin danger of
tho savage man and the savage beast
The very method and composition of
the expedition that set out on this
hazardous enterprise brings us straight
back to the Old Testament. The Beers
were pastoral people, cattle repre-
scented with them property, and was
practically it's only representative; and
it was rs member of pastoral
community that the Boer child was
brought up from his earliest years.
each child" wrote Paul Kruger in
his memoirs, "when quite young re-
ceives as his personal property cou-
pie of sheep, oxen or horses from his
parents, which he tends with special
care, and to which he becomes at
tached."
Similarly the composition of the
force which was leaving Cape Colony
is Renaissance Of the days of Jacob
and Rachel. 'My parents and rela-
tives," Kruger puts it, cleft house ana
home for wild and unknown country
and set out, about twenty of them,
with nearly 10000 African sheep and
a few hundred horses and cattle, which
they had received largely in exchange
for goods they left behind"
Hunting was at once the pleasure
and the resource of this brave little
expedition, and they had not long left
their homes in Cape Colony when in
the kingdom of the NIatabele they
found abundant game. 1t was in this
school that Kruger learnt those arts
which are naturally most esteemed in
such pastoral and fighting people as
that to which he belonged. No man,
it was said, had a surer aim.
The sportsman with us goes out with
a complete armory Of weapons and
ammunition; with the Beers single
rifle and single bullet are all they are
expected to take along with them;
they are expected to bring down the
game with single shot. Fighting,
however, came in as a part Of the
work of the expedition quite as GER
tainly as hunting and trekine; and the
story of those early days Of Kruger
stamp him MS one of the great soldiers
of his time. Some of the stories, in
deed, are so rich in adventure that
they seem like pages torn out Of the
books Of Mr.. Rider Haggard's tales
of bloody adventure and wholesale
slaughter. Take, for instance, the ac-
count of the fight against the Matabele
in which Kruger took part, being at
that time, it must be remembered, just
II years Of age:
at was at Vetchkop, in October of
1886. Commandant Celliers was in
command, and, counting the boys of
Kruger's age, he had available for the
defence of his lager 40 in all. He
drew up so wagons in the form of Il
hollow square, with three in the center
to shelter the women and children.
He had strong barbados made of mi
mosa branches and chains linking
wagon to wagon, and at two opposite
angles of his square he threw out lit
tie wooden barricaded, loop-hoed con-
strnctions of the nature of sentry
J l., Il, III II,