Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1911-07-21
LIFE ON A BOER FARM
NOT INVITING FROM AMERICAN
POINT OF VIEW.
Woman Traveller Describes the Mo.
notony and Discomforts She
Found In the Agricultural Re-
glons of South Africa.

An American woman travelling in
South Africa was detained by floods
and compelled to spend month on
Boer farm.
The first nights monotony," she
writes in Health Culture, was broken
| by the roaring of ostriches under our
windows. We thought 1t was tame
lion.
THE farmer and his family lived
chiefly on sour bread and sour
skinned milk. l was therefore hun
CRY most of the time and the ripe
figs hanging in clusters were pretty
alluring. After pushing back the
skin of the fig and enjoying the soft
fruit with its tropical taste l had a
refreshing nights sleep, only to awak-
en- in the morning pretty we'll scared,
for my tongue was so swollen and
black that 1 could not talk.
The Boer wife laughed and enjoyed
my discontinue and explained that
the skin of the fig had numerous fine
thorns and l had not been careful
to remove 1t when eating.
When told the farmers wife
that l liked buttermilk in quantity
noticed that l had cupful or so given
me, but she threw 1t by the pailful to
the pigs. They were of far more con-
sequence to her than l, for they would
stay longer with her and were her
familiars. l was not
Then again, when | was hungry
for butter on my bread, white clam
my substance made from 'sheeptail
fat was handed to me, and l could
not allow the farmers wife to see me
culver. She sold her butter in the
village close by at rs cents pound,
more or less. Sour bread and green
strawberries (plenty of them) were
considered good enough.
THE Boer family was one of the
wealthiest of their kind. There was
not ripple of fun or exuberant life
in anything but the live stock Con-
versation was q dead language-un-
known.
THE women are mute beings, ac-
cepting their destiny with deep
Stiffness. The wife gives of her
strength to the limit, and dies after
giving birth to a dozen or more chill
dren, to make way for wife number
two, who gives another dozen chill
dren to her country. Her adobe house,
with its dirt floor made of anthill clay
mixed with beef gall is chamber of
horror to an Amerivan traveller.
THE farmer depends upon his ten
to eighteen children, of all sizes, to
help him. A Kaffir as an employe
is undependable as the wind that
blows. Yet that Kaffir is the hired
man In the mines and elsewhere in
South Africa The white man as
day laborer is a general failure. He
cannot be worked in droves like the
Kaffir from the interior, whose Ian
guage, in clicks and vowel sounds, is
hardly human.
THE Boer is not long lived. One
seldom met an aged Boer of the old
stock. Dom Paul Kruger, who was
rs years old when he died, was an
exception. Hatred toward the Uit-
lander and the lust for gold and power
was what kept the fires of life burn
ing at white heat within him.
ITO stem the elements alone in AT
rica takes the stoutest heart. Fevers
assail the discouraged and underfed
home boy. The easily forded streams
become rivers. like swirling Niagaras,
In few hours and the terrific thun-
derstorms paralyze one sensitive to
electrical influences.
There is no pretty little, far-off
streak in the sky which the amateur
photographer can catch on his film,
but the air is charged with electricity
SO appalling in its violet hued and
deep orange earthbound clouds that
one has to come to complete stand
still whether walking or riding on the
open veldt, so as not to attract the
ribbonlike lightning playing around
him and venting its fury on any NOV
ing object"