The Huguenots, who joined the small Dutch population of 1689, brought a considerable element of culture and liberality of thought with them, but although many of the best families in Cape Colony, and South Africa generally, to-day trace their descent from these settlers, the effect upon the scattered masses of the people was very slight. The distinctive language and religion and culture to a large extent disappeared under laws which enforced uniformity and in time merged the Frenchman in the Boer. Of course, the influence was to some extent a good one and it yet dwells on the surface of affairs in such names as De Villiers and Joubert, Du Plessis and Le Seuer, or their local corruptions. A more potent factor in this evolution of character was the solitary nature of the settler's life. [Sidenote: Boer and American Colonist] Pioneers on the American continent were often alone with their families for a time in some advanced frontier location, but it was not usually a continuous isolation. As the years passed on other families joined them, settlements grew rapidly, and with these villages came the various amenities of social and civilized life. But the Boer seemed to catch from the wandering savages around him something of the spirit of their roaming life, and in this he was encouraged by the nature of his occupation and by the Government regulations, which simply charged him rental for three thousand acres of grazing ground without confining him to any specific location. He did not carve his farm out of some primeval forest, build a permanent home for his family on his own land, or cultivate the soil with the strenuous labor of his hands. During the century in which his racial type was developing the Dutch settler moved from point to point with his cattle in accordance with the season and the pasture, and lived an almost nomadic life. His covered wagon was to him what the wigwam has been to the savage of the American continent, while his skill in shooting held a somewhat similar place to that of the bow and arrow in Indian economy. Hence the accentuation of his intellectual narrowness by continued isolation and the strengthening of the physical frame at the expense of mental power. [Sidenote: Boer Characteristics]