To the fighting qualities of the Boer many tributes have been and more will be paid in the future. It is essentially a product of his environment. The student of British wars with the Kaffirs and of the interminable succession of struggles fought by the Boer with Hottentots and Bushmen in early Colonial days; with the Kosas on the frontiers of Cape Colony and the Zulus in Natal; with the Matabeles in the pioneer days of the republics, and with the Basutos during more than a decade in the history of the Free State; with the Bapedis of the Transvaal and the Bechuanas of the northern and western borders; with the Baramapulana of the Limpopo River and the Swazis of the southeastern border; will understand how much of native guile and savagery there is in the Boer method of warfare, and why it is so difficult for troops trained in other kinds of fighting to meet it when combined with European science in armament and trained skill in the management of great guns. Added to the quality of native cunning in warfare is an alertness of movement derived from long and hereditary skill in hunting wild animals and living constantly on horseback; as well as in fighting continuously a wily and ambush-making native foe. As with the Kaffir himself, laziness disappears when the game of the Boer is on the horizon, and it matters not whether the quarry be animal or human, the hunter and fighter becomes at once a creature of the veldt; a very part and parcel of the country around him. He knows every foot of South African soil. In the words of Pringle, referring to the emigrant farmer of earlier years: "Afar in the desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side: Away--away--in the wilderness vast, Where the White Man's foot hath never passed, And the quivered Koranna or Bechuan Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan: A region of emptiness, howling and drear, Which man hath abandoned from famine and fear." Those days are passed; but the instinct remains, the knowledge has become hereditary, and, through the love of hunting which still continues in the breast of the Boer, it is to-day a practical and potent force. To the average Dutch farmer maps are therefore unnecessary, and the Drakensberg is as familiar in its every detail of mountain and kopje and rainless river as are the rooms of his own home on the rolling plains of the Transvaal or the Orange Free State. Hence it is that the general peculiarities of his complex character combine to make him a soldier and enemy whom it is no easy task to subdue--even for the legions of Britain and her allied Empire. CHAPTER X. The Annexation of the Transvaal. [Sidenote: Dangers Without, Difficulties Within]