Prevented by their isolated position from any companionship with those of their own age beyond the limits of their family, and shut off from those sports and amusements which in cities and even small societies draw the young of different sexes together in light social intercourse, and which satisfy the needs of youth as the games of childhood satisfied the child, and render the celibacy of early youth not only endurable, but often make those years the most joyful of life:--and shut out entirely as they are, in their really primitive condition, from all those intellectual enjoyments which are independent of actual society, and which, perhaps, are to be tasted to the full by the man or woman who lives alone with the immortally embalmed dead in books--a delight which, until under the pressure of overpowering personal affection, renders some men and women unwilling to give up their celibate life, fearing they shall be robbed of it!--devoid of all this, the life of the young African Boer, whether man or woman, who has attained puberty, becomes inexpressibly empty, and probably physically and mentally unhealthy, if they remain single. There is, further, an economic reason for these early unions: the Boer does not seek to make money that he may marry; he marries that he may make a start in life. Not only is it impossible for the young man to trek away to some solitary farm without a companion who may cook his food, make his clothing, and attend to him when ill, but if he remain on his father's homestead it is impossible for him to start his own little household, and he remains merely a child in his father's house while he remains single; therefore, when he desires to attain to full manhood and begin life, he of necessity looks round for a partner in his wife. And the maiden's life is equally barren of aim till she finds a husband. It might seem that with his solitary environment this matter of finding a wife might be one of difficulty and almost of impossibility. But the skill of the fore-trekker in accommodating himself to the conditions of his solitary South African life has invented an institution which does away with all difficulty.