He has no language in which to re-express what he learns from Nature; but he knows her. The modern poetaster who writes volumes on the sea and stars, who would die of terror if left out alone for one night with those very stars and the God of stars that he adores in verse, and for whom the sea is only endurable seen from a fashionable parade with bands and much-dressed women to save him from the awful oppression of being alone with it; it is not _he_, but the Chaldean shepherd who rejoices when the night comes that he may lie beside his sheep, and with his head on a stone watch the hosts march past above; it was he who named them for us and loved them, as a man loves his fellows. As it is the rough sailor, who amid all the joys of shore longs simply to be out again and to feel the night spray on his cheek, who loves and knows the voice of the sea. And when the old Boer tells you simply how many a young porcupine has at birth, and which bird points the way to a honey nest, and gives you the names and uses of the bushes you walk over, his knowledge speaks of a closer union than the poetaster's words. It is not the girl in delicate attire--such as takes its birth only in vast cities and as the result of much human labour and thought--who with attentive male companions waiting on her glances, climbs an eminence to exclaim loudly over the beauty of the view and the loveliness of nature, who loves nature--it is the man who silently has been contented to live and labour on that Alpine height all his life, and who would die of weariness and thirst if removed from it; it is he who loves it. As the man who writes sonnets to a woman and throws himself in transports of passion at her feet for a moment is not the man who owns her, but he who firmly grasps her hand and walks shoulder to shoulder beside her through dark and light till death divides them; so it is not he who praises Nature, but he who lies continually on her breast and is satisfied who is actually united to her and receives her strength. No one with keen perception can have lived among the Boers without perceiving how close, though unconscious, is their union with the world about them, and how real the nourishment they draw from it. The little karoo bushes, where they are shooting, the ironstones of the kopje with the sun on them, are beautiful to the Boer.