It is this solemn, reverent, almost shy, manner of speaking of conflict, which misleads the ignorant stranger. In conversation several years ago with a man newly from Europe, we dwelt on what we believed to be the superb fighting and staying power of the African Boer. "How is that possible," said the newcomer, "when every individual Boer you meet is an arrant coward?" And he proceeded to illustrate his assertion by stating that a short time before in conversation with three young Boers, all greatly his superiors in size, he had offered to fight all of them in succession to show which was the better man, an Englishman or a Dutchman. They declined the contest, and one of them, smiling sheepishly, walked up to him and asked him to take a cup of coffee. "They funked it! They funked!" cried the newcomer. "They dared not stand up to me, and I was the smallest of the four!" It was not easy to explain to the Public School man that while he was regarding the Boer as an arrant coward, the Boer was regarding him, good-naturedly, as a fool! The Boer looked upon the offer, without any cause of quarrel, to break each other's skulls much as a horny-handed ploughman, the son of six generations of ploughmen, would regard an offer to plough six acres of land in which nothing was to be planted, simply in order to see who could plough the fastest. "He talks too much; he cannot fight," was probably the comment of the Boers after he had left them, and possibly each man merely misunderstood the other. The Englishman might have fought well, in spite of all his talk, and the Boer in spite of his silence. It is the difference in mental attitude, doubtless, which has misled the ignorant newcomer, and often the old inhabitant of the country who is not gifted with the power of reading human nature beneath its surface, into holding the view that the Boer is not a fighter. The truth is, the African Boer, devoid as he is of all passion for conflict, regarding war as part of the stern and unavoidable evil of life, to be quietly faced, but never sought, will, if his people, his land, or his freedom, are attacked, go forth to meet war with the same grim unbending resolution with which his forefathers went out to found their homes in the desert. As long as the African Boer remains the African Boer, whenever these things are touched, he will be found among his plains and on his kopjes ready to die, the silent, bravest child of our broad veld. * * * * * It has been said of the Boer that he is conservative; that he follows line by line the manners and traditions of his fathers; that that which has been sacred to his forebears is sacred to him; that he is immobile, and does not change. This is in part true; in part, untrue.