From 1872 onwards Selous had known and studied the Boers intimately. He had lived and hunted with them from the Orange Free State to Matabeleland, and had found them a simple race of hunter-farmers, intensely patriotic and hopelessly conservative. He knew that "they are neither angels nor devils, but just men like ourselves," and that the views of the British, German and Jew storekeepers and traders of the Transvaal and Orange Free State were hopelessly wrong, because they did not know the real back-veldt Boers of the country, who made up the majority of the Nation. He himself had never received anything but kindness and straight dealing from them, and was therefore able to appreciate their indignation and outbursts of fury when a second annexation was contemplated by our Government. He replies to the charge that life for Englishmen was impossible in the Transvaal after the retrocession to the Boers of that country in 1881: "Mr. Rider Haggard has told us that he found it impossible to go on living in the Transvaal amid the daily insults of victorious Boers, and he also tells us that Boers look upon Englishmen with contempt, and consider them to be morally and physically cowards. I travelled slowly through the Transvaal by bullock-waggon shortly after the retrocession of the country in 1881, and visited all the farmhouses on my route. I met with no insults nor the least incivility anywhere, nor ever heard any boasting about Boer successes over our troops, though at that time I understood the 'Taal' well. In common with all who really know the Boers, who have lived amongst them, and not taken their character at second-hand, I have always been struck by their moderation in speaking of their victories over our soldiers. As for the Boers having a contempt for Englishmen as individuals, that is nonsense. They hate the British Government, and knowing their history, I for one think they have ample reason for doing so. But the individual Englishman that they know, they take at his real value. There are of course, unfortunately, certain Englishmen in Johannesburg, or people who are now put down as Englishmen, who could not but appear as contemptible to a Boer as they would do to most people in this country. But, on the other hand, I could name many Englishmen and Scotchmen, men who have been honest and upright and fearless in all their dealings with their neighbours, who have been held in immense respect by all the Boers of their acquaintance. These men, however, lived amongst the Boers, spoke their language, and took a sympathetic interest in their lives; whilst one of the troubles of the present situation in the Transvaal is that the Uitlander population of Johannesburg is, in its sympathies, its mode of life, and all its hopes and aspirations, as wide as the poles asunder from the pastoral Boers, with whom it never mixes, and whom it therefore does not understand." (Letter to the "Times," October 24th, 1899.)