A TRANSVAAL OFFICIAL.*
MR. WILSON has given to the world a book which in a desultory way may rank very near The Transvaal from Within, and yet is almost as amusing as Prinsloo of Prinsloosdorp. We have had many revelations, genuine and spurious, of the dark corners of Pretoria; but those who have plodded through the recent books on South Africa know that humour is unknown to most chroniclers of Boer ways. Mr. Wilson really has much to say that is worth hearing, and his remin- iscences exhibit delightfully the incongruities of the South African Republic. A Cape Colonist by birth, he went to the Transvaal in 1883, when the Republic had " just half-a-crown in the Standard Bank to keep its account open," became in succession a Landdrost and a Mining Commissioner, and seems to have had abundant opportunities of knowing what went on in Pretoria. He evidently has a keen personal dis- like for Mr. Kriiger, and he rejoices in the downfall of his oligarchy. But he seems to have served the South African Republic well when holding an official post, and we take it that his evidence need not be suspect. The book is written without much method, but in a final chapter, " If I were Autocrat," he states very clearly his views on re- construction. He would, for instance, " dismiss every official save two,—the Postmaster-General and the Registrar of Deeds," reinstate Mr. Koetze as Chief Justice, abolish the office of Landdrost and eliminate the " Zarp" policemen, re- model the Field Cornets on the Cape system, establish (he does not say how soon) a one-Chamber Parliament with equality for the two languages, prohibit absolutely the • Behind the Suns in the Trenevad. By David Mackay Wilson.. London Cassell and Co. [10s. 6d.)
supply of liquor to natives, and .appoint a good many .Cape ,Colonials as officials. On the land question he has important remarks to offer, looking to the division of the country into small farms that could be thoroughly. worked. The United hish League might possibly justify its existence, in fact, if it turned its attention to the Transvaal and preached there the dOetrine of small holdings as opposed to huge grazing farms. Mr, Wilson sees the necessity of guarding against the aliena- tion to speculators of the lands given to military Colonists.
It will be seen that he has practical notions that deserve consideration, and we have hastened to state these in order to notice more particularly the account which he gives of the Republic which the National Liberal Federation seems to admire so much. His feelings with regard to the Boers are not bigoted. He knows the people thoroughly, and while he describes unsparingly the ignorance, suspiciousness, and par- tial callousness of the Transvaal farmers, he recognises their many good qualities, and is alive to the fact that in the early days of the gold rush they were quite justified in looking on strangers with suspicion. Even in Cape Colony, as he says, " the first imported specimen of Englishman seen by very many of the farmers was the navvy, brought out in large numbers for the construction of the first rail- ways," who " soon became a synonym for all that was rowdy, brutal, and drunken." Of certain personages, such as Abel Erasmus, Captain Schiel, and Mr. Christian Joubert (not to be confused, of course, with his kinsman the General), we are told a great deal that is as unpleasant as it is in South Africa notorious, but perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the sketch of President Kruger. This is undoubtedly biassed ; a man who possessed only the traits here described could hardly have won Mr. Kruger's ascendency. But Mr. Wilson evidently speaks of the President as he found him, and the portrait, so far as it goes, is lifelike. It will be new to most readers that the President once made to the Barberton miners a very excellent speech in English,—" the tongtie he does not understand." The occasion was one in which the extraordinary native shrewdness of the Boer leader completely—for the moment—pacified a turbulent mob of miners. The most serious charge against the President, if we judge him by his own lights, is the assertion, backed by a, certain amount of evidence, that where his personal interests were concerned he was completely indifferent to the interests of the farmers, In fairness, we must say that Mr. Wilson was perhaps unduly impressed with the fact that the Presi- dent was very much bored by an agricultural show organised by his critic. Most of us know how he used to browbeat his Rand, but if Mr. Wilson can guarantee (as apparently he can) the truth of one of his assertions in this connection, some puzzling points in Transvaal history are cleared up. He declares that on more than one occasion the President at a sort of informal levee-
" Cooly directed those present to vote in a certain way, ex- cusing himself from giving his reasons on the ground that the subj-ct was one of such importance that he could not in the interests of the State disclose further particulars. I do not remember having heard of this dictation being resented Fy any member, for there were few who would have had the courage to oppose the will of the President. I have heard him declare that they were to vote as directed, in spite of anything he might say to the contrary in the ktaad. Thus the cunning diplomatist fre- quently got ore lit with the Tritlander for throwing his personal influence on the side opposed to the vote of the Read."
Mr. Kruger, however, has left the Transvaal, but a good many people remain in it of the calibre of those who com- posed what was nicknamed "the Third Read," It is quite certain that half-a-dozen individuals for years carried on a lucrative blackmail on all proposed concessions. Mr. Wilson gives convincing details, and the broad facts were of course common knowledge, But the book is by no means a mere treatise on rascality. Its writer is fully alive to the more romantic side of African life. He gives some strange stories of Kaffir witchcraft, and of the extraordinary " secret telegraphy " by which in South and in North Africa natives seem to ascertain events before news could come by any ordinary channel, We commend the subject to Mr. Andrew Lang. Mr. Wilson knows the Swazis well, and has some remarkable stories to tell about them.
King Umbandine on one occasion at a sort of battue of buck accidentally killed a Kaffir who had got into the line of fire. " He fined the widow twelve oxen
because her husband had spoiled the royal sport." There are many other good stories in the •book, We may, perhaps note that on natural history Mr. Wilson is not invariably accurate. He identifies the meerkat (the " suricate" known to all readers of Frank Buckland) with the
Madagascar cat,"--a South African name for the The meerkat is one of the commonest African animals, and makes a delightful pet, and yet authors are most vague about it. Canon Knas Little seems to mistake it for the mon- goose,. while the author of A Subaltern's Letters to his Wife apparently confuses it with the Cape ground squirrel (which is very much as if one should identify the rabbit and the weasel). So, for that matter, do most farmers on the karoo; each is a brown beast which lives in the ground, and that is good enough for the average Cape farmer.
But this fascinating animal has caused us to digress. It would be unfair to give a further precis of Behind the Scenes in the Transvaal; the book is one, however, which seems to call for description rather than detailed criticism, We have not found any material mistakes, and can say with- out reservation that the volume is most entertaining. Perhaps before quitting it we may be allowed to quote the description of bow the Boer used to drill: we all know now how he can fight without drill :— "When the Staats Artillerie was formed, one of the principal sources of amusement to many of us was to watch the drill. The law required that every private should be a burgher. Conse- quently the members of the corps were the rawest of the raw, youths fresh from the farm. Not only had they no notion of drill, but even their instructors had but hazy ideas as to how to move their men when once they had got them in line. Nor.was the difficulty lessened by the absence of words in the Taal capable of representing the military words of command. The drill- in- structor, therefore, had to invent his own, and naturally pressed into his service such words and phrases as appealed most directly to the simple-minded son of the soil. The words were largely drawn from the phraseology of the farm. Halt ! ' for example, was expressed by the Taal equivalent for the Woa ' addressed to a horse; • Forward ' by ' Gee-up' in the vernacular ; ' Quick March' by Make as if you were plovers,' the South African plover having a peculiar military strut, with head erect, that came nearest to what the drill instructor imagined the real thing must look like to a Boer. The order to Present' required con- siderable circumlocution. It ran,' Make as if you were going to shoot, but don't shoot!' The position assumed by the soldier standing at ease suggested the attitude of a knee-haltered horse. . . . . . Therefore, when the Staats Artillerie man was told to
Stand like a knee Faltered horse,' he knew that he had to bend one knee, and strike a grotesquely uneasy position."
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