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The fate of the South African Boer was safe from the moment these men came to mingle their blood with his; as the fate of the North American States was safe when the Mayflower had crossed with its load of dissentient Englishmen; as the fate of the Spanish colonies would have been safe, had Spain, in place of cauterizing her growing points in the bonfires of the squares of Toledo and Madrid, simply nipped them off from the parent tree and transplanted them alive in her colonies in the New World, there to beget a newer and stronger Spain. One is sometimes astonished at certain qualities found in the South African Boer, till one recalls the fact that a strain of this uncompromising, self-guiding blood runs in his veins; making him, what often in his lowest and poorest conditions he yet remains—an aristocrat!

On the arrival of these men at the Cape, the Dutch East India Company portioned them out lands to cultivate, mainly in the lovely valleys of Stellenbosch, French-Hoek, and Drakenstein. At the time of their arrival they formed probably about one-sixth of the whole population. How rapidly they increased and how large is the share their blood holds in the Boer race may be noted if one run one's eye over the list of the occupants of any district or village inhabited by Boers, and marks how great the number of French names which will occur. There are districts in the Western Province of the Colony in which these names largely predominate over those of Dutch or German origin; and even in the Free State and Transvaal, they are numerous to an extent which their original numbers would not have led us to expect. Of our most noted of Cape families, many bear these names; the De Villiers, the Jouberts, the Du Toits, the Naudès—and if other names, such as the Reitzes, Van Aarts, Hofmeyrs or Krugers, are not less widely known, it will generally be found on analysis that the proportion of French blood even in these families is as large as in those whose patronymics are purely French. There is probably not a Boer in South Africa at the present day whose blood is not richly touched by that of the Huguenot.