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We ask no forgiveness for thus digressing, for until the attitude of other European colonists towards their home lands has been fully grasped, the very exceptional position of the Boer, and the effect of his attitude on himself and South Africa, and the importance of the Huguenot influence in producing this attitude, cannot be understood.

So complete has been the Boer's severance from his fatherlands in Europe, both France and Holland, that for him they practically do not exist. For two hundred years their social and political life has rolled on unrecked of by him; Paris and The Hague are no nearer to his heart than Madrid or Vienna. He will swear more lustily at you if you call him a Frenchman or a Hollander than should you call him an Englishman or a German; and we have known primitive Boers who have vigorously denied that they had even originally descended from either Hollanders or Frenchmen.

The Huguenot has caused this severance in two ways.

Firstly, through the fact of his being a religious exile, and an exile of a peculiar type.