She has been following her usual custom in South Africa.
But the Boers are not fond of the English, and they have been trying with all their power to keep these neighbors of theirs as far away from them as possible. As the English have advanced, the Boers have retreated, even giving up the diamond mines of Kimberly in the process of moving.
One day, however, rich gold-fields were discovered on the Witwaters Rand. A Rand is the high land on either side of a river valley.
This settled matters for the Boers. From the moment gold-fields were discovered, Englishmen poured into the Transvaal.
The Boers, who, as we have said, are a quiet farming people, were not pleased with this invasion of foreigners. They christened them Uitlanders, which means outsiders, and they are decidedly not in love with them.
The capital of the Transvaal is a town called Pretoria. It is the seat of the government, and is a simple, unpretentious town, situated in the centre of the little Republic.
When the Uitlanders poured over the borders into the gold-fields, they desired to have a town somewhat nearer to the Rand and the gold-fields than Pretoria was, so they founded Johannesburg.
This town flourished amazingly, and soon far outstripped Pretoria in size and importance, just as the Uitlanders had outstripped the Boers in point of numbers and wealth.
The native population of the Transvaal is very scattered. They are a nation of farmers, and at the present time there are only about 15,000 Boer men in the whole territory, while of the English-speaking Uitlanders there are more than five times that number.
No sooner did Johannesburg grow to be a powerful city, than the Uitlanders, her citizens, demanded that they should have a voice in the government of the country.
They complained that they were hardly used by the Boers, and made to pay heavy taxes.
The taxes are certainly heavy, but they are levied upon the gold miners, who have come to the Transvaal for the sole purpose of making fortunes out of the gold deposits; these fortunes they wish to carry away with them to their own country.
The Boers, very naturally, think that some portion of these riches should be paid to the country which gave them, and they cannot see by what right these foreign gold-hunters expect to have a voice in the government.