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Of the man who now began to play so prominent a part on the political stage, the world at that time knew but little. Even now opinions regarding him are many and varied, and it may be interesting to read, in close juxtaposition, sketches of his character and ways which have from time to time been drawn by those who have come in contact with him.

Perhaps no more impartial sketch can be presented than that of Mr. Distant, a naturalist, who visited the Transvaal about eight years ago. He said:—"President Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger was born on the 10th October 1825, in the district of Colesburg in the Cape Colony, and is without doubt the greatest and most representative man that the Boers have yet produced. Uneducated, or self-educated, he possesses a very large amount of that natural wisdom so often denied to men of great learning and of literary cultivation. With many prejudices, he is fearless, stubborn, and resolute, and he really understands Englishmen little better than they understand him. In his earlier days he has been a somewhat ardent sportsman and a good shot. He has been engaged and honourably mentioned in most of the Kaffir fights of his time. … Socially, he has always lived in a somewhat humble position, and it is to the credit of his nature as a man that he bears not the slightest trace of the parvenu. Plain and undistinguished in appearance, he combines the advantages of a prodigious memory with a remarkable aptitude for reading his fellow-man, and this last quality would be more valuable were it not leavened by a weakness in resisting flattery and adulation. He is very pious and self-reliant, which is provocative of bigotry and hot temper; and surrounded and approached on all sides by clever and often unscrupulous financiers and speculators, his scutcheon has worn wonderfully well, and his character and reputation passed through many fiery ordeals. He is also a rough diplomatist of no mean rank."

The picture is distinctly interesting, but it does Mr. Kruger an injustice. Mr. Distant says that "he understands Englishmen little better than they understand him." Surely this remark is an insult to Mr. Kruger's great sagacity. He long ago "took the measure" of the Englishman, and he has enjoyed himself immensely in seeing how far it was possible—vulgarly speaking—to "try it on" with the British nation. If Mr. Kruger could be induced to write a book entitled "My Life and Games with the British Government for the last Twenty Years," he might afford our politicians some useful and instructive entertainment.

To Mr. Distant's portrait of the President of the South African Republic another and a later one may be appended. It is drawn by the able pen of Mr. Fitzpatrick, the author of "The Transvaal from Within." "In the history of South Africa the figure of the grim old President will loom large and striking—picturesque, as the figure of one who, by his character and will, made and held his people; magnificent, as one who, in the face of the blackest fortune, never wavered from his aim or faltered in his effort; who, with a courage that seemed and still seems fatuous, but which may well be called heroic, stood up against the might of the greatest empire in the world. And, it may be, pathetic too, as one whose limitations were great, one whose training and associations, whose very successes, had narrowed and embittered and hardened him; as one who, when the greatness of success was his to take and hold, turned his back on the supreme opportunity and used his strength and qualities to fight against the spirit of progress and all that the enlightenment of the age pronounces to be fitting and necessary to good government and a healthy State.

"To an English nobleman who, in the course of an interview, remarked, 'My father was a Minister of England and twice Viceroy of Ireland,' the old Dutchman answered, 'And my father was a shepherd!' It was not pride rebuking pride; it was the ever-present fact which would not have been worth mentioning but for the suggestion of the antithesis. He, too, was a shepherd, and is—a peasant. It may be that he knows what would be right and good for his people, and it may be not; but it is sure that he realises that to educate would be to emancipate; to broaden their views would be to break down the defences of their prejudices; to let in the new leaven would be to spoil the old bread; to give unto all men the rights of men would be to swamp for ever the party which is to him greater than the State. When one thinks of the one-century history of this people, much is seen that accounts for their extraordinary love of isolation, and their ingrained and passionate aversion to control; much, too, that draws to them a world of sympathy. And when one realises the old Dopper President hemmed in once more by the hurrying tide of civilisation, from which his people have fled for generations—trying to fight both Fate and Nature, standing up to stem a tide as resistless as the eternal sea—one sees the pathos of the picture. But this is as another generation may see it. To-day we are too close, so close that the meaner details, the blots and flaws, are all most plainly visible: the corruption, the insincerity, the injustice, the barbarity—all the unlovely touches that will by-and-by be forgotten, sponged away by the gentle hand of Time, when only the picturesque will remain."

PAUL KRUGER,

President of the Transvaal Republic.

Photo by Elliott & Fry, London.

Mr. Fitzpatrick speaks somewhat more plainly in another place:—

"Outside the Transvaal Mr. Kruger has the reputation of being free from taint of corruption from which so many of his colleagues suffer. Yet within the Republic and among his own people one of the gravest of the charges levelled against him is, that by his example and connivance he has made himself responsible for much of the plundering that goes on. There are numbers of cases in which the President's nearest relations have been proved to be concerned in the most flagrant jobs, only to be screened by his influence; such cases, for instance, as that of the Vaal River Water Supply Concession, in which Mr. Kruger's son-in-law 'hawked' about for the highest bid the vote of the Executive Council on a matter which had not yet come before it, and, moreover, sold and duly delivered the aforesaid vote. There is the famous libel case in which Mr. Eugene Marais, the editor of the Dutch paper Land en Volk, successfully sustained his allegation that the President had defrauded the State by charging heavy travelling expenses for a certain trip on which he was actually the guest of the Cape Colonial Government."

The light thus thrown on the dealings of Mr. Kruger is not a solitary gleam. It may be remembered that during the period of British rule in the Transvaal he had an appointment under Government. The terms of his letter of dismissal can be found on page 135 of Blue-Book, c. 144, and involving as they do a serious charge of misrepresentation in money matters, are useful when viewed in line with the above quotation.

Mrs. Lionel Phillips imagines that every one must by this time have gauged the nature of the President, as she herself has done. She says:—

"Paul Kruger is so well known from the many portraits and caricatures that have appeared in recent years, as well as descriptions of him, that one from me seems superfluous. His clumsy features, and small cunning eyes, set high in his face, with great puffy rings beneath them, his lank straight locks, worn longer than is usual, the fringe of beard framing his face, even his greasy frock-coat and antiquated tall hat have been pourtrayed times without number. He is a man of quite 75 years of age now, and his big massive frame is bent, but in his youth he possessed enormous strength, and many extraordinary feats are told of him. Once seen he is not easily forgotten. He has a certain natural dignity of bearing, and I think his character is clearly to be read in his face—strength of will and cunning, with the dulness of expression one sees in peasants' faces. 'Manners none, and customs beastly,' might have been a life-like description of Kruger. The habit of constantly expectorating, which so many Boers have, he has never lost. He is quite ignorant of conversation in the ordinary acceptation of the word; he is an autocrat in all his ways, and has a habit of almost throwing short, jerky sentences at you generally allegorical in form, or partaking largely of scriptural quotations—or misquotations quite as often. Like most of the Boers, the Bible is his only literature—that book he certainly studies a good deal, and his religion is a very large part of his being, but somehow he misses the true spirit of Christianity, in that he leaves out the rudimentary qualities of charity and truth."