It is suggestive of recent South African history that the tenant farmers were referred to in some of the old documents as boors or boers. To us of to-day the name is associated with sweltering velts and beleaguered kopps and laagers of waggons bristling with guns. Perhaps the best way for us to comprehend the Boer of the seventeenth century, with his energy, pluck, thrift, and courage, is by studying his kinsman of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to whose unconquerable obstinacy the attention of the world has for several years been directed. Instead of a Transvaal farm, substitute a Hudson River bouwerie. Let the colonist trek with family and household goods and gods to the pleasant, well-watered lands of Schuyler or Van Rensselaer. He carries a match-lock gun, heavy as a weaver's beam, easy to handle as a small cannon, and taking probably not more than five minutes to load and fire. His garments are of a quaint cut, and

Early Settlers of the Hudson Valley 99 he has a cherubic breadth of feature, if we are to trust the painters. He is unlettered, practical, not too nice in manners and far from fanciful regarding either this life or the next. He has accepted Calvinism, but does not allow it to disturb him; wherein he differs essentially from his New England neighbour, who wears his creed as an ascetic would wear a hair shirt, to the discomfort of himself and the annoyance of his neighl)ours. The Hudson River Boer worked out his salvation with infinite difficulty and toil, though fear and trembling were foreign to his disposition. He hewed his home out of the wilderness, endured hardshi]) with as little complaint as any colonist in the world has ever made, and he has furnished the backbone and sinew of many a hardy fight.