Note 237 — Chapter VII · THE GODS AND THE SONS OF GOD

See Sollas, op. cit., pp. 300–301: “They loved their country and showed an unfailing devotion to their chiefs; they possessed all the noblest of the primitive virtues, and, not least, unflinching bravery and unquenchable love of freedom. It was this last which came to be accounted to them as their greatest crime. They found it impossible to become slaves to strange masters in their own land. Equally impossible was it for a hunting race to maintain its existence in proximity to an encroaching agricultural people of European blood. A terrible war of extermination was waged against them by the Boers. The stories that are told of this war are shocking to our humanity; and we cannot refuse a tribute to these brave people, who in almost every instance preferred death to surrender.” Dr. Sollas adds a note to the effect that the Cape Government regarded the extermination of the Bushmen for a long time as a matter of State policy.