Page:EB1911 - Volume 20.djvu/186

 constitution met on the 18th of December 1907, when it was announced that the Transvaal and Orange Colony had each given notice of the termination of the intercolonial council with the intention of each colony to gain individual control of its railways and constabulary.

After a two days’ session the legislature was prorogued until May 1908, when the chief measure submitted by the government was an education bill designed to foster the knowledge of the Dutch language. This measure became law (see above § Education). Parliament also passed a measure granting ex-President Steyn a pension of

£1000 a year and ex-President Reitz a pension of £500. In view of the dissolution of the intercolonial council a convention was signed at Pretoria on the 29th of May which made provision for the division of the common property, rights and liabilities of the Orange Colony and the Transvaal in respect to the railways and constabulary, and established for four years a joint board to continue the administration of the railway systems of the two colonies. The Orange Colony assumed responsibility for £7,700,000 of the guaranteed loan of £35,000,000 of 1903 (see : ). The colony took part during this month in an inter-state conference which met at Pretoria and Cape Town, and determined to renew the existing customs convention and to make no alteration in railway rates. These decisions were the result of an agreement to bring before the parliaments of the various colonies a resolution advocating the closer union of the South African states and the appointment of delegates to a national convention to frame a draft constitution. In this convention Mr Steyn took a leading and conciliatory part, and subsequently the Orange River legislature agreed to the terms drawn up by the convention for the unification of the four self-governing colonies. Under the imperial act by which unification was established (May 31, 1910) the colony entered the union under the style of the Free State Province. (For the union movement see : .) Mr Fischer and General Hertzog became members of the first union ministry while Dr A. E. W. Ramsbottom, formerly colonial treasurer, became the first administrator of the Free State as a province of the union.

The period during which the province had been a self-governing colony had been one of steady progress in most directions, but was greatly embittered by the educational policy pursued by General Hertzog. From the date of the passing of the education act in the middle of 1908 until the absorption of the colony into the union.

General Hertzog so administered the provisions of the act regarding the media of instruction as to compel every European child to receive instruction in every subject partly in the medium of Dutch. This policy of compulsory bilingualism was persisted in despite the vehement protests of the English-speaking community, and of the desire of many Dutch burghers that the medium of instruction for their children should be English. Attempts to adjust the difficulty were made and a conference on the subject was held at Bloemfontein in November 1909. It was fruitless, and in March 1910 Mr Hugh Gunn (director of education since 1904) resigned. The action of General Hertzog had the support of his colleagues and of Mr Steyn and kept alive the racial spirit. Failing to obtain redress the English-speaking section of the community proceeded to open separate schools, the terms of the act of union leaving the management of elementary education to the provincial council.

—A. H. Keane, The Boer States: Land and People (1900); The Report on the 1904 census (Bloemfontein, 1906); The Statistical Year Book (Bloemfontein) and other official publications; W. S. Johnson, Orangia (1906), a good elementary geography; ''Précis of Information. Orange Free State and Griqualand West (War Office, 1878); D. Aitton, “De Oranje Vrijstaat,” Tijds. K. Ned. Aard. Genoots. Amsterdam'', vol. xvii. (1900); H. Kloessel, Die Südafrikanischen Republiken (Leipzig, 1888). For a good early account of the country see Sir W. Cornwallis Harris, Narrative of an Expedition into Southern Africa during 1836–37 (Bombay, 1838). For history see, in addition to the British, Cape and Orange Free State parliamentary papers, H. Dehérain, L’Expansion des Boers au xixᵉ siècle (Paris, 1905); G. McCall Theal, History of South Africa since 1795 [up to 1872], vols. ii., iii. and iv. (1908 ed.), and A. Wilmot’s Life and Times of Sir R. Southey (1904). G. B. Beak’s The Aftermath of War (1906) is an account of the repatriation work in the Orange River Colony. A. C. Murray and R. Cannon, Map of the Orange River Colony (6 sheets: 4 m. to 1 in., 1908). The place of publication, unless otherwise stated, is London. Consult also the bibliographies under, and.

 ORANGEMEN, members of the Orange Society, an association of Irish Protestants, originating and chiefly flourishing in Ulster, but with ramifications in other parts of the United Kingdom, and in the British colonies. Orangemen derive their name from King William III. (Prince of Orange). They are enrolled in lodges in the ordinary form of a secret society. Their toasts, about which there is no concealment, indicate the spirit of the Orangemen. The commonest form is “the glorious, pious and immortal memory of the great and good King William, who saved us from popery, slavery, knavery, brass money and wooden shoes,” with grotesque or truculent additions according to the orator’s taste. The brass money refers to James II.’s finance, and the wooden shoes to his French allies. The final words are often “a fig for the bishop of Cork,” in allusion to Dr Peter Browne, who, in 1715, wrote cogently against the practice of toasting the dead. Orangemen are fond of beating drums and flaunting flags with the legend “no surrender,” in allusion to Londonderry. Orangeism is essentially political. Its original object was the maintenance of Protestant ascendancy, and that spirit still survives. The first regular lodges were founded in 1795, but the system existed earlier. The Brunswick clubs, founded to oppose Catholic emancipation, were sprigs from the original Orange tree. The orange flowers of the Lilium bulbiferum are worn in Ulster on the 1st and 12th July, the anniversaries of the Boyne and Aughrim. Another great day is the 5th of November, when William III. landed in Torbay.  ORANG-UTAN (“man of the woods”), the Malay name of the giant red man-like ape of Borneo and Sumatra, known to the Dyaks as the mias, and to most naturalists as Simia satyrus. The red, or brownish-red, colour of the long and coarse hair at once distinguishes the orang-utan from the African apes; a further point of distinction being the excessive length of the arms, which are of such proportions that the animal when in the upright posture (which it seldom voluntarily assumes) can rest on its bent knuckles. Very characteristic of the old males, which may stand as much as 5 ft. in height, is the lateral expansion of the cheeks, owing to a kind of warty growth, thus producing an extraordinarily broad and flattened type of face. Such an expansion is however by no means characteristic of all the males of the species, and is apparently a feature of racial value. Another peculiarity of the males is the presence of a huge throat-sac or pouch on the front of the throat and chest, which may extend even to the arm-pits; although present in females, it does not reach nearly the same dimensions in that sex. More than half-a-dozen separate races of orangutan are recognized in Borneo, where, however, they do not appear to be restricted to separate localities. In Sumatra the Deli and Langkat district is inhabited by S. satyrus deliensis and Abong by S. s. abongensis.

In Borneo the red ape inhabits the swampy forest-tract at the foot of the mountains. In confinement these apes (of which adult specimens have been exhibited in Calcutta) appear very slow and deliberate in their movements; but in their native forests they swing themselves from bough to bough and from tree to tree as fast as a man can walk on the ground beneath. They construct platforms of boughs in the trees, which are used as sleeping-places, and apparently occupied for several nights in succession. Jack-fruit or durian, the tough spiny hide of which is torn open with their strong fingers, forms the chief food of orang-utans, which also consume the luscious mangustin and other fruits. (See .)  ORANIENBAUM, a town of European Russia, in the government of St Petersburg, lying 100 ft. above the sea on the south