THE LIFE OF A BOKK. 209 



Reaching the home of a farmer named Vasson, he found himself in the midst of a 

 scene quite patriarchal. All the plain before the house was white with sheep and lambs, 

 drinking- at the " dam " or in long troughs. The dam is an indispensable institution in a 

 country where springs are scarce, and where a river is a prodigy. It is the new settler's 

 first work, even before erecting his house, to find a hollow space, and dam it up, so as to 

 make a reservoir. He then proceeds to make the best sun-dried bricks he can, and to erect 

 his cottage, usually of two, and rarely more than three, rooms. Not unfrequently, there 



THE "GALATEA" PASSING KNYSNA HEADS. 



is a garden, hardly worthy of the name, where a few potatoes and onions are raised. The 

 farmers, more especially the Dutch, are " the heaviest and largest in the world." At an 

 early age their drowsy habits and copious feeding run them into flesh. " Three times a 

 day the family gorges itself upon lumps of mutton, fried in the tallowy fat of the sheep's 

 tail, or else their only change of diet upon the tasteless frlcadel kneaded balls of 

 meat and onions, likewise swimming in grease. Very few vegetables they have, and those 

 are rarely used. Brown bread they make, but scarcely touch it. Fancy existing from 

 birth to death upon mutton scraps, half boiled, half fried, in tallow ! So doth the Boer. 

 It is not eating, but devouring, with him. And fancy the existence ! always alone with 

 one's father, mother, brothers, and sisters ; of whom not one can do more than write his 

 name, scarce one can read, not one has heard of any event in history, nor dreamed of such 

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