28 Recollections of Adventures 



Prinsloo, nicknamed " Tweeduim," (because he had 

 two thumbs on one hand), lived on the banks of the 

 Apie's River, and the Field Cornet, Andries van der 

 Walt, had a cottage near the furrow below Eland's 

 Poort. Messrs. Lionel and Lewis Devereux and 

 William Skinner, who had built a large house for the 

 late General Andries Pretorius on Groot Plaats (a 

 beautiful farm in the Magaliesberg valley) were 

 engaged to build a Dutch Reformed Church in 

 Pretoria, and Mr. Pretorius came and camped in tents, 

 while superintending the making and burning the 

 bricks, and I used to go out with him to shoot 

 " quaggas " as food for the Makkatee brick makers. 

 One day, Mr. Pretorius, who had good horses, and 

 was a good shot, said that any of the party who did 

 not shoot anything was to get ten cuts with a 

 bullock " strop " ; in the evening old Franz Schutte, 

 a deacon and leading light of the church was court- 

 martialled and stretched, while Mr. Pretorius gave 

 him a few cuts, when he shouted so violently that 

 we had to let him go. He left in high dudgeon 

 and never went shooting with us again. At that 

 time the Pretoria town commonage swarmed with 

 Gnu, Blesbok, Springbok and Quagga in the winter, 

 which came from the high veld into the sheltered 

 valleys for warmth, and better grass. I used to 

 go out before daylight and shoot them, as they 

 returned to the high veld during the day time. 

 Poor beasts, they are all gone long ago. It was 

 difficult in those days to earn a living, so I obtained 

 a Government appointment as schoolmaster, but I 

 found it most irksome and only kept on until I 



Editor's Note. Now, on looking from the fine pile of the 

 Union Buildings over the great extent of the town, with its 

 houses situated among their gardens on the many hills Pretoria, 

 the Administrative capital of the Union of South Africa, would 

 seem to have undergone incredible changes in the 60 years since 

 this lonely little farmhouse was its sole habitation. 



