Commandos and Civil War of 1864 109 



self-defence fired, hitting Scheepers in the shoulder, 

 from which wound he afterwards died. The son-in- 

 law was put in jail, tried and convicted of the murder 

 of his father-in-law and was hanged in Pretoria. It 

 appeared to be a heinous offence to shoot a father- 

 in-law under any circumstances. Had it been a 

 mother-in-law there might have been extenuating 

 circumstances. 



The patriarchal Government of the Transvaal 

 during the fifties and sixties was often amusingly 

 primitive. The first Landdrost Joachim Prinsloo, a 

 real good type of an honest old " voortrekker " and 

 a kind-hearted hospitable man whom everyone 

 respected and liked, when discussing one day the 

 collection of taxes and disbursements, admitted that 

 he found difficulty in keeping books, but after 

 paying his own and other salaries, the balance went 

 to the Government. He said this in perfect good 

 faith and in his case no harm was done, as he had 

 not much to administrator, and he was scrupulously 

 honest, but the system would not work well under 

 conditions obtaining now. A burgher was con- 

 demned to be hanged at Potchefstroom, he was 

 placed on a wagon which was drawn under a 

 gallows, like a slaughter pole. He was blind- folded 

 and the rope placed round his neck, when the 

 wagon was pulled from under him, but the rope 

 broke, and he fell to the ground. He had all along 

 declined to believe that they would really hang him 

 and when he recovered from the jerk he received, he 

 said, " It's all very fine to pretend to hang me, and a 

 joke is a joke, but you hurt me." They apologised 

 for the accident, but put him again on the wagon 

 with a stronger rope attached to him and he was 

 legally executed, no joke this time. A notorious 

 horse -thief Breytenbach, spent much of his time in 



