47 



to her and which she was taming. They all Sir Alfred, 

 the Hills, every one behaved as if each was my host and 

 felt it peculiarly incumbent on him to give me a good time; 

 and among these hosts one who did very much for me was 

 Captain Arthur Slatter. I was his guest at Kilimakiu, 

 where he was running an ostrich-farm; he had lost his 

 right hand, yet he was an 

 exceedingly good game 

 shot both with his light 

 and his heavy rifles. 



At Kitanga, Sir Al- 

 fred's place, two Boers 

 were working, Messrs. 

 Prinsloo and Klopper. 

 We forgathered, of 

 course, as I too was of 

 Dutch ancestry; they 

 were strong, upstanding 

 men, good mechanics, 

 good masons, and Prins- 

 loo spoke English well. I 

 afterward stopped at the 

 farm of Klopper's father, 

 and at the farm of an- 

 other Boer named Loijs; 

 and I met other Boers while out hunting Erasmus, Botha, 

 Joubert, Meyer. They were descendants of the Voortrek- 

 kers with the same names who led the hard-fighting farmers 

 northward from the Cape seventy years ago; and were 

 kinsfolk of the men who since then have made these names 

 honorably known throughout the world. There must of 

 course be many Boers who have gone backward under the 

 stress of a hard and semi-savage life; just as in our com- 

 munities of the frontier, the backwoods, and the lonely 

 mountains, there are shiftless "poor whites" and "mean 

 whites/' mingled with the sturdy men and women who have 

 laid deep the foundations of our national greatness. But 



Sir Alfred with cheetah cub, Botha 

 From a photograph by Kennit Roosevelt 



