CHAPTER IV. 



OUR LITTLE HOME. 



Building operations A plucking Ugliness of Cape houses Our rooms 

 Fountain in sitting-room a failure Drowned pets Decoration of 

 rooms Colonist must be Jack-of- all-trades Cape waggons Shoot- 

 ing expeditions Strange tale told by Boer. 



ON our first arrival in the Karroo we were unable to 

 take up our abode at once on our own farm ; the best of 

 the three small Dutch houses on it being little better 

 than a hut, and consisting but of two small and badly- 

 built rooms ; with mud floors and smoke-blackened reed 

 ceilings, as far removed from the horizontal as the 

 roughly-plastered walls, which bulged and retreated in 

 all unexpected directions, were from the perpendicular 

 the whole architecture, if so pretentious a term may 

 be used, being entirely innocent of any approach to a 

 straight line or correct angle. We at once commenced 

 building operations ; in the meanwhile renting a little 

 house which happened to be vacant on the next farm, 

 about an hour's rough, but pretty ride from our own. 



Now came a busy time for T , and for his manager 



the latter already installed, uncomfortably enough, 

 in the old Dutch house for besides the brick-making 



61 T 



