The Sand-Dunes of the Desert 



photograph of Gert beside his hut. He is 

 one hundred years of age, and is probably the 

 only coloured man now alive who has had the 

 honour of shaking hands with the late Queen 

 Victoria. I showed Gert his photograph in 

 Farini's book, entitled " Through the Kalahari 

 Desert " (page 97) — a photograph taken in 

 1885 — and he was immensely pleased. Farini 

 took Gert home to England, and it was there 

 that he met the Queen. Gert said that you 

 could put the whole of Upington into one house 

 in London, that the people were like the locusts 

 for multitude, and that he greatly missed the 

 desert sand-dunes in the city ! 



William is the finest tracker in the Kalahari. 

 Put him on the spoor of a man or a horse, a 

 snake or a wild cat — it is all the same. He will 

 knock the sleeping wild cat on the head, trace 

 the lost traveller to the thorn bush on the sand- 

 dune, or summon the flying criminal to surrender 

 in the King's name. 



And Jacob, the other Bastard Hottentot — 

 what a toiler ! always working from dawn far 

 into the night ! If work counts for anything 

 in the Land of the Hereafter, then Jacob will 

 surely have a high place. His pedigree is some- 

 what obscure. He also is a child of the sand- 



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