NEW YEAR ON THE VELDT 



WAS lying in my ham- 

 mock watching from the 

 open window of my 

 bungalow the birth of a 

 golden dawn — the dawn 

 of the New Year of 1895 

 — when the rumble of 

 wheels and the clatter 

 of hoofs on the dusty, 

 sunbaked veldt road 

 came to my ears. As a 

 considerable amount of 

 traffic in the shape of transport waggons, mining material, 

 and so forth, passed along the road, upon which abutted 

 my four-roomed "mansion," I paid but little heed to the 

 approaching waggon. But when the lumbering vehicle 

 pulled up before my modest abode and a volley of ear- 

 splitting and unmistakably British " who-whoops " 

 awakened the dead silence of early morning, I thought it 

 was about time to " get a move on " and investigate 

 from the stoejp. Thanks to that benefactor to mankind, 

 the inventor of pyjamas, all I had to do was to slip my 

 somewhat abnormal feet into a pair of veldtschoons and 

 shuffle out on to the stoe'p to find my three friends, 



R , B , and S , perched like a leash of amiable 



232 



