THEIR BESETTING VICE, 



233 



standing on his legs was the more desirable position 

 to assume. 



The spill which my servant had sustained would 

 have had serious consequences to a white man ; not 

 so to him, for he rose smiling, with an abundant ad- 

 hesion of earth sticking to his wool and face. He 

 got well chaffed by his countrymen, but took it with 

 the usual good temper of a black man. The hunt 

 for that occasion was now finished, all the horses had 

 had more than enough, while the game continued 

 sailing away, at the same steady even gait, as if they 

 had just been started, instead of having done nearly 

 two miles at their best pace. Leaving William, 

 the guide, and some of the Griquas to attend to the 

 cutting up and transportation of the meat to campy 

 with two of the strangers I started for a survey of 

 the country. These people are generally a very 

 civil and obliging lot, excellent hunters, but not often 

 good shots. Why, I cannot say, unless it be their 

 fear or dread of recoil. As they invariably over- 

 load their guns, this is quite possible. Kama, chief 

 of the Bamanwato pc'ople, although a good all-round 

 sportsman, I never could persuade to fire one of my 

 elephant guns. The Griquas are a bastard race, 

 generally a cross between the Boer frontier farmers 

 and native women. Their besetting vice is drunken- 

 ness. To abstain from spirits when obtainable 

 appears to them a moral impossibility. Yet they 

 have produced some remarkable men, persons who, if 

 they had existed in Europe, would have left a great 

 reputation after them, both as soldiers and patriots, 

 Africaneer, Waterbocr, and Adam Kock,will long be 

 remembered by their race, ay, and by colonists. 



The surroundings had been so much harrowed by 

 our chase that it was some time before we found 

 game, and then it was in a perfectly new section of the 

 country, separated from where we had hunted by a 

 wide ridge of undulating land Here was situated 



