CHAPTER IV 



I MUST now introduce my readers to another character, Roelef van Staden by- 

 name, or " Oom Roelef," as his juniors were in the habit of calling him. 

 While Teenie and I were smoking our pipes after supper one evening, he came 

 over to our waggon on his return from rhebuck shooting. From the moment 

 I saw him I felt that here was the very man I wanted to complete my party, 

 and I lost no time in securing his services. Fine, well-set-up men are common 

 enough amongst the Boers ; indeed, taking them all round, it would be hard to 

 find a more stalwart race than the Free State Dutchmen, but of all the men I 

 came across in South Africa, Van Staden was undoubtedly the most interesting. 

 He was forty-eight years of age, a fine manly fellow, with a face so excep- 

 tionally handsome, so refined, and so expressive, that I wished many a time 

 that I could take him home to my father as a perfect model and type of an old 

 African hunter. In mind and manner, too, he was equally exceptional amongst 

 his class. When I got to know him well and speak his language, as I presently 

 did, I found him the most delightful and sympathetic of companions. Loving 

 nature with all his heart, and having spent his life since boyhood in the African 

 wilds, he was a perfect fund of information on all things relating to the wild 

 life in that country. His travels had not perhaps been so varied or so wide- 

 spread as Selous', but his hunting expeditions into all parts of the interior since 

 he was eighteen years of age had given him a familiar knowledge of the 

 country such as few other men possessed. With no education but what the 

 veldt and the forest had given him, the kindliness of his disposition constantly 

 made itself felt, while there was an entire absence of that vulgar swagger and 

 boorishness which are so often apparent in the talk and actions of inferior men, 

 particularly amongst the Transvaal Boers. In a word, he was one of Nature's 

 gentlemen, and as such I have great pleasure in presenting him to my readers 

 as well as I can with pen and pencil. To complete my sketch, I may say that 



