A CAPE CART JOURNEY. 



when the north wind blows fiercely, glowing hot 

 from its passage over thousands of miles of heated 

 plains, smothering you in clouds of hideous red 

 dust, then indeed you feel inclined to curse the day 

 you ever saw the country. 



However, there was nothing for it but to grin and 

 bear the infliction. At our next outspan, Blaauw 

 Krantz (Blue Cliff), we picked up a Boer who was 

 making for the next accommodation-house, where 

 we proposed to stay the night. This gentleman rode 

 with us, and peppered us incessantly with questions, 

 which our Afrikander guide duly translated. 



The ages and description of our parents, the 

 numbers and ages of our brothers and sisters, where 

 we came from, where we were going to, and what 

 we were going to do, what were our possessions in 

 land, money, and flocks — these and innumerable 

 others were the questions asked of us. But this, 

 as we soon learned, is an invariable Dutch custom, 

 not intended in any offensive spirit, and the newly- 

 arrived traveller will do well to yield good-humouredly 

 to the rather un-English catechism. The fact is, 

 the Cape Dutch are a simple and eminently patriar- 

 chal people, who take a keen and even a ludicrous 

 interest in all matters pertaining to the family circle. 

 If you would win your way instantly to their good 

 graces, tell them you are the father of a dozen stout 

 children. They will be enraptured, for the Boer, 

 himself uxorious to a degree, has an intense 

 admiration for large families and their parents. 

 Possibly this feeling is engendered out of Nature's 

 political economy, for South Africa is a vast country, 

 and sparsely populated. 



We were now getting well into the Great Winter- 



