LIFE ON A MOUNTAIN FARM. 83 



get one from a Tottie, on the subject of these 

 creatures. Returning from our bathe, we have 

 breakfast, and then set about the work of the day. 

 Our farmhouse has not been long built — about three 

 years. It boasts four really good rooms, spacious 

 and lofty, besides a good kitchen. Owing to the 

 difficulties and expense of transport, our furniture 

 is plain and serviceable, and something lacking from 

 an ornate point of view. Our living-room boasts 

 a strong table, a plain sideboard, a bureau, eight or 

 ten strong Windsor arm-chairs, half-a-dozen pictures, 

 and a large chest or two. The ceilings are of deal ; 

 every inch of the timber of these and the flooring 

 has been imported from abroad, and brought hither 

 by ox-waggon from Port Elizabeth. Guns and rifles, 

 and the heads and horns of mountain antelopes, 

 help to adorn the bare walls, which are unpapered 

 and plainly distempered ; some cocoa-nut matting 

 completes the furnishing of the apartment. In one 

 corner lies a great pile of oranges. These we 

 procure from an occasional fruit Boer passing 

 with his waggon through the poort, and during 

 the day this corner, with its golden store, is 

 often visited by all of us. In another corner of 

 the room lies a neat pile of Boer tobacco, dark stuff, 

 twisted up into great rolls, weighing many pounds, 

 fastened together at the ends by pegs of bamboo. 

 From these twists we cut our supplies as wanted. 

 Tobacco is, happily for the Cape colonist, extra- 

 ordinarily cheap. We pay from twopence to six- 

 pence per pound for the commodity — ours averages 

 about threepence — and occasionally from the better 

 class of Oudtshoorn Boers, we procure a really 

 decent smoking article. You need to get accustomed 



