Chapter VI. 

 A RACE WITH A KAFFIR. 



IT is a hot afternoon in Naroekas Poort ; the sun 

 plays steadily down upon the rough and broken 

 sides, strewn with boulders of every shape and 

 size, of the mountains that surround us ; upon the 

 white-washed walls of our flat-roofed farmhouse ; 

 upon thorn and shrub, spek-boom, prickly pear, 

 cactus, aloe, and Kaffir plum that grow around ; 

 upon the little lands of oats and mealies down by 

 the river-bed at our feet, and upon the kraals, some 

 built of thorn, others of stone, lying to our flank, 

 which at this time of day shelter only a few ostriches 

 (for whom a more spacious camp is being prepared), 

 who stalk hither and thither in foolish solemnity. 

 It plays, too, upon the grove of thorny acacia {Acacia 

 horrida) that clothes the bottom of our valley away 

 in the hot distance, and upon the tiny clear stream 

 • — fontein we call it here — that trickles down the 

 mountain at our back, watering in its course the 

 small potato patch that has been won so hardly 

 from these sterile rocks. Nature lies silent in the 

 heat, the soft cooing of turtle doves and the song of 

 the merry Basuto, building us a new stone kraal, 

 alone disturb the repose. But why, the reader will 

 ask, is your habitation pitched amid such rugged 

 surroundings ? My answer is — we are pastoral 

 farmers, and these sterile looking mountains well 

 serve our purposes. Our wide acreage of mountain 



