THE BOER OF TO-BAY. 331 



of mine,* very well express the courting preparations: 



" Carl Jansen was een jonge kerel, 

 En dapper 00k was hij. 

 Fluks was hij met zyn laange roer, 

 En 00k met paarde reij. 



Carl Jansen klim zyn spoght piart op, 



De beste wat hij kon krij. 

 Dan gaat hij voort al lynks en reghts, 



Met de meisjes o'r als te vrej. 



Carl Jansen komt na' onze huis, 



Hij jaa moss, oer de vlak. 

 Zyn stevels het al mooi geschine, 



En een kerse was en zyn zaak." 



Even in the long-settled Cape Colony, Boer 

 husbandry is too frequently as primitive as it was 

 two centuries since. The Boer has ever preferred 

 pastoral farming, with its loose roving methods, and 

 free-and-easy camp life in the trek-veldt for part of 

 the year, to agriculture. Far greater returns might 

 be obtained from the soil, if a little more trouble 

 were taken ; if the ground were a little better 

 prepared, and more care were taken to plough 

 deeper and more evenly. As often as not in the 

 back settlements, the bushes and roots are not 

 cleared away, nor the clods broken by rolling and 

 harrowing. It is an astonishing fact, that thrashing 

 is performed in most parts of the Colony, in the 

 ancient Biblical manner, by treading out the corn on 

 a circular threshing floor by means of horses or oxen ; 

 the corn is then cleared of the chaff, simply by 

 throwing it in the air when a good breeze is blowing, 

 and it is then bagged and stored away ready for sale 

 or use. Thrashing, which by the aid of machinery 



* Mr. A. G. Evans, an eighteen years' resident among the Boers of 

 Sneeuwberg. 



