THE LEGEND OF JAN PRINSLOO'S KLOOF. 359 



was usual to the marauding frontier Boers of ninety- 

 years ago — made his exit from the scene in a 

 manner cruel and horrible enough to match fitly 

 with the rest of his wicked and violent existence. 



Since Jan Prinsloo's fearful ending, which will be 

 hereafter alluded to, the kloof has borne an evil 

 reputation. Now and again a Boer has taken the 

 farm, tempted by its pastoral advantages and its 

 low purchase-money, but somehow, none have ever 

 stayed upon it for long. The last tenant, an 

 Englishman, quitted it hastily nearly thirty years 

 ago, and ever since then the house has steadily 

 fallen into ruin, the dark kloof has become year by 

 year more sombre and more desolate, the footsteps 

 of human beings now rarely penetrate thither, and 

 even the very Kaffirs avoid the place. 



In September of the year i860, a young English 

 Afrikander, Stephen Goodrick by name, who had, 

 from the time he could handle a rifle, been engaged 

 in the far interior, in the then lucrative, if dangerous 

 occupation of elephant hunting ; having amassed, at 

 the age of thirty, some four or five thousand pounds, 

 after fourteen years of hunting and trading in 

 Northern Bechuanaland, and the Lake N'Gami 

 region, threw up the game, and trekked down to 

 Graham's Town with his last loads of ivory. 

 These disposed of, and his affairs settled, he took 

 unto himself for a wife, a handsome, dark-eyed girl, 

 the daughter of Scotch parents, living near his own 

 family in the Western province, and then set about 

 looking for a farm, having determined to settle down 

 to the more peaceful pursuits of pastoral farming. 

 After a month of riding hither and thither, inspecting 

 farms in the districts of Swellendam, Oudtshoorn, 



