THE LEGEND OF JAN PRINSLOO'S KLOOF. 361 



morning all were up early, and Goodrick rode round 

 the farm — all good mountain pasture, embracing some 

 19,000 morgen (rather more than 40,000 acres) in its 

 area. The Boer, in his uncouth, rough way, warmly 

 praised the farm ; the price he asked was extremely 

 small, and the annual Government quit rent very 

 trifling. Van der Meulen explained as his reason for 

 selling the place apparently so much below its value, 

 that he had been offered, at an absurdly small price, 

 a very fine farm in the Transvaal, by a relation who 

 had lately annexed the best of the land of a native 

 chief; and as many of his blood relations, Boertrekkers 

 •of 1836, were settled there, he wished to quit the 

 Colony quickly and join them. Finally, Goodrick 

 agreed to buy the farm, together with part of the 

 stock, and early on the following morning left the 

 kloof. The purchase was shortly completed at Cape 

 Town, where the vendor and purchaser met a week 

 afterwards, and the Van der Meulens having trekked 

 out with all their household goods and belongings, 

 the Englishman and his wife prepared to enter upon 

 their property. 



Stephen Goodrick, then, with two waggons, 

 carrying his wife, her white female servant, a 

 quantity of furniture and household and farming 

 necessaries, and taking with him four Hottentots 

 .and half-a-dozen horses, trekked again through 

 Lange Kloof, over the Kougaberg, and thence 

 through a country partly mountain, partly karroo, 

 until one afternoon early in October, the waggons 

 crossed the deep and dangerous drift of the river, and 

 went up through the poort that led into Prinsloo's 

 Kloof. After a most difficult and tedious piece of 

 travelHngfor some seven miles — for. the half-forgotten 



