378 KLOOF AND KARROO. 



before slavery was abolished and the emigrant Boers 

 trekked out into the Free State and Transvaal, and 

 you will know that is long since. 



" My father lived as a servant under that very 

 Jan Prinsloo, whom you saw murdered last night 

 in yonder kraal, and many a time has he told me 

 of Prinsloo and his evil doings and his dreadful 

 end. Well, Jan Prinsloo was a grown man years 

 before the English came across the shining waters 

 and took the country from the Dutch.* He was 

 one of the wild and lawless gang settled about 

 Bruintjes Hoogte, on the other side of Sunday 

 River, who bade defiance to all laws and govern- 

 ments, and who, under Marthinus Prinsloo (a 

 kinsman of Jan's) and Adriaan Van Jaarsveld, got 

 up an insurrection two years after the English came,, 

 and captured Graaff Reinet. 



" General Vandeleur soon put this rising down, and 

 Marthinus Prinsloo and Van Jaarsveld were hanged, 

 but Jan Prinsloo, who was implicated, somehow 

 retired early in the insurrection, and was pardoned. 

 Some years before this, Jan was fast friends, as a 

 younger man, with Jan Bloem, who, as you may have 

 heard, was a noted freebooter who fled from the- 

 Colony across the Orange River, raised a marauding 

 band of Griquas and Korannas, and plundered, 

 murdered, and devastated amongst many of the 

 Bechuanas tribes, besides trading and shooting ivory 

 as well. The bloody deeds of these men yet live in 

 Bechuana story, Jan Bloem at last, however, drank 

 from a poisoned fountain in the Bechuana country, 

 and died like a hysena, as he deserved. Then Jan 

 Prinsloo took all his herds, waggons, ivory, and 



* The Cape was first taken by the British in 1795. 



