CHAPTER IV. 



OUR LITTLE HOME. 



Building operations — A plucking— Ugliness of Cape houses— Our rooms 

 — Fountain in sitting-room a failure — Drowned pets — Decoration of 

 rooms —Colonist must be Jack-of-all-trades — Cape waggons — Shoot- 

 ing expeditions — Strange tale told by Boer. 



On our first arrival in the Karroo we were unable to 

 take up our abode at once on our own farm ; the best of 

 the three small Dutch houses on it being little better 

 than a hut, and consisting but of two small and badly- 

 built rooms ; with mud floors and smoke-blackened reed 

 ceilings, as far removed from the horizontal as the 

 roughly-plastered walls, which bulged and retreated in 

 all unexpected directions, were from the perpendicular 

 — the whole architecture, if so pretentious a term may 

 be used, being entirely innocent of any approach to a 

 straight line or correct angle. We at once commenced 

 building operations ; in tlie meanwhile renting a little 

 house which happened to be vacant on the next farm, 

 about an hour's rough, but pretty ride from our own. 



Now came a busy time for T , and for his manager 



— the latter already installed, uncomfortably enough, 

 in the old Dutch house— for besides the brick-making 



