TRAVELS IN 
deemed advisable to let the matter rest; and to summon 
the troops in the neighbourhood to attend the funeral of the 
unfortunate men, whose fate might operate as a check to its 
further progress. 
It would seem, by the end wliich this same Van Roy was 
doomed to make, that, as our immortal poet has finely ex- 
pressed it, 
" 'Even-handed justice 
Returns th' ingredients of our poison'd chalice 
** To our own lips." 
He, in the subsequent wars between the boors and Hotten- 
tots, was shot through the head in his own house : which 
was afterwards burnt to the ground ; his property plun- 
dered and destroyed, and his family reduced to extreme 
poverty. 
The sanguinary character of many of the African colonists 
may be owing, perhaps, in a certain degree, to the circum- 
stance of their having been soldiers in German regiments 
serving abroad ; where the least relaxation from a rigid sys- 
tem of discipline is followed up by the greatest severity of 
punishment. The soldier, having served out the time of his 
engagement, which at most is five years, is at liberty to de- 
mand his discharge. If he is able to read and write, how- 
ever indifferently, he usually finds employment, as school- 
master, in a boors family ; if not qualified for such a situa- 
tion, he either engages as a sort of servant, or hires himself 
to some butcher of the town, who sends him to the extremi- 
