120 TRAVELS IN 
go to a little distance for wood to build a shed, he sees his 
stock destroyed from day to day and from year to year, with- 
out applying the remedy which common sense so clearly 
points out, and which requires neither much expence nor 
great exertions to accomplish. 
If the Arcadian shepherds, who were certainly not so rich, 
were as uncomfortable in their cottages as the Cape boors, 
their poets must have been woefully led astray by the muse. 
But Pegasus was always fond of playing his gambols in 
the flowery regions of fancy. Without a fiction, the people 
of the Cape consider Graaf Reynet as the Arcadia of the 
colony. 
Few of the distant boors have more than one slave, and 
many none ; but the number of Hottentots amounts, on an 
average in Graaf Reynet, to thirteen in each family. The 
inhumanity with which they treat this nation I have fre- 
quently had occasion to notice. The boor has few good fea- 
tures in his character, but this is perhaps the worst. Not 
satisfied with defrauding them of the petty earnings of their 
industry, and with inflicting the most cruel and brutal punish- 
ment for every trifling fault, they make it a common practice 
to retain the wife and children after turnino; adrift the hus- 
band ; thus dissolving the tender ties of social intercourse, 
and cutting off even the natural resources of wretchedness 
and sorrow. It is in vain for the Hottentot to complain. 
To whom, indeed, should he complain ? The Landrost is a 
mere cypher, and must either enter into all the views of the 
boors, or lead a most uncomfortable life. The last, who was 
