e Colony. Let us glance at the more pleasant part of
it.

Their coffee finished, Klaas Stuurmann moves to the temporary kraals, a
hundred yards away, where his flocks are confined for the night. There
are two kraals--one for the sheep, one for goats--and they are simply
made of bush and branches of the acacia and wait-a-bit thorns, fashioned
into a light ring-fencing, just sufficient to keep the flocks within and
prowling hyaenas and jackals without. Already the native herd-boys are
there waiting for their charges; and the hungry kraal-denizens, knowing
their breakfast-hour is nigh, bleat loudly for the near freedom of the
veldt. The tall Dutchman now plants himself by the entrance of the
sheep-kraal, from which a herdsman drags away the thorns. Forth flock
the impatient sheep, and as their stream issues through the narrow exit,
Klaas Stuurmann numbers them head by head. As a rule the Boer is a bad
hand at figures; but in the necessary ancient custom of counting flocks
night and morning, he can reckon with as much skill as any man.
Practice makes perfect, and so Klaas Stuurmann finds no difficulty in
taking his fleecy census, fast as the sheep pass forth.

The sheep--600 of them--are checked and found in order, and the same
process is gone through at the other kraal, whence, to the number of
800, the goats go forth, in the ancient African fashion of five thousand
years, to pasture in the wild. The warm air, full of the rich, aromatic
scent of the veldt vegetation, now springing in its prime, comes
alluringly into the nostrils of these nomadic flocks, and soon they are
scattered upon the plain feeding vigorously, their silent, patient
herd-boys tending them for the hot, livelong day.

What do these dusky herd-boys think of, day after day, as they follow
their flocks? Heaven knows! As well ask the bird and beast of the
great plains what are their thoughts! Sometimes in the days of the
Pharaohs there sprang a great warrior or statesman from the
brown-skinned herdsmen and hunters of the far Land of Cush; nay, Egypt
herself was ruled not seldom during these remote ages by almost pure
Ethiopian blood. But nowadays there be no black Hampdens, or yellow
Miltons, still less, possible Pharaohs, from among the lazy Kaffirs and
poor besotted Hottentots of the Cape Colony.

Refilling his pipe from colonial tobacco, carried loose in his
jacket-pocket, and relighting it, the big Boer moves massively back to
his wagon, n