sted. It is sometimes surprising how
little the inhabitants of one part of the world know about the lives and
occupations of those in another part, but at the Cape, in former times,
it was more singular still to find the residents there knowing little or
nothing of the principal events occurring up the country, or if they
knew of the general facts, these were in transmission so perverted or
distorted as to be very far from the truth when they reached Cape Town;
so that Hans, both from his nationality and experiences, was sought as a
guest by many of the leading merchants at the Cape.

Having despatched to some friends in the eastern frontier letters which
he requested might be sent by the first opportunity to Bernhard and
Katrine, Hans had no objection to partake for a time of the hospitality
offered to him at the Cape. To him it was an entire novelty to sit down
to formal dinners, and to live in the ceremonial manner which it struck
him was adopted by the people with whom he now mixed; yet he was not
long before he fully appreciated the good things which were set before
him. Though Hans was deficient in many of those necessary items of
education and refinement which belong to civilised and polite society,
yet from his known wild life these were overlooked, and as he warmed
with his subject, and described in brief graphic language, either in
English or Dutch, the scenes through which he had passed, and gave in
detail his adventures in elephant and lion hunting, his hearers forgot
that he had used his knife to carry his peas to his mouth, and had
seemed unconscious he had so long delayed eating his fish that the table
had been kept waiting for him.

Very many of the residents of Cape Town and the neighbourhood were men
who had either come to settle there from Holland or England, or had been
born at Cape Town, and had never travelled far from it. Thus to these
men the wilderness of Africa was as much an unknown land as are the
Highlands of Scotland, with their sports, to the London cockney, whose
travels have been confined to Richmond, Kew, or Greenwich. As a natural
consequence, Hans was often supposed to be inventing tales when he was
stating the most sober matters of fact; and not imagining for a moment
that his hearers were doubting his veracity, he rarely gave any of those
additional details which might have smoothed the difficulties to belief;
consequently, amongst many of the fast young gentlemen of the Cape,