The Vee-Boers

CHAPTER ONE.

ON THE KAROO.

A vast plain, seemingly bounded but by the horizon; treeless, save where
a solitary _cameel-doorn_ [Note 1] spreads its feathered leaves, or a
clump of arborescent aloes, mingled with rigid-stemmed euphorbias,
breaks the continuity of its outline. These types of desert vegetation
but proclaim its sterility, which is further evinced by tufts of
whiteish withered grass, growing thinly between them.

Over it three waggons are moving; immense vehicles with bodies above
four yards in length, surrounded by an arching of bamboo canes covered
with canvas. To each is attached eight pairs of long-horned oxen, with
a driver seated on the box, who flourishes a whip, in length like a
fishing-rod; another on foot alongside, wielding the terrible _jambok_,
while at the head of the extended team marches the "foreloper," _reim_
in hand, guiding the oxen along the track.

Half a score horsemen ride here and there upon the flanks, with three
others in advance; and bringing up the rear is a drove of milch cows--
some with calves at the foot--and a flock of _fat-tailed_ sheep, their
tails full fifty pounds in weight, and trailing on the ground.

The cows and sheep are in charge of ten or a dozen dark-skinned
herdsmen, most of them all but naked; while a like number of large
wolfish-looking dogs completes the list of living things visible outside
the waggons. But, were the end curtains raised, under their tilts would
be seen women with children--of both sexes and all ages--in each the
members of a single family, its male head excepted.

Of the last there are three, corresponding to the number of the waggons,
of which they are the respective proprietors--the three men riding in
advance. Their names, Jan Van Dorn, Hans Blom, and Klaas Rynwald. All
Dutch names, and Dutch are they who bear them, at least by descent, for
the scene _is_ Southern Africa, and they are _Boers_.

Not of the ordinary class, though, as may be told by their large
accompaniment of unattached cattle and sheep--over a hundred of the
former, and three times as many of the latter. These, with other signs
well-known to South Africans, proclaim them to be Vee-Boers [Note 2].