s
been an interesting one. Most of it has been spent in places as far as
possible from centers where conventionality reigns.
My still unrecorded experiences include, inter alia, war, hunting, the
administration of native tribes in remote areas, rovings under special
commission in those waterless regions to the north-west through which
the boundary common to British and German territory runs and perhaps
most interesting of all, a microscopic study of human infusoria
inhabiting isolated and therefore stagnant towns and hamlets.
I intend to retire soon with a typewriting machine and some beehives,
to a little farm I have acquired in a sleepy locality on the south
coast. There I hope to be spared for some few years to develop the
economic products of the honey-bee, to meditate on the Universal
Postulate, and to watch, from afar, my children cultivating the
difficult fields of Experience. May their task be easier than mine has
been!
Having thus taken the public into my confidence, I will say
AU REVOIR.
L'ENVOI
As a pack of wolves is the hungry Past;
It hunts Man laden with hopes and fears;
Its bay swells loud with the hasting years,
Till the red fangs sink in his flank at last.
The bay grows louder, the flame ringed een
Glow with greed as the night sinks, black;
Swerve and double still o'er your track
The pitiless, questing nostrils lean.
Mark, O brothers, before I fall,
I fling this sheaf of script to your care;
Take and read it; I fain would share
My scanty gatherings with you all.
With all with the hunted, whose eyes search mine
In vain for the hint of a 'scaping clue;
With those still tranc'd, where the skies bedew
The half-op'd blossoms that round them shine.
Take my sheaf it was gleaned with toil
From fields now dimm'd in a long-sped day;
In a clime where naught but dim shadows stray
Yet its grain may sprout from a kindly soil.
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.
***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REMINISCENCES OF A SOUTH AFRICAN
PIONEER***
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