s "kraal" was in a district bordering the great
Kalihari desert--the Saara of Southern Africa. The region around, for
hundreds of miles, was uninhabited, for the thinly-scattered, half-human
Bushmen who dwelt within its limits, hardly deserved the name of
inhabitants any more than the wild beasts that howled around them.

I have said that Von Bloom now followed the occupation of a "trek-boor."
Farming in the Cape colony consists principally in the rearing of
horses, cattle, sheep, and goats; and these animals form the wealth of
the boor. But the stock of our field-cornet was now a very small one.
The proscription had swept away all his wealth, and he had not been
fortunate in his first essays as a nomade grazier. The emancipation
law, passed by the British Government, extended not only to the Negroes
of the West India Islands, but also to the Hottentots of the Cape; and
the result of it was that the servants of Mynheer Von Bloom had deserted
him. His cattle, no longer properly cared for, had strayed off. Some
of them fell a prey to wild beasts--some died of the _murrain_. His
horses, too, were decimated by that mysterious disease of Southern
Africa, the "horse-sickness;" while his sheep and goats were continually
being attacked and diminished in numbers by the earth-wolf, the wild
hound, and the hyena. A series of losses had he suffered until his
horses, oxen, sheep, and goats, scarce counted altogether an hundred
head. A very small stock for a vee-boor, or South African grazier.

Withal our field-cornet was not unhappy. He looked around upon his
three brave sons--Hans, Hendrik, and Jan. He looked upon his
cherry-cheeked, flaxen-haired daughter, Gertrude, the very type and
image of what her mother had been. From these he drew the hope of a
happier future.

His two eldest boys were already helps to him in his daily occupations;
the youngest would soon be so likewise. In Gertrude,--or "Truey," as
she was endearingly styled,--he would soon have a capital housekeeper.
He was not unhappy therefore; and if an occasional sigh escaped him, it
was when the face of little Truey recalled the memory of that Gertrude
who was now in heaven.

But Hendrik Von Bloom was not the man to despair. Disappointments had
not succeeded in causing his spirits to droop. He only applied himself
more ardently to the task of once more building up his fortune.

For himself he had no ambition to be rich. He would have been contented