ar-off back-country women folk are scarce, and in much request,
and already, at eighteen, Anna Stuurmann has found a mate. Next to her
brothers' wagon there stands the wagon of her betrothed--Rodolf
Klopper--who is just now away in the grass plains a little to the north,
shooting springboks with the younger Stuurmanns. This wagon is newly
repaired, smart, and gaily painted, and is destined in another month or
two, after the flocks have been well recruited in the Bushmanland
Trek-veldt, to become the home of the Boer maiden. The combined
families are to trek to Calvinia village, where the marriage will take
place, and thenceforth Anna becomes mistress of her own man and wagon.

His daughter's modest toilet complete, the big Boer dips a corner of the
not over-clean towel in water, runs it carelessly over brow, cheeks,
eyes, and mouth, dips his hands, and the trick is done. The proximity
of cleanliness to godliness is no axiom of the Cape Dutch farmer, still
less of the roaming Trek-Boer. A dry, parched land, and lack of water,
have doubtless had a good deal to do with this trait.

At eleven o'clock, sitting in the shade of the sail suspended between
two wagons, father and daughter partake, after a long grace, of the
usual meal--pieces of mutton, swimming in sheep's-tail fat, boiled rice,
coarse bread, and the eternal coffee, which, however, is just now,
thanks to the sweet herbage, plenteously tempered by a supply of _bokke
melk_ (goat's milk). Again the big Dutchman lights his pipe, and
presently, yielding to the heat and the effects of his meal, falls to
sleep, sitting on the sand with his back against the wagon-wheel--a
moving picture of pastoral listlessness, or, if you please, pastoral
sloth. The hot day wears on. At three o'clock Anna mounts to the
wagon-box, and, shading her eyes from the intense glare, scans the hot
plain, now dancing and shimmering with mirage. The flocks have turned
for home--she can hear the far-off tinkle of their bells, borne drowsily
upon the warm air; but it is not the flocks she searches for. In
another half-hour she looks forth again. This time, far in the north,
she picks out from the shimmer and tremble of the atmosphere a tiny
cloud of dust. That is what she is expecting, and she now gives orders
to the Hottentot and another boy to tend the fire, get the pot and pan
in order, and fill the great kettle.

In a while you may catch the steady trample of galloping hoofs, and
p