any
heathen host into the hands of a few faithful servants. But with all
this reliant devotion he never forgot " to keep his powder dry," and
used every opportunity to perfect his skill as a marksman.
Back
of his faith and prudence was an unflinching spirit. In the uncouth
Boer smouldered the fire of an ancestry that charged at Ivry and
starved at Levden. Even the women and children were dauntless at the
pinch of need. With her white grease-cloth wrapped about her face, the
Boer's vrouw was an uncouth object, but with her eye on the sight of a
rifle many a fat old woman was a guard to be feared.
No
impediments nor dangers stayed the advance of these pioneers. When a
heavy wheel dropped into a deep gully or earth-crack or ant-bear hole,
it was pried out with untiring patience. When thunder-storms changed
the red soil to beds of mire and the wheels were clogged masses of mud
from nave to felloe, the mud was laboriously scraped away and the
wagons tugged to firmer ground. When the violent wrenches and strains
snapped trektouws and wagon-poles and king-bolts like packthread, the
same inflexible temper relinked the broken touws with riems of rawhide,
chopped out new wagon-poles, and forged new fastenings with rude
blacksmith's art. No karroo was so forbidding and no stream so swollen
as to bar the onward march.
