Page:Life of Africaner.pdf/4

 frosty morning, and, for the first time, observing that his breath was like smoke proceeding from his throat, he was seized with extreme horror, supposing there was a fire in his stomach, ran to his master, crying, "Fire! fire!"

Ethiopia or Abyssinia, Egypt, and the countries bordering on the Mediterranean Sea, viz., the coast of Barbary, all situated at the north part of Africa, were well known in the early ages; but the immense regions beyond them to the south were entirely unknown till a few hundred years ago, when the Portuguese discovered the way to the East Indies by sailing round the Cape of Good Hope, which is at the southern part of Africa.

The father of Africaner, the subject of the present memoir, was a Hottentot, born in the Hottentot country now called the colony of the Cape of Good Hope. He, with his family, were in the service of a Dutch boor, or farmer, in the district of Tulbagh, and were employed in attending the farmer's cattle. These, for the sake of pasture when it was scarce in that dry and sandy part of Africa, were sent higher up the country, beyond the limits of the colony, to the vicinity of the Great Orange River, where, as in the days of Abraham and Lot, the natives consider it is no intrusion for strangers to bring their flocks and feed them as long as they please. It is the same in all the interior of Southern Africa that is yet known.

Afterwards, the family lived with another boor, named Piemaar, at a farm on the banks of the Elephant's River, which is the largest, except the Great Orange River, on the western side of South Africa; and in such a country