The Covenant Part 26

Hendrik was so interested that he summoned Dikkop, who conveyed the important information that so far as he could discern, they called themselves the Xhosa: Hkausa, Hkausa, he p.r.o.nounced the word, giving it a p.r.o.nounced click in the back of his throat. 'They said they were the Xhosa, who lived beyond a big river.' he p.r.o.nounced the word, giving it a p.r.o.nounced click in the back of his throat. 'They said they were the Xhosa, who lived beyond a big river.'

'What river?' Hendrik asked.

'There were so many,' Adriaan and Dikkop said together, and for the first time they spelled out the geography of the vast lands to the east, and it was this report, laboriously written down in archaic language by Hendrik van Doorn, that ultimately reached the Cape, adding to the Compagnie's comprehension of the lands they were about to govern, whether they wanted to or not: The land east of our farm is not to be traversed easily, because heavy mountains enclose it on the north, a chain unbroken for many miles that cannot be penetrated, for there seem to be no pa.s.ses across it. Travel to the south along the seacoast is no easier, because deep ravines cut in from the sh.o.r.e, running many miles at times, not pa.s.sable with wagons. But in between these impediments are lands of great productivity and greater beauty. Our farm lies at the western edge of what must be the finest lands on earth, a garden of flowers and birds and animals. Copious rivers produce water for every purpose, and if fruit trees can be made to grow there as easily as they do here, you will have a garden paradise. But we have reason to believe that black tribes are pressing down upon it from the east.

When Hendrik finished this writing he was proud to have remembered so much of his education, and ashamed that he had neglected it. At Trianon his parents had taught him his letters and to speak correct Dutch, but long years in the company of Hottentot and slave, and then with an illiterate wife, had caused him to speak in rough, unlettered sentences. Worse, he had taught none of his children to read.

But he engaged in no recriminations, for life was bountiful. With June came harvest time, and the family was busy gathering not only enough vegetables for the long winter, but also more than enough to dry for seeds: big yellow pumpkins, gnarled green squash, mealies, radishes, onions, cauliflower and cabbage for pickling. The fruit trees, of course, were too young to bear, but in his explorations of the surrounding terrain Hendrik had found wild lemons whose thick and oily skin proved so useful, and bitter almonds like the ones from the hedge his grandfather had cut down during his escape from Compagnie domination.

One heard little of the Compagnie out here. The farm was so distant from headquartersone hundred and sixty-two miles in a straight line, half again more according to the wandering path over the mountainsthat no official could easily reach it. No predikant ever arrived for marriages and baptisms, and certainly no a.s.sessor or tax collector. Still, a kind of supervision prevailed, distant and unenforced, but ready for implementation when roads should penetrate the area. A petulant Compagnie official who crossed the mountains in vast discomfort had come as far east as four farms short of Van Doorn's, and he had written upon his return to the Cape: Wherever I went I heard of divers Dutchmen who occupied stupendous farms, Rooi van Valck to the north, Hendrik van Doorn to the east. They graze their cattle on our land without the Compagnie deriving any benefit. They plant their seeds on Compagnie land without any profit to us, and I think the Compagnie deserves better treatment from these rascals. I recommend that every man who occupies a farm pay to the Compagnie a tax of twelve rix-dollars a year plus one-tenth of whatever harvest of grain or fruit or vegetables or animals he produces. But how this tax is to be collected from farms as distant as Rooi van Valck's and Hendrik van Doorn's, I have not decided.

The loan-farm law was pa.s.sed, but as the perceptive emissary had predicted, it could rarely be enforced. Distant farmers were instructed to carry their taxes to either the Cape or Stellenbosch, and they simply ignored the law. On farms close in, the officials did make a brave show of riding out in midwinter to demand overdue t.i.thes, but with obstinate and dangerous renegades like Rooi van Valck, no collector dared approach his outlaw domain lest he be shot through the neck.

In these years Adriaan had little concern with tax collectors; he was so occupied with extending his knowledge of the wilderness that weeks would pa.s.s without his being seen at the farm. It was then that the soubriquet Mai Adriaan was fastened most securely to him; he would come home from an exploration and say, 'While I was sleeping in the tree . . .' or 'As I climbed out of the hippo's wallow . . .' or 'In the days when I lived with the gemsbok . . .' He caused outrage among his family and the slaves by insisting that lions could climb trees, for it was commonly accepted that they could not and that a man was secure if only he could find refuge in a tree.

'No,' said Adriaan, 'I've seen a tree with seven lions sleeping on the higher branches.' This was so crazy that even the slaves called him Mai Adriaan, and once when he was twenty he experienced for the first time the loneliness that comes upon a young man when he is ridiculed by his peers. The family was eating in the hut, sc.r.a.ping away at bones of mutton and cabbage, when his father asked, 'Have the animals moved closer to our valley?' and he replied automatically, 'When I was staying with the rhinoceros . . .' and his brothers and sisters said simultaneously, 'Oh, Adriaan!' and he had blushed furiously and started to leave the table where they huddled, except that his mother placed her hand upon his arm to restrain him.

That night, as they sat outside the hut, she told him, 'It's not good for a man to wait too long. You must find yourself a wife.'

'Where?'

'That's always the question. Look at our Florrie. Where's she to catch a husband? I'll tell you where. One of these days a young man will come by here on his horse, looking for a bride. And he'll see Florrie, and off she'll go-'

And sure enough, within four weeks of that conversation Dikkop, always frightened of new movement, came rus.h.i.+ng to the hut, shouting, 'Man coming on horse!' And in came a dusty, l.u.s.ty young farmer who had ridden a hundred and twenty miles on hearing the rumor that Hendrik van Doorn out beyond the river had several daughters. He made no secret of his mission, stayed five weeks, during which he ate enormous quant.i.ties of food, and on the night Hendrik offered him a bread pudding crammed with lemon rind and cherries and dried apples, he belched, pushed back the soup plate from which he had gorged himself, and said, 'Florrie and me, we're heading home tomorrow.'

The Van Doorns were delighted. It might be years or never before they saw this daughter again, but at her age it was proper that she ride away. Illiterate, barely able to sew a straight line, a horrible cook, a worse housekeeper, off she went with her illiterate husband to found a new farm, to raise a new brood of tough-minded trekboers to occupy the land.

Two nights after they departed, Johanna sat with Adriaan again and said, 'Take the brown horse and be going.'

'Where?'

'Three people now have told us that Rooi van Valck has a mess of daughters. Ride up and get one.'

'They also say Rooi's a bad one. Defames the Bible.'

'Well.' She hardly knew how to say what was required, but she had thought about this matter for some time, keeping her mouth shut lest she irritate her husband. But now she said in a low voice, 'Adriaan, it's possible to take the Bible too seriously. I can't read it myselfnever had my lettersbut sometimes I think your father makes a fool of himself, scouring that book for instructions. If Rooi van Valck has a daughter, and she looks as if she'd be good in bed, grab her.' When Adriaan said nothing, for these ideas were shocking to him, raised as he was with absolute faith in the Bible, even though he could not read it for himself, his mother added, 'Living in a hut is no pleasure. It's not much better than what the Hottentots have. But to love your father and go to bed with him when you children are asleep. That can be enough to keep a life going.' With a sudden jerk of her hand she pulled him around to face her in the darkness. With her eyes close to his she whispered, 'And never forget it. You leave for Van Valck's at sunup.'

Adriaan took the brown horse and rode far to the north, across the empty plains, across the muddy Touws River, and well to the west of the Witte-berge Mountains, until he saw ahead the columns of dust that signified a settlement. It was the farm, the little empire, of Rooi van Valck, and to get to the hartebeest huts in which Rooi and his wild collection of attendants lived, he had to pa.s.s through valleys containing twenty thousand sheep, seven thousand head of cattle.

'I'm looking for Rooi,' Adriaan said, overwhelmed by the magnitude of his wealth.

'Not here,' a Madagascan slave growled.

'Where is he?'

'Who knows?'

'Can I speak to his wife?'

'Which one?'

'His wife. I want to speak with his wife.'

'He's got four. The white one, the yellow one, the brown one, the black one.'

'Which one has the daughters?' 'They all got daughters, sons too.'

'I'll see the white one.'

'Over there.' And the slave pointed to a hut not one bit better than the one the Van Doorns occupied.

All these cattle, Adriaan said to himself as he crossed the clearing to the hut. And he lives in a hut like us. He was pleased rather than disturbed, and when the white Mevrouw van Valck invited him to sit with her, he was relieved to see that she was much like his mother: old beyond her years, well adapted to the dirt, independent in nature.

'What do you want?' she asked, squatting on a log that served as a bench.

'To see your husband.'

'He's around somewheres.'

'When will he be back?'

Like the slave, she answered, 'Who knows?'

'Today? Three days?'

'Who knows?' Looking at him carefully, she asked, 'What farm?' 'Hendrik van Doorn's.' 'Never heard of him.' 'Trianon. Those Van Doorns.'

The name had a startling effect on her. 'Trianon!' she roared, following the name with a string of Dutch and Hottentot curses. Then, going to the open end of the hut, she bellowed, 'Guess who's here? A Van Doorn of Trianon!'

'I'm not from Trianon,' Adriaan tried to explain, but before he could establish this fact, numerous people had erupted from the many huts, women of varied colors bringing with them children of the most mixed appearance.

'This one is from Trianon!' Mevrouw van Valck shouted, hitting him in the shoulder playfully and ringing out a new string of obscenities. 'And I'll wager he's come to find him a wife. Isn't that right, Van Doorn? Isn't that right?'

And before he could control his blus.h.i.+ng and explain in an orderly manner the purpose of his mission, the tough woman had yelled for different people, and a procession of bewildering types came to her hut. 'You can have this one,' she shrilled, pointing to a nubile girl of seventeen with dark skin and black hair. 'But you can't have that one because he's a boy.' This occasioned great laughter among the women, and the parade continued.

'This one you can have,' she said more seriously, 'and I'd advise you to take her.' With these words she brought forth one of her own daughters, a girl with bright red hair that fell almost to her waist. She seemed to be about fifteen or sixteen, not shy, not embarra.s.sed by her rowdy mother. Going directly to Adriaan, she extended her hands and said, 'h.e.l.lo, I'm Seena.' When her mother started to say something obscene, the girl turned in a flash and shouted, 'You, d.a.m.n fool, shut up.'

'She's the good one,' Mevrouw van Valck shouted, cackling with the other wives, who formed a circle of approbation.

'She has lovely hair,' a Malay woman said, reaching out to fluff the girl's red tresses.

Adriaan, overcome with embarra.s.sment, asked Seena, 'Is there somewhere . . .'

'Get away, you . . .' The girl uttered an oath equal to her mother's and chased the women back. 'We can sit here,' and she indicated an old wagon chest at the entrance to the hut in which she lived with a ramshackle collection of other children.

'Where's your father?' Adriaan asked.

'Out killing Bushmen,' she said.

'When will he be back?'

'Who knows? Last time it took him four weeks to clean out the valleys.'

'Can I stay here?'

'Was my mother right? Are you looking for a wife?'

'I'm . . . I'm . . . looking for your father.'

'You don't have to wait for him. He doesn't care what happens. Have you a farm?'

'I live a long way off.'

'Good.' That was all she said, but the single word conveyed her longing to get away from this tempestuous place.

It was worse when Rooi himself roared in from the manhunt. He was a huge man with a flaming head of red hair that gave him his name. He was really Rupertus van Valck, from a family which had settled early at the Cape. Rooi van Valck, Rooi the Falcon, the red-haired terror who submitted to no control, whether from the Cape governor, the Lords XVII, or G.o.d Himself.

The Van Valcks first had trouble with authority in the time of Van Riebeeck, when Leopold, the stubborn soldier who had founded the family, sought permission to marry a Malaccan girl. The Compagnie dillydallied so long that when permission was finally granted, Rooi's grandfather was a sire twice over. The next serious clash came when Mevrouw van Valck, a lively, independent-minded woman, wanted to dress in a way becoming her prettiness. From Amsterdam the Lords XVII specifically ordered that 'Mevrouw van Valck must not wear bombazine, and certainly not a bright yellow bombazine, and especially since she is not the wife of a senior Compagnie official.' When she persisted, with her husband's encouragement, soldiers were sent to rip the dress apart, whereupon Van Valck thumped the soldiersand spent a long day on the wooden horse.

Since he had not been dropped onto the killing horse from any height, he escaped the permanent injury that had marred Willem van Doorn's later life, but he never escaped the corroding resentment, and when some months later one of the soldiers who dropped him was found with his throat cut, it was a.s.sumed that Van Valck had done it. Nothing was proved, but subsequently, when Willem and Katje made their escape through the bitter almond, this Van Valck followed the same route. But he went north.

There, in a wild and s.p.a.cious valley, he built his huts, a.s.sembled slaves and runaways, and launched the infamous Van Valcks. He had four sons, and they proliferated, but all kept to the initial valley, where they farmed vast herds of animals and planted whole orchards of a single fruit. They sheared their own sheep, wove their own cloth, and tanned their hides to make leather shoes. They timbered, built rude roads, and had a community which needed to move out for nothing except periodic journeys to graze, and into which officials were afraid to enter.

It was the other side of the African coin. At the Cape, citizens came to attention when the Lords XVII handed down a directive; they lived for the Compagnie's profit, from the Compagnie's largesse, and in obedience to the Compagnie's strict laws. But at Van Valck's frontier, the red-haired adventurers said, 'To h.e.l.l with the Compagnie!' and enforced it.

No predikant had ever preached at Rooi van Valck's, or ever dared to castigate the master for having four wives. For two generations no Van Valck had been legally married, and in this generation none wished to be. The melange of children could not be distinguished, and their bounding health and good spirits belied the Compagnie's belief that children must be reared in strict accordance with the Bible. At Rooi's, there were no Bibles.

'So you come looking for a bride?' the huge man said as he studied Adriaan. 'You the one they call Mai Adriaan?'

'How did you hear of me?'

'The smous. In what way are you crazy?'

'I like to wander. I study the animals.'

'Eh, Seena! Kom hier, verdomde vrouw.' When she came to him, he rumpled her hair and said, 'No question she's my daughter. Look at that hair! I don't have to worry the smous got to her mother.'

When Adriaan blushed a deeper red than Rooi's shock of hair, the renegade tossed his daughter in the air, catching her under the arms. 'If you get her, you're getting a good one,' he cried. And again he s.n.a.t.c.hed her up, throwing her far into the air, but this time she fell not back to his arms, but across the open s.p.a.ce into Adriaan's. The first time he touched Seena, really, was as she came flying at him.

'She's yours, son, and don't go wandering too much, Crazy Adriaan, or the smous will catch her when you're not looking.'

'Shut up, d.a.m.n you!' the girl cried, making a face at her father. 'If Adriaan was bigger, he'd thrash you.'

With a huge hand, Rooi reached out, grabbed Adriaan, and almost broke his collarbone. Shaking him like a dog, he said, 'He better not try. And, son, you treat this girl right, or I'll kill you.' It was obvious that he meant it, but to Rooi's surprise, Adriaan broke loose, swung his fist in uncontrollable fury, and smashed the huge man on the side of his face. It was like a monkey swatting an elephant, and Rooi roared with delight.

'He's a s.p.u.n.ky one, Seena. But if he tries to hit you, kick him in the stomach.' And with a sudden swipe of his right boot, he aimed a shot at Adriaan's crotch. Perhaps the fear of the awful pain that impended activated the young man, for deftly he sidestepped, caught the up-swinging foot, and toppled the big redhead.

While still flat on the ground, Rooi lashed out with a swinging leg, caught Adriaan at the ankles and brought him down. With a leap, the big man fell upon him, wrestling him into a position where he could gouge his eyes with big knuckles. As Adriaan felt the man's superhuman strength and saw the dreadful knuckles coming at him, he thought: I am wrestling with the devil. For the devil's daughter. And he jerked his knees up to smite the evil one in the gut, but Rooi fended off this last attack.

'I'll teach you,' he grunted, and he would have done so had not Seena grabbed a log and struck him on the head, knocking him quite silly. When he recovered, blinking his eyes and spitting, he roared, 'Who hit me?' and Seena said, 'He did.' And there stood Adriaan, fists clenched, waiting for what might come next.

'By G.o.d!' the huge redhead shouted as he raised himself to his knees. 'I do believe Seena's got herself a good one.' And when he hoisted himself back onto his feet, still groggy, he embraced Adriaan in one huge arm, Seena in the other, and dragged them into his hut, where he broke out a jug of brandy.

They drank through the night, and toward four in the morning, when Adriaan was almost insensible, Rooi insisted that the bridal couple be given a hut to themselves, so children were swept out of the hovel occupied by the Malayan wife, and onto her filthy pile of straw the young pair were thrown. At first Adriaan wanted only to sleep, a fact which was circulated through the camp by youngsters who watched from a peephole, but Seena certainly did not propose to spend her wedding night in that manner. So, as the children shouted to the elders, she roused him from his stupor and indoctrinated him into the duties of a husband.

'That's good, that's good!' Rooi van Valck said when the children reported to him. 'I think Seena's got herself a man to be proud of. He's a little crazy, that's obvious, but he's quick with his fists, and I like that. What's his name again?'

'Adriaan,' the children said. They knew everything.

Sotopo's achievement of manhood did not come easily. As his brother Mandiso had predicted when the matter of the boy's joining the exodus to the Fish River was discussed, the new settlement had no guardian to supervise the circ.u.mcision rites, no other boys to share it, and certainly no large community to arrange a celebration. But Sotopo knew that the ceremony had to be performed, and it was, in a lonely and gruesome way.

A small hut was built, big enough for one boy. Since white clay could not be located, red had to suffice. There being no older man familiar with a sharp cutting edge, a young amateur volunteered, and with a dull a.s.segai performed a hideous operation. Without the proper herbs to medicate it, the wound festered so badly that Sotopo almost lost his life. For a hundred days he remained in isolation, only his brother slipping in occasionally to share the experience he had had when he was inducted into manhood.

When the seclusion ended, the small hut was set aflame, as custom required, and time was at hand for him to dance. He did so alone, with no gourd, no stringed instrument; tail feathers projected from the rear as he waved his b.u.t.tocks, and the sh.e.l.ls about his ankle reverberated when he stomped. At the conclusion he delivered a speech of profound import. Looking at the adventurous little band, he said in a loud, clear voice, 'I am a man.' It was toward men like him that the trekboers were advancing.

Seena and Adriaan met Nels Linnart of Sweden in a most improbable way. In 1748 a horseman came rus.h.i.+ng up from the south with the exciting news that a great s.h.i.+p had foundered off Cape Seal, with so much cargo to be salvaged that all farms in the area could replenish their stocks for a dozen years. At Van Doorn's, every able man saddled his horse to partic.i.p.ate in the looting, and when Adriaan galloped south, Seena rode with him, her long red hair flas.h.i.+ng in the wind.

They arrived at the wreck about two hours before sunset the next day, to find an even richer store than the messenger had indicated. Some thirty trekboers had formed a rescue line with ropes and were bringing the s.h.i.+p's pa.s.sengers ash.o.r.e, but as soon as the lives were saved, these same men rushed back through the waves to plunder the s.h.i.+p, and the eager Van Doorns arrived in time to reach the foodstuffs before the water damaged them. Whole barrels of flour and herring were rafted ash.o.r.e. One family concentrated on every item of furniture in the captain's cabin, and when he protested, a huge trekboer glowered at him and said, 'If you'd kept your s.h.i.+p off the rocks, we wouldn't be plundering it.'

All that night, with the aid of a shadowy moon and rush lanterns, the avaricious trekboers ransacked the s.h.i.+p of its movable treasures, but at dawn a young man not over thirty came to Adriaan and said, in highly accented Dutch, 'Please, sir, you and your wife look decent. Will you help me get my books?'

'Who are you?' Adriaan asked suspiciously.

'Dr. Nels Linnart, Stockholm and Uppsala.' When Adriaan's blank face showed that he understood nothing, the young man said, 'Sweden.' Adriaan had never heard of this, either, so the man said, 'Please, I have fine books there. I must save them.'

Still Adriaan registered nothing, but Seena said impatiently, 'He needs help,' and in the doctor's wake the two Van Doorns swam out to the s.h.i.+p, clambered up the side and boarded the vessel that could not stay afloat much longer. To them it was a weird universe of dark pa.s.sageways, pounding waves and the dank smell of steerage. The treasured books were in a cabin, forty or fifty large volumes published in diverse countries, and these Dr. Linnart proposed to move ash.o.r.e, but to get them through the waves without destroying them posed a problem.

Seena devised a way. She would jump down into the waves, grasp the rope, then accept an armful of books, which she would hold aloft as Adriaan struggled beneath her, holding her above the waves as they moved slowly ash.o.r.e. 'Bravo!' cried the doctor from the deck as he saw the couple deposit his books well inland and come back for another cargo.

In this manner the little library was rescued; it would form the foundation of a notable collection of books in southern Africa: Latin, Greek, German, Dutch, English, Swedish, and fourteen in French. They covered various branches of science, especially mathematics and botany, and among them was Systema Naturae Systema Naturae by Karl von Linne, also of Stockholm and Uppsala. 'He's my uncle,' the young doctor said, stamping the water out of his boots. by Karl von Linne, also of Stockholm and Uppsala. 'He's my uncle,' the young doctor said, stamping the water out of his boots.

'What kind of book is this?' Adriaan asked, for it was the first one other than his father's Bible that he had ever held in his hands. 'It deals with plants and flowers.'

And there on the beach by the wrecked s.h.i.+p Adriaan said the words that would determine the remainder of his life: 'I like plants and flowers.'

'Have you seen many here?' the young scientist asked, concerned always with his basic subject even though his s.h.i.+p had sunk.

'I have walked many miles,' Adriaan said with immediate recognition of the young man's intense interest, 'and wherever I went, there was something new.'

'That's what my uncle said. My job is to collect the new plants. The ones we haven't heard of yet in Europe.'

'What do you mean, collect?' Adriaan asked, but before the young doctor could explain, Hendrik shouted, 'Come on! There's lots more to take before she sinks.' And the two young Van Doorns continued with the plunder, but when there was nothing left and the s.h.i.+p started to break apart, Adriaan was drawn back to the scientist, and while the other trekboers helped the s.h.i.+pwrecked pa.s.sengers build temporary huts to protect themselves till rescue s.h.i.+ps arrived, he and Seena stowed the precious books upon their two horses and started walking back to the farm, accompanied by the young Swede.

I had intended [he wrote in his report published by the London a.s.sociation] doing my collecting in India, but Providence sent my s.h.i.+p upon the rocks at the southern tip of Africa, where I was rescued by a remarkable couple with whom I spent the four happiest months of my life, living in a wattled hut. The husband, who could not read a word of any language, had made himself a well-trained scientist, while his wife with flaming red hair could do positively anything. She could ride a horse, handle a gun, drink copious quant.i.ties of gin, swear like a Norwegian, prune fruit trees, sew, cook, laugh and tell fabulous lies about her father, who, she claimed, had four wives. I remember the morning that I cried in my bad Dutch, 'G.o.d did not intend me to go to India. He brought me here to work with you.' They opened a new world for me, showing me wonders I had not antic.i.p.ated. The husband knew every tree, the wife every device required for a good life, and when the four months ended in their hut, I was better prepared to start my collecting than if I had matriculated in a university. To my great joy and profit, this wonderful pair wanted to join me, even though I warned them that I might be gone for seven months. 'What's that to us?' Mevrouw van Doorn asked, and they rode off with me as unconcerned as if headed for a fete champetre fete champetre in some French park. in some French park.

They traveled farther east than Adriaan had gone on his first exploration, then due north into a type of land which not even he had ever seen. It lay well north of the mountain range and was desert, yet not desert, for whenever rain fell, a mult.i.tude of flowers burst across the entire landscape, submerging it in a carpet of such beauty that Dr. Linnart was amazed: 'I could spend a lifetime here and identify a new flower every day, I do believe.' When Adriaan inquired further as to why the Swede was collecting so avidly, Linnart spent several nights endeavoring to explain what the expedition signified, and in his report he referred to this experience: Van Doorn wis.h.i.+ng to know what I was about, I decided to unravel for him the full extent of my interest, holding back nothing. I laid forth Karl von Linne's organizing principle of genus genus and and species, species, and within the first hour this natural-born scientist understood what I was saying better than most of my students at the university. He then asked me why Linne bothered with such a system, and I informed him that my uncle intended to catalogue every plant growing in the world, which was why I had come to South Africa, and he asked me, 'Even these flowers on the veld?' and I said, 'Especially these flowers, which we do not see in Europe.' So with that bare instruction, he proceeded to collect some four hundred flowers, not less, arranging them in grand divisions according to Von Linne's principles. It was a remarkable feat which few scholars in Europe could have duplicated. and within the first hour this natural-born scientist understood what I was saying better than most of my students at the university. He then asked me why Linne bothered with such a system, and I informed him that my uncle intended to catalogue every plant growing in the world, which was why I had come to South Africa, and he asked me, 'Even these flowers on the veld?' and I said, 'Especially these flowers, which we do not see in Europe.' So with that bare instruction, he proceeded to collect some four hundred flowers, not less, arranging them in grand divisions according to Von Linne's principles. It was a remarkable feat which few scholars in Europe could have duplicated.

The caravan consisted of Dr. Linnart, the two Van Doorns, Dikkop in charge of everything, and ten Hottentots paid by the Swede. Two wagons accompanied the expedition, loaded with small wooden boxes into which the specimens collected by Adriaan went. On four separate occasions Linnart said that he could not credit the wealth of flowers on the veld, and each time Adriaan a.s.sured him that if he went farther, he would find more.