قراءة كتاب Our Little Boer Cousin
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| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| Preface | vii | |
| I. | Petrus Joubert | 1 |
| II. | At "Weltefreden" | 17 |
| III. | A Transvaal "Model Farm" | 34 |
| IV. | The Great "Trek" | 51 |
| V. | A Boer "Nachtmaal" | 71 |
| VI. | Over the "Great Karroo" to Cape Town | 81 |
| VII. | A Kafir Party at the Chief's Kraal | 94 |
| VIII. | A Storm on the Drakensberg | 107 |
| IX. | A Zulu War-Dance | 120 |
| X. | Petrus the Hero | 135 |
List of Illustrations
| PAGE | |
| "Petrus busied himself steeping bullock's hide in water." (See page 19) | Frontispiece |
| "The lieutenant again took careful aim and fired" | 13 |
| "It was a long, low, one-story cottage, half-hidden by the roadside trees" | 79 |
| "The searching party . . . carried great torches" | 109 |
| "Piling great beams of wood in orderly rows on the wharf" | 122 |
| "The whole yelling mass made another wild charge" | 131 |
Our Little Boer Cousin
CHAPTER I
PETRUS JOUBERT
It was spring in the Transvaal. Already the wattle-trees beside the farm-schoolhouse door were thickly covered with a mass of golden bloom, and the little blue pan—or lake—down among the willows, again reflected the sky and clouds as the Boer children trooped past it.
Many a chilly morning had they trudged on their way to that same little room of corrugated iron and wood, just beyond the farthest kopje[1]—often so early that the grass was still sparkling with the sunlit hoar-frost.
The sun shone warm now, and groups of laughing little Boer girls, in large pinafores and kappies, hurried across the trackless grassy veldt[2] from every direction. Some of them, like Christina Allida, Adriana, Franzina, and black-eyed, laughing little Yettie, whose farms were a long way off, drove over in their crowded Cape cart spiders and ramshackle conveyances of every description.
Soon Franzina's cart, with Yettie, came rumbling up to the door, where all the older boys—like their big cousin, Petrus Joubert—who had galloped over on their shaggy little Cape ponies, were off-saddling and knee-haltering them under the wattle-trees. To remove the saddle, and then, with the head-stall, to fasten the pony's head to his leg just above his knee, so that he might graze freely about, yet be caught again when wanted after school was out, took but a moment. Then the saddles were hung on the schoolhouse wall in a lengthening row, and lessons begun.
All Boer boys are trained to ride from the time they can walk. Petrus could even "out-spann"[3] a team of his uncle's oxen. He was fond of all
