overdue account. The Boer will at once plead poverty, and speculate
on how he can possibly manage to liquidate his liability. If the
merchant knows the ropes sufficiently (and the majority of merchants
do), he will drop the subject for half an hour, at the end of which
time he will ask the Boer if he wants to sell any cattle or produce,
as he (the merchant) can find an outlet for either or both. The Boer's
diplomacy is weak, and he falls into the trap. He has fifty cattle to
dispose of; the merchant buys them, and the overdue account, with
interest, is paid.

The Boers are very superstitious in a great many things. For instance,
they regard locusts as a direct visitation from the Almighty. When the
pest settles down upon ground occupied by Kaffirs, all the available
tin cans and empty paraffin tins are requisitioned, and there is a
mighty noise, that ought to frighten off any respectable locust swarm;
but the Boer, when he sees them coming, goes into his house and lays
hold of his Bible, and reads and prays until he thinks there ought to
be some good result. The Boer is gifted with great and abiding
patience (in such cases only), and, no matter if the locusts stop long
enough to eat up every green blade on his farm, he will continue to
study his Bible and pray. But, as I have remarked parenthetically, it
is only in cases of emergency where he evinces such a display of
patience and exercises such a pious disposition. When he is not
praying, he is putting ten-pound stones in his bales of wool to be
ready for the merchant's scales, and transacting other little matters
of business of a like nature.

The Boer is not particular in the matter of cleanliness. It suits him
just as well to be dirty as to be clean. It is no exaggeration to say
that numbers of Boers do not wash themselves from one week's end to