I was bought by Fritz Botha and sold by Frederick Botha, who was then veldcornet (justice of the peace) of the Boers.
This notice is signed by the Justice of the Peace or "Veld Cornet" of the district.
I shall sleep in mine, and dream of African hill- sides wrapt in a 'Veld combas'.
The people are burning the veld all about, and the lurid smoke by day and flaming hill-sides by night are very striking.
This is one of the paradoxes of the high-veld rivers.
Presently a little white dorp, Carolina, appeared some miles away on the left, with that curious look of a Pilgrim's Progress village which so many veld townships possess.
But cultivation on the veld will always be superimposed: it will remain, like Egypt, ageless and immutable--one of the primeval types of the created world.
The country was rolling veld dotted with wait-a-bit thorn-bushes; the farmhouses few but large; the roads heavy with sand.
A deserted garden does not return to the veld for many years, if ever.
The lower type of European and the back-veld Dutchman have in their present state no equitable right to the decision, which the franchise gives, on matters which they are unable to come within a measurable distance of understanding.
Large quantities of veld grass might be cut for winter fodder, and roots and forage crops could be grown in summer for the same purpose.
With care and money great tracts of the high-veld might change their character.
There is one feature of the high veld which has not had the attention it deserves--I mean the wind.
It is the highest part of the great central tableland, and a very bleak dwelling-place in winter; but in summer and autumn it has a full share of the curious veld beauty.
The Komati here is a slow high-veld stream creeping through long muddy pools with the slenderest of currents, but some eight miles down it is a hill torrent.
It was the most smiling country we had seen, for bush-veld has an ineradicable air of barbarism, but a green open land with white homesteads among trees is the true type of a settled country.
The heaviest and most important item of the load was three casks of water, for we were about to enter and encamp in the deadly dune-veld where Thirst is a king who has reigned supreme since the world was young.
My plan was to strike north-east across the veld until I reached the river; then to follow, so far as possible, the course of the latter down to Arris, beyond Kuboos.
The Kanya-veld is hardly, if at all, higher than the rest of the desert.
There's nothing up there but natives and a few back-veld Dutchmen with native blood in them.
The police and the commandos had been kept very secret, and, besides, they were moving on the high veld and out of the ken of the tribes.
Do you think you can talk over these surly back-veld fools?
When I've been hunting in the bush-veld I've often met strings of Kaffirs from hundreds of miles distant, and they've all been going or coming from Blaauwildebeestefontein.
My horse was a veld pony, so I set him loose to see what he would do.
If a learned profession was denied me I vastly preferred a veld store to an Edinburgh office stool.
Then they move south, picking up contingents; and the final concentration is to be on the highveld near Amsterdam, which is convenient for the Swazis and the Zulus.
Cut off the wire and rail communication of a South African veld town and you have isolation in the most thorough sense.
The veld around the Riet water-holes is just a mass of small kopjes and rocks; it narrows to a small defile that opens suddenly on to the coverless Husab Road.
The attacking party had to work their way through open veld before they could charge the enemy; they made a mark as good as standing game.
When you see this--catch a glimpse of it suddenly where it stands on the veld outside the town--you get a thrill of sheer astonishment.
I have never seen this feature of the veldso marked elsewhere in South Africa.
Having got away at the action at Hamanskraal, he and his younger brother were moving about in the veld with ex-Major Pienaar and a moderate force.
The second phase of the Free State Rebellion was a pantomime more than anything else; a week's pantomime acted in the open veld in rain that never stopped.
With his goal practically right ahead, he reached three of the parallel large sand dunes with which the veld around Upington is scattered.
It was bitterly cold--cold as the Free State night on the veld knows how to be.
About half an hour before sunset we reached the foot of the mountains toward which we had been trekking all through the afternoon, and outspanned on the veld at the entrance to a pass which had revealed itself about an hour earlier.
I have imagined you in an unconventional setting with the veld for a background.
Then he picked up the revolver that lay on the veld and sat down facing him.
But here on the high veld the nights were cold yet, and the crispness of the mornings still reminded a man of the feel of an English spring.
The figure he was watching suddenly threw up its arms and fell and lay upon the veldquite motionless, so that had he not seen the falling of it he would not have known that it was there.
His mind had reverted to the scene on the veld in the early morning when Van Bleit had sat with a revolver covering him, and a murderous finger crooked round the trigger.
The pocket-book and its further contents lay on the veld at his feet.
There was nothing for it but to tramp over the veld between meals.
And the man in the next compartment sat and smoked and meditated gloomily, while the train ran on through fertile grass-veld towards the mountains and the sterile plain which lay beyond them.
There's a stone erected to your memory out on the veld beyond Bulawayo.
The veld glowed with an intensity of colour that strove with a sort of hard defiance against the golden light of the sun.
Green mingled with brown and orange, shot with vivid colours, where the hardy veld flowers blossomed in the grass and among the piles of hot-looking yellow stones by the side of the road.
Surely never had sunlight shone more golden, never had the blue of the sky appeared more intense, nor the veld glowed with such splendour of colour.
If the dear Father had meant soda to be put into soap what would He have made milk-bushes for, and stuck them all over the veld as thick as lambs in the lambing season?
The veld here is looking pretty good, and the sheep are better since we washed them.
When she is with us day by day in the lonely veld we may both of us grow to love her, and how, then, will our friendship bear the strain of rivalry?
In the veldthere are few topics that can outlast a week, and then there is little to fall back upon but the eternal subject of religion, or the ways of nature.
Take as an example the children of the back-veld Dutch in South Africa.
When I inquired what they wanted it for, they answered "To eat," and averred that no other meat obtainable in the African veld was equal to that of a fat hyæna.
I was once camped many years ago near a small native village on the high veld of Mashunaland to the south-east of the present town of Salisbury.
Then not a sound is heard until, after an interval of a few minutes, the grand competitive roaring peals across the lonely veld once more.
The new departure did not prove successful; no great harm was done, for the shells lighting on the soft veld were kinder than the shellers, and generally failed to burst.
On a billiard table they could have feasted their eyes at least on green; but the veld could not offer even that ocular consolation.
For several hours they were marshalled on the veld with a demonstrativeness that seemed to say: "You might as well give in at once; look at the size of us!
Across the veld streamed the lines of infantry, the poor fellows eager, after seven miles of that upland air, for the breakfast which had been promised them.
By the middle of September the veld had turned from drab to green, and the great drama was fated to last for one more act, however anxious all the British and the majority of the Boers might be to ring down the curtain.
For a hundred more years the history of the colony was a record of the gradual spreading of the Afrikaners over the huge expanse of veld which lay to the north of them.
About a hundred and fifty burghers rushed out of the ditches, streaming across the veld upon foot to the spot where their horses had been secreted.
Negotiations, then, must not be unduly hurried while the veld was a bare russet-coloured dust-swept plain.
The whole vast expanse of the eastern veld was dotted with the broken and charred wagons of the enemy.
On the 5th Ermelo was occupied, and the fresh deep ruts upon the veld told the British horsemen of the huge Boer convoy that was ahead of them.
The veldhad been burned unusually early to ensure a speedy grass-crop after the first rains, there had been a collecting of horses, a distribution of rifles and ammunition.
In the early days of May, when the season of the rains was past and the veld was green, Lord Roberts's six weeks of enforced inaction came to an end.
The weather was so atrocious that the veld resembled an inland sea, with the kopjes as islands rising out of it.
But again there was a delay, while the rain came and the grass grew, and the veld was as a mounted rifleman would have it.
Dick and she Had made this veld their home for seasons three.
Under the cloudless curve Of a wide remorseless sky Sleeps the patchy scrub of the sweeping veld And the slim blue gums, and the wattle belt Where the shrike broods watchfully.
Across the scrub and veld Dick pointed with his sjambok to the white Outspreading tent, then to the wattle belt That marshalled thinly in the shimmering light.
He shrieked away the sight Till the wide veld was reeling.
As it sweeps the veld with its icy breath, Biting the scrub with its teeth of death, lifting the dust like a phantom shroud From the tailing heaps, in a veil of cloud.
The country through which this road led was various--open bushy veld with sparse trees, dense jungle, cocoanut groves, tall and cool.
His life is thus over the free open hills and veld until, somewhere between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, the year of the circumcision comes.
It does not take long for daylight to glide through dusk into darkness in the bush veld in South Africa, and even these few minutes spent in conversation had seen the light begin to fade from the sky as the sun disappeared.
By the building of block houses the space on the High Veld was limited very much.
He had to leave the High Veld to try to lead the enemy away, and proceeded to the Vryheid district.
In the South African Republic these meetings were conducted as follows:--On the High Veld by the Commandant General; in the Western districts by the Acting State President and General J.
The condition on the High Veld as regards horses was very bad.
He explained how the block house lines on the High Veld ran.
The veld over the entire Cape Colony is overgrown with bushes (scrub).
In the High Veld there was no more food for their people.
The sun was not yet up, and the air was cold with frost, for they were on the Transvaal high-veld at the end of winter.
Its horns, held low, struck the forelegs of the horse, and next instant horse, man, and wilderbeeste rolled on the veld together.
It was down in that bit of bushveld eight days ago.
Father, father, for God's sake, take me away from this hateful hill and its gold and its dead, and let us get out into the veld again together.
Then, having stirred the mixture with a stick, he took a red ember from the fire and dropped it into the kettle, a process which, as travellers in the veld know well, has a clearing effect upon the coffee.
Nothing matters; one may as well die upon the veld as in the sea or anywhere else.
Now the spring had fully come, the veld was emerald with grass and bright with flowers.
On the edge of the bush-veld we found the waggon quite safe, also one of Captain Robertson's that had followed us from Strathmuir in order to carry the expected load of hippopotamus' hides and ivory.
About midday we passed out of the bush-veld and reached the place where the drive was to be.
Well, the full moon came up in silver glory and after I had taken a good look at her for luck, also at all the veldwithin sight, I turned in.
Less than an hour's tramp brought us to the bush-veld where I feared that our troubles might begin, since if the Amahagger were cunning, they would take advantage of it to confuse or hide their spoor.
We trekked along a kind of native road over fine veld of the same character as that on which Strathmuir stood, having the lower-lying bush-veld which ran down to the Zambesi on our right.
This, he remarked, was the worst veld through which he had ever travelled, but as the Great Medicine would never consent to be buried in that stinking mud, he had no doubt that we should come safely through it some time.
Before nightfall we came to a ridge whereon this bush-veld turned south, fringing that tributary of the great river in the swamps of which we were to hunt for sea-cows.
On we travelled from day to day, meeting with such difficulties and dangers as are common on roadless veld in Africa, but no more, for the grass was good and there was plenty of game, of which we shot what we wanted for meat.
For the first three days the track ran on through scattered, rolling bush-veld of the character that I have described, but tending continually down hill.
The next two days were repetitions of the first, but on the fourth we passed out of the bush-veld into the swamp country that bordered the great river.
They would, however, do better work by remaining on the veld and using their influence with the leaders to bring this about.
The flames sped onward, and soon all the veld to the east was black.
The veld was green, and the trees heavily laden with young fruit gave promise of a good harvest.
We lived in God's free nature, and as we came nearer to her great heart throbbing in the grey veld and the blue mountain, those of us who could felt ourselves borne away by a delicious but withal terrible Power.
If, however, the majority were in favour of peace, the burghers should choose other leaders in the place of those who had held them in the veld by means of lies and threats.
The veld was yellow and scorched by the sun, and when we halted for a while on the farm I have just mentioned, the west wind sang a mournful ditty over the parched country.
One instance of a sad veldfire occurred on the 11th of August.
Lord Kitchener declared that the behaviour of the Boers in the veld seemed very foolish to him.
This had hardly been said when someone shouted, "The veld is on fire!
Merwe advised him strongly not to return to theveld whilst we were waiting for the result of the meetings of the People, and said that his house at Krugersdorp was at his service.
The Boers in the veld seemed to him like sheep without a shepherd.
When we passed through Cornelis River, close to the house of Paul Prinsloo, the number of cattle was so great that the veld seemed literally alive with them.
It thus happened that some wasted their ammunition by firing it away at game, and through carelessness the veld was set on fire almost daily.
The farm on the veld stood on the veld, a thing of the veld, a thing rooted and established there and nowhere else.
The memory of long rides and tramps over that limitless veld returns to me, lonely in spite of the creaking, lumbering waggons and transport riders and Kaffirs that followed behind.
Our work of repatriation which had loomed so large on the southernward veld became here a business at once incidental and remote.
Then again, after a probation of eighteen months, the country had been pronounced favourably upon by Dutch and Colonial farmers, especially for cattle-ranching, whilst many predicted that much of the high veld would carry sheep.
It proceeds as follows:— "We were now in a very different country from the open veld of the earlier ride.
