What took
place when I rode into a small town on the Rand known as Doorn Kloof
one chilly misty morning, was written in the bowl of fate.
Doorn Kloof is well named; it means "the hoof of the Devil." A
straggling collection of corrugated iron shanties set in the middle of
a grayish sandy plain as barren of vegetation as the shores of the
Dead Sea, sweltering hot an hour after sunrise, chilly cold an hour
after sunset, populated by about four hundred Boers of the old
narrow-minded ultra Dutch type with as much imagination as a
grasshopper--that is Doorn Kloof.
When I rode into the village I was in a decidedly bad temper. Hungry,
wet to the skin, the dismal aspect of the place, the absence of
anything resembling a hotel, the incivility of the inhabitants, all
contributed to shorten my, by no means long, temper. I was ripe for a
row. As I rode down the solitary street I found a big burly _Dopper_
flogging brutally a half-grown native boy. This humanitarian had the
usual Boer view that the sambrock is more effective than the Bible as
a civilizing medium. After convincing him of the technical error of
his method, I attended to the black boy, whose back was as raw as a
beefsteak. Kim completely adopted me and he is with me still. I
christened him Kim, after Kipling's hero, for his Basuto name is
unpronounceable. He has repaid me often for what he considers the
saving or his life.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25