back, very miserably clad. He was not more than fourteen years of age, and in reply to my question whither he was going, he told me that his father, who lived in a hut near the next pool, had sent him to take a waggon, and two negroes to attend to it, all the way to the Makalaka country, to barter beadsand calico for kaffir-corn. We arrived next day at the pool of which the lad had spoken. It was called Henry’s Pan, after the name of a hunter’s servant who had killed a giraffe there. I found three Boer families settled at the place, as well as three Dutch hunters, Schmitt and the two brothers Lotriet. For the last month Schmitt had been living in a grass-hut, and had killed a sword-antelope on the day before our arrival. His narratives of hunting-excursions. were most interesting.
One of the Henry’s Pan people had a cancer in his lower jaw, and both the Lotriet families—one a party of three, and the other of nine—were suffering from fever. Their huts, wretched structures of dry branches and grass, were quite inadequate to protect them either from sun or rain, and as they lay upon the ground, their condition seemed pitiable in the extreme. They attributed all their hardships to a trader who had unscrupulously enticed them into the district, and wiped his hands of them almost directly afterwards. The account they gave was entirely substantiated by six hunters of whom I subsequently made inquiries; and so convinced was I that the facts ought to be circulated as a warning to others, that I sent the story of the Lotriets to the Diamond News, in which it was inserted under the title of “Dark Deeds.” I am in possession of
