' We replied, that we should be very
glad to make ourselves useful, and then he sent us some dinner by a
Hottentot girl. But we soon found out that we had to deal with an
ill-tempered, brutal fellow; and that he gave us plenty of hard work,
but by no means plenty of food. He would not trust us with guns, so the
Hottentots went out with the cattle, but he gave us plenty of work to
do about the house; and at last he treated us very cruelly. When he was
short of provisions for the Hottentots and other slaves, of whom he bad
a good many, he would go out with the other farmers who lived near him,
and shoot quaggas for them to eat. Nobody but a Hottentot could live
upon such flesh."
"What is quagga?"
"A wild ass, partly covered with stripes, but not so much as the zebra;
a pretty animal to look at, but the flesh is very bad. At last he would
give us nothing to eat but quaggas, the same as the Hottentots, while
he and his family - for he had a wife and five children - lived upon
mutton and the flesh of the antelope, which is very excellent eating.
We asked him to allow us a gun to procure better food, and he kicked
Romer so unmercifully, that he could not work for two days afterwards.
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