San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1892-07-18

uH d..
I drank from the same delicious stream
= as my eager hack.
In the Sourberg mountain range of
South Africa nestles a lovely village,
known to the colonists by the appropri-
ate name of Drowsy Dorp. 1t was
settled by the Holland Dutch long be-
fore the advent of British rule, and is
about one mile square in size and form,
Its wide streets run at right angles, while
a slight incline of surface permits one
Strong spring of pure water from the
neighboring mountain to be divided by
sluyts, and so pour a stream along the
edge of each sidewalk, serving at once
for domestic purposes and irrigation.
The houses are built at distance from
the side paths and from each other, the
roads being lined with Kaffirboorus, i'm
ported oaks and large, double lowered
cherry trees. ra,.
The front yards are hedged with per-
petual rose trees, clipped lemons and
oleanders in continuous bloom. The
gardens, in front and behind, are filled
with orange, luquOt, guava and peach
trees. The plats planted with bushcuts,
grapevines, red currants and pomegran-
ates, while the homestead separating di-
visions are walls of fig trees, ounces
and sour lines, mixed with bamboo
fronds. In fact, all the temperate and
subtropical fruits abound, and as each
house has an acre of ground the town
looks, among the parched, brown topped,
surrounding country, like an emerald
set in dull dark green velvet.
/ first saw it in the late evening, after
twelve hours ride through scorched,
burned up and arid district. Twas weary
with long, hot ride, and suffering from
intense thirst. | pulled my tired horse
up at the first sluyt, and dismounting
drank from the same delicious stream
as my eager hack, and as the cool liquid
qualification flowed past me to him felt
that his satisfaction was equal to my
own. It is only by an Africander or an
Arab that the full force of Moses strik-
ing the rock can be appreciated. Hold
ing the bride rein loosely in my hand,
sat on the sluyt bank, relieved from
straining heat by the overhanging trees
and the shades Of evening.
! The smell Of the roses and orange
blossoms, the ripple Of the running wa
ter and the twinkling lights of the
houses gave a feeling of enjoyment, rest
| and satisfaction so complete that l re-
solved to abide there, and have ever
SINCE looked upon the Dorp as the para
disc of the province. At the date of this
narrative | had lived in it three years,
and .throve with the village. Drowsy
Dorp is placed at the mouth of a large
kloof or narrow valley, running far into
the interior of the range, but which
opened out into a considerable fat ex.
panse about ten miles from the village
called Jacks Flat, pronounced "Yaaks
Flat"
The road through the range ran the
whole length of the valley, and many
smaller kloofs branching off from il
held farms of great extent, giving sus-
tenance to large browsing herds of cat
tie and sheep.
In branch kloof, rather broader than
the rest, dwelt middle aged Boer with
a bright and handsome daughter, who
was just at that age where "brook and
river meet"
She did not want for suitors, but
owing to their numbers and the colonial
fashion of housing and boarding wooers
free for the time of their remaining, the
father did not look favorably upon any
new advance, the more so as he was a
widower, and his daughter kept house,
His farm was known as Sand Foutein,
it having a natural spring upon it,
which was dug deep into pond of one
quarter of an acre and planted around
with weeping willows, in whose
branches focks of various birds always
lowered and to whose pendulous twigs
the numerous weaver birds had attached
hundreds of nests.
Water, in that dry land, means life, |
wealth and happiness to man and beast,
for the sunshine is always there. AT
the fork, where, the way to the farm
Joined the main road, Jacks Flat com.
menced. There was a slight bank
about six feet deep on one side of the
road, and in travelling on dark nights
wagons going too near the edge had on
some rare occasions toppled over; and
there was an uncertain legend that
some one, at long past period, had been
killed by this kind of accident. More
over, there was rumor that Hitges,
the owner OF Sand Foutein, had first
come to the place with his brother and
his dead fathers female ward, to settle