Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland(楚帕·彼得·豪尔凯特).pdf

Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland
Trooper Peter Halket of
Mashonaland
By Olive Schreiner
1
Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland
To a Great Good Man, Sir e Grey,
Once Governor of the Cape Colony, who, during his rule in South
Africa, bound to himself the Dutchmen, Englishmen, and Natives he
governed, by an uncorruptible justice and a broad humanity; and who is
remembered among us today as representing the noblest attributes of an
Imperial Rule.
"Our low life was the level's and the night's; He's for the morning."
Olive Schreiner.
19, Russell Road, Kensington, W., February, 1897.
Aardvark - The great anteater. Cape Smoke - A very inferior brandy
made in Cape Colony. Kopje - Little hillock. Kraal - A Kaffir encampment.
Mealies - Maize (corn). Riem - A thong of undressed leather universally
used in South Africa. Vatje of Old Dop - A little cask of Cape brandy. Veld
- Open Country.
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Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland
Trooper Peter Halket of
Mashonaland
It was a dark night; a chill breath ing from the east; not
enough to disturb the blaze of Trooper Peter Halket's fire, yet enough to
make it quiver. He sat alone beside it on the top of a kopje.
All about was an rable darkness; not a star was visible in the
black curve over his head.
He had been travelling with a dozen men who were taking provisions
of mealies and rice to the next camp. He had been sent out to act as scout
along a low range of hills, and had lost his way. Since eight in the
morning he had wandered among long grasses, and ironstone kopjes, and
stunted bush, and e upon no sign of human habitation, but the
remains of a burnt kraal, and a down-trampled and now uncultivated
mealie field, where a month before the pany's forces had
destroyed a native settlement.
Three times in the day it had appeared to him that he had returned to
the very spot from which he had started; nor was it his wish to travel very
far, for he knew rades e back to look for him, to t