It had been a good "Nachtmaal." The inspiring services, old friendships renewed, the large number of marriages and engagements, and the golden sovereigns in his pocket, all told him so. He handed Petrus a generous amount, telling him he might need it on his trip. The sun was sinking in the west, and the trek back to the farm a long one. So he in-spanned his long team of oxen just as Aunt Kotie's motor came whizzing up for Petrus. The boy hesitated. It was his first trip away from home alone. He had never been parted from his dear Uncle Abraham.
As he jumped into her car he could see through the gathering dusk many fathers of families, Bible in hand, standing in their wagons conducting evening service. Aunt Kotie's driver was a Zulu, he noticed, but not with alarm.
"Trek!" yelled Uncle Abraham to his oxen. Aunt Kotie had just promised him she would go with Koos to Kimberley and put him safely in Lieutenant Wortley's care. Petrus waved "good-by" as the big wagon rolled off and vanished in the deepening twilight.
Aunt Kotie lived in Parktown, the most fashionable quarter of the great metropolis. Next morning, from her upper veranda, Petrus got a wonderful bird's-eye view over the city, and off to the Mageliesberg Mountains. South of the city, as Aunt Kotie explained, the Vaal and other streams of the Orange River glided through gorges to the Atlantic Ocean, while northward they flowed to the Limpopo, and then on into the Indian Ocean.
Petrus noticed that a huge, black-skinned Zulu, who eyed him narrowly from time to time, served them at breakfast, and that still another black giant—a particularly evil-looking fellow, under whose tread the very earth shook—helped him and his aunt into the waiting motor car for their sightseeing ride. Aunt Kotie explained that native boys did all her work. She found them more reliable than white help.
As they drove down broad streets, past great stone and marble buildings, palatial club-houses, fine churches, museums, and the High School, Aunt Kotie saw that something was wrong. The people walked briskly and excitedly about the streets. Ugly rumors of anti-German riots had reached her. "Market Square," of yesterday's peaceful "Nachtmaal" was now filled with striking miners, who were in open revolt, she was told, having already attacked and battered in the offices of the Rand gold mines.
So Aunt Kotie ordered her Zulu driver to keep far away from the "Market Square," and instead of visiting the gold-fields they would motor up to Pretoria and back—the Union's capital city, which would be sure to interest Petrus.
In fact, Petrus was having his first glimpse of a great city. Johannesburg was the equal of any great metropolis of Europe, Aunt Kotie told him. It was the wonderful "Golden City" he had long wished to see. He had never been beyond the "Market Square" before. The "City of Midas," it had been called since the discovery of the famous "Witwatersrand" or "White Water's Ridge" south of the city.