But the old Boers were not always nomads. The course of their wanderings took the old fore-trekkers sometimes eastward and north-eastwards, to the more fertile parts of the Karroo, and to the luxuriant coast lands, where pasturage and water were abundant and permanent. Here, where after long wanderings the ox-wagon drew up beside some strong fountain, the Boer surveying the land found it good, and often resolved to end his wanderings for a time. He might call the place Matjesfontein, or Jackalsfontein, or Wildekatfontein, after the fountain he had outspanned beside and the reeds that grew beside it, or the jackals that howled round it, or the wild cats which he had killed among the rocks; and here he made his home.
As time passed, close beside the wagon rose a small square or oblong house built of poles and bushes, and plastered over with mud; and kraals with walls of rough stones or mimosa-branches were raised, and placed as near the house and water supply as possible, to save the stock at night from the depredations of Bushmen or wild beasts, and to facilitate their drinking in the day. Here, as years passed, and his sons and daughters grew up about him, he raised a brick or stone dwelling, solid, square, unornamental, seeming to have as its prototype the old African ox-wagon taken from its wheels, and anchored to one spot of earth. And as time passed, he also often made a dam, to ensure water supply in drought, and sometimes he planted a few willow trees on the wall, and made a small fruit garden below it, fenced round with rough stones. But the beautiful homes of Bovenland, with their massively built houses, and polished wooden floors, raised by the hands of slave workmen, with their oak-avenues and vineyards and rose hedges, have seldom tended to repeat themselves in the more arid regions further north. Without a superfluous detail, or an attempt at ornament, squatting in the red sand and sun of the up-country plains, these little buildings, with their coatings of red sand or hard whitewash, seem almost a spontaneous growth of the land, and, like the brown ant-heaps that dot it everywhere, are indigenous to the country.
The Western Boer built as if for his children's children to inhabit: the up-country Boer farm-house of the past, as of to-day, is essentially the home of a nomad;[47] of one who has anchored himself temporarily on a spot of earth, but who is ever ready at any moment to gather his household goods together and move onwards. The typical up-country farm-house is the home of a man who, knowing that he or his children may at any moment leave, can waste no time in ornamenting it.
Within the house the same bare simplicity prevails.
To-day, as one travels on some high up-country plain, one sees across the flat at the foot of some kopje, or in the centre of a great level, one of these small brown or white structures, with square black patches beside it where its kraals lie.
If it be the noon or afternoon of a warm day, as one approaches one finds that all the doors and windows are closed, and nothing living or moving to be seen but a few cocks and hens scratching in the sand, or sitting in the shadow of the house-gable, or perhaps a little hand-lamb looking for a few blades of green among the dried-up bushes about the house, or a couple of great Boer bull-dogs lie in the shade of the wagon-house, and, rising up slowly, approach with heads down and eyes half closed.
The household are taking their midday siesta, and the green wooden shutters and door are closed. But, as one dismounts, from behind the brick oven at the back one sees a little white and sandy head appear, and a little shoeless or vel-schoened urchin, who has escaped from the embargo of the midday siesta to play secretly in the sun, rushes into the house by the back-door, and raises the cry of "Mense!" (people).
When we have dismounted and hooked our horse to a rail or the post on which a carpenter's vice is fastened, and are preparing to mount the little stone platform running along the whole front of the house, the upper half of the door opens slowly, and the Boer's head looks out over it, his eyes still dreamy with midday sleep.
If we are folk of respectable appearance, unmistakably white and mounted, he will open the lower half of the door and come out in his shirt and tan-cord trousers, and shake hands quietly, and having asked a few questions, will invite us to off-saddle. And when we have removed the saddles from our horses, and, having first securely knee-haltered them, turned them loose to feed on the bushes, and replied to our host's inquiries as to our names, our business, and other small details, we follow him into the house. The door is divided into two parts, partly because the upper half being left open, it admits all the air, and sometimes, if there be no window, all the light that gains accession to the front room—the windows being so made that they cannot open—and partly because the lower half, when closed, serves to keep the children in, and to keep the fowls and dogs out. When we enter we find the front room of large size as compared to the whole building, and we are asked to take a seat on one of the chairs or the sofa, whose seats are composed of thongs of dried ox-hide skilfully interlaced. The floor of the room is of hardened mud, worn here and there into inequalities by the tramping of feet; the walls are white-washed, and from the rafters or against the wall are rests for a couple of guns. In the centre of the room is a square table, often with unturned legs of some Colonial wood, and generally of African contrivance; on one side of the room, opposite the wooden sofa, and made of the same curious old wood, stands a little square table, generally with a coffee-urn upon it, and sometimes a little work-box or a large family Bible; beside it is invariably an elbow-chair of the same make as the sofa, and with a seat of the same interlaced leather thongs; before the elbow-chair stands a little square wooden stove, such as you may see exactly portrayed in many an old Flemish picture of the seventeenth century—a little solid wooden box with a hole at one side, into which a brazier of live coals may be put, the top carved out into holes of a fanciful pattern, through which the heat may rise to the feet of the person using it. Soon the door of the side room opens, and the mistress of the house, who also has been taking her siesta, appears in her dark print gown, and with a clean white pocket-handkerchief tied hastily round her throat in honour of the newcomer. She silently shakes hands, and goes to her elbow-chair, placing her feet on the stove, which, in the summertime, is coalless, and serves merely as a footstool. As she fans herself to drive away the flies, which in Africa and in the neighbourhood of stock kraals are numerous, she calls to the Kaffir maid in the kitchen at the back to make haste and let the kettle boil, or coaxes the three-year-old child, who stands pressing backwards against her knee, eyeing the stranger from under a mass of tumbled hair, with a finger in its mouth, to go and tell the elder sister to come and make the coffee. Even in her youth the house-mother has been generally buxom, and, when past it, is often stout, as the result of a quiescent life and from the lack of open-air exercise.[48] From time to time the elder children slink out of the side sleeping apartments, with little bare feet or with undressed leather shoes, and generally no socks. They extend their little hands and say "Dag!"[49] and seat themselves silently on the chairs with their little feet dangling down. Presently an older girl, almost or quite grown-up, appears, who has been detained by some efforts at personal adornment; she has smoothed the top of her heavy, silky, dark or fair hair with a brush or comb, and has put a silk handkerchief round her throat, and perhaps has on her Sunday town-made shoes. She shakes hands somewhat bashfully, and goes through to the back room, hurrying on the coffee-making, while we sit, and, with intervals of silence, discuss the weather and the health of the stock. Presently one of the children, growing tired of its perch on the chair, goes out, and leaves the lower half of the front door open, and the hens enter, and the two large dogs slink quietly in and lie down under the table. When the hand-lamb and a couple more fowls follow, the mother calls to one of the children to drive them out, but the dogs remain under the table, winking with their yellow eyes at us. By this time the coffee has come. It is placed in an urn on the little side-table with a brazier of hot coals beneath it, and the eldest daughter pours it out and hands it round. In the wall of the room there is generally a small cupboard, the door of which is made with panes of glass, and which looks like a blind window. Here are kept the spare cups and saucers, the black bottle of cocoa-nut oil with which the whole family oil their heads on Sunday mornings, and whatever else in the way of crockery and ornament, and not for daily use, the house contains; and, if there be not enough cups out, some are now produced for the use of the strangers. Even the smallest child has its basin of coffee, and when the cups and basins have been used they are put into a brass dish of water and covered with a cloth, to be free from flies and ready for further use.