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By Root 3329 0

in Holland and sent him by Rebecca's father in Swellendam; he was punctilious about never posing as a real clergyman, for that was a holy vocation requiring years of formal study and the laying on of hands, but he did enforce religious law on both his own family and the scattered farms. Whenever a young man and woman started living together, he and Rebecca would visit them, take their names down in a book, and make them promise that as soon as a predikant came their way, they would marry. He also kept a register of births, threatening parents with damnation if they failed to have their infants baptized when the dominee came.

One night as he rode back after lecturing two young couples living carelessly down by the sea, he took Rebecca by the hand and led her a safe distance from the hut: 'I'm sorely worried. I've been reflecting on Adriaan and Seena. It's an affront to God for me to travel far distances to enforce His ordinances when in my own home . . .'

'What are we going to do about them?'

'It would be a dreadful act, Rebecca, to evict one's own parents. But if they persist in evil ways . . .'

When he paused to weigh the gravity of the problem, Rebecca enumerated the nagging difficulties she faced with Seena, the worst being her mother-in-law's paganism: 'She sneers at our teaching, Vicus. When you were gone she brought Dikkop back into the hut, even though she knows the Bible forbids it. When I pointed this out, she snapped, "Either he stays or you starve." '

'Rebecca, we should pray,' and they did, two earnest and contrite hearts seeking the right thing to do. They considered themselves neither arrogant nor unforgiving; all they sought was justice and sanctification, and in the end they resolved that Adriaan and Seena would have to leave: 'They're still young enough to build their own hut, they and that Canaanite Dikkop.'

They rose early so as to be strengthened for the unpleasant scene that must ensue, but when they looked out to the meadow they found Adriaan and Dikkop already up, two horses laden with enough gear to last them for an extensive journey.

'What are you doing?' Lodevicus demanded.

'Seena!' Adriaan shouted. 'Come out here!' And when the redhead appeared, her husband said, 'Tell them.'

She did: 'He's tired of your preaching. He's ashamed to keep a hut in which his friend is not welcome. And he doesn't like the new type of life you're trying to force on us.'

'What is he going to do?' Rebecca asked.

'He and Dikkop are going up to the Zambezi River.' The blank look on her son's face betrayed the fact that he had no idea of where such a river might be. 'The Swede told us about it. It's up there.' And with a careless wave of her arm she indicated a wild river of the imagination some fifteen hundred miles to the north.

'And you?' Rebecca asked.

'I'll stay here. This is my farm, you know.'

And in those few words Seena underlined the impossible situation that faced the young Van Doorns. They could not force his mother off this farm, nor could they in decency abandon her here. They would have to share the hut with her until her husband returned. 'How long will you be gone?' Lodevicus asked in chastened voice.

'Three years,' Adriaan said, and with a flick of his whip he started his oxen north.

It was in October 1766, when Adriaan was at the advanced age of fifty-four, that he and Dikkop left. They took with them sixteen reserve oxen, four horses, a tent, extra guns, more ammunition than they would probably need, sacks of flour and four bags of biltong. They wore the rough homemade cloths of the veld and carried a precious tin box containing Boer farm remedies, medicinal herbs and leaves, their value learned through generations of experience.

They moved slowly at first, seven or eight miles a day, then ten, then fifteen. They let themselves be diverted by almost anything: an unusual tree, a likelihood of animals. Often they camped for weeks at a time at some congenial spot, replenished their biltong and moved on.

As the two went slowly north, they saw wonders that no settler had ever seen before: