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By Root 3671 0

veldkornet for his district, and he presented a dominating appearance; tall, heavy, white-haired, with whiskers down the sides of his face, he wore substantial clothes, holding up his heavy trousers with both belt and suspenders. When he walked among strangers he strode ahead, with Wilhelmina a respectful four paces behind. In public she always referred to him as the Mijnheer, and he was gratified to see how easily she assumed Rebecca's role as a driving religious force, but of a different quality. She was amiable, forgiving of minor defections and most eager to be of help to everyone who came past the farm. She sang as she worked and was overjoyed to learn that a real church had been built at Graaff-Reinet, ninety-odd miles to the northwest: 'We must report to the predikant for our marriage.'

'I can't leave the farm.'

Wilhelmina laughed. 'You call yourself a trekboer?'

'No more. The Van Doorns are through wandering. This is our home.'

'But Tjaart's got to be baptized,' she said with such simplicity that he could not refuse her. So the older Van Doorn children were left in charge while their stepmother led Lodevicus and young Tjaart to their religious duties.

It was a glorious ride, with Tjaart old enough to recall in later years the vast empty spaces, the lovely hills with their tops flattened. He would never forget the moment when his parents halted their horses some miles south of the new village to observe that extraordinary peak which guarded the site: from flat land it rose very high in gentle sweeps until it neared an apex, when suddenly it became a round turret, many feet high, with sheer walls of solid gray granite. And at the top, forming a beautiful green pyramid, rose wooded slopes coming to a delicate point.

'God must have placed it there to guide us to things important,' Lodevicus said, impressing upon his son the stunning significance of the place, and Tjaart remembered this peak long after he had forgotten his parents' marriage and his own baptism.

The boy now had three memories upon which to build his life: that the Dutch way of life must be defended against the English enemy; that Graaff-Reinet was a center of excitement; and that far to the north, as Grandfather Adriaan had told the other children before he died, lay an open valley of compelling beauty which he called Vrijmeer.

And then, in 1806, when the Van Doorns were congratulating themselves upon having resisted the English threat and preserving the countryside for Calvinism, the final shocking news arrived. Because the ordinary citizens of Holland had joined forces with Napoleon, England felt it must reoccupy the Cape to keep it from falling into French hands, which would cut the life line to India. It was now an English possession, and neither the local Dutch government nor the mother country Holland would exercise further control. All of Lodevicus' apprehensions about suppression at English hands revived.

The Cape, having been a stopping place between Holland and Java during the years 1647 to 1806, now became one between England and India, and the indifference with which Holland had always treated this potentially grand possession would now be matched by English imperiousness.

In these days of change it was inevitable that assessments be made of Holland's long rule, and it was remarked by certain observersDutchmen who had known their country's holdings in other parts of the world, Englishmen who had fought in the American war, and Frenchmen who knew many parts of the worldthat her rule had been almost without parallel in world history. The home country had allowed neither its royalty, its parliament nor its citizens any voice in the rule of this distant possession; control had rested in the hands of a clique of businessmen who made all decisions with an eye to profit. True, these profits had sometimes been widely distributed, with the government grabbing a healthy share, but in essence the colony had been a narrow business venture.

This had imposed limitations. The surging colonization that marked the French, Spanish and English settlement