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Updated: May 26, 2025
It was a strange sight, that marriage, for my great-grandmother attended it seated on the voor-kisse of her best waggon drawn by eighteen white oxen, the descendants of Dingaan's royal cattle that Swart Piet stole to bring destruction upon the Umpondwana. By her side was her husband, old Jan Botmar, whom she caused to be carried to the waggon and tied in it in his chair.
Is it strange, therefore, that I, believing now as ever in that vision, should wish to visit this mountain where, as I am sure, I shall find the wife that is lost to me?" After this the Boers laughed no more but consulted apart till at last the elder, Heer Celliers, spoke. "Heeren Botmar and Kenzie," he said, "of all this story of a vision we can say little.
At length, when all the tale was told, the lawyer looked at me with his sharp eyes and said, through the interpreter: "Vrouw Botmar, you have heard the story, tell us what you know. Is the young man who lives with you he whom we seek?" Now I thought for a second, though that second seemed like a year. All doubt had left me, there was no room for it.
"You, vrouw, can stop with the neighbours here, and we will join you in Natal." "You will do no such thing, Jan Botmar," I answered, "for where you two go there I can go. What! Am I not sick also with love for my daughter and anxious to learn her fate?"
My father was against such a match, for he had the old French pride of race in him, and thought little of the Botmar family, as though we were not all the children of one God except the black Kaffirs, who are the children of the devil. For my part I have never regretted it, although doubtless I might have done much better for myself; and if Jan did, he has been wise enough not to say so to me.
It was to this effect: "Well-beloved Heer Botmar, I have received your honoured letter, and I think that the unchristian spirit which it shows cannot be pleasing to our Lord. Still, as I seek peace and not war, I take no offence, nor shall I come near your place to provoke the shedding of the blood of men.
Therefore to Thee, Maker of the world, be praise and thanks and glory. Yes, let all things praise Thee as do my aged lips. It is something over three years since my great-grandmother, the Vrouw Suzanne Botmar, finished dictating to me this history of her early days and of my grandparents, Ralph Kenzie, the English castaway, and Suzanne Botmar, her daughter.
"Good-bye, Heer Botmar," he said, "and good fortune to you upon your journey. For my part I cannot understand you emigrants. The English Government is an accursed Government, no doubt; still I would not sell a farm and a house like this for fifty pounds and an old waggon in order to wander in the wilderness to escape from it, there to be eaten by lions or murdered by Kaffirs.
I want her whose scorn and beauty have driven me mad, her for whom I have been seeking this long time Suzanne Botmar." "She is my wife," said Ralph; "would you steal away my wife?" "No, friend, for that would not be lawful. I will not take your wife, but I shall take your widow, as will be easy, seeing that you are armed with God's strength only."
"Yes, yes; they all say that, Heer Botmar, and I trust that they are right, for you will need nothing less than a cloud by day and a pillar of fire in the darkness to protect you from all the dangers in your path.
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