Nevertheless, we have continued to employ Mapors on the farm and have a number of families there now. My old nurse was a Mapor woman. She was faithfulness personified, and I led her a merry dance. Her only garment was a loin cloth made of a duiker skin, and on account of her scant clothing my older brothers nick-named her "Jass," which means "overcoat." Jass was the mother of several little Mapors, the scars on her forehead showing their number. Like all the other savages in the Transvaal, the Mapors practice scarification to a great extent. The women are scarred either on the forehead or breasts, while the men are entitled to a scar on the forehead for each enemy they have killed. Until I was sent to boarding-school in Grahamstown, that is, until I was well into my teens, my only companions were little kaffir boys. My best pal was Sibijaan, whose name means "The Skunk," and even today he is my body servant when I am at home. How we came to possess him is illustrative of conditions in the district surrounding Rietvlei. Sibijaan and two other little kaffirs were brought to our home early one morning by a neighbor of ours who had captured them on our property. It seems they belonged to some tribe that had recently been wiped out by the Zulus and had been fleeing north to get away from the death that caught their people. I have never seen so miserable a trio as these poor little natives. They were almost starved and were unutterably dirty. In addition, they were in a state of most pitiable terror. They regarded the white men with bulging eyes and seemed only to want a place to hide. Since they had been captured on our farm, they belonged to us. My mother was at home at the time, and the neighbor and she had a pretty argument as to the disposal of the captives. I listened to all of it, keeping one eye on the little boys and wondering how I would feel if I were in their place. Finally my mother agreed that the neighbor should have the largest of the three, since he was big enough to be of some use in herding cattle and sheep. The two little fellows were to belong to us, and subsequent events proved that we had much the best of the bargain. The one taken by our neighbor soon escaped, while our captives quickly became devoted to us and are with us yet. The elder of the two was Sibijaan, and my mother gave him to me for my own servant and playmate. Several of my brothers happened to be spending a few days at the farm at this time and they gave Sibijaan his name. Dick did the naming when he said, "The little nigger would make a skunk blush with envy. Let's call him The Skunk!" Sibijaan and I soon had definite tasks assigned to us. On a Boer farm no one rests--all have their work, even to the women and children. We were sent out to mind the sheep, of which my father had thousands, and were given about a dozen other little kaffirs as assistants. I was about seven years old at this time, big and strong for my age.