South Africa -- Description and travel; South Africa -- History -- 1836-1909; South Africa -- History -- To 1836
At one corner of the square the Judge was holding the Court in a large
room next to the Post-office which is kept for that and other public
services. The Judge I had met at Pretoria, and had been much struck by
his youth. One expects a judge to be reverend with years, but this was
hardly more than a boy judge. He had been brought from the Cape Bar to
act as Judge in the Transvaal before the annexation,--when the payment
even of a judge’s salary must have been a matter of much doubt. But the
annexation came speedily and the position of the new comer was made sure
by British authority. He at any rate must approve the great step taken
by Sir Theophilus Shepstone. I was assured when at Pretoria that the
Colony generally had every reason to be satisfied with the choice made
by the Republic. He will no doubt have assistant Judges and become a
Chief Justice before long and may probably live to be the oldest legal
pundit under the British Crown. I went into the Court to look at him
while at work, but was not much edified as the case then before him was
carried on in Dutch. Dutch and English have to be used in the Court as
one or the other language may be needed. An interpreter is present, but
as all the parties concerned in the case, including the Judge and the
jury, were conversant with Dutch, no interpreter was wanted when I was
there.
From Potchefstroom to Klerksdorp our horses, including the new purchase,
did their work well. Here we found a clean little Inn kept by an
Englishman with a very nice English wife,--who regaled us with lamb and
mint-sauce and boiled potatoes, and provided clean sheets for our
couches. Why such a man, and especially why such a woman, should be at
such a place it is difficult to understand. For Klerksdorp is a town
consisting perhaps of a dozen houses. The mail cart passes but once a
week, and the other traffic on the road is chiefly that of ox-waggons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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