Twenty-five years ago I rode up here and saw this spot.

Look, you see that rock there behind the house?
I slept under it and woke at sunrise and looked out at this beautiful scene and at the great veldt (it was all alive with game then), and I said to myself, 'Silas, for five-and-twenty years have you wandered about this great country, and now you are getting tired of it; you've never seen a fairer spot than this or a healthier; be a wise man and stop here.' And so I did.

I bought the 3,000 _morgen_ (6,000 acres), more or less, for 10 pounds down and a case of gin, and I set to work to make this place, and you see I have made it.

Ay, it has grown under my hand, every stone and tree of it, and you know what that means in a new country.

But one way or another I have done it, and now I have grown too old to manage it, and that's how I came to give out that I wanted a partner, as Mr.Snow told you down in Durban.