.

THE PROMISE.
Of the original thirty-five souls, not reckoning natives, who had accompanied Henri Marais upon his ill-fated expedition, there now remained but nine alive at the new Maraisfontein.

These were himself, his daughter, four Prinsloos--a family of extraordinary constitution--and three Meyers, being the husband of the poor woman I had seen committed to the grave and two of her six children.

The rest, Hernan Pereira excepted, had died of fever and actual starvation, for when the fever lessened with the change of the seasons, the starvation set in.

It appeared that, with the exception of a very little, they had stored their powder in a kind of outbuilding which they constructed, placing it at a distance for safety's sake.