By the time that I was twenty I could speak Dutch and three or four Kaffir dialects perfectly, and I doubt if there was anybody in South Africa who understood native ways of thought and action more completely than I did.

Also I was really a very good shot and horseman, and I think--as, indeed, my subsequent career proves to have been the case--a great deal tougher than the majority of men.

Though I was then, as now, light and small, nothing seemed to tire me.

I could bear any amount of exposure and privation, and I never met the native who was my master in feats of endurance.

Of course, all that is different now, I am speaking of my early manhood.
It may be wondered that I did not run absolutely wild in such surroundings, but I was held back from this by my father's society.