ESCAPE FROM BLACKS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21098, 4 February 1932, Page 10

ESCAPE FROM BLACKS.

WHITE GIRL'S ADVENTURES

SOUTH AFRICAN STORY. [FROM OUR OWN COTiRESRONnrNT. 1 CAPETOWN. Dec. 18. Speaking only a native language, vet living all her life within a few miles of her own kind, a white girl has been found nl Ficksburg, near Basutoland, and through the activities of the local branch of the Child Welfare Society has been rescued from an uncertain future among the Basuto. Nurse Greeff, of Ihe Ficksburg Child Welfare Society clinic, while on her rounds in the lower end of tho town, noticed a bare legged girl, apparently about 15 years of age, dressed in blanket and dock, with an unusually fair skin, and with unmistakably light hair showing beneath her head-dress, working as a house girl in-one of tho poorer houses of that quarter.

The nurse mentioned the matter to Mrs. J. S. do Villiers, vice-president of the clinic, and tlie girl was taken to tlie lioinc of Mrs. do Villiers, wlio gave her food and shelter and reported the matter to the resident magistrate. The latter communicated with Lho Department of Education in Pretoria, to see if the Government would take charge of the girl and have her placed in a suitable institution, and in the meantime she was medically examined and found to be quite fit and well. Her age appears to bo between 13 and 15 and she can speak no other language than Basuto. The girl has been clothed in European garments and placed at a Eicksburg boarding house, where she is cpiite happy playing with the children there, and where she is rapidly realising that she. is indeed white and not black. Jfer early history is a trifle obscure, but it is certain that she spent her early years with hor father, an Englishman, who worked on a European trading station in Basutoland and afterwards with Indian traders in north Basutoland. She was left in charge of these Indians while still a child and later, when she grow up, was sought in marriage by one of them. But she ran away across the border to Eicksburg, where she found work as a native in the house of some, poor whites.

Hester, as the child is now called, is being well cared for, is learning English and Afrikaans, and is quickly adapting herself generally to European habits.