midday
`` Look , Baas , '' said Hans , `` those wanderers did not lie ; there is the house of the white man . I wonder if he drinks anything stronger than water , '' he added with a sigh and a kind of reminiscent contraction of his yellow throat . As it happened , he did . We had sighted the house from far away shortly after sunrise and by midday we were there . As we approached I saw that it stood almost immediately beneath two great baobab trees , babyan trees we call them in South Africa , perhaps because monkeys eat their fruit . It was a thatched house with whitewashed walls and a stoep or veranda round it , apparently of the ordinary Dutch type . Moreover , beyond it , at a little distance were other houses or rather shanties with waggon sheds , etc. , and beyond and mixed up with these a number of native huts .