The natives suffer much from snake-bites, and white new-comers from
mosquitos; all classes from ‘ticks,’ which also persecute the dogs
and horses. The native language is very melodious and easily learned;
and the Kaffirs pick up a little English readily enough. They are
indeed a clever race and very home-loving. One genius of the author’s
acquaintance, called ‘Sixpence,’ had actually accompanied his master
to England, whence he returned with a terrible recollection of an
English winter, and a deep-rooted amazement at the boys of the Shoe
Brigade who wanted to clean his boots. That astonished him, Sixpence
declares, more than anything else. Lady Barker is emphatic in her
advice to all colonists that they should make up their minds from the
first to have Kaffir servants. One ‘Tom,’ a nurse-boy, figures in her
book most amusingly; he is a capital fellow; and it is to be hoped he
has abandoned the intention, which he confided to his mistress, of
resigning his position after ‘forty moons,’ because by that time he
should be in a position to buy plenty of wives, who would work for him
and support him for the rest of his life. A Kaffir servant usually gets
a pound a month, his clothes, and food. The clothes consist of a shirt
and trousers of coarse check cotton, and a soldier’s cast-off greatcoat
for winter—all the old uniforms of Europe find their way to South
Africa; and the food is plenty of ‘mealies’—or maize meal for ‘scoff,’
the native name for a mixture which probably resembles porridge. If a
servant be worth making comfortable, one gives him a trifle every week
to buy meat. The only effectual punishment and the sole restraint which
can be placed on the Kaffir propensity to break things, is a system of
fines.
A native kraal consists of a cluster of huts which exactly resemble
huge beehives. There is a rude attempt at sod-fencing round them, and
a few head of cattle graze in the neighbourhood. Women roughly scratch
the earth with crooked hoes to form a mealy-ground. Cows and mealies
are all the Kaffirs require, except blankets and tobacco. The latter is
smoked out of a cow’s horn. ‘They seem a very gay and cheerful people,’
says the author, ‘to judge by the laughter and jests I hear from the
groups returning to their kraals every day by the road just outside
our fence. Sometimes one of the party carries an umbrella; and the
effect of a tall Kaffir clad in nothing at all, and carefully guarding
his bare head with a tattered “Gamp,” is very ridiculous. Often one of
the party walks first, playing upon a rude pipe; whilst the others jig
after him, laughing and capering like boys let loose from school, and
all chattering loudly.’
No man, except he be a white settler’s servant, ever carries a
burden. When an ‘induna’ or chief is ‘on the track,’ he rides a sorry
nag, resting only the point of his great toe in the stirrup, like the
Abyssinians. He is followed by his ‘tail’ or great men, who carry
bundles of sticks and keep up with the ambling steed. Then come the
wives, bearing heavy loads on their heads; but walking with firm
erect carriage, their shapely arms and legs bare, their bodies, from
shoulder to knee, clothed in some coarse stuff, which they drape in
exquisite folds. Lady Barker describes the Kaffir women as looking
neither oppressed nor discontented, but healthy, happy, jolly, lazy,
and slow to appreciate any benefit from civilisation, except the money,
concerning which they, in common with most savages, display a keenness
of comprehension hardly to be improved upon.
A dozen miles from Maritzburg, on the road which forms the first stage
of the great overland journey to the Diamond Fields, is the little town
of Hawick, on the river Umgeni, which widens down just beneath it to
an exquisitely beautiful fall. Over the brink goes the wide, smooth,
waveless sheet of water, in an absolutely straight descent of three
hundred and twenty feet. From the highest point of the road above the
river, the Drakensberg Mountains, snow-covered, except in the hottest
summer, are visible, and though majestic, they are disappointing. They
are a splendid range of level lines, far up beyond the floating clouds.
‘I miss,’ says the author, ‘the serrated peaks of the Southern Alps
and the grand confusion of the Himalayan range. This is evidently the
peculiarity of the mountain formation of South Africa; I noticed it
first in Table Mountain at Cape Town; it is repeated in every little
hill between Durban and Maritzburg, and carried out on a gigantic scale
in this splendid range.’
Lady Barker made an interesting excursion of over one hundred miles
into the Bush, where she saw real savage Kaffir life, splendid forest
scenes, and came on traces of the wild animals, which are being rapidly
exterminated. With one forest picture we regretfully take leave of
this interesting volume: ‘The tall stately trees around, with their
smooth magnificent boles, shoot up straight as a willow wand for sixty
feet and more before putting forth their crown of leafy branches; the
more diminutive undergrowth of gracefulest shrubs and plumy tufts
of fern and lovely wild-flowers, violets, clematis, wood anemones,
and hepaticas, shewing here and there a modest gleam of colour. But
indeed the very mosses and lichens at our feet are a week’s study,
and so are the details of the delicate green tracery creeping close
to the ground. Up above our heads the foliage is interlaced and woven
together by a perfect network of “monkey-ropes,” a stout and sturdy
species of liane, which are used by the troops of baboons which live
in those great woods, coming down in armies when the mealies are ripe,
and carrying off the cobs by armfuls.’ It is spring-tide (September)
when Lady Barker lays down her pen; soon, we hope, to resume it, and
tell us of the growth of the colony. ‘Everything is bursting hurriedly
and luxuriantly into bloom. The young oaks are a mass of tender green,
and even the unpoetical blue gums try hard to assume a fresh spring
tint. The fruit-trees look like large bouquets of pink blossom, and
the loquot trees afford good sport in climbing and stone-throwing
amid their cluster of yellow plums. On the _veldt_ the lilies are
pushing up their green sheaths and white or scarlet cups through the
yet hard ground, and the black hill-slopes are turning a vivid green,
and the flowers are springing up in millions all over my field like
flower-beds. Spring is always lovely everywhere, but nowhere is it
lovelier than in fair Natal.’
A PERILOUS POSITION.
IN TWO CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I.
‘Now, look here, Fred; you’ve exactly an hour and a half to get back
in,’ said Mr Middleton after luncheon. ‘I shall be at the mill by three
precisely. Are you sure you can manage it?’
‘Oh, quite certain of it, sir,’ was my confident reply. ‘Why, I could
go to M—— and back within the hour, easy riding. I’ll not keep you
waiting, depend upon it.’ So saying, I vaulted the low sill of a window
which stood wide open, and approached a couple who were strolling upon
the lawn in front of Holm Court, the aristocratic-looking dwelling I
had quitted.
Of this couple, one was a young lady, very fair and, in my eyes at
least, very beautiful. She was the elder child and only daughter of
the Mr Middleton already mentioned; a mill-owner who had realised a
gigantic fortune by manufacturing; and in three days she was to be my
wife. I for my part was a young man of good family, possessed of an
independent fortune, in my twenty-second year, and ardently attached to
my intended bride. That this attachment was mutual, I was, moreover,
well assured; and on that delicious summer afternoon life opened before
me full of brilliant promise. So happy indeed did I feel, that it was
with difficulty I could restrain my jubilation within bounds, and
compel myself to walk along the ground at a reasonable and gentlemanly
pace, instead of running or leaping as, in my ecstasy, inclination
prompted.
As I neared her my darling stepped forward to meet me; and after a
few words upon another subject, she administered an anxious caution
apropos of an adventure in which I was about to join, and to which I
shall advert immediately. I assured her in return that there was no
danger connected with it; and with an affectionate temporary adieu,
we parted. Looking back as I prepared to mount my horse, which, held
by a groom, stood ready saddled before the hall door, I saw my sweet
girl rejoined by the companion, who, upon my approach, had sauntered
away from her to some short distance. This companion was a Mr Marmaduke
Hesketh, a fine-looking handsome man, about thirty-five, second-cousin
to Mr Middleton, and lately returned from America. That this gentleman
entertained towards my humble self feelings of a no very friendly
character, I was well aware, although he had never addressed to me a
single discourteous word; and the cause of his antipathy I had divined.
He too was in love with Clara Middleton; I was sure of it, although he
had never told her so; and although Clara herself, when I mentioned
my impression to her, laughed at me for it, and called me a ‘fanciful
goose.’ Her rallying, however, did not shake my conviction of the
truth, and I felt very sorry for the poor man. As his successful rival,
I could afford to pity him; and I had too much confidence in Clara’s
affection to feel an atom of jealousy, even when, as now, I left him
alone in her company.
My foot in the stirrup, I was preparing for a spring to the saddle,
when my name, called eagerly from behind, arrested the action; and
turning, I saw Clara’s brother—a nice-looking lad of twelve or
so—running breathlessly down the broad steps of the entrance-hall.
‘I say, Mr Carleton,’ he panted on reaching my side, ‘mamma wants you,
please, to get her a bottle of chloroform from Pennick’s the druggist
when you’re passing. And I say; mind you don’t forget my string, will
you? It’s to be as strong as ever you can get it, you know, for it’s
such a big kite; and two balls, mind—big ones. You’ll be sure and
remember?’
‘Oh, I’ll remember, Charlie, safe enough,’ I returned, smiling. ‘String
and chloroform—two important commissions. I’ll not forget. Bye-bye, my
boy.’ And giving my horse his head, I trotted down the avenue, passed
the lodge gates, and turned in the direction of the busy manufacturing
town of M——.
My errand there was to see the clergyman who was to officiate at the
marriage, and to arrange with him some slight alteration in the hour
previously appointed for the ceremony. On my return from this visit I
was, according to agreement, to meet Mr Middleton and Mr Hesketh on
the site of a large cotton-mill in process of erection by the former.
Of this mill one portion was already completed, namely, an enormous
chimney—the broadest and tallest by far of any in the county. Mr
Middleton, exceedingly proud of his chimney, and considering it a
masterpiece of enterprise, had determined beforehand to ascend to its
summit as soon as it should be finished; and in this expedition he
had invited Mr Hesketh and myself to accompany him. The scaffolding
used in building it having been removed, the ascent was to be made by
means of a bucket or car (similar to those employed in the descent of
coal-pits), affixed to two strong chains, passing over pulleys which
ran on pins built into the chimney at the top; and the car was to be
worked by a windlass.
It wanted exactly five minutes to three when I arrived at the
rendezvous—my business at M—— transacted, and the chloroform and
string I had been commissioned to purchase in my pocket. Giving my
horse into the charge of one of Mr Middleton’s employés, of whom there
were several about, I walked towards the subterranean entrance to the
chimney, near which I perceived Mr Marmaduke Hesketh standing. He
looked rather pale, I thought, as courteously advancing on my approach,
he imparted to me the information that Mr Middleton had just received
a telegram summoning him to the bedside of his brother, Captain
Middleton. That gentleman, it appeared, had been taken suddenly and
dangerously ill; and full of anxiety, Mr and Mrs Middleton had already
started off for F—— Junction, in order to catch the first train thence
to the town, some twenty miles distant, where the captain was stationed
with his regiment. Mr Middleton had, however, my informant proceeded,
expressed, before leaving, a desire that we would not allow his absence
to interfere with our project of ascending the chimney; and he, Mr
Hesketh, concluded by hoping that I would not object to accompany him
alone, as he very much wished to see the view from the top, and would
not, as I knew—for he was leaving Holm Court the next day—have another
opportunity of doing so.
Young and fond of adventure, I had rather enjoyed the prospect of
this enterprise, and though disappointed not to carry it out in my
intended father-in-law’s company, I saw no reason for declining Mr
Hesketh’s proposal to go with him alone. Accordingly, signifying
my assent to it, we proceeded to enter the chimney together. Some
half-dozen men were waiting within, in readiness to turn the crank of
the windlass; and a moment later, swaying and vibrating in mid-air,
we were slowly ascending through the gradually narrowing aperture of
the great chimney. On gaining the top I was the first to step from the
bucket; but Mr Hesketh was speedily by my side. The stone coping being
fully two feet in width and having a narrow parapet a foot in height,
presented a perfectly safe footing. I had a strong head, and had not
expected to feel dizzy; yet, as I now gazed from that tremendous
height, a singular feeling of insecurity seized upon me.
‘Will you not walk round?’ said my companion when we had stood together
for a few seconds on the spot where we had alighted.
‘Oh, certainly,’ I replied with an assumption of boldness, but an
inward shrinking from the ordeal; and with Mr Hesketh at my heels, I
commenced the circuit.
About half the short distance was accomplished, when a hand laid on
my arm arrested my steps. ‘We’ve a fine view from here—haven’t we?’
observed Mr Hesketh as I stopped, a sensation of dread thrilling
through my nerves at his touch. ‘You see Holm Court there, down to the
right, don’t you?’
‘Of course, quite plainly,’ I returned, clearing my throat to cover the
strange nervous uneasiness I was experiencing.
‘So glad I persuaded you to come and see the view,’ he remarked next in
a very peculiar tone, and at the same time tightening his grasp upon my
arm. ‘But it’s an awful height, isn’t it; I hope you don’t feel giddy?’
‘Not at all,’ I replied, endeavouring to keep my composure as I gazed
downwards at the long perpendicular wall of smooth brick, but feeling
that I was trembling perceptibly.
‘And yet there is but a step between us and death,’ he pursued with
a sneer. ‘Hollo! I’m quoting Scripture, I declare. You wouldn’t have
expected that of me; would you?’
‘Oh, anybody can quote Scripture, you know,’ I responded with a ghastly
attempt at airiness. ‘But I say, Hesketh, let go my arm, will you?
You’re hurting me.’
‘Hurting you, am I? Ha, ha! I beg your pardon, I’m sure,’ he laughed,
increasing instead of diminishing the vice-like pressure of his
fingers. ‘I wouldn’t hurt you for the world; O no! But now, if you’ve
quite finished with the scenery, Mr Frederick Carleton, I’ll trouble
you to give me your attention for a moment. I’m going to ask you a
question, which you may perhaps consider somewhat curiously timed. I am
not a vain man, that I know of; but I should like to have your opinion
respecting my personal appearance. Should you feel justified now, for
instance, in describing me as a well-built, powerful kind of man?’
Considering that he was upwards of six feet in height, broad and stout
in proportion, with well-developed sinewy limbs, the description would
have been accurate; and I said so.
‘If you feel any doubt of it,’ he resumed, still in the same peculiar
tone, ‘oblige me by examining that muscle.’ And he stretched out for my
inspection an arm that could have felled an ox—firm and strong as a bar
of iron.
‘I am quite satisfied of your muscular strength and powerful physical
development, Mr Hesketh,’ I said, with an effort to appear unconcerned
and amused, which I was conscious was a dead failure. ‘And now, with
your permission, I think we had better descend.’
‘Not just this moment, my precious little bantam cock,’ was the
startling rejoinder. ‘Sorry to detain you, believe me, but I must
trouble you with another question. Supposing, now, that you and I, dear
friend, were to have a tussle at the top of this chimney, and that each
of us was trying to throw the other over, which, should you think,
would have the better chance of accomplishing his purpose?’
Summoning to my aid all the manliness of which I was possessed, I
courageously declined to answer this question—asserting that the case
was not a supposable one, seeing that I entertained towards him no
feelings of enmity, and that I felt sure he had no desire to injure me.
‘Look in my face and see if I haven’t!’ he rejoined in loud fierce
accents, very different from those he had hitherto employed. ‘Look in
my face, Mr Frederick Carleton, and see if I haven’t!’
I did look, and my heart died within me—for on the face of the man who
still retained my arm in his iron grip on the top of that terrible
chimney, I saw an expression of fiendish hate and malignance, of the
like of which I could not have believed a human countenance capable.
As my eyes fell before the awful glare of his, he laughed. ‘You have
read your answer, I see,’ he said. ‘And now, listen. Seat yourself upon
the parapet exactly where you now stand; observe as closely as you
please what I am about to do; but stir one step to hinder it, and as I
live, I will hurl you below!’
The threat, I knew, was no vain one; the man who uttered it overtopped
me by the head and shoulders, and possessed double my strength.
Resistance, therefore, would have been entirely useless; and trembling
in every limb, I obeyed the command, and seated myself. And this was
what I then beheld. Approaching the mass of machinery against which
rested the wooden box or car wherein we had ascended, Mr Hesketh leaned
over the edge of the chimney, and deliberately lifted this up from
one of the two strong iron hooks upon which it hung suspended. Then
slipping the loosened chain over the pulley, he sent it clattering
towards the ground below. A horrified shout from the men who stood by
the windlass greeted this act, coming up hoarse and discordant from the
distance; and bending forwards I answered that shout with an imploring
cry for aid—a wild vain cry! The men, of course, could not help me; and
with sickening despair I watched them retreating to the subterranean
passage, to save themselves from danger—as mounted now upon the
projecting machinery, Mr Hesketh loosened the remaining hook of the car
and precipitated it into the abyss beneath.
MISPRINTS.
Misprints, errors of the press, printers’ blunders, typographical
mistakes—call them what we may—are so numerous that every reader meets
with them occasionally. Budgets of ludicrous examples are now and then
given in the popular journals; and these budgets might be greatly
extended. Our _Journal_ gave its quota more than thirty years ago; and
the matter was again touched upon in the volume for 1872.
Many errors consist in the omission of a single letter in a single
word, altering the sense most materially. Thus, an omission of the
letter _t_, in a work by Dr Watts, made immortal into _immoral_; and
other grotesque instances of this kind of error could be given. The
heedless substitution of one letter for another, without exceeding or
falling short of the proper number of letters in the word, is a very
frequent form of blunder. ‘Bring him to look’ is a poor version of
‘bring him to _book_.’ A candidate at an election certainly did not
mean, as a newspaper implied, that he fully expected to come in ‘at
the top of the _pole_.’ A compositor, perhaps a learner, being unable
to make out a Greek word of three letters, set them down as the three
numerals to which they bore some resemblance in shape, namely 185. At
a public demonstration the mob rent the air with their _snouts_. Dr
Livingstone’s cap, as worn when Mr Stanley met him in the heart of
Africa, was said in one of the papers to have been ‘_famished_ with
a gold-lace band.’ In old English printing, the syllable _con_ was
often contracted to something like the shape of the figure 9; and this
numeral is to be found in many books, even standard works, where it
has no right whatever; in one edition of the _Monasticon Anglicanum_
for instance, the word conquest is represented as _9quest_. There
are both a wrong letter used and a letter omitted in the startling
statement, that a right reverend prelate was highly pleased with some
ecclesiastical _iniquities_ shewn to him.
A useful question has been asked, and to some extent discussed, whether
several of the above-cited misprints of single letters, or others
similar to them, may not be due to the arrangement of the compositor’s
working apparatus? Mr Keightley suggested, a few years ago, that
possibly some of the varied readings of passages in Shakspeare might
be due to the compositor dipping his fingers into the wrong cell, and
others to the fact that wrong types have got into the right cell.
Most persons who have visited any of the printing establishments are
aware that the compositor’s types are placed in flat cases provided
with a number of small cells or receptacles, each for one particular
letter of one particular class of type. There are two cases, one
called the _upper_ and the other the _lower_; the former being for
the capitals, the latter for the small letters. Both cases are placed
before the compositor, inclining upwards from front to back, the upper
more inclined than the lower. The cells are not ranged in regular
alphabetical order, but in such manner that those containing the
letters most wanted shall be grouped together near the compositor’s
hand, leaving such letters as _j_, _k_, _q_, _x_, _z_, &c. to occupy
cells near the margin of the case. May not some types fall out of an
overfilled cell into the one just below it; or may not the filling of
a pair of cases with new type be so carelessly managed that a few fall
over into the wrong cells; or may the compositor, in distributing the
type after printing, now and then drop a type into a wrong cell?
A practical printer will answer such a question in the affirmative.
The letters _b_ and _l_, for instance, being in contiguous cells, one
may fall or slip down into the cell belonging to the other, which
might be the cause of ‘bring him to _book_’ being changed into ‘bring
him to _look_.’ The old form of type for the double letter _st_ is
believed to have led to many misprints—such as nostrils being expressed
_stostrils_, in a Bible printed in the early part of the present
century. Whether the types were arranged in the cases a hundred or two
hundred years ago in the same order and manner as at present, might be
worth a little investigation—in so far as any change of arrangement
may have rendered either more or less frequent such misprints as would
arise from the falling over of some of the types into wrong cells.
There are now something like a hundred and fifty cells in a pair of
cases for ordinary book and newspaper printing; even if there were the
same number in former times, it does not necessarily follow that the
arrangement of the rank and file would be the same.
Benjamin Franklin, when a young man, refused to give ‘garnish’ or
‘pay his footing,’ on being placed in a room of compositors; because
he had already responded to a demand for similar blackmail in another
department of the printing-office. They took a peculiar method of
punishing him, by disarranging some of the types in his cells when he
was out of the room. Very likely this technical tribulation may have
led him inadvertently to the committal of numerous misprints. Several
years ago Mr H. Martin, of Halifax, adverted to a typographical error
in a former communication of his to one of the journals, and added:
‘Upwards of thirty years’ experience in connection with the press has
taught me to be very lenient towards misprints. The difficulty of
detecting typographical errors is much greater than the uninitiated are
inclined to believe. I have often observed that, even if the spelling
be correct, a wrong word is very apt to remain undetected.’ He notices
an instance in an edition of Shakspeare’s _Merchant of Venice_, where
Portia’s lines—