One round, black speck high up yonder on the stony hillside. There he
sits--the large old baboon; wary sentinel that he is, keeping jealous
watch over the safety of the nimble troop under his charge, which,
scattered about amid the bush, is feasting upon succulent roots and
other vegetable provender afforded by its native wilds. And from his
lofty perch he can descry something unwonted immediately beneath--danger
possibly, intrusion at any rate--and he lifts up his voice: "Baugch-m!
Baugch-m?" The sun blazes in a blue, cloudless sky, darting down his
beams with a fierceness and vigour somewhat premature this lovely
afternoon of an early South African spring day, and all nature is at
rest in the drowsy stillness now broken by that loud, harsh cry. A
cliff rears its perpendicular face from amid the bush-covered slopes,
which, meeting at its base, form a triangular hollow. From the brow of
the cliff rises a rugged steep, thickly grown with dark prickly aloes,
whose bristling shapes, surmounted by bunches of red blossom, sprout
upwards from the dry, stony soil. The tiniest thread of a streamlet
trickles down the face of the rock, losing itself in a pool beneath,
which reflects, as in a mirror, cliff, and overhanging bushes, and blue
sky. A faint cattle track leading down to the water betokens that in a
land of droughts and burning skies even this reservoir, remote and
insignificant, is of account at times; but to-day here are no cattle.
The long-drawn piping whistle of a spreuw [of the starling species]
echoes now and again from the cool recesses of the rock; the hum of bees
among the blossoming spekboem and mimosa; the twittering of the finks,
whose pear-shaped pendulous nests sway to and fro over the water as the
light-hearted birds fly in and out--all tell of solitude and of the
peace of the wilderness. Here a big butterfly flits lightly on spotted
wings above the flowering bushes; there, stalking solemnly among the
stones, an armour-plated tortoise seems to be in rivalry with a horny
and long-legged beetle as to which of them shall be the first to reach
the other side of the small open space.
"Baugch-m! Baugch-m!"
Two round black specks high up there on the stony hillside. The
resounding call is answered, and the two guardians of the troop sit
there, a couple of hundred yards apart, looking down into the
sequestered nook below.
The sleeper moves, then rolls over on his back and draws his
broad-brimmed hat right over his face.
Clearly he does not intend rousing himself just yet. The sun's beams
strike full upon him, but he feels them not; evidently he is indisposed
to let even the monarch of light interfere with his siesta. A few
minutes more, and, with a start, he raises himself on his elbow and
looks around.
"By Jove, how hot it is! I must have been doing the sluggard trick to
some purpose, for the cliff was full in the sun when first I pricked for
the softest plank here, and now it's throwing out a shadow as long as an
attorney's bill of costs. Past four!" looking at his watch. "Now for a
pipe; then a start."
He picks himself up out of the pass, yawns and stretches. The tortoise,
which had already stood motionless, its bright eye dilated with alarm,
now subsides into its shell, hoping to pass for one of the surrounding
stones; its scarabean competitor likewise is equal to the occasion,
after its own manner, and falling over on its side, with legs stiff and
extended, feigns death industriously. Meanwhile the aloe-dotted steep
overhead is alive with the loud warning cries of the disturbed baboons,
whose ungainly but nimble shapes--some fifty in number--may be seen
making off helter-skelter up the hill, to disappear with all possible
despatch over the brow of the same.
"Noisy brutes!" grumbles the wayfarer, shading his eyes to watch them.
"But for your unprincipled shindy I could have done a good hour's more
snooze with all the pleasure in life. If only I had a rifle here--even
a Government Snider--it would go hard but that one or two of you would
learn the golden art of silence."
Look at him as he stands there just six foot high in his boots--
well-proportioned, broad-shouldered, straight as a dart. The face is of
a very uncommon type, with character and determination in its regular,
clear-cut features; but a look of _insouciance_ in the eyes--which are
neither grey nor blue, but sometimes one, sometimes the other--
neutralises what would otherwise be an energetic and restless
expression. The mouth is nearly hidden by a drooping, golden-brown
moustache. In the matter of age the man would have satisfied a census
collector by the casual reply, "Rising nine-and-twenty."
Colonial born you would certainly not pronounce him. Yet not a touch of
the "rawness" of the greenhorn or "new chum" would you descry, even if
the serviceable suit of tancord and the quality of the saddle and riding
gear lying on the ground did not betoken a certain amount of
acquaintance with colonial life on the part of their owner.
He draws a rough cherrywood pipe from his pocket, fills and lights it,
sending forth vigorous blue puffs which hang upon the drowsy air. He
stands for a moment looking at the sun, and decides that it is time to
start.
"Now, I wonder what has become of Sticks. The old scamp is given to
erring and straying afar just when wanted. When I don't require his
services he'll fool about the camp by the hour."
Sticks was his horse. That estimable quadruped had at one time been
addicted to "sticking," an inconvenient vice of which his present owner
had thoroughly cured him.
Our wayfarer strolls leisurely to the ridge which shuts in the hollow,
and looks around. Then a reddish object amid the green bush, some
hundreds of yards further down, catches his eye. It is the object of
his search; and, with one hand thrust carelessly into a pocket, he makes
for the errant nag and returns leading his steed to the waterhole, where
clouds of yellow finks scatter right and left, vociferously giving vent
to their indignation at being thus invaded.
And now, having saddled up, he is on his way. Steeper and steeper grows
the ascent; the bush meets here and there over the narrow path, nearly
sweeping the rider from his saddle, and the horse, blinded now and then
by a thick branch of spekboem flying back in his eyes, makes an approach
to a stumble, for which he is not to blame, for the track is rugged
enough in all conscience. At length the narrow path comes to an end,
merging into a broad but stony waggon road.
But--excelsior! The bay steps out at a brisk walk, ascending ever the
rough road which winds round the abrupt spurs of the hills like a ledge,
mounting higher and higher above the long sweep of bush-covered slope,
where, among the recesses of many a dark ravine, thickets of
"wait-a-bit" thorn, and mimosa, and tangled underwood, afford retreat to
the more retiring denizens of the waste--the sharp-horned bushbuck and
the tusked wild pig, the hooded cobra, and the deadly puff-adder. And
beneath those shades, too, in the still gloom, the spotted leopard
creeps stealthily upon its prey, and the howl of the hyena and the
shrill yelping bay of the jackal resound weirdly through the night.
"It's waxing chilly. Up, old Sticks!" ejaculates the traveller, with a
light tap of his riding-crop. The horse picks up his head and scrambles
along with new zest. A few minutes more and he is standing on the top
of the _randt_ [the high ground or ridge overlooking the valley of a
river] for a brief blow after his exertions, which his heaving flanks
proclaim to have been of no mean order, while his rider is contemplating
the fresh scene which opens out before his gaze. For the wooded country
has been left, and now before him lies spread a panorama of broad and
rolling plains, dotted capriciously here and there with clumps of bush.
A lovely sweep of country stretches away in many undulations to the
wooded foothills of a beautiful mountain range which forms a background
to the whole view, extending, crescent-like, far as the eye can travel.
The snow-cap yet resting on the lofty peak of the Great Winterberg
flushes first with a delicate tinge and then blood-red; many a jutting
spur and grey cliff starts forth wondrously distinct, while the forest
trees upon a score of distant heights stand soft and feathery, touched
with a shimmer of green and gold from the long beams of the sinking sun
as he dips down and down to the purpling west.
The stranger rides on, enjoying the glorious beauty of this fair
landscape--never fairer than when seen thus, in the almost unearthly
lustre of a perfect evening. A steinbuck leaps out of the grass, and
after a brief run halts and steadily surveys the intruder. Down in the
hollow a pair of blue cranes utter their musical note of alarm, and
stalk rapidly hither and thither, as though undecided about the quarter
whence danger threatens, and the cooing of doves from yon clump of
euphorbia blends in soft harmony with the peaceful surroundings as in a
vesper chant of rest.
And now a strange group appears over the rise in front. It is a Kafir
_trek_. Two men, three women, and some children, driving before them
their modest possessions in live stock, consisting of three cows (one
with a calf), and a few sheep and goats. The men wear an ample blanket
apiece thrown loosely round their shoulders, but other clothing have
they none, with the exception of a pair of boots, which however, each
carries slung over his shoulder, preferring to walk barefoot. The women
are somewhat less scantily clad, with nondescript draperies of
blanketing and bead-work falling around them. Each has her baby slung
on her back, and carries an enormous bundle on her head, containing pots
and pans, blankets and matting--the household goods and chattels; for
her lord disdains to bear anything but his kerries, or knobsticks, and
marches along in front looking as if the whole world belonged to him.
Some of the elder children are laden with smaller bundles, and even the
cows are pressed into the service as porters, each having a long roll of
mats fastened across her horns, and two or three mongrel curs slink
behind the group. All Kafir garments are plentifully bedaubed with red
ochre, an adornment frequently extended to their wearers, giving them
the appearance of peripatetic flower-pots.
"Naand, Baas!" [Note 1] sing out the men as they meet the traveller,
and then continue in their own tongue, "Nxazela." [Tobacco.]
No bad specimens of their hardy and supple race are these two fellows as
they stand there, their well-knit, active figures glistening like bronze
in the setting sun. They hold their heads well up, and each of their
shrewd and rather good-looking countenances is lighted by a pair of
clear, penetrating eyes. The stranger chucks them a bit of the coveted
plant, and asks how much further it is to Seringa Vale.
"Over there," replies one of the Kafirs, pointing with his stick to the
second rise in the ground, about two miles off. With a brief good-night
the horseman touches up his nag and breaks into a gentle canter, while
the natives, collecting their stock--which has taken advantage of the
halt to scatter over the _veldt_ and pick up a few mouthfuls of grass--
resume their way.
The sun has gone down, and the white peak of the Great Winterberg towers
up cold and spectral to the liquid sky, as the horseman crests the ridge
indicated, and lo--the broad roof of a substantial farmhouse lies
beneath. Around, are several thatched outbuildings, and the whole is
charmingly situated, nestling in a grove of seringas and orange trees.
There is a fruit-garden in front of the house, or rather on one side of
it, though it may almost be said to have two fronts, for the verandah
and the _stoep_ run round the two sides which command the best and
widest view, while another and a larger garden, even more leafy and
inviting-looking, lies down in the kloof. Close to the homestead are
the sheep and cattle kraals, with their prickly thorn-fences, into one
of which a white, fleecy flock is already being counted, while another,
preceded by its _voerbok_ [Note 2] is coming down the kloof, urged on by
the shout and whistle of its Kafir shepherd. The cattle enclosure is
already alive with the dappled hides of its denizens, moving about among
whom are the bronzed forms of the cattle-herd and his small boys, who
are busily employed in sorting out the calves and shutting them up in
their pen for the night, away from their mothers, so that these may
contribute their share towards filling the milk-pails in the morning.
Behind the kraals stand the abodes of the Kafir farm servants, eight or
ten beehive-shaped huts to wit, and stepping along towards these,
calabash on head, comes a file of native women and girls who have been
to draw water from the spring. They sing, as they walk, a monotonous
kind of savage chant, stopping now and then to bawl out some "chaff" to
the shepherd approaching with his flock as aforesaid, and going into
shrill peals of laughter over his reply.
The traveller draws rein for a little while, till the counting-in
process is accomplished, then rides down to the kraal gate and
dismounts. A man turns away from giving some final directions to the
Kafir who is tying up the gate--an old man, over whose head at least
seventy summers must have passed, but yet stalwart of body and handsome
of feature, with hair and beard like silver. He is dressed in the rough
cord suit and slouch hat of the ordinary frontier farmer, and in his
hand he carries a whip of plaited raw-hide. His clothes have a timeworn
appearance, and his hands are large and hard-looking; but, in spite of
the roughness of his aspect and attire, you need only look once into
Walter Brathwaite's face to know that you were confronting a man of
gentle blood.
"Good evening," he says, heartily, advancing with outstretched hand
towards the stranger. But a curious smile upon the tatter's face causes
him to pause with a half mystified, hesitating air, as if it were not
unfamiliar to him. "Why, no. It can't be. Bless my soul, it is,
though. Why, Claverton, how are you, my boy? Glad to see you back
again in Africa," and he enclosed the younger man's hand in a strong
grip. "But come in; the wife'll be delighted. Here, Jacob," he
shouted, in stentorian tones which brought a young Hottentot upon the
scene in a twinkling, "take the Baas's horse and off-saddle him."
Passing through a hall, garnished with trophies of the chase, bushbuck
horns, and tusks of the wild pig, and a couple of grinning
panther-heads, they entered the dining-room, a large, homelike
apartment, plainly but comfortably furnished.
"Here, Mary, I've brought you a visitor," said the settler, as they
entered. "You remember Arthur Claverton?"
A tall old lady, whose kindly and still handsome face bore unmistakable
signs of former beauty, rose from a sewing-machine at which she had been
working, with a start of surprise.
"What! Arthur? Why, so it is. But I should never have known you,
you're so altered. Ah, I always said we should see you out here again,"
she continued, shaking his hand cordially.
The stranger smiled, and a very pleasant smile it was.
"Well, yes, so you did, Mrs Brathwaite; but at least I have the faculty
of knowing when and where I am well off," he said, really touched by the
genuine warmth of his reception.
"So you've been all over the world since we saw you last--to Australia
and back?" she went on. "And then the last thing we heard of you was
that you had gone to America."
"I attempted to; but Providence, or rather the blunder-headed lookout on
board a homeward-bound liner, willed otherwise."
"How do you mean?"
"Why! that the said idiotically-handled craft collided with ours, two
days out, cutting her down to the water's edge and sinking her in
thirteen minutes. I and twenty-four others were picked up, but the rest
went to Davy Jones's locker. There weren't many more of them, though,
for it was a small boat, and I was nearly the only passenger."
"Oh! And you didn't try the voyage again?" said Mrs Brathwaite, in
subdued tones. She was colonial born, and in her own element as brave a
woman as ever stepped. In the earlier frontier wars she had stood by
her husband's side within the laager and loaded his guns for him, while
the conflict waxed long and desperate, and the night was ablaze with the
flash of volleys, and the air was heavy with asphyxiating smoke, and the
detonating crash of musketry and the battle-shouts of the savage foe,
and had never flinched. But she had a shuddering horror of the sea, and
would almost have gone through all her terrible experiences again rather
than trust herself for one hour on its smiling, treacherous expanse.
"Well, no; I didn't," he answered. "I took it as an omen, and concluded
to dismiss the Far West in favour of the `Sunny South.' So here I am."
"Ah! well," put in the old settler. "Perhaps we'll be able to find you
something in the way of excitement here, if that's what you were in
search of, and that before very long, too. All isn't so quiet here as
they try to make out. I've lived on the frontier, man and boy, all my
life, and I can see pretty plainly that there's mischief brewing."
"Is there? I did hear something of the sort on my way up, now I think
of it; but I had an idea that the days of war were over, and that Jack
Kafir had got his quietus."
"Ha! ha! Had you really, now? Why, bless my soul, the Kafirs are far
more numerous than ever; they outnumber us by fifty to one. They hate
us as much as ever they did, and for some time past have been steadily
collecting guns and ammunition. Now, what do they want those guns and
that ammunition for? Not for hunting, for there's next to no game in
all Kafirland. No, it is to put them on an equal footing with us; and
then, with their numbers, they think to have it all their own way.
There's mischief brewing, mark my words."
"It wouldn't mean a scrimmage among themselves, would it? They might be
anxious to exterminate each other," ventured Claverton.
The other smiled significantly, and was about to reply, when the
conversation was interrupted by the entrance of supper and--Hicks.
The latter was one of those young Englishmen often met with on colonial
farms, learning their business in the capacity of assistant, or general
factotum; and who may be divided into two categories: those who take
kindly to the life and throw themselves thoroughly into it and its
interests, and those who don't, and leave it after a trial. Our friend
Hicks may be placed in the former of these. He was a strong, energetic,
good-tempered fellow, who loved his calling, and was a favourite with
everybody. He had served three years in the Frontier Mounted Police,
and had been two with Mr Brathwaite, and, by virtue of so much hard,
healthy, open-air life, was twice the man he had been when he left his
father's Midlandshire parsonage five years previously.
"You were asking if the Kafirs might not be preparing for a fight among
themselves?" resumed the old settler as they took their places at the
supper-table, which looked cheerful and homelike in the extreme. He had
got upon a favourite hobby, and was not to be diverted from a congenial
ride. "There isn't the slightest chance of it, because they know very
well we shan't let them. We prefer encouraging them to hammer away at
us."
"Pickling a rod for our own backs?" remarked Claverton.
"Just so. By patching up their tribal disputes we check just so much
salutary blood-letting, and foster hordes of lazy, thieving rascals
right on our border. Even if the sham philanthropy, under which we
groan, obliges us to sit still while the savages grow fat on our stolen
cattle and laugh at us, the least it could do would be to allow them to
cut a few of each other's throats when they have a mind to."
"The Home Government, I suppose?"
"That's it. A parcel of old women in Downing Street, ruled by Exeter
Hall and the Peace Society. What do they know about the Colony, and
what do they care? After British subjects have been murdered and
plundered all along the border, an official is sent to inquire into it.
Of course the chiefs all pretend ignorance, and throw the blame on
somebody else. Then follows great palaver and buttering over. The
chiefs are told to be good boys and not do it again, and are given
waggon-loads of presents--and a treaty is made. A treaty! With
savages--savages whose boast is that they are a nation of liars. Can't
you imagine the wily rascals sniggering in their blankets, and wondering
how much longer they are going to allow themselves to be governed by
such a race of milksops!"
His listeners could not forbear a laugh.
"I can tell you it's no laughing matter to be burned out of house and
home three times as I have been," went on the old man, "and that through
the sentimental cant of our rulers. No; coddling savages doesn't do--
never did do, and never will. Treat them fairly and with the strictest
justice; but, if you are to rule them at all, you must do so with a
strong hand."
Walter Brathwaite had, as he said, lived on the frontier, man and boy,
all his life; for he was a mere child when his father, tempted by the
inducement of free grants of land, had transferred the family fortunes
to the shores of Southern Africa in the early days of the settlement of
the Cape Colony. His youth and earlier manhood were passed amid the
hardships and obstacles of an emigrant's life. And also its dangers--
for the tribes infesting the rugged and difficult country which then was
Kafirland, were wont to lay marauding hands on the settler's flocks and
herds--nor did the savages scruple about adding murder to pillage.
Still the emigrants throve; for those were the days of good seasons and
healthy flocks and herds--when pasturage was plentiful and succulent,
droughts were infrequent, and disease almost unknown. Three successive
wars at short intervals swept away the fruits of the unfortunate
settlers' toil; but they managed to pick up again, and now, at this
period of our narrative, it is twenty years since the last of these, and
there are once more the same signs of restlessness among the tribes
which the experienced remember to have heralded former outbreaks. So if
Walter Brathwaite expresses strong distrust of his barbarous neighbours,
it is not without ample justification. He has done good service, too,
in the time of need; has fought valiantly and ungrudgingly on behalf of
his adopted country, and whether in peace or in war has ever enjoyed the
respect and good opinion of his fellows. In truth, right justly so.
Gifted with strong, practical common sense; his straightforward nature
abhorring anything in the shape of humbug or meanness; of a thoroughly
kind-hearted, genial disposition and open-handed to a degree, he is a
splendid specimen of the colonist who is also by birth and tradition a
true English gentleman; and now in the latter years of his long, useful,
and honourable life, he is an object of esteem and affection to all who
know him--and they are many.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. Dutch, "Evening, master." Dutch is nearly always employed in
the Cape Colony for intercourse with the natives, comparatively few
frontiersmen, even, being well versed in the Kafir language.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 2. "The goat which goes before."--A goat is always used instead of
a bell-wether on the Cape sheep farms, and so accustomed do the flocks
become to their leader that it is a hard and toilsome business to induce
them to enter their fold without it.