The last day of each trip in the Bush veld was always a day of trial and
hard work for man and beast. The Berg stood up before us like an
impassable barrier. Looked at from below the prospect was despairing--
from above, appalling. There was no road that the eye could follow.
Here and there a broad furrowed streak of red soil straight down some
steep grass-covered spur was visible: it looked like a mountain
timber-slide or the scour of some tropical storm; and that was all one
could see of it from below. For perhaps a week the towering bulwarks of
the High veld were visible as we toiled along--at first only in
occasional hazy glimpses, then daily clearer higher and grander, as the
great barrier it was.
After many hard treks through the broken foothills, with their rocky
sideling slopes and boulder-strewn torrent beds, at last the Berg itself
was reached. There, on a flat-topped terrace-like spur where the last
outspan was, we took breath, halved our loads, double-spanned, and
pulled ourselves together for the last big climb.
From there the scoured red streaks stood out revealed as road tracks--
for, made road there was none; from there, lines of whitish rock and
loose stones and big boulders, that one had taken for the beds of
mountain torrents, stood revealed as bits of `road,' linking up some of
the broken sections of the route; but even from there not nearly all the
track was visible. The bumpy rumbling and heavy clattering of waggons
on the rocky trail, the shouts of drivers and the crack of whips, mixed
with confusing echoes from somewhere above, set one puzzling and
searching higher still. Then in unexpected places here and there other
waggons would be seen against the shadowy mountains, creeping up with
infinite labour foot by foot, tacking at all sorts of angles, winding by
undetected spur and slope and ridge towards the summit--the long spans
of oxen and the bulky loads, dwarfed into miniature by the vast
background, looking like snails upon a face of rock.
To those who do not know, there is not much difference between spans of
oxen; and the driving of them seems merely a matter of brute strength in
arm and lung. One span looks like another; and the weird unearthly
yells of the drivers, the cracks--like rifle-shots--of the long lashes,
and the hum and thud of the more cruel doubled whip, seem to be all that
is needed. But it is not so: heart and training in the cattle, skill
and judgment in the driver, are needed there; for the Berg is a
searching test of man and beast. Some, double-spanned and relieved of
half their three-ton loads, will stick for a whole day where the pull is
steepest, the road too narrow to swing the spans, and the curves too
sharp to let the fifteen couples of bewildered and despairing oxen get a
straight pull; whilst others will pass along slowly but steadily and
without check, knowing what each beast will do and stand, when to urge
and when to ease it, when and where to stop them for a blow, and how to
get them all leaning to the yoke, ready and willing for the `heave
together' that is essential for restarting a heavy load against such a
hill. Patience, understanding, judgment, and decision: those are the
qualities it calls for, and here again the white man justifies his claim
to lead and rule; for, although they are as ten or twenty to one, there
is not a native driver who can compare with the best of the white men.
It was on the Berg that I first saw what a really first-class man can
do. There were many waggons facing the pass that day; portions of
loads, dumped off to ease the pull, dotted the roadside; tangles of
disordered maddened spans blocked the way; and fragments of yokes,
skeys, strops, and reims, and broken disselbooms, told the tale of
trouble.
Old Charlie Roberts came along with his two waggons. He was `old' with
us--being nearly fifty; he was also stout and in poor health. We buried
him at Pilgrim's Rest a week later: the cold, clear air on top of the
Berg that night, when he brought the last load up, brought out the
fever. It was his last trek.
He walked slowly up past us, to "take a squint at things," as he put it,
and see if it was possible to get past the stuck waggons; and a little
later he started, making three loads of his two and going up with single
spans of eighteen oxen each, because the other waggons, stuck in various
places on the road, did not give him room to work double-spans. To us
it seemed madness to attempt with eighteen oxen a harder task than we
and others were essaying with thirty; we would have waited until the
road ahead was clear.
We were half-way up when we saw old Charlie coming along steadily and
without any fuss at all. He had no second driver to help him; he did no
shouting; he walked along heavily and with difficulty beside the span,
playing the long whip lightly about as he gave the word to go or called
quietly to individual oxen by name, but he did not touch them; and when
he paused to `blow' them he leaned heavily on his whip-stick to rest
himself. We were stopped by some break in the gear and were completely
blocking the road when he caught up. Any one else would have waited: he
pulled out into the rough sideling track on the slope below, to pass us.
Even a good span with a good driver may well come to grief in trying to
pass another that is stuck--for the sight and example are demoralising--
but old Charlie did not turn a hair; he went steadily on, giving a
brisker call and touching up his oxen here and there with light flicks.
They used to say he could kill a fly on a front ox or on the toe of his
own boot with the voorslag of his big whip.
The track he took was merely the scorings made by skidding waggons
coming down the mountain; it was so steep and rough there that a pull of
ten yards between the spells for breath was all one could hope for; and
many were thankful to have done much less. At the second pause, as they
were passing us, one of his oxen turned, leaning inwards against the
chain, and looked back. Old Charlie remarked quietly, "I thought he
would chuck it; only bought him last week. He's got no heart."
He walked along the span up to the shirking animal, which continued to
glare back at him in a frightened way, and touched it behind with the
butt of his long whip-stick to bring it up to the yoke. The ox started
forward into place with a jerk, but eased back again slightly as Charlie
went back to his place near the after-oxen. Once more the span went on
and the shirker got a smart reminder as Charlie gave the call to start,
and he warmed it up well as a lesson while they pulled. At the next
stop it lay back worse than before.
Not one driver in a hundred would have done then what he did: they would
have tried other courses first. Charlie dropped his whip quietly and
outspanned the ox and its mate, saying to me as I gave him a hand:
"When I strike a rotter, I chuck him out before he spoils the others!"
In another ten minutes he and his stalwarts had left us behind.
Old Charlie knew his oxen--each one of them, their characters and what
they could do. I think he loved them too; at any rate, it was his care
for them that day--handling them himself instead of leaving it to his
boys--that killed him.
Other men had other methods. Some are by nature brutal; others, only
undiscerning or impatient. Most of them sooner or later realise that
they are only harming themselves by ill-treating their own cattle; and
that is one--but only the meanest--reason why the white man learns to
drive better than the native, who seldom owns the span he drives; the
better and bigger reasons belong to the qualities of race and the
effects of civilisation. But, with all this, experience is as essential
as ever; a beginner has no balanced judgment, and that explains
something that I heard an old transport-rider say in the earliest days--
something which I did not understand then, and heard with resentment and
a boy's uppish scorn.
"The Lord help the beginner's boys and bullocks: starts by pettin', and
ends by killin'. Too clever to learn; too young to own up; swearin' and
sloggin' all the time; and never sets down to _think_ until the boys are
gone and the bullocks done!"
I felt hot all over, but had learned enough to keep quiet; besides, the
hit was not meant for me, although the tip, I believe, was: the hit was
at some one else who had just left us--one who had been given a start
before he had gained experience and, naturally, was then busy making a
mess of things himself and laying down the law for others. It was when
the offender had gone that the old transport-rider took up the general
question and finished his observations with a proverb which I had not
heard before--perhaps invented it:
"Yah!" he said, rising and stretching himself, "there's no rule for a
young fool."