It was not until the second time I stayed with him that old Cornelis Van
Vuuren began to open his heart, and to pour fitfully into my ears, from
the rich storehouse of his memory, many a strange tale of veldt life. I
had been fortunate enough to render some little service to a son of the
Van Vuurens, far up in the hunting veldt; and these kindly, if somewhat
uncouth, South African Dutch folk do not lightly forget such matters.
When I passed through the Orange Free State on my way to Natal, in the
year 1880, I stayed for a night at the Van Vuurens' farm. The good
people received me with the greatest hospitality, and Cornelis pressed
me to stay longer. I was unable to do so at that time; but later, on my
way up-country, I outspanned at Nooitgedacht, and stayed several nights.
That name, Nooitgedacht (never give in), bestowed years ago upon the
farm, well indicates the strong and stubborn character of old Cornelis
Van Vuuren, its owner. There were some springboks and blesboks running
on the place--remnants of those mighty herds of game which formerly
blackened the Free State plains.
During the daytime I shot a few head of buck--I wanted some blesbok
heads as specimens--and at evening, after supper, as we sat out beneath
the warm starlight, Cornelis would open up, and yarn to me in a way
that, until you know him well, the Boer seldom manifests to the
_rooinek_ [Literally, Red-neck--a Boer name for Englishmen].
What experiences the old man had had! In his youth he had been a great
hunter, and had followed the elephants far into the interior before
Gordon Cumming's time. In those days ivory was plentiful throughout the
north of the Transvaal. Many and many a rich load of tusks had Cornelis
brought down-country. One of the first to penetrate into the Sabi River
country and Gazaland, he had reaped a rich reward. So well had he done,
that by 1863 he had practically retired from the hunting veldt, having
amassed enough money and cattle to settle down on one of the best farms
in the Free State. Here, at the time I knew him, he was living in a
roomy, comfortable farmhouse--one of the best Dutch homesteads I have
entered. Groves of fruit trees flourished round about; the well-tilled
"lands" grew enough grain for a pastoral farmer's needs; upon the 10,000
acre run large herds of cattle, sheep, goats, and horses flourished.
Most of the children had grown up, and been duly married off long since.
Only Franz Van Vuuren, the youngest son, whom I had met up-country, now
lived with his parents.
By the second evening, as we sat at supper, old Cornelis and I had
become fast friends. The old man knew from his son that I had shot
pretty successfully in Mashonaland; and, in the old Dutch fashion, his
simple soul went out at once to a hunter--especially to one who had done
Franz a kindly turn. It was a warm evening in November. Vrouw Van
Vuuren--a broad-faced, white-haired, portly old dame, still keen-eyed,
brisk and sharp with her native servants--sat at the head of the table,
endued with a clean print gown and her best black silk apron in honour
of my coming. In front of her stood the great coffee urn. Her
capacious feet, enveloped in soft _velschoens_, rested, spite of the
warmth of the African evening, upon one of those curious chafing
stools--a footstool filled with hot embers--so common in Boer houses.
Franz sat at one side of the table, I at the other. Old Cornelis was at
the top. I see him now in memory as he stood reverently pouring forth
one of those long Dutch prayers, without which no good Boer will begin
his meal. He was a magnificent old fellow, far better looking than the
average run of Free State or Transvaal Boers. Cornelis Van Vuuren stood
a good six feet in his _velschoens_, and, although now seventy years of
age, was still erect and strong as an ancient oak. His thick masses of
white hair--not too well trimmed--and his snowy beard well set off his
strong, massive features. And the old man's bright blue eye--merry,
alert, and penetrating--showed that the fire of life still burned strong
within that great old frame. Well might he be called by his fellows,
"Sterk Cornelis" (strong Cornelis). I had often heard of the old man's
reputation far up in the interior--of his clear courage and unflagging
resource; for Cornelis had been in many a tight place, whether in
hunting or in native wars. Few men, even among the great English
hunters, had been more reliable at need, whether facing an infuriated
bull elephant, or standing up to a wounded and snarling lion--two of the
most dangerous foes, I take it, that a man may expect to confront in
Africa.
As we sat at the evening meal, the pretty Cape swallows, in their
handsome livery of blue-black and rufous, flitted in and out of the
chamber, through door or open window, hawking incessantly at the plague
of flies, or sitting sometimes upon the top of the open door, cheeping
their brief, cheerful song. As in many Boer houses, the Van Vuurens had
fitted up, for cleanliness' sake, directly under the swallows' nests,
which were fastened between the central roof timber and the reed thatch,
immediately over the table, a broad, square, flat piece of wood. Thus
the swallows never trouble the farmer; and, in return for a kindly
toleration, the pretty, tame creatures do their best to rid the
homesteads of those plagues of flies which are found at most cattle
kraals near a Dutchman's house. Sometimes I have seen the little,
confiding creatures, as old Cornelis sat outside upon the _stoep_, with
legs comfortably outstretched, stoop for an instant upon his shoe, and,
like lightning, pick off some fly that had rested there.
I had long spoken Boer Dutch, and our conversation therefore flowed
smoothly and merrily enough. Old Cornelis was in high spirits, and, in
response to my queries, told several anecdotes of his early life in the
far wilderness. He had been one of the "Voor-Trekkers," quitting the
Cape Colony in 1836, and passing beyond the Orange River to found a new
home, and to seek fresh hunting-grounds beyond the reach of a British
government. His young wife had fared forth with him, and for twenty
years and more had shared his life of pioneer and hunter, with all its
dangers, its roughs and tumbles, its wild pleasures, and its fierce
occasional excitements. In the distant interior, in the big wagon, or
in some temporary hartebeest house of reeds and clay, had the family of
this sturdy pair been reared around them.
Presently, as he filled his great pipe, and pushed his coffee cup away,
some amusing reminiscence flitted across the old Boer's brain. A broad
smile overspread his face, as he said to me, nodding mischievously at
his wife, "_Kerel_ (my boy), you have never by chance heard the story of
the vrouw there and her Frenchman? It used to be pretty well-known in
the veldt years ago."
"No," I answered, "I never heard the tale. What is it?"
"Almighty!" he returned. "It's a good story, though an old one. I
never think of it without laughing, though it happened forty years ago!
I must tell it to him, vrouw; what say you?"
And then, as the merry recollection rose firmer before the old man's
mind, his broad palm smote his great thigh with a smack that resounded
through the room, and he burst into a fit of laughing--so hearty and so
long, that the tears started into his blue eyes.
But Vrouw Van Vuuren looked meanwhile straight in front of her, with a
rather grim look upon her strong old face.
"Cornelis Van Vuuren," she said, after a little pause, looking now very
hard at her husband, "that is an old and a foolish story that has been
told far too many times already. I will not have it told in my house.
If you wish to repeat tales that are better dead and buried, you must go
outside."
Cornelis looked at his wife. One glance, and a long experience--nearly
fifty years of married life--told him plainly enough that the vrouw was
in earnest.
"That is all right, Anna, my dear," he said simply. "I won't tease you
with an old joke. Come, my friend [to me], we will smoke our pipes
outside."
We sat ourselves down upon the broad _stoep_ (veranda) which ran round
the house, and smoked our pipes. Franz had gone to the sheep-kraals to
see that all was well for the night. The sun had just set, and the
western heavens and horizon were still aflame with colour. A strange,
mellow, refracted light filled the upper air, and threw the flat grass
plains, stretching everywhere around, into strong relief. Far out upon
these grassy flats, some half a mile away, grazed a troop of springbok,
their shining white and cinnamon coats flecking the plain brilliantly.
The mingled bleat of sheep and goats and the low of neat cattle came not
unpleasantly from the kraals behind the dwelling. I saw that the old
man's eye was resting upon the springboks, now grazing so peacefully
upon the plain. Presently he took his pipe from his mouth, shook his
head regretfully, and said, "'Tis a pity the _wilde_ (game) are going so
fast. I never could have believed it. When I first trekked through
this country, in 1837, the land was darkened with wild animals.
Almighty! they ran in millions. Quagga, Bonte quagga, black wildebeest,
elands, hartebeest, ostrich, springboks, blesboks. Ach! _Kerel_! (my
boy) I tell you I have passed across these plains through a herd of
_trek-bokken_ (migrating springboks) three or four miles broad, and
extending as far as a man's eye could reach. All day we passed through
that _trek-bokken_. I shall never forget it, never. We shot scores of
buck, till we were tired; but we were chiefly anxious to get past the
springboks, which had eaten off every blade of grass for miles upon
miles, so that our oxen and horses looked like being starved. And now,
almost all gone, all gone!"
"But," I said, "although you Afrikanders have pretty well cleaned out
the Free State and Transvaal, there is still a good deal of game beyond.
Along the Sabi River, for instance!"
"Yes, yes," said the old fellow, "that's right enough; but even there
the heavy game's going. Why, how many elephants does a man now get in a
season's hunt? Eight or ten, perhaps,--if he is a good man,--and thinks
himself lucky. Why, _Kerel_, when I first hunted along the Crocodile, I
shot sixty elephants to my own _roer_ (gun) in five months. That was
something like a game country,--elephants and rhinoceros as common as
goats in a kraal."
"Was that the season you met the Frenchman?" I inquired, with a smile.
"No, no," briskly responded Cornelis, with a sly look towards the room
where the vrouw still sat. "Not that season, nor the next. But you
would like to hear the yarn, and it always make me laugh to tell it.
Laughter is good. I was always a merry one, and that, thank the Heer
God, is the reason I have got so well through my troubles. Your
sour-faced fellow is no good for the long trek through life.
"Well, well! It was a funny business that of the good vrouw there and
the little Frenchman. It happened in this way. In the third year after
we had got into the Transvaal, about two years after we had driven
Moselikatse and his _verdomde_ (infernal) Matabele rascals beyond the
Crocodile, I was shooting elephants up in the north. The vrouw was with
me, and the children,--we had three young children then,--and we had
made a big _scherm_ (camp) some way south of the Crocodile, a few miles
out of reach of the `fly,' [Tse-tse fly] which, I can tell you, was in
those days a terrible pest.
"The first time I met Pierre Cellois--`Klein Pierre' we used to call
him--I was about a day east of our camp, shooting water-buck for
_velschoens_. We had worn out our foot-gear, and wanted fresh supplies
of skin. Never shall I forget the little Frenchman's appearance. He
was tricked out in a big slouch hat smothered with great white ostrich
feathers--enough to frighten half the game of the country away. Then he
had a bright blue jacket with gilt buttons, a pink flannel shirt, a red
silk sash round his waist--something like what your officers wore across
their shoulders at Boom Plaats, when we fought Sir Harry Smith--white
breeches, and long, shiny, black English hunting-boots. In his sash he
had stuck a long knife and a pair of pistols. At his side he wore a
wonderful powder-horn, decked with silver, and over his back a brown
leather bag, smothered with steel mountings, the flash of which you
might see a mile off. He carried a good English rifle. His Hottentot
boy, besides a fowling-piece, carried a green net and a lot of boxes.
The little Frenchman collected butterflies and bird-skins, and he never
went abroad without his full paraphernalia. I have seen some funny
sights in the veldt, but never have I seen such a figure of a sportsman
as Pierre Cellois.
"Well, the little Frenchman, it seems, had come up to the Transvaal to
shoot game and to collect specimens for a museum. He had read a book by
your English army officer, Captain Harris, who was up in the country
just before we turned out Moselikatse and his Matabele. Though he was
an Englishman, Harris was a right good sportsman. I saw him in our
laager in 1837, and his wagons were crammed with horns and skins and
ivory. Cellois had Harris's book with him, a great book--I saw it
afterwards on Gordon Cumming's wagon in Bamangwato--full of capital
coloured pictures of game. Little Cellois used to rave over that book,
and fling his arms about, and slap his rifle, and altogether send me
nearly dying with laughter. But, bless you, Pierre was no sportsman; I
could see that at once with half an eye. He had the best of rifles,
powder-horns, knives, pistols, everything else--but he hadn't the pluck,
without which a man in the veldt in those days might surely turn his
wagons and go home. I have seen him peppering away at a rhinoceros at a
hundred and a hundred and fifty yards--teasing the great beast, and
tickling its hide, and making it mad, but doing nothing more.
"Well, we hunted together during the afternoon of the day I met him, and
I shot a big white rhinoceros bull--about the easiest beast a man could
shoot. The Frenchman hadn't seen a rhinoceros shot before, and he
nearly went out of his mind. He danced about, cried out with joy, and
then rushing up to me, put his arms round my neck and kissed me--yes,
kissed me, the little fool! Pah! I couldn't stand that, and I gave him
a bit of a push, and sent him over on his back. He picked himself up
and seemed rather angry, but we became good friends afterwards. Next
day we came across elephants, and I shot three good bulls, and a cow
with long teeth. I was finishing off the last bull, when Pierre
Cellois, who had kept very much in the background so far, came up and
fired his piece two or three times into the beast, which was now at a
stand, just about dying. Then it fell, and the little fellow climbed up
on to its back, screaming and waving his arms, took off his hat and
cried out something about `La France.' Laugh! I nearly split my sides
with laughing at that little jackanapes fellow dancing about up there on
the big elephant."
And the old man, as he recalled that absurd scene of forty years agone,
laughed in his hearty, massive way so heartily that I, too, was impelled
to join him.
"Well," went on Cornelis, "that evening Cellois' wagon came on to the
spot where the elephants lay, and the little Frenchman wrote home a long
letter to his wife. He had picked up Dutch at Cape Town, and he told me
in his excitable way how he had headed his letter. He wrote: `From the
camp upon the Crocodile River, upon the day we slew four elephants.' I
laughed, and didn't say much; but I thought the little man a bit of a
liar, considering that _I_ had shot the elephants, and that _he_ had
done no more than fire two or three bullets into a bull which was
already as good as dead. However, bless you, I didn't much mind, and I
reckoned it would please his vrouw at home. These Frenchmen, I
understand, _are_ rather queer in their ways compared to us Boers, or
even to you English folk.
"A day or two after, having chopped out the tusks, we trekked back to my
camp, and the little Frenchman met my vrouw. I can tell you she didn't
much appreciate him, in spite of his fine clothes and his prancing ways.
If he was highly dressed before, he was a thousandfold more gay now.
In the evenings, after coming into camp, he would deck himself up in all
sorts of finery--silk waistcoats covered with flowers, white shirts with
frills--frills, I tell you--collars, blue neckerchiefs, and I can't tell
what. Then he was for ever paying my wife compliments, which she hated.
The vrouw then was, I can tell you, a very handsome young woman, and
although she wore but simple clothes, and her big _kapje_ (sun-bonnet),
it was very plain that he admired her strongly. But then, where a woman
was concerned little Pierre was a perfect fool. Why, I have heard him
paying compliments and talking nonsense to his Hottentot driver's wife,
_Kaitje_--such trash as that!
"What my wife couldn't stand was the habit the little fellow had of
holding her hand when they met, and sometimes even of kissing it.
Almighty! that sent her mad. I could see the angry flush rise to her
cheeks and neck, and at last one day she snatched her hand from his and
slapped his face pretty smartly.
"Not long after, we were outspanned together on the Crocodile River, in
a clear place where there was no tse-tse fly for some miles. It was a
pleasant camp, and we stood there some time. Here the Frenchman
collected birds and butterflies, and I was often away shooting game.
One day the little Frenchman was fishing from a high spit of sand below
the banks. He had, it seems, waded into the water a little to get his
line further out, and a young crocodile, about five feet long, made a
grab at him, and caught him by the leg. The reptile was not big enough
and strong enough to pull the little fellow in, and a pretty tussle the
two had. The vrouw, who was on the wagon close by, hearing some
dreadful cries for help, snatched up a gun and ran down. There she saw
the crocodile and the Frenchman pulling and hauling and kicking on the
spit of sand. She at once let off the gun close into the beast's side.
It was my big elephant _roer_, carrying four balls to the pound. It
made a great hole in the crocodile's side, so that it quitted its hold,
turned over belly upwards, and lay there dead in the shallows. Well, a
pretty fuss Cellois made about this affair. He wasn't much hurt; he had
his high boots on, and the crocodile had only given him a few pinches in
the calf and side of the leg. He was all right again in a day or two.
But he pestered the vrouw nearly to death with his speeches and
grimaces, called her his angel, his deliverer, and what not. I was away
a good deal just then, and being a veldt-man, and knowing my wife, and
not wasting much thought upon the little Frenchman, except when he
amused me in camp, I took little heed of what was passing, so to speak,
beneath my nose. It seems then that the foolish fellow began to make
love to my wife after the crocodile episode. At last, two or three
evenings after, when Pierre had gone to his wagon for the night, the
vrouw said to me,--
"`Cornelis, you are a fool. This little jackanapes of a Frenchman is
making love to me, and you see nothing and do nothing. If you don't
tell him to pack up and trek to-morrow, I shall. I will put up with it
no longer.'
"`Wait till to-morrow night, Anna,' I said. `I am riding at dawn
to-morrow after zwart-wit-pens (sable antelope). I will see to the
matter when I come in. I am sorry this little French ape has been
teasing you.'
"Well, I rode off next day, and by the merest chance shot two
zwart-wit-pens quite early, and came into camp again at noon. As I rode
up, I heard piercing shrieks and howls, and cries for mercy, which I
knew could come only from Klein Pierre. Then I turned a corner of the
_scherm_ (camp fence), and saw at once what was up. Almighty! Although
I was startled and surprised, I could scarcely help laughing. There was
Pierre Cellois, tied up to our wagon-wheel; all the native servants
standing round, and the vrouw, very red and angry, flogging away at the
fellow's back with a good _sjambok_ (whip) of sea-cow hide.
"I jumped off my horse, and ran up to the group. `Anna! Anna!' I
cried, `what in the Heer God's name are you doing?'
"The vrouw, I can tell you, was mad with anger. She turned upon me,
threw down the _sjambok_, and said, `If you hadn't been a fool,
Cornelis, with no more than half an eye, this need never have happened.
This little baboon fellow has insulted me grossly. He came up to me,
put his arm round my waist, as I sat in my chair, and kissed me upon the
mouth. And so I have had him tied up by the boys, and flogged him. Now
do you finish with him.'
"Well, I was pretty angry--angry at being scolded before all the boys,
and angry at this little scoundrel's impudence, and so I picked up the
_sjambok_, and gave him half a dozen or so for myself. Then I had him
untied, and let him go, and bade him inspan and trek at once before
worse happened.
"Almighty! how mad the fellow was. He cried, he screamed, he wanted to
fight me with pistols. But I just sat on my wagon-box, with my gun on
my knees, and bade him be off. Well, he trekked in an hour--my boys
helped him to inspan the oxen--and we never saw him again. I heard that
he went down to Mooi River Dorp (Potchefstrom) and lodged a complaint
with Martinus Wessels Pretorius, our commandant, and wanted
satisfaction, and threatened a war, and all sorts of things. But, bless
you, old Pretorius knew a thing or two. He got the true story from the
Frenchman's Hottentots, and just packed him off south of the Vaal River,
and he passed, as I heard, to the old colony, and so home to France.
That is the story of the vrouw's little Frenchman; the vrouw, yonder,
will tell you if it is true or no."
The old lady, as Cornelis finished speaking, stood just within the
doorway of the house, looking up into the star-spangled sky. She turned
towards us; her grave old face, as she did so, lit up by the lamp-light
from within. "_My Frenchman_!" she answered, with a look of strong
contempt. "It is an old tale, that, which had better been left untold.
I hate the name of Frenchman. I come of Huguenot blood myself, Meneer,"
she continued, addressing me, "my father was a Joubert. The Huguenots,
I trust, were a very different people. Sooner than think myself akin to
such a race as that little dressed-up _baviaan_ (baboon) my husband has
been telling you of, I would disown my own blood. But, indeed, though
some of us have Huguenot names, we are all good Dutchmen in South Africa
nowadays. You English and we, Meneer, are not always the best of
friends; but at least you are men, and not apes in clothes like Pierre
Cellois. Come in now, and have a _soupje_ [A drink] before you go to
bed."
Pierre Cellois, as I happened to learn since, has long been dust. He
became a shining light in his own country, wrote a book, and is still
referred to as "that great explorer and hunter."
Stout Cornelis Van Vuuren and his good vrouw, too, have lain for some
years in their quiet graves. I sometimes wonder if they and the little
Frenchman have met and settled their differences in the silent land.