My record of campaigns and outlandish travel includes in its barest
shape, Borneo, Upper Egypt, Central America, the Cape, the West Coast
of Africa, the Danubian Principalities, Afghanistan, India, Turkey,
Greece, Egypt a third time; were I to count the episodes, it would
swell into a geographic catalogue. In such journeying I have found many
odd billets, a few of which I purpose to sketch just as they occur to
mind in writing, without story or connection. But, so far as may be, I
shall avoid those scenes which have been made familiar to the public
through historic events, and through the descriptions furnished by my
own “Special” fraternity.
No eccentricity of fortune surprises me now, though it brings vastly
more discomfort for the time than in earlier days; and my recollections
grow weaker proportionately. However strange one’s quarters, however
distressed or frightened one may be, an abiding consciousness dwells
in the soul that one has seen and done and gone through the same
experience already. The power of observation is not dulled, nor the
sense of fun, still less that of alarm; but the circumstances do not
seem worth remembering particularly. If one reflects more, one feels
less. After his first visit to the Antipodes, so to speak, a boy has
stories inexhaustible of anecdote, remark, and adventure; but from each
succeeding journey he brings back shorter and drier reports, until
a trip to the moon would seem hardly worth telling at length: after
stating the facts, he has done. Last week I entertained a confrère
just returned from El Teb and Tamasi; we have served together in
divers parts, and the public, I understand, has been interested in our
stories; but all through the evening not fifty words were exchanged
touching on matters personal in his late vicissitudes. It seems less
and less worth while to dwell upon impressions and to carry them away,
the more impressions one gathers. This is not the common belief. We
read of men in novels, who having been everywhere and done everything,
are always ready with a tale of adventure that thrills the heroine. I
will venture to say that such a personage has not been far into terra
incognita, nor has served in many wars, unless, of course, he is a
professional talker.
Thus it happens that a man’s earliest memories of travel are the
strongest, though they be insignificant compared with others he might
have collected on the same ground at a later date. I have a hundred
cabinet pictures of Egypt as I knew it, an idle boy, but not one worth
sketching from the late campaign. That was a very big business;—one
recorded the facts, stored them for use, and forgot the incidents.
It is only by an effort that I recall scenes therein quite otherwise
impressive than that unforgotten experience of Esné by night, which
struck me twenty-one years ago, and still remains fresh of color. At
that time the banished sisterhood of Almeh, Ghawazee, dancing and
singing women, still dwelt at the spot assigned them—or many did. We
had seen a performance in going up, and had ordered something more
special for our return. An old negress who kept what one may describe
as the box office, in a vile mud hut, assured us with conviction that
the best dancer and the loveliest woman in those parts would attend at
nightfall. A respectable Arab addressed us returning to the dabeah, and
asked permission to go with our party. In the evening he followed to a
hut, somewhat larger but not less vile than the box office. The only
lights were set on the mud floor, one by each of the musicians, who
squatted there smoking _hasheesh_ to nerve them for special exertions.
In a line across the back, their faces hardly to be distinguished,
sat the Ghawazee, arrayed in silks and muslins of the brightest hue,
the coins that decked their heads twinkling and faintly jingling as
they moved restlessly. The police-officer sat beside us, on one of our
chairs, in snowy uniform and gold belt. Everybody smoked, including
specially the candles, and the spiral cloud from every mouth had a
curious effect so long as it was visible.
The band struck up, with voice and instrument—a metallic hum, a nasal
scream, a twang of strings so loose that they seemed to take their note
from the wood itself, a dull beat of tomtoms. Presently a Ghawazee
arose. You have all read descriptions of the performance, but it must
be seen in its natural habitat, as here, to keep any sort of interest.
I have never beheld it, that I recollect, in the pitiless glow of gas,
when, no doubt, it is grotesque. But in that dim and ruddy twilight,
the long robes and full trousers of the Ghawazee, quivering to the
tremulous movement of her limbs, have sudden strange effects of sheen
and shadow. The arms out-curved, with small castanets betwixt the
index and the thumb, the head thrown back, the closed eyelashes, the
white teeth gleaming, have significance and charm also in that misty
air, though they seem prurient affectation under strong light. But the
entertainment is monotonous. Before our programme was half through, we
called for the _prima ballerina_, and she came forward—a good-looking
woman, helmeted with coins—put out her small bare foot, the toes
turned up, rounded her arms, and tinkled her castanets with the air
of a mistress. At the instant our guest sprang by and seized her,
shouting—the musicians tumbled this way and that—the candles upset—a
woman took fire—the police-officer bawled—and we were a struggling
mass in the doorway! The dragoman afterwards explained that this man’s
son had married the dancer, on an understanding, of course, that she
dropped her profession. He heard that the box-keeper had tempted her,
with her husband’s consent, to perform for our benefit, and hence the
interruption.
A series of earthquakes alarmed Nicaragua in January, 1866, and the
municipality of the capital asked us to explore Mombacho, an ancient
crater from which the disturbance was supposed to come. My companion
and I rode out, with guides, and at nightfall reached Dirioma, an
Indian village. A superb avenue of organo cactus leads to that secluded
settlement; the trunks, ten feet high, looked like fluted pillars of
marble in the pale glow of starlight. Dirioma is much the same now,
probably, as the Conquistadores found it, a marvel of color, softness,
and grace of form. Each dwelling, framed of bamboos and sticks, like a
bird-cage, stands in its own compound; the road runs straight and broad
and smooth in front; palms droop over the cactus hedge, black against
the night sky as ostrich plumes, and behind them lies a dusky mass of
foliage, gleaming red in the glow of the hearth. All day and all night
the place is still, for Indian children, if they play, are silent.
Our billet assigned was such a hut, hung round with hollow logs used as
beehives; in dismounting we upset one, but the insects were familiar
with disasters of the sort, and they took it kindly. We asked about
“Carib Stones,” as usual—all antiquities are called Carib Stones in
Nicaragua—and the guide led us into another compound, where a very old
man crouched beside an enormous fire, with three or four Indians about
him. When our inquiries were explained, with difficulty, the veteran
brightened and began talking like a machine. Some feathers of the
quetzal bird lay beside him; these he snatched up, waved, and shook
to emphasise his statements. We could understand very little of the
patois, more than half Indian; but the naked old man’s shadow played
grotesquely on the lattice wall behind, the brandished plumes flashed
emerald and sapphire, the elders sat round like wrinkled effigies
in bronze, their small eyes fixed upon us with never a wink. The
ancient hero did not tell much—he spoke of the golden temple which, as
everybody knows, is hid somewhere in the neighboring woods; but gave
no precise information. Afterwards we learned that this was a lineal
descendant of the old caciques of Dirioma, who gave four thousand axes
of gold—or whatever the number may have been—to Gil Gonzalez de Avila.
Though he worked as a slave before the emancipation, the Indians revere
and obey him to such degree that a Secretary of State thought worth
while to ask of us what his remarks had been.
Many odd quarters we knew on the West Coast, where men and
circumstances have a character all their own. Quisa recurs to my mind
just now; I could not tell why, for we saw places as strange under
more exciting conditions. This is the first town, or was, within the
Ashanti realm proper. It looked almost civilized to us, marching from
the coast—for refinement is comparative—and decidedly picturesque.
Quisa might be called a town, its ways streets, its dwellings cottages
of unusual form. A row of fine shade-trees in the middle of the chief
thoroughfare had earthen benches at their feet, where the elders sat
for council and gossip. The king’s house stood at the intersection
of the main streets. It had not the alcove or box in the outer wall,
so conspicuous in the architecture of Coomassie, but the façade,
of polished stucco, was broken by niches, and moulded arabesques,
two inches in relief, covered it all over. What they represented or
signified we could not make out with confidence, so thoroughly had
the style been “conventionalized” by generations of artists; but in
the original idea they were human figures probably, engaged in war
and ceremonies of state. The wall was colored in Venetian red, with a
pleasing gloss upon it, and it stretched twenty yards or so on either
side the doorway. This was a Moorish arch, of wood, the same in type as
those we are familiar with at Sydenham, and gaily painted. Inside and
out all was clean and perfect.
Through this doorway a passage, smoothly coated with chunam, and tinted
red, opened into the _cour d’honneur_. On the right hand, just inside
the door, stood a fetich niche, very like an exaggerated font for holy
water. It contained the usual medley of rubbish—bones and sticks and
teeth and roots and tangles of string; a lot of eggshells also, pierced
and tied together. Opposite to this niche was a hollow in the wall, two
steps above the ground, just long enough and broad enough for a man
to lie; the quarters, doubtless, of a slave who kept the door. What I
have termed the _cour d’honneur_ was a small quadrangle, unroofed, with
alcoves much like boxes at a theatre on three of its sides. The middle
one, that fronting the entrance, occupied the full breadth of the wall,
saving a doorway that led through to the next court; the others were
smaller. These boxes stood on a level, perhaps five feet above the
floor of the yard. They had no way in from the back, but access was
gained by steps from below, and the parapet, of mud and chunam, was
cut away at that point. Wooden columns and arches, of Moorish design
and color, marked the king’s box—that in the middle. They had hangings
apparently, for pegs were there, and I found a silk “cloth” on the
ground.
It was not difficult, with our experience, to refill this courtyard
with the pride and pomp and circumstance of Quisa royalty. There sat
the king on his earthen bench, wrapped in a spotless robe of cotton,
home-spun, and home-dyed in graceful patterns. His sandals, with a
golden sole and little, solid, golden figures for ornament, rested
on a patchwork carpet of silk. His arms were bare, but loaded with
bracelets; some of the costly Aggry bead, some a bristling string
of nuggets unworked. Arab charms, wrapped in small leather cases,
sewn with gold, encircled his wrists and elbows and knees, and they
dangled from the arch above. On the floor at either hand crouched a
page, one holding his pipe, silver-bound, one his drinking calabash,
mounted in gold and carved. Behind these favorites squatted the bearer
of the toddy jar, Dutch earthenware, set in silver, and the drinking
calabash, carved and bound in gold; of the silver-mounted stool and
gun, the silver spittoon, and knives with silver hafts in a belt of
leopard-skin—in short, the retinue essential to his majesty’s comfort.
Nearest of all stood the executioner, with his four-handled sword of
office, looking like a toy-stool of gold with a clumsy blade thrust
through the seat. The royal councillors sat upon the cross-benches, and
the smaller alcoves were occupied by wives and slaves, handsome enough,
many of them, their lips full but not thick, their noses straight,
their skins brown with a shade of gold. A mass of ornaments, in bullion
or filagree, decked the long wool of these ladies, combed to all manner
of fantastic shapes: eccentricity has no bounds in dealing with that
stiff and elastic material, which grows to a surprising length amongst
Ashantis and Fantis. I have seen it drawn out, kinkles and all,
eighteen inches from the skull, and thus remain stark on end, until the
lady had time to get it arranged in, for instance, the exact similitude
of a pine-apple, divided into lozenges, with a neat curl in the centre
of each.
So the king of Quisa sat to display his magnificence daily, and to
administer justice. It is the inclination of us superior beings to
imagine that “off with his head,” is the monotonous refrain of every
judgment pronounced by negro royalty. The notion is gathered perhaps
rather from burlesques and comic songs than from inquiry, and I suspect
that shrewd comment and patient debate were often heard in that pretty
court. The general effect of it, even empty, astonished us all, from
Sir Garnet to Tommy Atkins. But we showed our emotion in various ways.
I entered with two young doctors, who had their billet at the palace.
After going through and surveying it in silence, one of them hurriedly
unpacked a trunk, produced his everlasting banjo, and sang an air of
the day: “You know it all depends upon the way in which it’s done!”
This exercise finished, he was equal to discussion.
A natural halting-place, as one may say, at the end of the first march
from Jellalabad is the castle of a great Ghilzai chief, whose name I
forget. He had been an active enemy in the late war; but for reasons
unknown the political department long refused to let us take possession
of this building, which is called Rosarbad, though it was empty; nor
would they even permit us to encamp in the fields and groves about it.
Accordingly a very small post was established on a bleak hillside in
the neighborhood, a spot so stony and barren that pegs would not hold
in the soil. Two nights I passed there are scored in the blackest of
chalk among my experiences of mere wretchedness; for a gale was always
blowing and tents were always collapsing: if one’s own escaped, the
yelling and roaring of other sufferers made life almost as miserable.
As for the horses, they enjoyed a battle scarcely interrupted, and the
squealing all night, with the shouting of furious troopers, banished
sleep. A detachment which had three weeks’ duty at that outpost
lost a quarter of its strength by invaliding, the result of sheer
fatigue. When I add that a night attack was always probable, and often
threatened, the least fanciful of readers may conceive that existence
at Boulé camp was not happy.
It was an aggravation and a mockery for these unfortunates to see the
great tower of Rosarbad above the cypresses and planes but a thousand
yards away, to know that it was confiscated by the laws of war, and
that no human being dwelt in those comfortable quarters. The state of
things became unbearable at last, the Politicals were overruled, and
when I came down country from Gandamuck I found the castle occupied.
It was late in the month of April. Quitting the barren, rocky highway,
we rode across a bridge, rough but neat, through a screen of trees,
and found ourselves in a landscape thoroughly and charmingly English.
The crops were strange, no doubt, but they looked familiar. The
stalwart peasantry who toiled there had dark faces and outlandish
dress; but, buried to the waist in green, stooping above their work,
they passed, at a glance, for English husbandmen. And the trees that
bordered these pleasant fields, full-leaved, deepshadowed, resembled
our native elm. Even the atmosphere was English, the still golden haze
of a midsummer evening. We pulled up, each struck with thoughts not
lightly to be breathed. The foreign landscape, the parched hills and
dusty road behind, were all shut out. One might fondly dream for an
instant that war and exile had come to an end, that these ruddy turrets
peeping above the trees marked the ancient, hospitable home where we
were eagerly expected. Our orderly looked and stared, and gazed and
muttered—the stupid exclamation does not signify; it was meant to
suggest wonder and delight and feeling beyond an honest trooper’s power
of expression.
Envious fancy had done its utmost among those poor fellows camped at
Boulé, in picturing the spot they were forbidden to approach. But it
surpassed anticipation. I am not going to describe the scene, for I
made no sketch, and some who will read this did, whilst every one who
halted there keeps a recollection of Rosarbad. Nothing like it did
we see in any part of Afghanistan. Though built of mud, its lofty
walls, brand new, had almost the sharpness of granite, and they were
thick enough to stand some pounding of solid shot. Frosts have tried
them now, doubtless, rains have channeled them, the battlements are
ruinous, and not one right angle remains; but it was mighty handsome
in our day, looking like a feudal fortress, with a gate-tower almost
majestic overlooking a grove of cypresses on the other side the moat:
so dense was the foliage of this copse that daylight could not pierce
it. A miscellaneous throng of bunniahs had converted its twilight
arcades into a bazaar, hanging bright cottons from trunk to trunk,
and establishing booths full of cheap glitter. Sowars and sepoys,
in flowing, picturesque undress, strolled hand in hand through the
chiaroscuro. Giant Pathans prowled up and down, all beard and eyes
and dirt, gazing with rapt, vulture-like expression at the luxury
displayed. Sometimes a yell arose, a sound of scuffling, a rush
of frightened traders and of sepoys to the rescue; then from the
struggling mass a prisoner was dragged, and perhaps a groaning comrade
was borne to the gate.
Within the portcullis and the vaulted approach lay a garden, actually
a garden, bordered on one side by the durbar hall, on another by a
row of small latticed chambers. In the hall, which was raised several
feet above the level, stood an enormous tub, into which a column of
water fell by a shoot. It was forced to the upper story, and thence
descended. Of all surprises that befell a visitor to Rosarbad, none
equalled this. A soothing cataract, a shower-bath, and a fish-pond all
in one make a convenience for the drawing-room hardly known in Europe.
After the first enthusiasm, however, certain disadvantages betrayed
themselves. The middle of the hall was a quagmire, and if in the zeal
of admiration one approached too near, the mud held one fast while
the shower wet one through. But this made part of the day’s fun. The
officers of the little garrison cherished their odd quarters, and they
applied their leisure to gardening, with such success that visitors
were sometimes presented with a rose. I need scarcely say that the
name of the castle has no connection with botany. The Pathan seems
to be acquainted with five flowers only—jasmine, rose, chrysanthemum,
iris, and narcissus. Painful to an enthusiast is the most successful of
Oriental gardens. Though they bear a mass of flowers so that Peshawur,
for instance, has an air laden with scents, the individual bloom is
mean and the tree pitiful.
In contrast to the glories of Rosarbad, I recall a billet on the
other side of Afghanistan. We had been snowed up in the Kojak pass—a
miserable time, and when a thaw released us I pushed on with a comrade
towards Quetta—a ride to try one’s good humor; for with the thaw
came rain, which made that bare desert as slippery as ice—a peculiar
condition dreaded under the name of ‘put.’ We got off the track somehow
beyond Abdallah Karez, and very glad were we to find an empty village,
where a Baboo go-master was posted to collect stores of forage and
grain. He had three sepoys to protect him—a guard much less formidable
than a score of Pathan dogs, left by their masters, I suppose, which
fed upon the carcasses of camels lying all around. This Baboo was
an ingenious man. The mud huts had been dismantled perhaps; anyhow,
they were roofless and badly gapped. In the long frost our go-master
had a bad time; the thermometer below zero at night, or always close
upon it, and no better protection than a tent for his southern limbs.
Moreover, there was some chance that the enemy might swoop down, or
he thought so. Superstition loses its awful power in the extremity
of wretchedness. The Baboo, who was forbidden to touch a dead insect
or even to look at it, employed sepoys and muleteers, and anyone he
could catch, in building a fortification of dead camels all round his
store-house; and he lived therein, shuddering with remorse, but warm
and secure. While the frost lasted it was mighty comfortable, but the
thaw had reduced that Baboo to sore distress. His wall was decaying
visibly under conditions which I need not suggest, and to enter the
enclosure needed more heroism and more cotton wool than the average
mortal is provided with. A camel’s is a heavy and unwieldy carcass when
frozen hard: a regiment of scavengers could not have cleared away those
scores of bodies when loosed by the thaw. The Government stores were
protected after a fashion hitherto thought peculiar to Chinese warfare,
by “stink-pot” torpedos in effect, and neither friend nor foe dared
approach. I do not know the end of that story. If it is the traveller’s
privilege to see queer incidents, it is too often his ill-luck to miss
the explanation and the catastrophe.
A scene I cherish with especial tenderness is that passed at Changhi,
behind Singapore. A Malay fishing village lay beneath our bungalow,
upon a broad and snowy beach. In barbarous regions of the North men
live underground, but these dwellings were suspended in the sunny air
amongst plumes of cocoanut and betel; behind them rose the shadowy
jungle. There was no cultivated land in sight, for the Malay finds his
harvest and his garden in the sea. The smooth sand below high-water
mark was a parterre of sponges, green and red, and purple blue,
intermixed with coral. Old-fashioned people in Europe cherish certain
round masses of limestone, daintily fluted, and put them under a glass
case for ornament. Imagine their beauty in the spot where nature places
them, every lip and hollow on the cream-white surface traced out in
vividest pencilling of green, with the seaflowers of sponge around them.
But after the first impulse of delight, one almost comes to overlook
this charming foreground; for beneath the water lies a tangle and a
maze of all things lovely for shape and color and growth and motion.
Coral takes a hundred flowery forms, weeds branch like trees or wave
like serpents, sponges are cups of amethyst and ruby. When waves lie
still, one sees just as clearly into the depths below as into the air
above, and almost as far, as it seems. The vegetation is gigantic in
its loveliness. There are coral growths shaped like an Egyptian lily
and as white, but three feet in diameter, wherein a mermaid might take
her bath. Others break into a thicket, each twig covered with snowy
rosettes which bear a morsel of green velvet in their bosoms. Others
are great round hillocks diapered with emerald, with here and there a
bush of scarlet thorn springing from their sides. Through and over the
garden, long silvery weeds tremble and quiver in a net. Small fish
as quick as humming-birds, and almost as gay, dart to and fro. Water
snakes float past in coils like Indian enamel of every shade, in red
and brown and yellow and purple. I am grateful that fate allowed me
three weeks of life at Changhi.
But I have dwelt also, too long, with those northern people referred
to who burrow in the earth, and with those southerners, not half long
enough, who inhabit the trees. Not to be forgotten are our quarters
before Plevna, in the compound of a Bulgar farm-house. The floor of its
single room lay perhaps two feet beneath the soil, and one entered by
a steep incline—that is to say, the inhabitants entered. The ends of
the roof descended just so low as to give room for a foot-square window
at the level of the earth; but on the incline mentioned, it rose. One
of my comrades in this hostelry was poor MacGahan, who lay on his back
and sang the whole day through when at home. He had laid some hay upon
the “stoop” beside the entrance, and from amongst it his bright eyes
watched and his voice resounded. I lived in a waggon. One day the
gudewife interviewed my dragoman. She expressed her belief that it was
MacGahan’s songs that brought the rain, which, indeed, was perennial.
She clung to her point with vehemence. Her husband arrived, and so
did some Cossacks. They listened with great interest for a while,
understanding not a word, and then, with a happy impulse, hustled the
Bulgar head first into his den. The motive of this proceeding lay
beyond our comprehension, and theirs also, no doubt; but the Cossack is
an irresponsible being. When we laughed they roared, crinkling their
jolly, ugly faces until the eyes vanished altogether. I gave them a
drink, but not a many-bladed knife, which was lost to human sight in
that hour.
The dirtiest experience to which mankind may be subjected is a
campaign; but when Russ meets Turk on Bulgarian fields you have a
conjuncture of men and circumstances not to be realised elsewhere. The
country was sodden at that time, the camps mid-leg deep in puddled
clay. General Zortoff, who had the command, occupied a hut much like
ours, a couple of hundred yards away; but we always mounted to pay a
call, for the space round head-quarters was an actual bog. Officers
waiting on the general sat perched upon fences round his yard, in a
manner very drolly miserable. The staff had their office in a cowshed
which had not been cleaned for years.
A month in a Dyak house is another pleasing recollection. For that
space of time, barring nights camped out, my quarters lay besides
the council fire. A hoop of human heads hung above it, within arm’s
length of my own. Ugly were they as valued—precious ugly, one might
say with literal truth—but the ghosts never visited my dreams. All
the inhabitants of a Dyak village dwell under one roof, more than a
thousand feet in length sometimes. The whole building stands twenty
to sixty feet in air on massive posts. Every family has its single
apartment side by side, the chief’s in the middle, and every door opens
on a clear, sheltered space running from end to end, which we call
the inner verandah, for there is a second beyond the eave. Opposite
the chief’s door lie the big stones of the council hearth, the heads,
belonging to the clan, strung on hoops, and details of common property.
That month spent with savages, living their life, noting the thousand
small events of every day, about which the most thoughtful of men would
hardly think of asking speculative questions—the experience of that
time taught me much that has been useful since: for the naked barbarian
and the æsthetic philosopher are one. He who knows by practice the
instincts of human nature understands a thousand mysteries inscrutable
to one who has only its acquired customs to guide him.
Pleasant was the teaching. Fog alone was visible from the top of the
ladder when the house began to stir—a sea of mist from which arose,
with no trunks perceptible, the crowns of fruit trees and feathered
crests of palms. First the married men turned out, and then the
bachelors appeared from their separate quarter; shivering under his
bark blanket, each cut a plug of betel and chewed it. Then graceful
girls came out with long shovel baskets, some leisurely and composed,
others bustling; these had not winnowed the paddy over night, and
certain of the youths knew why. After a while the housewife opened her
door, and in that defiant voice which belongs to hard-working mothers
everywhere, summoned her family to breakfast. When they reappeared the
fog was lifting, the sky dappled like an opal. Cheered by the growing
warmth men moved briskly, arranging their tools and arms and gear. The
young women and maidens followed, a pleasing bevy, with loads strapped
to their backs, and all the villagers descended to the lower earth.
Only the chief and his old councillors remained—sitting over their
eternal fire, chewing their eternal betel—the grandames, and the sick.
Towards sunset the laboring folk returned, and the males sat to chew
and gossip, but the girls had still their hardest work to do. Presently
all the house resounded with the thud of pestles, and the air was
filled with husks from the pounded rice. A silence of interest and
hunger followed whilst the meal was cooking, and then the pleasure of
the day began. For the elders it was only talk, always the same, as far
as I could gather, of bad times and good times, and the prospect of the
year; seldom personal, and never gossiping, at the chief’s fire, where
all heads of families assembled. No one paid attention to the youth or
to the maidens, so soon as their household duties were complete. By
this time darkness had quite fallen, and there was no light excepting
the low fires. Shoulders glossy as brown silk were faintly luminous
in the twilight, as we looked down the house; from time to time a
fire shot out, revealing the seated group around, lively enough, but
subdued. Shadows stalked from hearth to hearth, tinkling and sparkling
in brazen finery, and vanished with the gloom;—then the whispered
chatter of girls, the smothered merriment, became more loud, with
expostulations and mirthful appeals for help. A very pleasant scene;
but I loved also to awake at midnight, and observe that different
picture. The councillors, taking no exercise, never turned in; all
the night through they maundered, and dozed, and coughed, and chewed
betel. Above them the teeth of the weazened “heads” glimmered through
the smoke. A labyrinth of posts and beams was faintly outlined in their
rear. Now and again a young form passed stealthily, for in the hours
of darkness courtship is seriously pursued. Beneath the cave I caught a
glimpse of azure sky, and palm fronds gleaming in the moonlight. Of all
the odd quarters I have known this is still the dearest to memory.
Once upon a time I lost myself in the veldt, somewhere by the Vaal
river. Leaving Pniel in a “spider cart,” with a mulatto groom, I
inspected the wet-diggings as far as Gong-Gong, and then got off
the track. They told me that to go wrong would be impossible, with
an Africander to steer my course, but I contrived to do it. Some
philosophers would have you think that every savage has an instinctive
mastery of woodcraft, but experience leads me to think that fools are
almost as common in Barbarie as in Christendom. We lost ourselves, and
wandered two days, heading direct for the Atlantic—and for nothing else
in particular, besides the Namaqualand desert. Settlements are very few
in that veldt, and the only one we came across was Jantje’s kraal on
the second evening;—Jantje has since rebelled, and is now an outlaw, I
believe. It had some forty huts on the top of a mound, encompassed by
raging brooks;—for the sky had been little better than a sieve since
we started. There was no sign of life, but a swelling roar of voices
directed me to a wooden church, which I entered. All the population
were there, and the vehemence of their devotions was deafening. A fat
man hurried up, not ceasing to howl with the rest—his mouth opened from
ear to ear and nose to chin. He took my arm, and led me out like a
stray dog, whilst the congregation bellowed and stared without a pause.
So many white lips—and teeth—fixed on me, in a gathering darkness that
obscured the black faces, had an effect indescribably gruesome and
absurd.
Outside the church this personage turned to resume his place, singing
all the time as loud as he could bawl. My groom coming up arrested
certain demands of explanation, which began to take a serious form,
but no help could be got from Jantje’s people. We annexed an empty
hut and camped there supperless, wet through. My first experience of
tompans was made that night. This curious insect dwells in deserted
Kaffir buildings and nowhere else, I believe. He is armed after the
best and newest suggestions of science for naval equipment—his vital
parts and locomotive machinery protected by the cuirass, his artillery,
of great weight and superior rifling, on the Moncrieff system, swift
to attack and agile to retreat. You cannot crush him with any weapon
less ponderous than a hammer; to ignore a beast as large and as flat as
a threepenny bit is impossible, and moral influence seems to be quite
ineffective. To sing hymns and cultivate tompans was the only visible
employment of Jantje’s kraal. I cannot affect to regret that its
inhabitants have been scattered to the winds. Wherever they have fled
they have found an opportunity to study better manners.
But I was going to recall the odd quarters at Jacobsdaal which brought
this adventure to a fitting close. We had no treaty of extradition with
the Free State at that time—I do not know that we have one now. All
sorts of criminals took refuge at Jacobsdaal, a tiny but prosperous
settlement lying just across the frontier. During my absence a gust
of indignation had swept over the Diamond Fields, and all the guilty,
the suspected, and the alarmed had fled. The landlady of the best
“Accommodation House” declared to me, almost with tears, that her
dwelling, hitherto inveterate in virtue, was become a rendezvous of
malefactors. She advised me to try the other shop for once, since even
thieves would not go there by choice—naturally. I did so, and found
the guests sitting down. In the place of honor was a canteen man,
badly wanted by the New Rush police. I also recognized an acquaintance
accused of cheating at cards in the “Pig and Whistle;” another who had
been lately described to the magistrate as “tremendous delirious;” an
American gentleman whom the police had vainly besought to render an
account to his partners. One of these latter, in attendance on his
fugitive associate, identified for me a man charged with murder, and
two common thieves. The conversation was most polite. The chairman’s
suasive tones in proposing a “leetle mutton” were as good as testimony
to character. He had a trick of cocking the old smoking-cap upon his
head before every observation, as if to point it with knowingness. The
extreme propriety with which he guided the conversation so overawed
the thieves that they were too hoarse to talk. My poor “tremendous”
friend yielded to the same wholesome influence, and addressed everyone
in the third person as “the honorable gentleman on my right,” or left,
or opposite. As for the manslaughterer, he showed warm philanthropy,
arguing with vehemence that black people have as good rights as
white, and better in their own country. Circumstances made this topic
embarrassing to the chairman. He cocked his smoking-cap from side to
side, imploring everyone to take some more of everything. After supper
he made a little speech, ending with a toast—“Home, lads, mothers and
dads.” The company drank it with deep emotion.—_Belgravia._