FURTHER PARTICULARS OF "SETTLERS' TOWN," AND A START MADE FOR THE
PROMISED LAND.
Threading his way among the streets of "Settlers' Town," and pushing
vigorously through the crowds of excited beings who peopled it, George
Dally led his new acquaintances to a tent in the outskirts of the camp--
a suburban tent, as it were.
Entering it, and ushering in his companions, he introduced them as the
gentlemen who had been capsized into the sea on landing, at which
operation he had had the honour to assist.
There were four individuals in the tent. A huge German labourer named
Scholtz, and his wife. Mrs Scholtz was a substantial woman of forty.
She was also a nurse, and, in soul, body, and spirit, was totally
absorbed in a baby boy, whose wild career had begun four months before
in a furious gale in the Bay of Biscay. As that infant "lay, on that
day, in the Bay of Biscay O!" the elemental strife outside appeared to
have found a lodgment in his soul, for he burst upon the astonished
passengers with a squall which lasted longer than the gale, and was
ultimately pronounced the worst that had visited the ship since she left
England. Born in a storm, the infant was baptised in a stiff breeze by
a Wesleyan minister, on and after which occasion he was understood to be
Jabez Brook; but one of the sailors happening to call him Junkie on the
second day of his existence, his nurse, Mrs Scholtz, leaped at the
endearing name like a hungry trout at a gay fly, and "Junkie" he
remained during the whole term of childhood.
Junkie's main characteristic was strength of lungs, and his chief
delight to make that fact known. Six passengers changed their berths
for the worse in order to avoid him. One who could not change became
nearly deranged towards the end of the voyage, and one, who was sea-sick
all the way out, seriously thought of suicide, but incapacity for any
physical effort whatever happily saved him. In short, Junkie was the
innocent cause of many dreadful thoughts and much improper language on
the unstable scene of his nativity.
Besides these three, there was in the tent a pretty, dark-eyed,
refined-looking girl of about twelve. She was Gertrude Brook, sister
and idolater of Junkie. Her father, Edwin Brook, and her mother, dwelt
in a tent close by. Brook was a gentleman of small means, but Mrs
Brook was a very rich lady--rich in the possession of a happy temper, a
loving disposition, a pretty face and figure, and a religious soul.
Thus Edwin Brook, though poor, may be described as a man of
inexhaustible wealth.
Gertrude had come into Dally's tent to fetch Junkie to her father when
Sandy Black and his friends entered, but Junkie had just touched the hot
teapot, with the contents of which Mrs Scholtz was regaling herself and
husband, and was not in an amiable humour. His outcries were deafening.
"Now _do_ hold its dear little tongue, and go to its popsy," said Mrs
Scholtz tenderly. (Mrs Scholtz was an Englishwoman.)
We need not say that Junkie declined obedience, neither would he listen
to the silvery blandishments of Gertie.
"Zee chile vas born shrieking, ant he vill die shrieking," growled
Scholtz, who disliked Junkie.
The entrance of the strangers, however, unexpectedly stopped the
shrieking, and before Junkie could recover his previous train of thought
Gertie bore him off in triumph, leaving the hospitable Dally and Mrs
Scholtz to entertain their visitors to small talk and tea.
While seated thus they became aware of a sudden increase of the din,
whip-cracking, and ox-bellowing with which the camp of the settlers
resounded.
"They seem fond o' noise here," observed Sandy Black, handing his cup to
Mrs Scholtz to be refilled.
"I never 'eard such an 'owling before," said Jerry Goldboy; "what is it
all about?"
"New arrivals from zee interior," answered Scholtz; "dere be always
vaggins comin' ant goin'."
"The camp is a changin' one," said Dally, sipping his tea with the air
of a connoisseur. "When you've been here as long as we have you'll
understand how it never increases much, for although ship after ship
arrives with new swarms of emigrants from the old country, waggon after
waggon comes from I don't know where--somewheres inland anyhow--and
every now an' then long trains of these are seen leaving camp, loaded
with goods and women and children, enough to sink a small schooner, and
followed by crowds of men tramping away to their new homes in the
wilderness--though what these same new homes or wilderness are like is
more than I can tell."
"Zee noise is great," growled Scholtz, as another burst of
whip-musketry, human roars, and bovine bellows broke on their ears, "ant
zee confusion is indesgraibable."
"The gentlemen whose business it is to keep order must have a hard time
of it," said Mrs Scholtz; "I can't ever understand how they does it,
what between landing parties and locating 'em, and feeding, supplying,
advising, and despatching of 'em, to say nothing of scolding and
snubbing, in the midst of all this Babel of bubbledom, quite surpasses
my understanding. Do _you_ understand it, Mr Black?"
"Ay," replied Sandy, clearing his throat and speaking somewhat
oracularly. "'Ee must know, Mrs Scholtz, that it's the result of
organisation and gineralship. A serjeant or corporal can kick or drive
a few men in ony direction that's wanted, but it takes a gineral to move
an army. If 'ee was to set a corporal to lead twunty thoosand men, he'd
gie them orders that wad thraw them into a deed lock, an' than naethin'
short o' a miracle could git them oot o't. Mony a battle's been lost by
brave men through bad gineralship, an' mony a battle's been won by puir
enough bodies o' men because of their leader's administrative abeelity,
Mrs Scholtz."
"Very true, Mr Black," replied Mrs Scholtz, with the assurance of one
who thoroughly understands what she hears.
"Noo," continued Sandy, with increased gravity, "if thae Kawfir bodies
we hear aboot only had chiefs wi' powers of organisation, an' was a'
united thegither, they wad drive the haul o' this colony into the sea
like chaff before the wind. But they'll niver do it; for, 'ee see, they
want mind--an' body withoot mind is but a puir thing after a', Mrs
Scholtz."
"I'm not so shure of zat," put in Scholtz, stretching his huge frame and
regarding it complacently; "it vould please me better to have body
vidout mint, zan mint vidout body."
"H'm! 'ee've reason to be pleased then," muttered Black, drily.
This compliment was either not appreciated by Scholtz, or he was
prevented from acknowledging it by an interruption from without; for
just at the moment a voice was heard asking a passer-by if he could tell
where the tents of the Scotch party were pitched. Those in the tent
rose at once, and Sandy Black, issuing out found that the questioner was
a handsome young Englishman, who would have appeared, what he really
was, both stout and tall, if he had not been dwarfed by his companion, a
Cape-Dutchman of unusually gigantic proportions.
"We are in search of the Scottish party," said the youth, turning to
Sandy with a polite bow; "can you direct us to its whereabouts?"
"I'm no' sure that I can, sir, though I'm wan o' the Scotch pairty
mysel', for me an' my freen hae lost oorsels, but doobtless Mister Dally
here can help us. May I ask what 'ee want wi' us?"
"Certainly," replied the Englishman, with a smile. "Mr Marais and I
have been commissioned to transport you to Baviaans river in
bullock-waggons, and we wish to see Mr Pringle, the head of your party,
to make arrangements.--Can you guide us, Mr Dally?"
"Have you been to the deputy-quartermaster-general's office?" asked
Dally.
"Yes, and they directed us to a spot said to be surrounded by evergreen
bushes near this quarter of the camp."
"_I_ know it--just outside the ridge between the camp and the Government
offices.--Come along, sir," said Dally; "I'll show you the way."
In a few minutes Dally led the party to a group of seven or eight tents
which were surrounded by Scotch ploughs, cart-wheels, harrows, cooking
utensils fire-arms, and various implements of husbandry and ironware.
"Here come the lost ones!" exclaimed Kenneth McTavish, who, with his
active wife and sprightly daughter Jessie, was busy arranging the
interior of his tent, "and bringing strangers with them too!"
While Sandy Black and his friend Jerry were explaining the cause of
their absence to some of the Scotch party, the young Englishman
introduced his friend and himself as Charles Considine and Hans Marais,
to the leader, Mr Pringle, a gentleman who, besides being a good poet,
afterwards took a prominent part in the first acts of that great drama--
the colonisation of the eastern frontier of South Africa.
It is unnecessary to trouble the reader with all that was said and done.
Suffice it to say that arrangements were soon made. The acting
Governor, Sir Rufane Donkin, arrived on the 6th of June from a visit to
Albany, the district near the sea on which a large number of the
settlers were afterwards located, and from him Mr Pringle learned that
the whole of the Scotch emigrants were to be located in the mountainous
country watered by some of the eastern branches of the Great Fish River,
close to the Kafir frontier. The upper part of the Baviaans, or
Baboons, River had been fixed for the reception of his particular
section. It was also intended by Government that a piece of unoccupied
territory still farther to the eastward should be settled by a party of
five hundred Highlanders, who, it was conjectured, would prove the most
effective buffer available to meet the first shock of invasion, should
the savages ever attempt another inroad.
Mr Pringle laid this proposed arrangement before a council of the heads
of families under his charge; it was heartily agreed to, and
preparations for an early start were actively begun.
On the day of his arrival Sir Rufane Donkin laid the foundation of the
first house of the now wealthy and flourishing, though not very
imposing, town of Port Elizabeth, so named after his deceased wife, to
whose memory an obelisk was subsequently erected on the adjacent
heights.
A week later, a train of seven waggons stood with the oxen "inspanned,"
or yoked, ready to leave the camp, from which many similar trains had
previously set out. The length of such a train may be conceived when it
is told that each waggon was drawn by twelve or sixteen oxen. These
were fastened in pairs to a single trace or "trektow" of twisted thongs
of bullock or buffalo hide, strong enough for a ship's cable. Each
waggon had a canvas cover or "till" to protect its goods and occupants
from the sun and rain, and each was driven by a tall Dutchman, who
carried a bamboo whip like a salmon fishing-rod with a lash of thirty
feet or more. A slave, Hottentot or Bushman, led the two front oxen of
each span.
Like pistol-shots the formidable whips went off; the oxen pulled, tossed
their unwieldy horns, and bellowed; the Dutchmen growled and shouted;
the half-naked "Totties" and Bushmen flung their arms and legs about,
glared and gasped like demons; the monstrous waggons moved; "Settlers'
Town" was slowly left behind, and our adventurers, heading for the
thorny jungles of the Zwartkops River, began their toilsome journey into
the land of hope and promise.
"It's a queer beginning!" remarked Sandy Black, as he trudged between
Hans Marais and Charlie Considine.
"I hope it will have a good ending," said Considine.
Whether that hope was fulfilled the reader shall find out in the sequel.
Meanwhile some of the English parties took their departure by the same
route, and journeyed in company till points of divergence were reached,
where many temporary friendships were brought to a close, though some
there were which, although very recently formed, withstood firmly the
damaging effects of time, trial, sorrow, and separation.