The little bushman, whom we have introduced as the attendant of our
English officers, must be more particularly described ere we advance in
a story in which he will frequently make his appearance.
The reader will consider his name--May--rather a misnomer for such a
creature.
He is about three feet and a half high; his head would be bald, but for
a few bead-like tufts of hair, scattered vaguely about the surface. His
eyes are long, black, twinkling, and very merry, but his expression is
less cunning than that of the Hottentot physiognomy. His nose! where is
it? His mouth is wide, but his white teeth redeem this feature from its
ugliness; his skin is of the hue of pale gingerbread.
The countenance, however, is far from unpleasing; his voice is odd, with
occasional clicks in pronunciation, which May chooses to introduce,
notwithstanding his education. The hands and feet are exquisitely
small, and the frame lithe and agile as a monkey's. His costume is
copied from his masters; the materials are coarser, but the "wide-awake"
hath on him a more jaunty air, the feather a more "knowing" feel, and
this is fastened to the hat with a gilt bugle, the gift of some light
infantry officer, and much prized by May, who had managed to coax from
the same source an old red jacket, which he carries in the waggon-box,
and wears on Sundays when they halt in the wilderness.
May is a capital mimic, takes off various members of the Graham's Town
garrison, well-known as oddities; imitates with ludicrous gravity the
imposing air of the governor's brother, and elicits peals of laughter
from his Hottentot comrades, when, arrayed in Fitje's yellow petticoat,
he caricatures the dancing of an affected young lady, whom he has
watched through the windows of a ball-room. But I must give you May's
origin, or you will wonder how this monkey came to see the world.
Behold a chain of mountains rising abruptly and with a bold sweep across
a most lovely wilderness. From the colonial border these mountains look
exquisitely, but faintly blue, in the haze which hangs about them. In
that busy colony how faint an idea can its inhabitants have of the wild
beings that dwell amid those distant solitary fastnesses. In the
shelving rocks, in bowery nooks scented with the rich perfume of plants,
which in our land a queen would prize in her conservatory, beside the
clearest running waters, the little bushmen find their rest among the
coneys, the bright-eyed lizards, and the treacherous snakes; brilliant
birds flit round them as they lie at ease beneath umbrageous boughs or
in cool shady caves, shrouded by luxurious creepers; from the flexile
branches of the banian-trees the monkeys peer down upon what some would
consider almost their fellow-apes, and on the plains thousands of noble
animals in herds are enjoying the gifts of nature, "feeding in large
pastures." An army of elephants is moving through the bush, on a
distant mountain; you cannot see them, but you can hear the loud
trumpet-cry of their leader giving warning of some intruder's stealthy
advance. In the valley the lions are ranged like soldiers awaiting the
return of their scouts, and beyond, far beyond, just where the sunset
reveals a spot which has lain in the shade all day, behold the
advance-guard of the stately giraffe--two of them: the one with neck
outstretched and eye and ear keenly intent, now upon the plain, now on
the mountain-side, while his companion crops the fresh green herbage. A
cloud crosses the sun, and the giraffes are seen no more; their
momentary appearance has drawn the bushmen-hunters from their haunts, to
gaze upon the shy and cautious animals.
There go the gnoos, tossing their manes, leaping, plunging, half in
play, yet dangerous even to their fellows; see how they wheel round,
advancing with eyes glaring through their shaggy forelocks. A herd of
zebras are comparatively tune to these eager, restless things; but in
greater contrast to the gnoos are the heavy eilands, fat and sleek, fit
mark for the hunter's poisoned arrows. There are ostriches, too,
stalking about; and nearer the bushmen's haunts, but wary of her
neighbours, the pauw, or the wild turkey of South Africa, has her brood;
far up in the air, between the clear sky and the fertile plain, rises
the secretary-bird, with the doomed snake in his beak. The serpent
writhes in its new element, swinging to and fro; up! up! above the rocks
and sea, the bird swoops higher and higher to drop its prey upon a
table-rock; its back is broken. Lie there, powerless, terrible, and
fatal, and doomed wretch, till your tormentor returns and finishes the
deed begun!
Sunset. The plain is in a glow, except where the mountains cast a
shade, and this will deepen, as the shield of gold dips behind them.
The little honey-bird, which has been wandering in search of travellers
to coax them to the sweet nest it dare not itself invade, goes back
disappointed to await the morning splendour; the sprews, on wings of
green and yellow, go glancing past to their embowered rest; the homely
brown-looking canaries are silent in the golden-blossomed mimosa, the
English swallow trills her way back to the mission-house on the other
side the mountain range; the few goats possessed by the poor bushmen
return bleating to their rude fold, and ere long the wild beasts of the
forest and the valley will come boldly forth; the tiger from the dense
bush in which he has lain stealthily all day; then the jackal's cry will
startle the children lying on their miserable sheepskins, and the lion's
roar will answer it, rousing the echoes and terrifying the horses and
cattle of those who travel in the wilderness.
Such a scene as this presented itself one glowing evening many years ago
to the eye of a wayfarer, whose appearance with his pack-horse and
saddle-bags, and the somewhat lame condition of the animal he led, gave
proof that he had journeyed far and fast. With home almost in sight, he
had outspanned his waggon in the valley, and ascending the hills had
found that darkness would overshadow his path ere the object he had in
view could be accomplished, if indeed it could be accomplished at all.
A mist was rising in white wreaths over the plain, till the vapour
became concentrated in a hazy shroud floating between the traveller and
his people below; his beasts were weary, and would probably fell if he
attempted the descent while yet it was light; besides, as I have said,
he had an object in view; so he sat down among the shrubs and rocks,
through which he had scrambled with some difficulty and much fatigue,
and began to ponder on what steps he must take to insure a safe bivouac
for himself and his jaded cattle during the night.
He was a good man, and would have had no personal fear even if he had
not been acquainted with the nature of the locality and its inhabitants;
but he had no mind to have his horses torn limb from limb by wild
beasts, and pitying them as their ears moved nervously backwards and
forwards, their eyeballs starting from their sockets, he regretted that
he had not delayed his expedition till the following morning.
There was no help for it now; the sinking horses looked piteously at
him, and he longed to take their saddles from their galled backs, but he
needed to look about him ere yet there was daylight: he regretted he had
not brought his waggon-driver with him, but always thinking of others,
he had overlooked his own necessities. He grieved for his horses, not
for himself.
James Trail was the occupant of the mission-house, whither our English
swallow had trilled her contented way. He was a childless widower, and,
bent on conquering his sorrow for his lost Mary by earnest attention to
his duties "in that path of life in which it had pleased God to call
him," he had made way for a married friend at his former station, and
with a few native herds, a faithful Hottentot servant, and a distant
relative, a trader in skins, ivory, horns, etc, had established a little
location in the lovely but uncivilised part of the country through which
he hoped to preach glad tidings of the Gospel; but the untameable race
of bushmen, whom he longed to attach to himself, looked at him from
their coverts like startled apes, and yelled, and shrieked, and
chattered, and once shot at him with their poisoned arrows, happily
without effect.
A trifling circumstance brought these mountain sprites to better terms.
One of a hunting-party was severely bitten by a puff-adder while
lingering behind his comrades, and Trail had discovered him, helpless
and terrified, and "like to die," by the side of a stream, to which he
had crawled with the vain wish to ford it. The good Samaritan placed
his neighbour on his own beast, after applying a remedy he always
carried with him to the deadly wound; he took him home, and would have
kept him, but the wild creature had been a rover all his life, and
longed for liberty; as soon as he recovered, he fled to the hills to
join his fellows. At times he would return, accompanied by a mate of
his own tribe. One day he brought his children with him; another, two
or three wild hunters, clothed in fitting skins, sat down in front of
the mission-house, but would not draw near. They waited for their share
of beads, their meal of mutton and bread and milk, and then scurried off
to their nooks to send down others. Wretched creatures! these came in
the dead of night as thieves, and Trail, wearied with their
depredations, and grieved at his want of success among them, made such a
compact as he could, by means of signs, assisted by his knowledge of the
Dutch and Kafir languages. On condition that they would permit his
flocks to feed in peace, he agreed to furnish them with game, Indian
corn, and beads. The bushmen, knowing that if after this compact the
pastor's sheep were lessened in number, mutilated, or poisoned, their
messengers would be sent empty-handed from his door, each kept a
constant watch upon his neighbour, and this sort of truce had been kept
between Trail and the pigmies up to the time when the former was making
arrangements for a journey on business into the colony.
For a week previously to leaving his house to the trader's care with two
herds only, all, however, well provided with arms, the missionary had
seen and heard nothing of his wild neighbours, and learning from his
cousin, who had occasion to follow him, that they had not come down from
the mountains since his departure, our good minister resolved, when on
his homeward route, on penetrating the fastnesses which he had at first
visited with pious intentions, but from which he had been driven, in
such a fashion as would have made most men hesitate ere they set foot on
such dangerous ground again: he felt it was his duty to seek these
creatures.
He would have made a fine picture, seated on a grey rock which jutted
out in an angle from the great mountain, which from base to summit, was
seven thousand feet above the level of the ocean. The plain lay some
hundred feet below, but the haze obscured it from the view. Trail felt
very solitary between the sky and this shroud-like vapour; he looked at
the poor brutes still panting beside him, and deliberated, as he took a
survey from the rock on which he was perched.
There was not a sound now; even that restless caller, the
whip-poor-will, was quiet. On each side of the traveller was a
comparatively clear space, behind was a scarp of rock overhung with
trees. Securing his horses, he relieved them of their saddles and
bridles, laid his saddle-bags against the rock, and having seen that the
animals had length of _reim_ (thong of leather) to give them room to
roll at full length upon the moist grass, he determined to climb higher
up in search of the little colony, whose condition he had long deplored.
Trail was a man of about three-and-thirty; the features were homely, but
the expression of the whole was highly benevolent; the frame was thin,
and could not be called graceful, but it was neither ungainly nor
vulgarly awkward; the eyes were large, and when lifted up, shone with a
pleasant, not a sparkling, light; the hair was thinning on the temples,
and the brow alone showed that by nature he was a man of a clear and
fair complexion. The rest was bronzed by climate.
There he stood alone, alone in that magnificent solitude; the purpose
for which he had come faded for a time from his memory, a gust of wind
swept the mist away from the side of the hill to which he turned, and a
part of the valley "lay smiling before him;" a stream of sunlight shot
athwart it, and he saw the wild tenants of the wilderness, disporting
and luxuriating as I have described; another gust opened the landscape
wide, and as Trail's eye swept the scene, his heart was lifted up in
admiration. He turned the angle of the hill again, but the plain was
hidden from his sight on that side, he could see nothing of his people
and the bivouac below. He paused under a tall yellow-wood tree, and sat
down again, his heart melting at the thought of what? his loneliness!
His head rested on his hands, and he went back, back to his wedding-day
at home in England, in the old church. There he stood, hand in hand
with Mary (his old playmate) at the altar: by her side his sister cried
bitterly, behind him her mother sobbed aloud, and the father's silence
was most eloquent, for the lips were firmly closed, and the eyes blinded
with tears. Younger children gazed sorrowfully on--and then--there came
the last parting. A ship in full sail, James and Mary Trail leaning
over the side of the vessel while she is lying-to at Spithead; a boat
below, from which many last gifts are handed up. A little sister
weeping heavily, the mother with her face buried in her handkerchief, a
young brother hastily wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, an
elder sister trying to sooth the father, who "would not be comforted."
They are all again before him: the boat pushes off; the old man
stretches forth his hands, blessing the voyagers; the sister waves her
handkerchief, the brother his hat, the mother tries to rise, but cannot,
as the boat is swayed between the white-crested waves, which soon part
the little vessel from the gallant ship; the yards are swung round, the
boat has faded to a speck, the bows dash through the sparkling waters,
churches, forts, and towers of the old town Mary Trail has never left
before, glide away from her aching sight, and she lies down like a child
to cry in her bridegroom's sheltering arms.
And lo! there is a grave, the first grave hollowed in the mound on which
a little chapel stands between two hills in Africa. There are others
near it now, and a deep-toned bell sends out its hallowed call across
the river, and up the kloof and on Sabbath days there is a gathering
from many homesteads; but Trail has left this peopled spot for another.
He visits it sometimes, and sits by Mary's grave, but he can no longer
bear it as a dwelling: nevertheless, he would have stayed there had
there not been one at hand to take charge of the district.
He had not long left this spot when I introduced him to the reader at
the early part of this chapter. He rises, but not without effort: his
steeds are quietly enjoying the crisp herbage, and above, the baboons
are looking out from their hiding-places, and shouting aloud. Trail
began to fancy his "little people" had caught sight of him, and were
calling to him from the rocks overhanging the platform on which he
stood.
He determined on seeking at once for some sheltered corner, where he
could kindle a fire, picquet his horses near him, and eat such provision
as he had brought, deferring his further search till dawn. The
non-appearance of a single living being puzzled him, the more when he
discovered the remains of a fire, over which the wind had passed,
scattering the ashes. It was evident that a meal of locusts had been
here cooked and eaten, probably some three or four days before. Some
had been rejected, and some were mingled with corn lying amid the ashes.
A stray arrow or two was also to be found, and a bow, unstrung, rested
against a stone. Whilst examining these evidences of human existence,
something rose heavily from a stunted bush: a huge asphogel, scared at
last from its lethargy, flapped its wings, rose slowly over Trail's
head, and floated down the mountain-side; another and another followed,
and our missionary felt assured that, dead or dying, some members of the
barbarian community were not far off. He discovered a fearful group at
last. It would be a sad task to describe the scene as it was depicted
by him to one who related the circumstances to me. It was probable that
some part of the community had been absent on a hunting expedition when
the fatality occurred, which had destroyed three aged bushmen, four or
five women, old and young, all inconceivably hideous in death, and
several children. One poor baby lay across its miserable mother's
bosom, apparently the victim of a snake, for the creature lay coiled up
beside the dead body, and a wretched little object had been mangled by
vultures at the entrance to the grot or cave into which the party had
apparently crawled to suffer and die together.
Trail had heard of whole families of bushmen dying from a surfeit of a
hearty meal of locusts,--from poisonous roots being mingled in their
cookery with the larvae of ants,--and of their sometimes falling victims
to the deadly enmity of some adverse tribes; but he saw it would be
dangerous as well as useless to penetrate the charnel-house further;
indeed he had taken as sharp a survey of the interior as the light
falling through a chasm would allow, and he shrunk from ascertaining
whether an inner cave existed.
Struck with horror, he had made up his mind to move some distance down
the mountain in spite of the coming darkness, when a feeble moan drew
his attention to a cleft in the rock, just at the entrance or mouth of
the cavern.
He knew it was the moan of a living being, and began to examine the
corner whence it proceeded, but all was in darkness; stretching out his
arm, he groped among the stones, and at length touched a clammy hand,
the fingers of which closed round his with a cold convulsive grasp. He
drew the creature forth, and found it to be a little bushboy, probably
five or six years old.
It was our friend May. He derived his name from the month in which he
had been brought into the Christian world, as Trail said. Truly the
good man's laying his hand upon the little creature was a wondrous and
providential circumstance. Poor, degraded, barbarous imp, thou wert a
frightful object; but the good minister looked on thee with the deep
anxiety and affection that those only feel who love their neighbour in
the true spirit of a Christian, and helpless and hideous as thou wert,
doubtless there were angels singing triumphantly through the golden
aisles of heaven as a herald on bright wings came among them with glad
tidings of a soul rescued from darkness. It was thine, poor May, lying
lonely and desolate, and apparently forgotten, in that fearful darkness;
the day-star from on high was ready to shed its light upon thee, and
there was great rejoicing among the ministering spirits of the upper
world!
We cannot trace the melancholy facts of the deaths alluded to to their
sources; nine or ten unredeemed souls had passed the outer threshold of
this world, to that mysterious region whence none return with a record;
but whether the cause arose from accidental poison, or by the agency of
vicious neighbours, Trail never ascertained. How the imp May had
escaped appeared a miracle; mayhap he had been absent gathering honey or
digging for roots; the goats had disappeared, if there had ever been
any; there was sheep wool on the bushes, but there were no sheep, and
the missionary concluded that the hunters had probably returned after
the calamity had befallen their fellows, and, in superstitious dread of
the locality, had hurried to change their quarters without any closer
examination of the spot than they had been induced to make from
curiosity or rapacity.
Speculation was fruitless, useless; May was rescued, and Trail, carrying
him to the bushes where the horses were picqueted, gave him such
nourishment as he could. It revived him, and as soon as he could manage
it, our traveller descended with his steed and the child to a convenient
spot, where he lit a fire at the opening of a natural alcove. Here he
again fastened his horse to a tree, happy in having found a spot watered
by a rill, which trickled down a channel among the rocks, and spreading
his _veldt combass_, a large rug made of dressed sheepskins, upon the
sward, he laid his saddle beneath his head, and not far from him he did
not disdain to place the weary and frightened being, whose sleep was
soon as peaceful as a Christian child's within "a fair ancestral hall."
The night passed without further adventure, for Trail's sleep was light,
and he kept up the fire at his feet, so as to prevent the intrusion of
the wild beasts of the neighbourhood. At dawn he found his _protege_
still sleeping; and by the time he had made further but unavailing
search for some living evidence of the sad spectacle he had beheld, the
mist had cleared away from the hill-side, and he descended with his
child of the wilderness to the bivouac, where he found his people in
some alarm and uncertainty about his safety.
To untravelled readers the idea of leaving the dead unburied among the
rocks and caves must appear rather unseemly, to say the least of it;
but, in the first place, Trail's party could not have accomplished such
an undertaking by themselves; and, in the next, leaving the waggon and
its contents together with the oxen, would have been madness. Add to
this, the chances were that a horde of bushmen might return to the spot
unexpectedly, and there was dearly no alternative but to make the best
of the early part of the day; for, although the mission-house was only
nine miles distant, the way lay between narrow and rocky passes, wound
up the steepest acclivities, and was at times difficult to penetrate,
owing to intervening clumps of bush, connected by a tangled growth of
underwood.
So the child was called May, in memory of the period of his rescue. The
bewildered creature's language was utterly untranslatable; but, with the
keenness of perception so peculiar to his race, he soon learned to
express his wants in a curiously-mixed dialect of Hottentot, Dutch,
Kafir, and English, and this part of his education accomplished, Mr
Trail sent him to his friends at the larger mission station to be
trained into something like civilisation by good Mrs Cheslyn.
And now it may be told, in a few words, how May progressed in his
education; how he learned to sing hymns in a truer voice than the Kafir
children, whose notes, however, far surpassed his in melody; how he
loved to dance in the moonlight with the Fingo herds, when Mrs Cheslyn
thought they were all fast asleep in an old school-house, till their
unearthly chant brought Mr Cheslyn out among them; how when the truant
was punished, he would escape, stay away for days, and come back
afterwards with ostrich eggs; how he would sulk sometimes with his lips
out, and his eyes almost hid by the low frowning brow, run away again,
and again return; how he stood in awe of no one but Mr Trail; how, if
he was saucy to Ellen Cheslyn, it was for her sake he usually returned
from his wanderings; how he would watch her in the doorway, looking up
the road on those days when Mr Trail was expected; then as he caught a
glimpse of horse and rider, winding down the hill, he would ask her, in
Kafir, "Uza kangala nina? uza lunguzela nina apa?"--"What are you
looking for? What are you peeping there for?" Then, with a low
chuckle, he would spring over the _stoep_, topple head over heels down
the garden walk and through the gateway, and, with distorted limbs and
visage, hasten to give his friend and benefactor the "Good morrow,"
pointing back to the house to call attention to the watchful Ellen, and
then plunging into the thicket, laughing and singing, and as merry as a
cricket.
May's life had been comparatively free from care. True, an outburst
from the savage tribes of Kafirs, to whom Mr Trail had been a gentle
and a kind teacher, laid his station, Westleyfield, even with the dust.
It was burnt to ashes, and all his little property with it, but his
wife, Ellen, escaped with her husband and infant to a Dutch lazar, or
encampment. May accompanied them, sometimes as nurse, sometimes as
caterer, with a knob-kierrie (club), knocking down a buck or a bird
occasionally, and cooking the same as opportunity offered. So they
passed on afterwards to the colony; but May, lingering behind one day,
looking for corn, which he believed to be buried in what appeared to him
a deserted _kraal_, or hamlet of huts, was pounced upon by the enemy,
who would have despatched him at once, but that one, more humane than
the rest, listened to the poor bushman's appeal, that he might be
permitted to say his prayer. After a brutal laugh from the wretches,
who boasted that "God Almighty was dead in their land," they consented.
This circumstance saved his life. As May cast himself prostrate on the
earth, a little party of _roed batjes_ (red jackets), commanded by a
sergeant, who happened to be reconnoitring in the neighbourhood, and who
had crept along the banks of a river, suddenly reared their heads, above
the cliffs of the Keiskama. There lay poor May, praying aloud, while
the savages danced round him, declaiming on the greatness of their
leader, on his bravery, his prowess, flight or ten Kafirs leaped and
howled about the helpless bushman, flourishing their knob-kierries,
shaking their assegais, and varying their war-cries with imitations of
the wild beasts, to which they compared their leader: "Behold," said
one, "he is a tiger!" and there was a chorus, accompanied by the vicious
whispering growl of the stealthy brute: "he is terrible as a lion,
keen-eyed as an eagle, wise as the serpent." Then the chorus-master
roared and shook his assegai, while the rest made their spears shiver
like the wings of passing birds, and the hiss of the serpent was
followed by the wild shout of attack upon their victim.
"The _roed batjes_!" cried the chorus-master, and the soldiers sprung
into the midst of the enemy with a hearty English cheer: the Kafirs gave
a yell of fear and disappointment, and May jumped up to find himself
surrounded by men he felt to be his friends, though they were almost as
strange to him, as regarded their appearance, as the foes from whom he
was rescued. He gave an answering yell of triumph in imitation of the
chorus-master, as he saw the latter, with his kaross flying in the wind,
stop, mount on a stone, and fling back an assegai, which quivered
through the air, and fell within a few inches of the sergeant's feet,
who drew it up from the ground as a trophy.
"Well," said the sergeant, turning May round and round, "you are a nice
little article, ain't you, to make such a confounded row about: and
where the--did you spring from, you small chap?"
"From Westleyfield, sir," answered the bushboy, in a very tolerable
English accent.
To be brief, he related his story, and followed the soldiers. An old
officer of the corps placed him in the service of his family; and, on
their departure for England, May was handed over to some one else, and
from his last master had been recommended to our travellers, Frankfort
and Ormsby, as an intelligent guide and trusty servant.
He had never rested after his rescue till he traced out the Trails, who
had terrible misgivings about him; but they could not prevail upon him
to return to Westleyfield; their settled mode of life was by no means so
agreeable to him as the one he led with the troops. He could seldom be
coaxed from head-quarters, the band acted upon him as a spell; but he
grew attached to Captain Frankfort before he became his servant, and
hung about the stable with the groom, who was happy to find his
recommendation of May confirmed in a way that satisfied the sportsman.
The English groom remained at head-quarters while trusty May went up the
country with Frankfort and Ormsby.
He had married in the colony, and made a bridal tour into the Winterberg
mountains with his wife--a Christian Hottentot gin with a dash of white
blood on her father's side, of which she was justly proud!--to introduce
her to his friends the Trails, and repeated his visit on the birth of
his child, when Mr Trail christened the creature Ellen, after his wife.
They did not return to Westleyfield; that station was handed over to
the charge of an older missionary, whose tall sons made almost a
garrison of defence among themselves.
May returned to the colony with Fitje and his child. Fitje, like
himself, had been brought up among people from whom she had imbibed
habits of civilisation,--would I could say, industry! but this would be
contrary to the nature of the Hottentot, however utter idleness and vice
may be overcome by good example: but they worked when they were
penniless, and, in spite of indolent propensities, Fitje made a good and
tender mother, and a most kind wife. She loved gossiping in the
sunshine, she could not resist a dance to the music of the drums and
fifes; but she did not smoke a pipe, she was an excellent washerwoman,
and she was a regular attendant at the Dutch chapel. She had a
Hottentot taste for smart _douks_, but she never tasted Cape brandy; and
when May fell under Captain Frankfort's care, she was so proud, that she
would not associate with her earlier acquaintance. She and May had a
little Kafir hut to themselves near Frankfort's garden, and the family
of the bushman, his merry-hearted wife and good-tempered baby, presented
a picture as agreeable to look at, in a moral point of view, as that of
any independent gentleman on earth.
I think we left him retiring to his mat under the store-waggon of the
sportsmen. Fitje and the child slept beside him soundly, albeit at
midnight the moon's rays slanted right across their swarthy faces.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning in Kafirland! The air is filled with delicious perfume. The
toman is spinning about in the hazy atmosphere, the jackals are quietly
wending their way across the plains, looking back at times, in brute
wonderment, perhaps at that great sun; the spider has spread her silver
tissue across the pathways to ensnare the unwary; and
"Jocund Day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain's top."
What a carpet of green and gold, variegated with the scarlet
"monkey-foot," the lonely, trembling, drooping gladiola, the agapanthus,
the geranium, brilliantly red as the lip of fabled Venus; the wreath of
jessamine and myrtle, and laurel boughs, in which the birds are awaking
to a world lovely to them!
Ah, what exquisite things hath Nature in her bounty spread before the
heathen! They cannot be counted, they dazzle the eye and set the heart
bounding in the plenitude of a pure, inartificial enjoyment.
The Dutchman's settlement was beginning to teem with signs of life. The
gates of the kraals were thrown open, and sheep and goats and oxen were
blending their voices with the incessant, uneasy chorus of the dogs,
while the herds divided the multitude to lead them to their separate
pastures.
The waggons of our party were already prepared to start; the hot coffee
had been thankfully enjoyed, the Kafirs paid in tobacco for their
offering of milk in tightly-woven baskets; and the Boer had come down to
say "thank you," for the pistol he had duly received.
Frankfort imparted to the Dutchman his suspicions, that some one had
been prowling about the bivouac in the early part of the night, but he
said it was unlikely; it was probably some cunning jackal, or a
herdsman's dog. Frankfort could not help thinking it was some human
being, but Van Bloem said no. May was already in advance of the
cavalcade, turning back now and then, with an impatient gesture at old
Piet, the chief waggon-driver, and Fitje, with her baby on her lap, and
gaily attired, is seated on the waggon-box of the largest vehicle, _en
grande dame_, being the only lady of the party. Happy Fitje! no
rivals--the men of all degrees turn to thee with deference, thankful for
the aid of thy womanly skill, and cheered by thy merry laugh, albeit thy
mouth be none of the smallest.
"_Trek_!" [Note 1]--what a shout!--"_Trek_!" the slash of the long whip
echoes many times, backwards, forwards, above, around, behind the
mountains and through the _kloofs_ (ravines). May is waiting at the
turn of the winding road, half a mile off. The train of men and
waggons, horses and dogs, moves slowly on, and the sportsmen ride gently
ahead. But May keeps steadily in advance of all, and the dogs raise a
cry of joy as they catch sight of him when he pauses at the angle of a
hill, and stands there a minute or two, whistling as gleefully as though
he were "monarch of all he surveyed."
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Note 1. There can be no literal translation of this word of command,
but the oxen understand it well,--to them it means "advance," "on."