Old Tyardt van der Walt, head of the family of that name, came of good
Netherlands stock. His grandfather had emigrated from Holland with his
family in the middle of the Eighteenth Century and settled at the Cape.
He bought a farm in the Stellenbosch district and there commenced life
anew as a wine farmer. The family consisted of his wife, a son and
several daughters--all of whom married early. At his death the farm
descended to his son Cornelius from whom, in course of time, another
Tyardt inherited it.
The last-mentioned Tyardt forsook the settled and fertile environs of
Stellenbosch and trekked forward to seek his fortune in the unknown and
perilous wilderness. A story is told as to the reason for this
migration which, though it has no direct bearing on the story which is
to be recorded in this volume, is interesting enough in itself to merit
relation.
There was, it is said, a gruesome legend connected with the van der
Walts. It dated from the times of William the Silent and was to the
following effect:--The head of the van der Walt family of that period
lived in the town of Maestricht. He was a man of solitary habits. In
his youth his wife had deserted him for another. He had been
passionately attached to her, and he never recovered from the blow, but
lived the rest of his days in solitude.
Years afterwards, when he was quite an old man, a son of the man who had
wronged him--a young and zealous Lutheran preacher, came to live in his
vicinity. This preacher was in the habit of visiting in disguise
families of his co-religionists in the Provinces where the Spaniards
held complete dominion. He had a dog that had been trained to convey
cypher messages from place to place. Van der Walt betrayed this
preacher to the authorities, with the result that he was captured and
sentenced to be burnt alive. The betrayer was among those who crowded
round the stake to gloat over the agonies of the victim. The dog had
followed its master and, seeing his evil case, set up a piteous howling.
The Spaniards, judging the heretic to be a wizard, and the dog his
familiar spirit, caught the unhappy animal and bound it among the
faggots at its master's feet. Just as the pile was lit the preacher
lifted up his voice and cried aloud:--
"Gerrit van der Walt,--for thy black treachery to a servant of the Lord,
thou shalt die in misery within a year and a day. Thy soul shall wander
homeless for ever and shall howl like a dog as the harbinger of
misfortune whenever it is about to fall upon one of thy blood."
It has been declared on respectable authority that from and after the
death of Gerrit, which took place under miserable circumstances within
the period named by his victim, a dog which was never seen would howl
around the dwelling of any van der Walt about to die, for the three
nights previous to the passing of his soul. Thus a new terror was added
to the death-bed of any member of the family.
The following account of the last occasion when this warning howl was
heard is firmly believed by the few surviving descendants in the direct
line. It is taken from an old manuscript which purports to date from
the year in which the incidents related are alleged to have taken place.
Towards the end of the last century, Tyardt's father, Cornelius van der
Walt, lay ill in bed, but no one imagined that his illness was likely to
be fatal, until one night after supper the dreaded howl was heard under
his window. The sick man, filled with terror, arose to a sitting
posture in his bed, and called Tyardt, who was his eldest son, before
him.
"If that dog be not shot by you before the day after to-morrow," he
said, "I will make my will anew and dispossess you of everything that
the law will allow me to leave to others."
Next day Tyardt brooded long and deeply over the occurrence. He did not
love his father, so the old man's death would have caused him no regret,
but he knew that the threat would be carried out.
There was an old and tattered family Bible on the loft, with a strong
and heavy metal clasp. This clasp Tyardt broke into fragments about the
size of ordinary slugs, and with them he loaded his gun, using portions
of the leaves as wadding.
As soon as night fell he stole quietly out and posted himself among the
branches of a small tree which grew just in front of the window of the
room in which his father lay.
The night was pitch dark; a damp fog had rolled in from the sea and
covered everything. Tyardt had not long to wait before a long, low
howl, which curdled his blood with dread, arose from just beneath him.
Terrified as he was, he thought of the property at stake, so he hardened
his will to the purpose and carefully cocked his gun.
There could be no mistaking the exact locality from which the howling
came; it was almost at his feet. He fired, and a horrible, half-human
yell followed the report of the gun. Then came a sound of scuffling
upon the ground. Soon a light was brought from the house, and then
Tyardt descended from the tree.
Beneath lay the huddled, bleeding figure of an old man of hideous
aspect, clad in a garb unknown at the Cape but which, it was afterwards
thought, suggested some wood-cuts in an old book brought out by the
last-deceased van der Walt from Holland. A sheet was thrown over the
horror, and the trembling family sat up, waiting for, but dreading, the
light of day. It was not until after the sun had arisen that they
ventured to go out and visit the scene of the tragedy,--but no trace of
the body could be seen; nor was there any sign of the blood which had so
much horrified the beholders on the previous night.
There appeared to have been no doubt as to the main facts having
occurred; slaves, servants, and, in fact, every member of the household
except the sick man, had seen the body. The mystery was never solved;
no body was ever found; no one from the neighbourhood was missed, nor,
so far as could be ascertained, had any man resembling the description
of the body ever been seen in the neighbourhood.
Cornelius van der Walt died during the following night, but without
altering his will. Tyardt, however, took the matter so much to heart
that he became a changed man. He came to hate the neighbourhood, and,
leaving the farm in the hands of his mother and a younger brother, he
set his face to the northward. He purchased two wagons, packed them
with his goods, and, with his young wife and three small children,
plunged into the unknown wilderness. After having passed some distance
beyond the farthest outposts of civilisation, he at length halted high
up near the head of a valley where the Tanqua River gorge cleaves the
southern face of the Roggeveld mountain range. Here he built a
homestead and took possession of the ground surrounding it for some
miles. From the large numbers of elands which haunted the hills he
named his new home "Elandsfontein."
For some time he was left to enjoy the solitude for which his nature
craved; but he lived long enough to feel himself inconveniently crowded
when neighbours established themselves at distances of from fifteen to
twenty miles from him on each side. However, he still drew comfort from
the thought that beyond the mountain chain which frowned down upon his
homestead on the northward, the vast, unoccupied desert lay--and
appeared likely to lie for ever unappropriated. Moreover, it was
certainly convenient to have the assistance of the aforesaid neighbours
in hunting Bushmen, with whom the surrounding mountains were infested.
The occurrence of the night before his father's death affected the
character of Tyardt van der Walt permanently. For years he could never
bear to be alone in the dark;--he suffered from the dread that the
horrible creature he had shot would re-appear to him. This man, who did
not know what fear of any material thing meant, was for long an abject
slave to dread of the supernatural, and fell into a state of piteous
terror if a dog howled within his hearing after dark.
It is said that his death was, after all, caused by the howling of a
dog. During one of his periodical fits of nervous depression he felt
unwell and, under his wife's persuasion, went to his bed one day a few
hours before the usual time. That night a dog howled on the hill across
the valley; the sick man, as soon as he heard it, turned his face to the
wall, saying that his summons had come. He refused to take any
nourishment, and died in the course of a few days.
Strange,--that the crime of over two centuries back should have sent its
baleful influence across the ocean wastes and the desert sands to drag a
man who was blameless in it to his doom.
No stouter-hearted men than those of the van der Walt stock ever took
their lives into their hands and faced, with unflinching eye, the
dangers of the desert which they helped so mightily to reclaim. It is,
however, an extraordinary fact that no member of this family in the
direct line could ever hear the howling of a dog after nightfall without
being reduced to abject terror.