Kitabı oku: «Six Months at the Cape», sayfa 7
Then it was, as my friend and I stood on the bush-topped knoll, that the magnificence of our picnic fully impressed us, for, as we surveyed the long line of riders, and trundling carts, and gigs, and carriages, and heavy Cape wagons with their creeping teams winding over the plain, the head of the column was seen almost on the horizon before the rear-guard had left the scene of our festivities. This was altogether one of the pleasantest days I had spent in the colony; the people were so hearty and vigorous, so varied in appearance, character, and age, so full of life and fun and good-will.
But it is not always in the sunshine that the good people of Salem enjoy themselves. The hunters among them occasionally go out shooting at night with the aid of a dark lantern, and the wretched creature which they pursue on such occasions is called a spring-hare. It seems a mixture of the hare and the kangaroo—its size and aspect being those of the former animal, while its long hind-legs and its action in springing resemble the latter. In running it does not use its fore legs, but bounds like the kangaroo.
Never having engaged in night-sporting—save in dreams—I agreed to accompany two Salem Nimrods on a hunt after spring-hares.
We went into the fields. That is all I can vouch for. It happened to be so dark that we might as well have been groping about in a coal-pit. My companions, however, knew the ground, which was fortunate, for walking over a rugged surface in the dark is not only confusing, but trying to the nerves, to say nothing of the temper. I followed faithfully and “close to heel,” like a well-trained dog.
“This way, Sir; mind the ditch.”
“Where? ah! all ri–ight!”
The last syllable was shot out of me like a bullet as I plunged into the ditch.
The Nimrod who carried the lantern opened the slide for a moment, revealed the rugged nature of the ground, and closed it when I had risen.
“It’s better farther on,” he said, encouragingly.
“Is it? Ah, that’s well.”
We came to a piece of ground which my feet and legs told me was covered with long rough grass and occasional bushes. Over this we stumbled, and here the rays of the lantern were directed far in advance of us, so as to sweep slowly round, bringing bushes, and grassy tufts, and stumps, and clods, into spectral view for a moment as the focus of light moved on.
“We never see their bodies,” said the lantern-bearer, slowly, as he peered earnestly in front, “we only see the sparkle of one eye when the light falls on it, and—then—we—fire—at—there, that’s one! Look, don’t you see his eye? Fire, Sir, fire!”
I raised my gun, and looked eagerly with all my eyes, but saw nothing. Never having been in the habit of firing at nothing, I hesitated.
“Ah, he’s gone! Never mind, we’ll soon see another.”
We stumbled on again. The surrounding gloom depressed me, but I revived under the influence of one or two false alarms, and a severe plunge into a deepish hole.
“There he is again, quite near,” whispered my light-bearer.
“Aim for the eye,” whispered the other.
The whispering, and intense silence that followed, coupled with the gloom, made me feel guilty. I saw nothing, but tried so hard to do so that I persuaded myself that I did, and attempted to aim.
“The sights of the gun are invisible,” I whispered somewhat testily.
Without a word the lantern was raised until the light glittered on the barrels. Then I saw nothing whatever except the gun! In sheer desperation I pulled the trigger. The tremendous appearance in the dark of the sheet of flame that belched forth, and the crash of the report in the silent night, gave me quite new ideas as to firearms.
“You’ve missed,” said the light-bearer.
As I had fired at nothing I felt inclined to reply that I had not—but refrained.
Again we stumbled on, and I began to grow melancholy, when another “there he goes” brought me to the “ready,” with eager eyes.
I saw it clearly enough this time. A diamond was sparkling in the blackness before me. I aimed and fired. There was a squeal and a rush. Instantly my friends dashed off in wild pursuit and I stood listening, not daring to move for fear of ditches. The sounds of leaping, stumbling, and crashing came to me on the night air for a few minutes; then my friends returned with the light, and with a poor little spring-hare’s lifeless and long-hind-legged body.
With this trophy I returned home, resolved never more to go hunting at night.
Letter 11.
Algoa Bay—Kafirs on the Coast—Difficulties Regarding Servants
Standing on the shores of Algoa Bay, with the “Liverpool of South Africa”—Port Elizabeth—at my back, I attempted to realise what must have been the scene, in the memorable “1820,” when the flourishing city was yet unborn, when the whole land was a veritable wilderness, and the sands on which the port now stands were covered with the tents of the “settlers.”
Some of the surroundings, thought I, are pretty much as they were in those days. The shipping at anchor in the offing must resemble the shipping that conveyed the emigrants across the sea—except, of course, these two giant steamers of the “Donald Currie” and the “Union” lines. The bright blue sky, too, and the fiery sun are the same, and so are those magnificent “rollers,” which, rising, one scarce can tell when or where, out of a dead-calm sea, stand up for a few seconds like liquid walls, and then rush up the beach with a magnificent roar.
As I gazed, the scene was rendered still more real by the approach from seaward of a great surf-boat, similar to the surf-boats that brought the settlers from their respective ships to the shore. Such boats are still used at the port to land goods—and also passengers, when the breakers are too high to admit of their being landed in small boats at the wooden pier. The surf-boats are bulky, broad, and flat, strongly built to stand severe hammering on the sand, and comparatively shallow at the stern, to admit of their being backed towards the beach, or hauled off to sea through the surf by means of a rope over the bow.
As the surf-boat neared the shore, I heard voices behind me, and, turning round, beheld a sight which sent me completely back into the 1820 days. It was a band of gentlemen in black—black from the crowns of their heads to the soles of their feet, with the exception of their lips and teeth and eyes. Here was the Simon Pure in very truth. They were so-called Red Kafirs, because of their habit of painting their bodies and blankets with red ochre. At this time the paint had been washed off, and the blankets laid aside. They were quite naked, fresh from the lands of their nativity, and apparently fit for anything.
Shade of Othello!—to say nothing of Apollo—what magnificent forms the fellows had, and what indescribably hideous faces! They were tall, muscular, broad-shouldered, small waisted and ankled, round-muscled, black-polished—in a word, elegantly powerful. Many of them might have stood as models for Hercules. Like superfine cloth, they were of various shades; some were brown-black, some almost blue-black, and many coal-black.
They were coming down to unload the surf-boat, and seemed full of fun, and sly childlike humour, as they walked, tripped, skipped and sidled into the water. At first I was greatly puzzled to account for the fact that all their heads and throats were wrapped up, or swathed, in dirty cloth. It seemed as if every man of them was under treatment for a bad cold. This I soon found was meant to serve as a protection to their naked skins from the sharp and rugged edges and corners of the casks and cases they had to carry.
The labour is rather severe, but is well paid, so that hundreds of Kafirs annually come down from their homes in the wilderness to work for a short time. They do not, I believe, make a profession of it. Fresh relays come every year. Each young fellow’s object is to make enough money to purchase a gun and cattle, and a wife—or wives. As these articles cost little in Africa, a comparatively short attention to business, during one season, enables a man who left home a beggar to return with his fortune made! He marries, sets his wives to hoe the mealies and milk the cows, and thereafter takes life easy, except when he takes a fancy to hunt elephants, or to go to war for pastime. Ever after he is a drone in the world’s beehive. Having no necessity he need not work, and possessing no principle he will not.
As the boat came surging in on the foam, these manly children waded out to meet her, throwing water at each other, and skylarking as they went. They treated the whole business in fact as a rather good jest, and although they toiled like heroes, they accompanied their work with such jovial looks, and hummed such lilting, free-and-easy airs the while, that it was difficult to associate their doings with anything like labour.
Soon the boat grounded, and the Kafirs crowded round her, up to their waists sometimes in the water, and sometimes up to the arm-pits, when a bigger wave than usual came roaring in. The boat itself was so large that, as they stood beside it, their heads barely rose to a level with the gunwale. The boatmen at once began to heave and roll the goods over the side. The Kafirs received them on their heads or shoulders, according to the shape or size of each package—and they refused nothing. If a bale or a box chanced to be too heavy for one man, a comrade lent assistance; if it proved still too heavy, a third added his head or shoulder, and the box or bale was borne off.
One fellow, like a black Hercules, put his wrapper on his head, and his head under a bale, which I thought would crush him down into the surf, but he walked ashore with an easy springing motion, that showed he possessed more than sufficient power. Another man, hitting Hercules a sounding smack as he went by, received a mighty cask on his head that should have cracked it—but it didn’t. Then I observed the boatmen place on the gunwale an enormous flat box, which seemed to me about ten feet square. It was corrugated iron, they told me, of, I forget, how many hundredweight. A crowd of Kafirs got under it, and carried it ashore as easily as if it had been a butterfly. But this was nothing to a box which next made its appearance from the bowels of that capacious boat. It was in the form of a cube, and must have measured nine or ten feet in all directions. Its contents I never ascertained, but the difficulty with which the boatmen got it rested on the side of the boat proved its weight to be worthy of its size. To get it on the shoulders of the Kafirs was the next difficulty. It was done by degrees. As the huge case was pushed over the edge, Kafir after Kafir put his head or shoulder to it, until there were, I think, from fifteen to twenty men beneath the weight;—then, slowly, it left the boat, and began to move towards the shore.
Assuredly, if four or five of these men had stumbled at the same moment, the others would have been crushed to death, but not a man stumbled. They came ashore with a slow, regular, almost dancing gait, humming a low monotonous chant, as if to enable them to step in time, and making serio-comic motions with arms and hands, until they deposited safely in a cart a weight that might have tested Atlas himself!
It seemed obvious that these wild men, (for such they truly were), had been gifted with all the powers that most white men lay claim to,—vigour, muscle, energy, pluck, fun, humour, resolution. Only principle is wanted to make them a respectable and useful portion of the human family. Like all the rest of us they are keenly alive to the influence of kindness and affection. Of course if your kindness, forbearance, or affection, take the form of action which leads them to think that you are afraid of them, they will merely esteem you cunning, and treat you accordingly; but if you convince a Kafir, or any other savage, that you have a disinterested regard for him, you are sure to find him grateful, more or less.
One family with which I dined gave me to understand that this was the result of their own experience. At that very time they had a Kafir girl in training as a housemaid. Servants, let me remark in passing, are a Cape difficulty. The demand is in excess of the supply, and the supply is not altogether what it should be, besides being dear and uncomfortably independent. I suppose it was because of this difficulty that the family I dined with had procured a half-wild Kafir girl, and undertaken her training.
Her clothes hung upon her in a manner that suggested novelty. She was young, very tall, black, lithe as an eel, strong as a horse. She was obviously new to the work, and went about it with the air of one who engages in a frolic. But the free air of the wilderness had taught her a freedom of action and stride, and a fling of body that it was not easy to restrain within the confined precincts of a dining—room. She moved round the table like a sable panther—ready to spring when wanted. She had an open-mouthed smile of amused good-will, and an open-eyed “what-next—only-say-quick—and-I’ll-do-it” expression that was impressive. She seized the plates and dishes and bore them off with a giraffe-like, high-stepping action that was quite alarming, but she broke or spilt nothing. To say that she flung about, would be mild. It would not have been strange, I thought—only a little extra dash in her jubilant method of proceeding—if she had gone head-foremost through the dining-room window for the sake of bearing the mutton round by a shorter route to the kitchen.
The family expected that this girl would be reduced to moderation, and rendered faithful—as she certainly was intelligent—by force of kindness in a short time.
Of course in a country thus circumstanced, there are bad servants. The independence of the Totties is most amusing—to those who do not suffer from it. I was told that servants out there have turned the tables on their employers, and instead of bringing “characters” with them, require to know the characters of master and mistress before they will engage. It is no uncommon thing for a domestic to come to you and say that she is tired and wants a rest, and is going off to see her mother. Indeed it is something to her credit if she takes the trouble to tell you. Sometimes she goes off without warning, leaving you to shift for yourself, returning perhaps after some days. If you find fault with her too severely on her return, she will probably leave you altogether.
This naturally tries the temper of high-spirited mistresses—as does also the incorrigible carelessness of some servants.
A gentle lady said to me quietly, one day, “I never keep a servant after slapping her!”
“Is it your habit to slap them?” I asked with a smile.
“No,” she replied with an answering smile, “but occasionally I am driven to it. When a careless girl, who has been frequently cautioned, singes one’s linen and destroys one’s best dress, and melts one’s tea-pot by putting it on the red-hot stove, what can flesh and blood do?”
I admitted that the supposed circumstances were trying.
“The last one I sent off,” continued the lady, “had done all that. When she filled up her cup of iniquity by melting the tea-pot, I just gave her a good hearty slap on the face. I couldn’t help it. Of course she left me after that.”
I did not doubt it, for the lady was not only gentle in her manner, and pretty to boot, but was tall and stout, and her fair arm was strong, and must have been heavy.
Letter 12.
Port Elizabeth—Algoa Bay—Diamonds—Kafir Nobility
Port Elizabeth may be described as the first-born city of the Eastern Province of the Cape of Good Hope. It came into being in 1820. It is now a flourishing seaport, full of energetic, busy, money-making men. It is the principal seaport of the Eastern Province, and the nearest point on the coast to the Diamond-fields—420 miles from De Beer’s New Rush, a distance which was traversed in about six days by coaches.
Among its more useful enterprises it has the honour of having sent out one pioneer of future commercial prosperity in the Eastern Province, for Port Elizabeth is the starting-point of one branch of that great railway system which is to revolutionise Africa. I do not say South Africa, but advisedly use the title of wider scope.
It is not every day that one can boast of having handled a tumbler full of diamonds. Being anxious to see a mass of those precious gems in an uncut condition, I appealed to a friend who had come out with me in the “Windsor Castle.”
He introduced me to a broker, who took me into a back office, opened a strong-box, took out a small packet, and, untying it, poured out a tumblerful of diamonds! They ranged from the size of a pin-head to that of a bean, and were varied in shade, from pure crystal to straw-colour. The broker then opened one or two separate parcels, each of which contained a specially large or fine diamond, varying in size from a pea to a hazelnut.
“That one,” he said, “may be worth four hundred pounds, and this, perhaps about five or six hundred.”
Looking at them, it was difficult to believe that they were other than paltry pebbles; yet these were the things for which men left home and kindred, pushed into the wilds of a savage land, toiled and moiled in the Great Pit at Kimberley, and too often sacrificed health, happiness, and life itself. Judging them from their looks, I would not have given sixpence for the entire lot—so true is it that we do wrong in judging uncut gems, as well as unknown men, by the “outward appearance.”
A very striking, and rather unfortunate instance of this false style of judgment occurred not many days afterwards in reference to some Kafir princes and chiefs: it was on the occasion of my quitting Port Elizabeth for Capetown.
We were to have started on a Saturday afternoon, but a gale said “no,” and we left on Sunday morning. Even then, although the gale had abated, a surf so magnificent was rolling into Algoa Bay that no ship’s boat could approach the jetty. This obliged the passengers to go off to the steamer in a surf-boat. Of course the boat could not approach nearer the dry sand than fifty yards or so. There she heaved about in oceans of boiling foam, while Kafirs carried us on board one by one. The Kafirs bore the women in their strong arms as children are carried, and put them over the gunwale tenderly, but the men were made to sit on their shoulders, as one sits on horseback, and were treated with less ceremony. A giant in ebony carried me off, and trotted as he went, to the delight of some of his comrades; but I was accustomed to riding, and patted his black head approvingly.
While standing on a commanding point in the stern, a fellow-passenger directed attention to a group of Kafirs who tried to keep apart from the others, and looked dignified. These, he told me, were a party of native princes, chiefs, and councillors, who had been brought fresh from their wilderness home—with their own consent, of course—and were being taken to Capetown for the purpose of being impressed with the wealth, power, grandeur, and vast resources of the white man. The other Kafirs, of whom there was a large gang, were common fellows, who chanced to be going by the same steamer as navvies to work on the Western railways. The difference between the navvies and their nobility was not great. Personally there was scarcely any, and the somewhat superior cloth of the robes worn by the latter made no great show.
The big boat was hauled off by a rope through the surf, the sail set, and we were soon alongside the ocean steamer whose iron sides rose above us like a city wall. There was nothing but an iron ladder, flat against this wall, by which to ascend. The heaving of the surf-boat was great. It approached the ladder and retreated from it in the most irregularly spasmodic manner. Only active men, accustomed to such feats, could get upon it. Kafirs, although active as kittens, are not accustomed to the sea, or to the motion of ships and boats. For them to ascend was a matter of great difficulty; for the women and children it was impossible.
But the difficulty had been provided for. Presently we saw a great cask like an overgrown hogs-head swing over the side and descend into the boat. It was caught by our sailors and placed on the stern-sheets. Several tars from the steamer descended to assist. The cask was large enough to hold three or four women besides a child or two. Amid much giggling and persuading it was filled, a signal given, steam applied, and the party was whirled aloft with a scream, and lowered on the vessel’s deck in safety.
The cask was again sent down. Meanwhile some of us had scrambled up the ladder, and a few of the Kafir navvies followed our example, but the most of them required a good deal of encouragement, and some strong persuasion, while others refused flatly to attempt it. All this time the black aristocrats looked on in grave silence. If I remember rightly there were a young prince, an old councillor, and two or three chiefs.
When those navvies that could be persuaded, or kicked up the ladder, had been disposed of, the sailors turned upon the timid ones and bundled them into the cask, neck and crop, four and five at a time. There was necessity for speed, and sailors are not wont to be delicate when this is the case. At last the aristocracy were approached. Whether the sailors knew who they were I cannot tell; it is probable that they did not, but judged by the “outward appearance.” They were “niggers,” that was enough for Jack.
“Come along, old boy,” said one, grasping the old councillor; but the councillor held back; Jack therefore gave him a powerful shove and he went into the cask head-foremost. Another man had seized the young prince at the same moment. That potentate—who in his own land possessed the power of life and death—turned round with dignity, and in doing so afforded an unlooked for opportunity to the sailor, who pushed him gently till he tripped against the cask and went in backwards, squeezing the old councillor almost flat.
“That’s your sort, Bill, fetch another!” cried Jack, as he packed the prince down.
One chief was quick-witted enough to submit and stepped in of his own accord. Another half-stepped and was half-thrust in.
“Hoist away!” shouted Bill.
At that moment a forgotten navvy caught Bill’s eye, he seized him by the neck; Jack helped; the man was thrown on the top of all, and went up next moment like a spread-eagle cover to the cask.
When this “lot” was lowered four or five of the Jack-tars on deck, who greatly enjoyed the fun, turned it suddenly over, and thus it was emptied of its human contents.
Even at that moment of humiliation the savage chiefs were true to themselves. They rose from the deck in dignified silence, the prince merely saying, sternly, to the gentleman who had charge of the party, “Was this what you brought me here for?”
It is but just to add that the gentleman in charge of these noble visitors did his best to prevent the outrage, but it had occurred suddenly, in the exuberance of “Jack’s” spirits, was over in a few seconds, and could not be undone.
These Kafir chiefs were afterwards feasted and fêted by the governor and gentry of Capetown, but I have my doubts whether they will ever forget or forgive the treatment received on that occasion in Algoa Bay.
To correct the false is more difficult than to imbibe the true. Did you ever think of that before? All my life have I been under the false impression that the Cape of Good Hope was the most southerly point of Africa. It is nothing of the sort. Cape Agulhas, not far distant, is the real extremity of South Africa. We doubled it on the 3rd of April.
Oh! Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco da Gama, what would you say if you knew that we “doubled the Cape”—the “Cape of Storms”—the “Cape of Torments”—in calm and sunshine, at the rate of thirteen knots or thereabouts, without a stitch of canvas, with ladies and gentlemen in every attitude of lazy ease upon our deck, and troops of children romping round them? How vast the difference between the “doublings” of the 15th and the 19th centuries! Then—the ships were small wooden tubs; now they are huge iron kettles. Then,—a few bold and sometimes turbulent spirits faced the dangers of unknown seas under the leadership of famous and heroic men; now, hundreds of men and women—timid and brave mixed undistinguishably—are carried in safety and comfort over the well-known ocean, by respectable captains of whom the world knows little or nothing beyond their names. Once in a lifetime was the daring feat attempted then. Once or twice a week is the trifling trip accomplished now.
But enough of moralising. Suffice it to say that we doubled the Cape without sails, without anxiety, without care, and with no triumph whatever,—but not without interest. Calm and sunny though it chanced to be, we could not look upon that barren, mountainous, rocky shore, without reflecting that it still is not less now than in days of old, the Stormy Cape, and that danger as appalling as that of yore may sometimes be encountered, while heroism quite as exalted as that of the ancient Portuguese navigators is sometimes displayed by modern Britons.
There is a point not far from Cape Agulhas—between it and the Cape of Good Hope—named Point Danger, where courage of the highest kind once calmly faced and fought with Death. On that Point, in February 1852, the Birkenhead was wrecked. It may be truly said that courage conquered on that occasion, because the end for which it fought was the deliverance of women and children from death, and this end was gained, though above 400 of the gallant men who fought the battle perished in the hour of victory.
The Birkenhead, a large iron steamer, was engaged in the transport of troops to the frontier, where war with the Kafirs raged at the time. These troops were detachments from several regiments under command of Colonel Seton of the 74th Highlanders. About two o’clock in the morning the vessel struck upon a rock near the well-named Point Danger, and so tremendous was the shock that her iron plates were driven in as if made of egg-shell. The cabin was immediately flooded, and it was evident that in a few minutes the vessel would be engulfed among the breakers.
None but those who have witnessed similar scenes can imagine the horrors of the situation. It was dark; the breakers roared around; the rugged and almost inaccessible shores of the Cape of Storms were on the one hand, the ocean on the other; men, women, and children were rushing about the decks in wild terror; sharks were known to be in these waters, and only two of the ship’s boats were available for service. In this moment of extremity God put it into the hearts of both officers and men to act with unexampled courage and wisdom.
To save all was manifestly out of the question. When people are in such circumstances it is too often “every man for himself;” the strong push aside the weak, fight for the boats, overcrowd and swamp them, and thus few, if any, are left to tell the tale. But it was not so with the heroes of the Birkenhead. At the word of command from Colonel Seton, the soldiers drew up on the reeling deck as if on parade, and obeyed his orders with steady calm, unflinching bravery. If there were any selfish spirits on board they were overawed by the heroism of the soldiers. The Colonel directed that the women and children and the sick should be put into the boats. This was quickly done, and these were all saved without a single exception—to the number of two hundred souls.
But while this was being accomplished the vessel was breaking up, and the fact that the men would be soon left to struggle in the waves was apparent to all; yet the noble officer continued to give his orders, and the not less noble men continued to obey, and saw the boats depart without a murmur. They were young soldiers too, who had never been under fire, and this “action” was the first and last that they and their leader were destined to fight. The vessel suddenly parted amidships, and though a few saved themselves by swimming and on floating pieces of wreck, the greater number perished—no fewer than 357 officers and soldiers—among whom was the Colonel—and sixty seamen, going down with the ship. It was a sad but splendid specimen of cool self-sacrificing courage, and of the power of discipline in moments of tremendous trial.
