The Autobiography of an Individualist: Iii
I
AT the outset of my third chapter I wish to emphasize the fact that I am doing my best to write, not simply the ups and downs of a somewhat adventurous career, but the plain history of a passion.
In the preceding sections of my story I have given a rough yet definite description of the soil in which this passion was planted, and of its manifestations and behavior when first it became conscious of its surroundings in the Highlands of Scotland. I have described the contact of my individualistic spirit with men and events when I was about to leave home; later, on board ship; and finally during a sojourn of two years in South America. Before concluding the story of my experiences in South America, however, a final incident remains to be noticed.
Applying its lessons to my own progress, the story relates specifically to the character and influence of women. My experience in such matters has been somewhat unusual. For one thing, I can just remember my mother on her death-bed. As a moral handicap the significance of this fact is immeasurable. Then again, there were no girls in our family, no sisters for companions or playmates.
Let the reasons be what they may, as I grew up, I consistently avoided female society. But this instinctive disinclination for the society of girls and women was accompanied by the most spiritual ideas in regard to their personalities and influence. My youthful and well-remembered conclusions on the subject are plain as plain can be. As a growing boy it never occurred to me that any girl or woman of my acquaintance could possibly be less than perfect in the workings of her heart, in the details of her daily occupation, or in matters that related to her mission as a sex. My attitude at the time may be summed up in two mottoes: ‘I worship,’ and, ‘I serve.’
But there comes to every mortal a time when youthful dreams must submit themselves to all sorts of practical and spiritual tests. In my case, the first clash was perhaps the most memorable event in which my personality has ever been called upon to take part. On the occasion to which I refer, I just happened to get close enough to the heart of a woman to enable me to understand a little of its fundamental character. It is one of those unforgettable links that still connect this most absorbing of life problems with my boyish dreams. It was shortly after my arrival in Bahia from Santos. She was a married woman. This fact, to me at the time, had not the slightest significance. I made her acquaintance on board ship, on the way over from Europe. She was then the young bride of one of my fellow clerks. Unfortunately he was the flimsiest kind of a fellow, and six months of life in Bahia were sufficient to carry him well along on the highway to perdition. On my arrival in Bahia I knew nothing about this state of affairs. However, when I heard that the family were in trouble I determined to call, and after a while I found them in poorly furnished quarters in what was then known as the upper city.
At the time of my first visit the husband was in jail and the young wife was taking care of her baby girl and trying to keep body and soul together with the assistance of a boarder or two. Within a few days I, too, as a boarder, was admitted into the family circle.
Readers perhaps will imagine that I am about to give a simple variation of an old story. Be this as it may, the significance of the experience to me personally was incalculable.
With my advent the young wife seemed to acquire a fresh supply of courage. We soon became attached to each other in a quiet sociable way, which easily led to the exchanging of confidences. Apart from her expressed gratitude, I knew absolutely nothing about her affections, except as they shone in her face and were manifested in her motherly devotion. And yet it is true that as the days went by the situation developed most delightfully in impossible directions, as it were, until the current of other affairs hurried it along to a climax.
Before leaving Santos I had written home to make inquiries in regard to the situation and prospects in South Africa, and very soon I received word that arrangements had been made which would enable me to join a party of young fellows who intended to leave England on a certain date. Finally the time came for me to pack up and take leave.
So one morning I prepared to walk out of my boarding-house for the last time. To me the occasion, in minutest detail, is unforgettable. In thinking it all over from a distance, one recognizes with a clearer understanding than at the time the significance of such events in the life-journey of the individual. Every once in a while in their lives people focus in this way and take stock of spiritual progress. The picture in my mind of the final scene and leavetaking is something like this: —
A ladder of houses on a cliff-like street. The city sparkling in the first glow of the early morning sun. The harbor beneath, and in the distance, dotted with ships. Inside a home, a flower-decked parlor, a child in a high chair pounding lustily on the table with little fists. The young mother sorrowtossed, yet struggling to speak cheerfully. The face pale as pale can be, yet gentle and firm beyond description. The hand extended, and the words ‘good-bye’ at the point of utterance. Then suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, the features relax, tears stream and the little body collapses. Just enough strength was left to enable her to rush from the room.
As for me, I stood there like a fool, bereft of motion, almost of thought. Quickly, however, I came to my senses. A situation hitherto undreamed of, yet actually rehearsed for two or three months in simplest everyday intercourse, dawned upon me. From her side and mine, all at once, I understood. I realized that to prolong my stay, or to call her back, would be sacrilege. Nevertheless, even to-day, I cannot easily account to myself for what followed. I turned to leave the house, and then the unutterable dilemma in my heart took refuge in action. I opened my purse and counted out upon the table, in sovereigns, the half of its contents. And that was the end of it all.
II
The scene now changes to South Africa. But before I begin the narrative of my travels and experience in that country, a word or two should be said regarding my aim and intentions in steering my course in such a strange direction.
To begin with, of course there was the roving, adventurous spirit tucked away in my heredity, added to the disgust which I had acquired for my life and surroundings in South America. Then again, there was the ever-present necessity of earning a living somehow and somewhere; and on top of all these considerations there came an enthusiastic invitation from a brother who was already in Africa, and who, at the time he wrote, was doing remarkably well at the Pilgrim’s Rest Gold-Fields. Just what I was going to do when I got there was to be left altogether to circumstances.
In the second place, a preliminary word or two of explanation is due in regard to the period at which I appeared on the African scene; and a very brief sketch or reminder of a few of the historical events which signalized this period and with which, here and there, I was in close touch, will certainly not be out of place.
In those days there were no railroads either in Natal or the Transvaal, and the ox-wagon was the most important single feature of African life. The Transvaal Republic, when first I entered the territory in the year 1877, was in a state of commercial and political anarchy, principally from a lack of funds necessary to enable the farmers to continue their campaign against the Kaffirs. President Burgers and his executive were in despair and the Republic was in a state of hopeless bankruptcy when, on April 12, 1877, at Pretoria, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, armed with the necessary authority from the British government, annexed the country as British territory.
The return of more prosperous conditions, however, aroused the Boers to renewed consciousness of their political subjection, and very soon, under the stupid and autocratic handling of the situation by British administrators, the old sores were reopened, and the war-spirit, nursed by the cautious and astute policy of Paul Kruger, who was at the head of the new movement, spread from farm to farm until it was fearlessly supported by nine tenths of the population.
At intervals following the annexation in 1877, came the Zulu war, which included the disaster at Isandlwana, the death of Prince Napoleon, the victory of Ulundi, and the capture of Cetewayo. Then, later, the campaign against the Kaffir chief Sekukuni in the north of the Transvaal was undertaken, and this again was followed in 1880 by the outbreak of the first Boer war of Independence, with the battle of Majuba Hill, and the recession of the Transvaal to the Boers by the Gladstone government, in 1881.
It was at the beginning of this string of historical events that I made my way into the Transvaal, and in the midst of these scenes I lived and moved about for over three years among the Boers and the Kaffirs.
While the events I have mentioned had but little direct connection with me and my fortunes, they form a sort of historical framework inside of which I moved up and down and formed personal opinions in regard to policies and peoples. In order to emphasize my personal relationship to these affairs and to these peoples, I think the best way will be to give a series of detached pictures of my African life and experience and to comment upon them by the way.
III
On the journey from South America to the Transvaal I halted for a day or two in Cape Town. Then I moved northward and spent a few weeks in the colony of Natal, where I happened to meet two men who took more than a passing interest in me and my problems. The first was Rider Haggard. At that time he was secretary to the governor. Haggard, like myself, was then in the making stage, and already his conversation was bristling with the ‘He,’ ‘She,’ and ‘Jess’ of his novels. With Haggard’s assistance I received an introduction to one of the most notable men of the period in that or any other country, Bishop Colenso. He was one of those persecuted forerunners of religious liberty. At the same time he was universally recognized as the great peace-loving arbitrator between the Kaffirs, the Boers, and the British. Three or four times I met him at his home, amid dream-like surroundings, flowers and hedgerows and gorgeous vegetation, a grand old man with a retinue of stately ring-crowned Zulus for servitors and errand boys. He seemed to be devoting his declining years to the material and spiritual interests of a little village of dark-skinned mission children. For the first time in my life, I met a man who listened to my story, gave me much practical and spiritual advice, and sent me on my way with renewed courage.
At this point in my narrative I may as well say that, in my mind, at the time, my personal mission in Africa was clearly understood. At the first encounter, in South America especially, Society and I had made the poorest kind of connection. The rough-andtumble childhood, the religion of John Knox, the discipline of the ‘taws,’ and the sterling influence of vigorous and healthy environment in youth, had received a palpable setback. Hitherto Society had been confining me in many ways; I was anxious to grow in a physical direction especially, and for that reason the prospect of a few years in Africa appealed to me. At the same time, both intellectually and religiously, I was holding my own. While I still remained steadfast to religious fundamentals, the meaning of religion in my mind, as well as its centre of gravity, was changing.
Of course, apart from this philosophy of life, there was, at all times, the problem of my material interests. Never in my life, however, have I had any schemes for the accumulation of money, and least of all while I was in Africa. I was possessed with a craving for knowledge, excitement, and personal expression. My mind was twenty years ahead of my experience. The problem for me would have been the same in any country — it was simply to find myself. In Africa as in South America I continued to follow my individualistic programme, and it must not be forgotten that my conclusions in regard to people and conditions were derived not from philosophy or reading, but from a discussion of live issues at camp-fires with indignant Kaffirs whose kraals had been sacked, and on wagon-seats with sturdy Boers whose everlasting theme was personal and national independence.
I can only refer in passing to the period of my initiation among these African scenes and people. In five or six months to become fairly expert in handling a wagon-whip and inspanning oxen, in horsemanship, hunting and rifle-shooting, and roughing it in general, was a very simple process for a fellow at my age; but to become conversationally at home among Kaffirs and Boers, and to a slight extent among Hottentots and tongue-snapping or ‘click’ speaking Bushmen, in a little over a year, was an achievement that can be comprehended only by those who possess a most retentive memory, and who from childhood have been passionately diligent and inquisitive in the study of languages. To me in Africa, this facility in languages was not only an ever-present and all-absorbing occupation, — it. proved also to be the point of contact, sympathetically taken advantage of in every way, that enabled me to get unusually close to the hearts and the homes of those peoples, both black and white.
As illustrations of my African experiences I have in mind a number of characteristic scenes or word-pictures. The first is that of a transport-rider or wagon-driver. With a wagon and a span of sixteen or eighteen oxen, at different times I took loads of merchandise from the coast across the Free State or the Transvaal, to Kimberley, Pretoria, or the Gold Fields. In those early days a trip of this description in dry weather over the flats, which in places were simply black with herds of blesboks, gnus, and zebras, was a sort of long-continued picnic; but when you got into the swamps, or breasted a range of mountains, it soon turned into a heroic and sometimes into a desperate. undertaking. Then it became a supreme test of lungs and limbs and courage. Winding up through dangerous gorges and over rocky heights, this creaking Transvaal buck-wagon, the forerunner of civilization, dragged its perilous way. Its string of straining and panting oxen, every back on the hump, every nose within an inch of the ground, goaded to the limit of exertion by the reverberating cracks of a fortyfoot whip, was, to me, an important element in a scene of physical splendor. And then at sundown, when we outspanned our cattle, cooked our food, smoked our pipes, and discussed the day’s doings round the camp-fires with Boers and Kaffirs from other wagons, as they happened to visit us, I, at any rate, amid these scenes, soon became aware that nature herself had taken me in hand, and that there was room in my heart for all manner of human sympathies; and that certainly, if I could have had my way, the whites and the blacks in South Africa would have worked out their social and political problems without a suspicion of bloodshed. But the collective interests of nations look upon Africa in a different light. I was soon led to observe that, so far as Africa was concerned, the interests of human society on the whole, and ideas of social justice in particular, were represented for the most part by shiploads of rum and rifles, by the debauching of Kaffir life, the almost fiendish search for gold and diamonds, and the harrying of the Boers from the Cape to the Zambesi.
On my first trip with a wagon and oxen I shipped as a sort of ‘dead-head,’ learning the business. My second venture was with my own outfit. The route, with a load of miscellaneous merchandise, was from Durban in Natal to Bethlehem in the Orange Free State. I hired a driver for the trip, a goodnatured mission Kaffir. His name was Grumpy. He could handle a whip, cook a meal, speak English after a fashion, swear, drink, and steal upon occasion with the best of his profession. In the matter of stealing, however, he drew the line at his own master. To me he was incorruptibly honest. So far as cheating and general iniquity were concerned, he never tired of reminding me that he had been educated in a school of experts, that is, of white men. I shall never forget the first time Grumpy reminded me of this fact. His first month’s wages consisted of a handful of silver coins, among which there happened to be a florin, that is, a twoshilling piece. Taking my ignorance for granted, he held the coin up before me and looked at it half sneeringly, as if it contained a dangerous or snake-like quality. Then grinning from ear to ear he said, ‘Baas, that’s a Scotchman.’ Of course I demanded an explanation, and his story substantially was as follows : —
‘When I was still at my Kraal in Swaziland, a number of years ago, the boys coming home from the Diamond Field brought news that they had been cheated. You must understand,’ Grumpy explained, ‘our boys are particularly fond of silver coins. Bulk means a good deal in Kaffirland. In buying cows and swapping them for wives there is nothing like a heap of silver coins to count and shuffle and squabble about. But you see, Baas, at that time the green Kaffirs did n’t understand the difference in value, or notice the difference in size, between a florin and a half-crown piece. Well, once upon a time, hundreds of these Kaffir boys had been working all winter long, road-making and trench-digging near Kimberley, and when the time came, the contractor, who was a Scotchman, paid them their wages for the most part in florins, but counted them as half-crown pieces, and pocketed the difference. When the trick was discovered the contractor had departed. But Kaffirs never forget an injury of this kind; consequently ever since, through the length and breadth of Kaffirland, a florin is known as a Scotchman.’
Before long Grumpy and I became fast friends, and not once did he abuse the trust I placed in him. In posting me on the geography of the country, on the methods of handling the oxen, and on the other details of wagon-life, his services were invaluable. At the same time no schoolmaster could possibly have been more patient or have taken more pleasure in explaining to me the proper intonation and meaning of words in his Kaffir vocabulary.
Grumpy and his companions were great smokers. On the trek at night, after the oxen had been securely fastened to the yokes, it was customary for the boys to construct in the soil a sort of tunnel about two inches high and ten or twelve feet in length and fill it with water. At one end the pipe bowl was inserted, at the other end the mouthpiece. Then the boys, lying flat on their stomachs, rolled over in turns and inhaled great gulps of the intoxicating fumes. At such times, after I came to understand their language in some degree, I delighted to retire to my bunk on top of the wagonload and listten, sometimes until midnight, to the orations, all about terrible fights and prodigious feasts, with which the boys regaled each other between their turns at the pipe.
But this first trip into the Free State with Grumpy as factotum was particularly memorable on account of an unfortunate experience on my first hunting expedition.
We had successfully scaled the Drakensburg Mountains and were encamped one afternoon at a drift of the Wilge River, when a couple of Boers came along and invited me to go hunting with them for an hour or two. I possessed a good rifle and a splendid shooting pony, so without delay we set out in search of the game. And game enough there was, to be sure. We were hardly out of sight of our wagons when, cantering over a ‘rise,’we came in plain view of a great herd of blesbok, the head of the column close at hand, with a long string behind it stretching out, it seemed, for miles, clear to the horizon. Catching sight of us, the mass as with one accord got under way and, headed by a number of leaders, tore across the veldt directly in front of us in a terrific stampede. My companions knew just what to do under the circumstances, and before I had sufficiently recovered from the excitement of the gallop to be able to aim straight, five or six of the animals had already succumbed to their skillful marksmanship. It was my first hunt and I suppose I was crazy with excitement, nevertheless, ever since I have always been heartily ashamed of my almost fiendish behavior that afternoon as a sportsman. I had always supposed that if I should fire deliberately at a house or a mountain, I could manage to hit it in some way. But after firing shot after shot as fast as I could ram the cartridges into my rifle, at a solid mass of galloping blesboks I soon began to wonder what on earth had become of the bullets. Apart from the blesboks there was actually nothing in sight to aim at but the sky.
Meanwhile the Boers, continuing the hunt in their own way, aiming at animals, not at herds, had galloped off in different directions while the bewildered blesboks, cut up into panicstricken squadrons by the galloping hunters, were tearing across the plains in different directions, for all the world like so many vanishing dust-storms.
In less than ten minutes from the time the herd had been sighted I stood alone on the veldt at the side of my horse, bemoaning my luck, and pondering on the next move.
But no, I was not alone after all. On a hillock some two hundred yards away I sighted a solitary bull blesbok. He was calmly surveying me and my pony in the most inquisitive manner. ‘Going to drop dead in a minute or two,’ I said to myself. So I waited. I had only one cartridge left in my belt and I might need that, I soliloquized, to kill something else on the wav back to the wagons. But it seems the old ram on the hillock had plans of his own, for suddenly he wheeled round and ambled slowly away, whipping the air with a broken and dangling hind leg. In a second I was in the saddle and after him. But the faster I galloped, the nimbler the old buck became on his three legs. I could scarcely believe my senses. He could trot and ‘tripple’ and gallop at will. But if I could n’t shoot straight, I had learned as a boy to ride anything and everything in the shape of a horse, and on this occasion my pony was a jewel of his kind. If I could remember them I should certainly be ashamed to give the details of that first African gallop across the veldt, dodging a labyrinth of holes, ant-hills, and boulders. It was a cruel errand. That pony was wingfooted, eagle-eyed, and remorseless; the game old blesbok, limbering along ahead of us and now at. last easing up a little, was doomed. In the end he simply halted, faced us, and awaited our approach. The tragedy was then completed with my last bullet.
But the end of the adventure was not yet. The primitive methods whereby in the dusk of the evening I beheaded and skinned that animal would better not be described. Let it suffice to say that in a few minutes I started on my return to the wagons with the hide and the hindquarters of the blesbok securely fastened behind my saddle.
But I had never given a thought to the course I had taken in my gallop across the veldt. I kept on and on, and before long it grew dark and somewhat cold. So I dismounted, and after thinking it over, I knee-haltered the horse and let him go, crept head first into a large ant-bear-hole for a night’s lodging, and made myself as comfortable as was possible under the circumstances, using the blesbok hide for a blanket.
The night was dark as pitch. Sleep was out of the question. I suppose that it was the haunches and the raw hide that attracted the creatures, but before long it really seemed as if I had settled down in a village of wild pigs and insulted the whole community. To begin with, squeaking incessantly, they seemed to be racing round and round in a circle, taking me for its centre. Then a number of jackals, drawing nearer and nearer, joined in the chorus. But I soon discovered that if I disliked the noise I fairly dreaded the silence. During the quiet spells I knew that something was chewing industriously at the projecting ends of the raw hide in which I was enveloped. It was hard work for me to keep kicking incessantly, but whenever I rested for a minute the chewing developed into vigorous and vicious tugs, the significance of which it was easy for one in my position to appreciate.
However, I kicked the night through in safety, and early in the morning, to my delight, I found my horse a short distance away, nibbling contentedly at his breakfast.
My troubles, however, were by no means ended. I spent the day as I had the evening before, wandering on and on without sighting a farmhouse or a scrap of a road. Luckily I had some matches, and at noon I built a fire and had some blesbok steak to eat, and when night came again, the blaze I made kept the jackals and pigs at a distance. The following day, the third after leaving my wagons, I was rescued in a curious manner.
Approaching a ’Krantz ’ or stony hillock, I was leading my horse through the high grass, when suddenly right in front of me up jumped a little bit of a Bushman boy about three feet high, and scampered away in the direction of the Krantz. Then I noticed something like a tent on the hillside, behind which the little oddity took refuge. In another minute I found myself in the presence of a Bushman and his wife. They were of the half-domesticated variety. The man could speak a few Dutch words and I had little difficulty in explaining my situation. He belonged to a Free State Boer, but at the time was on a pilgrimage of some kind and had halted for the day to doctor a snake bite from which he was suffering. After loading their stomachs with my blesbok meat, I set out again with the Bushman as guide. Just before sundown we came in sight of our wagons. Grumpy had no difficulty in persuading me that for two days I must have been wandering round in a circle.
My next picture has the Boers for its centrepiece. For a while, after I had made sufficient money at the ‘transport’ business to enable me to trade a little on my own account, I made my headquarters in the Komati district on a farm, the property of a man named Prinsloo. I was trading at the time and making trips in different directions. In all that region, where the Steyn, the Joubert, and the Botha families predominated and at a later date became renowned for their patriotism, there was no such hater and baiter of the British as this man Prinsloo. And not without reason. Being too old himself for active service, he made up for it by perpetually rehearsing his exploits and experience to the rising generation and inspiring it with his heroic spirit.
In the struggle in South Africa, both past and to come, the individuality of these rugged farmers was at slake. As the Boer looked at it, and very reasonably, on the one side there were business and imperial interests, backed up by humbug diplomacy; and on his own side there were the simple issues of his home and his national existence. Old man Prinsloo was not only saturated with traditions and experiences of what he called British tyranny, but his own family had a personal grievance of the bitterest nature. He was by no means blind to the benefits of civilization, and being fairly well educated, he had, in an evil day, sent his daughter to some private establishment at the Cape, to be educated. It happened to be a garrison town of some kind, where the redcoats were continually coming and going. He lost track of his child and that is all the outside world knew about the case; but everybody understood what had happened, and what was happening to young girls all over the world, especially in small out-of-the-way communities where scarlet jackets were in camp or garrison. I have heard Africander women allude to it under their breath as ‘The curse of the redcoats.’ With this private affair added to the national issue, Prinsloo’s rage against the British was simply titanic.
But to do justice to him and to account, in a measure, for my personal estimate and impressions of these Boers, I will direct attention to another side of his character.
One evening while I was encamped on the high veldt which, on their long trips from the Kaffir Lands to the Diamond Fields, hundreds of natives were at all times crossing, the weather took a most unusual turn. It was in the spring of the year, when all over these fire-swept and blackened flats little tufts of green grass were beginning to sprout. The game from the Bush Lands was arriving in long strings and small herds, and traveling away to the southward. On the evening in question a snowstorm of unexampled severity — in fact snowstorms were almost unheard of in that part of the country — swept over these high lands. That night, old as he was, Prinsloo drove round among the farms in the district and collected a large party of his friends and relations. About one o’clock in the morning the party arrived at my encampment. For the most part the men were on horseback, but there were also two or three cape carts loaded with fuel and kettles and coffee. A medley of voices aroused me from slumber with cries for blankets and coffee, with which they knew I was well supplied. Then Prinsloo himself jerked aside the canvas curtain from the end of the wagon and explained to me that the Kaffirs on the Kimberley highroad, a couple of miles away, were huddling together in heaps and freezing to death by the score.
It did not take the party long to get under way again. Before morning every Boer in the district was on the scene. The rescue of these naked unfortunates on that snow-covered highway by Prinsloo and his followers is the most pathetic and one of the most humanly gratifying of my African memories.
But to return to the Prinsloo farm. One day I returned from a short trip on horseback and alighted at the farmhouse door. Prinsloo himself came out and assisted me in caring for my horse. For some time I had been trying to sell him something or other, but on this occasion, when I broached the subject as we were entering the house, he dismissed the matter with the laconic reply, ‘After the war, my boy, after the war.’ The expression ‘After the war,’ was as old as the first trek of the Boers northward from the Cape Colony. It came in very handy in the common affairs of life. For want of a better expression or excuse, domestic arrangements, building operations, or perhaps hunting trips and such like, year in and year out, were being postponed until ‘after the war.’ In this way its absolute certainty was forever kept in the minds of the people. It was a sort of perpetual echo that had floated down the years from that never-to-be-forgotten day at Slaghters Nek in the Free State, when a number of Boer prisoners had been strung up like criminals, and their wives had been dragged to the scene to witness the execution, as a lesson, it was said, to future generations. Among children the words must have filtered into the blood somehow. One day I asked a little mite of a patriot to run on an errand for me. He said he thought his mother might not approve of his doing so. Personally, however, he did n’t object, and while he would n’t do it just then, he hoped to be able to earn a few pennies from the ‘red-necks’ in this way, ‘after the war.’
However, Prinsloo and I stepped into the house and found therein quite a company of young Boers, sipping coffee and smoking their pipes. I understood in an instant that important business was being discussed, and it did not take Prinsloo long to enlighten me. I had barely taken my seat, when out it came, straight from the shoulder, somewhat in this way: —
‘Look here, young man,’ he began, ‘some of these fellows say they like you; they think you are to be trusted. At any rate, when you sell us anything we usually get what we bargain for, which is no small recommendation. But what I have to tell you now is that affairs in our country have just about come to a head, and as you have seen a good deal and know a good deal about our cause in this district, you must now get out on five minutes’ notice, or swear in, do you understand? Swearing in,’ he continued, ‘does n’t mean that you will be commanded to fight for us, but simply that you must come under the Boer rule: keep your mouth shut, and help us in any other way you may choose.’
Under these conditions it did n’t take me long to ‘swear in.’
That same night there was a big gathering of Boers in that neighborhood. It was nearly midnight when they separated. On the following day a column of redcoats on the main wagon-road to Pretoria wus attacked at Bronkhurst Sprint by Boers coming from nearly every direction. The British force was practically annihilated. Even old man Prinsloo was satisfied. This was the beginning of the first Boer struggle for independence in 1880.
The next is a scene from Kaffirland. I make no apologies for my defense of the Kaffirs. My admiration for these people at that time is easily understood. The original human stamp was there, and you could study its manifestations to your heart’s desire. I confess that I was ignorant at the time, and lacking in social experience; nevertheless, I was mentally at war with the artificialities and barbarities of civilization, and I found much in these unadulterated Kaffirs to renew my faith in human effort and human sympathies.
Some time before Sir Garnet Wolseley appeared upon the scene and burned their villages, dynamited their caves, and, with the help of his Zwasi allies, massacred the population, I was one day swapping salt for Kaffir corn at the ‘stadt’ or town of a powerful chief of the Maccatecs. His name, I think, was Mampoor. As this was the third or fourth visit I had made to this Kraal, I had the run of the place, and was on friendly terms with the chief. On the occasion I am now trying to describe he was seated, or rather squatting, in front of his hut. He was one of the finest looking specimens I ever saw of what was called a refugee Zulu Kaffir, tall, light-skinned, stalwart, and heavily fleshed. He knew how to combine business with pleasure by methods unheard of in civilized circles. At his side, jabbering incessantly, was a buxom intombi or maiden. She was next in order as his bride elect. Once in a while the huge frame of the chief quivered and gave a sort of a chuckle as he happened to catch and enjoy one of her flattering remarks. But his attention, for the most part, was concentrated on the eloquence of three or four old men, minor chiefs or indunas, who were squatting on the ground in front of him.
These old men were trying to persuade the chief to provide an extra ox or two for the grand ceremony that was to take place in the afternoon. It is the picture of this ceremony, with its lessons of courage, endurance, and loyalty, that I wish now to describe, to account in a measure for the fascination which, I confess, Kaffir life had for me at the time.
In the centre of the town was a sort of common, or large enclosure. At the time I entered, inside the palisades, in a dense ring round the edges, the whole population of the town was massed. In a reserved centre space, a huge sacrificial ox stood at bay within a ring of glittering assegais. Squatted on the ground at. a short distance from the nose of the animal was the royal butcher, horribly painted and befeathered. He was addressing the animal and telling him, in fitful screams, just what he was going to do to him later on, and once in a while the butcher changed his tone to a whine, and implored his victim, when he felt the tickle of the assegai in his heart, not to get excit ed about it, but to take his time and to fall in such and such a vay, with nose upturned to the wide sky, in order that the omens might be lucky, and the flesh untainted.
And just then, amid a terrific din of kettledrums and the shouts of thousands, the boys themselves, glittering and handsome, brandishing their first spears and shields, entered the arena in long procession. The feast was in their honor. Their young hearts were filled with joy and triumph. The period of trial and purification was over. For a whole moon period they had been out among the rocks on the mountain side, for the most part hungry and thirsty and blanketless. Their taskmasters had never let up on them for one minute. They had been drilled and buffeted, hammered with knobkerries and pricked with assegais and hardened up to the very acme of daring and endurance. They were now to enter manhood, and nothing remained but the triumph and the feasting. One afteranother these war-bedecked young warriors jumped out of the procession into the arena and with frantic gestures and marvelous limb-play told the assembly, in passionate language, just what it is to be manly and dexterous and stout-hearted. Each one in turn was applauded.
The young girls, here and there in bunches, were jabbering incessantly and bubbling over with delight, while a number of old hags, doubled up, dried up, crooked beyond conception, and crazy with excitement, ambled around the arena in weird and trance-like gyrations. Then suddenly the centre space was cleared of everything but the ox and the dancing butcher. The assegai flashed in the sunlight, and the feast was on.
For reasons, then, which may or may not be apparent to my readers, I was in sympathy with those dissatisfied Boers and those heathenish Kaffirs. In my ignorance of or dissatisfaction with society, I suppose I failed to appreciate the forced relationship that, practically speaking, existed and exists between profession and expediency. My mind, at the time, was honestly crammed with precepts, proverbs, texts, and old saws about liberty, the pursuit of happiness, human rights and property rights; and with these fundamentals forever buzzing in my brain, I could not, for the life of me, account for the conduct of Europeans in Africa. From my point of view then, with Christianity as a background, the excuse for the African wars was reduced to the simple objections of the ordinary traveler, that the Kaffir, as a rule, lacked soap, and the Boer, as a rule, forgot to shave.
It was at this stage of my mental and physical experience in Africa that I met a certain individual, and immediately my whole line of thought and interest was changed; and as the result, within eight months I landed on American soil. It was just after the capture of the Kaffir chief, Sekukuni, by Sir Garnet Wolseley and his native allies, the Zwasis, in 1879, I think.
I was crossing the high veldt at the time, on the way from Leydenburg to Heidelburg. The journey itself was very interesting for other reasons, which cannot well be omitted from my narrative. A few miles out of Leydenburg, the wagon-road winds up the face of a precipitous mountain. With anything but a clever span of oxen, the ascent was long drawn out and extremely difficult. One morning, on account of a break in the wagon-gear, I was compelled to outspan some distance from the summit of the hill. Shortly after the sun had cleared the mountain-tops, the blanket of mist in the long valley below quickly evaporated, and exposed to view a remarkable scene.
A straggling column of Zwasi Kaffirs, about five thousand in number, came out of the mist and began to ascend the hill. They were returning from the country of their hereditary enemies the Maccatees, where they had been helping the British to burn and sack their principal town. Here and there could be seen small bunches of captured cattle and women, and bringing up the rear was a long string of the wounded. Efforts had been made in Leydenburg to provide treatment for some of them in the hospitals; but what was the use? When the main body arrived and marched, chanting and jabbering, through the streets, the patients tore off the bandages and were soon hobbling along in the rear of the procession. Later, when these unfortunates passed my wagon, instead of bandages there were patches of clay, and in some of the more jagged wounds made by potlegs and such missiles, which had been utilized instead of bullets, there were plugs of twisted grass. Recovery for these stout-hearted warriors was a foregone conclusion.
It was on this occasion that I had the singular fortune again to meet Peixoto. Like many other adventurers, he had taken service and in the course of time had become naturalized among the Zwasis. His account of the campaign in Sekukuni’s country was particularly interesting in relation to the development of his own character. It seems he, with a troop of his Zwasi warriors, had been left behind for a day or two to patrol the mountains after the caves had been dynamited by the British. He affirmed, with savage glee, that when he came away from the place, by placing his ear to the ground he could still hear dogs barking and children crying down below in the sealed-up caves. He was glad, he said, he was not a Christian; the Kaffir and Kaffir life were good enough for him.
However, I continued my journey, and one evening was comfortably outspanned on the high veldt when a large cape cart, drawn by four horses, came along and made preparations to camp alongside our wagons for the night. I happened to have two or three very tame chickens which were eating out of my hand and perching at times on my shoulders. Very soon an elderly man, one of a group which had arrived with the cape cart, caught sight of the chickens and came over to my wagon gayly clapping his hands. With chickens as a point of contact, a conversation ensued that was prolonged into the night and continued with unabated interest the following morning. I told the man a good deal about, myself, my plans and my philosophy; and one thing leading to another, he happened to strike into the subject of Democracy and the United States. To me, at the time, it was absolutely a new world of thought. Before I met this man, had any one asked me to define a Republican, very probably I should have replied that he was a horrid sort of a demagogue or disturber of society like Charles Bradlaugh, who, on five minutes’ notice, would, perhaps, have shipped Queen Victoria to Botany Bay.
As I call to mind our conversation, however, this man had a number of serious criticisms to make of the tendencies of democratic government in the United States. Nevertheless, he drew, for my benefit, a brilliant picture of its principles and possibilities, and before his analysis was finished, my interest and enthusiasm in the matter were aroused to the highest pitch. Finally he gave me a good deal of inside history in regard to affairs, and consequently in regard to my own prospects, in Africa, for a number of years to come, and he strongly advised me to make the best of my way to the United States.
This man was the celebrated war correspondent known to Americans in particular, as well as to all the world, as ‘Bull Run Russell.’
As soon, then, as I was able to dispose of what little stock and interests I owned in the country, I set out on the long trip to America.