Six Months at the Cape

It was a most enjoyable ride in the bright sunshine that day. Everything was fresh, green, and glittering after the long-continued rain. Baboons were seen on the way, and shouted at us, whether in defiance, derision, or encouragement, is best known to themselves. All the “drifts” or fords were passed in safety till we came to the last on Baviaans River. Here the powerful stream rose to our saddles, and the opposite bank had been so much washed away that it seemed impossible to get the cart up.

“I’ll cross,” said Edwards, “and if necessary we’ll cut a slope in the bank.”

In he went, floundered through, and managed to ascend the opposite bank, though not without a severe struggle, for besides being high and steep, it was very wet—coated, in fact, with soft mud.

The Tottie with the led horse followed his master. I followed the Tottie—close in his steps, so as to get the benefit of his experience, either by imitating or avoiding his example. We gained the opposite side. I saw the Hottentot’s horse rise before me as if mounting a staircase. He slipped, and floundered on his nose and knees. The led horse disconcerted him. Just then my own horse made a bound up the bank, and pawed the mud for a moment. “Slack the reins! give him his head!” shouted Edwards. I did so. With a mighty plunge and a groan the sturdy animal bore me to the top of the bank in safety. I turned and saw the Tottie’s horse throw up its head and fore legs, as if imploringly, to the skies, and fall backwards. The Tottie himself appeared for a moment in the form of a spread-eagle, and then horse and man went back with a sounding splash into the river.

Hobson, who had been all the time enjoying the spectacle, now crossed with the cart; but, on taking the bank, despite their utmost efforts, the powerful pair stuck fast on their knees and noses. Meanwhile the Hottentot scrambled out with his animals, none the worse for the plunge.

As the horses could not move the cart an inch in their semi-perpendicular position, we unharnessed them, and the four of us, by slow degrees, working one wheel at a time, zig-zagged the cart upward a few feet, when horses were once more attached, and the crossing was finally accomplished.

That evening we came to “Smith’s farm,” one of the places where the Diamond-field coaches stop to change horses. It was beyond the mountains at the commencement of the great rolling plains. Here I had arranged to await the arrival of the mail-cart, and proceed viâ Bedford to Grahamstown.

And here, with deep regret, I bade farewell to my friend Hobson—a true-hearted, well-educated Englishman, born in the colony; the son of one of the “1820 settlers;” a brave, bold, fearless, loving man, who hunted lions, leopards, elephants, zebras, and all the large game of Africa in his youth, and was “out” in the war,—a warm friend, a splendid type of those hardy men whose lot it is to subdue the wilderness.

There were several hours to pass before the arrival of the mail-cart. Smith and his people were busy, and, as there were no guests at the time in that lonely road-side inn, I had plenty of leisure to bask in the sunshine, sketch the cactus bushes that abounded there,5 gaze dreamily over the boundless Karroo, and meditate sadly on friendships and partings.

The first thing that struck me on turning from Smith’s humble abode to ramble on the plains was the presence of a bad smell—a very bad smell! I brought my nose to bear in various directions, but could discover no cause. Having nothing to do I applied myself with diligence to the investigation, all the more earnestly that I found it impossible to get out of the tainted atmosphere. Regarding the heavens steadily, for it was very calm, and making up my mind as to the direction which the little wind that there was came from, I followed my nose, and was led by it to the decaying carcass of an ox which lay not a hundred yards from Smith’s door. My opinion of Smith was lowered! When I passed to windward of the carcass, the bad smell ceased.

I mention this, not because it is an interesting incident, but because it is a feature of South African travel. Wherever you go on the Karroo, there you will find the rotting remains of poor creatures, which, having “died in harness,” are cast loose for the benefit of the vultures. These ill-looking and disgusting birds are most useful scavengers. They scent the quarry from afar—so far, indeed, as to be beyond the vision of human eyes. You may gaze round you far and near in the plains, and behold no sign of any bird; but kill one of your horses and leave it dead on the plain, and straightway, from various quarters of the heavens, you will see little specks which grow and float, and circle and grow, until they assume the ugly form and huge proportions of unclean vultures, which will perch on the carcass, and make away with it in a remarkably short space of time. It was only the skin and bones of the ox which rendered themselves obnoxious at Smith’s. Vultures had cleared out of it every morsel of flesh some days before.

As I have said, there are no roads worthy of the name in many parts of the Karroo. Those that exist are often in such a dilapidated condition that travellers sometimes find it more pleasant to forsake them and drive over the rugged veldt. This can be easily understood when it is remembered that the roads are traversed by the celebrated “Cape wagons,” which are of enormous size and weight, requiring from sixteen to twenty oxen to draw them. Such vehicles finding a hollow in a road, soon make it a deep hole, which finally becomes an impassable cavern. In drawing, struggling, and fighting with these wagons, sick and weakly animals constantly succumb, are left to die, and thus vultures are supplied with a continual feast, while carcasses and skulls, and bleaching bones, are familiar objects by the roadsides on the plains.

At last the mail-cart arrived, and I secured a place.

It is usually a small two-wheeled vehicle drawn by four horses, the driver of which seems to think that every one ought to possess an iron frame as callous as his own. The cart has a species of canvas hood, such as I have described in a former letter, stretched on a movable frame. It serves the purpose of a monstrous parasol. You get into this cart, the team is cleverly started by, it may be, a smart fellow, and driven away with the speed at which mails ought to travel; or it is wildly started by a conceited driver, who sets out with a plunge, and continues his course with a prolonged crash, as though the fate of empires reposed in his mail-bags. You come to a ditch; you go in with a plunge, and come out with a jerk. Your head hits the back of the hood when you go in, your nose hits the back of the driver when you come out. A rut in the road causes one wheel to descend suddenly about eighteen inches; or an unavoidable lump of that height produces the same effect; the hood gives you a deliberate punch on the head. Before you have quite recovered, it gives you another. A miniature precipice appears. This was caused by the latest waterspout choosing to cut the road instead of follow it. The mail-cart does not pause. Its springs were made, apparently, to spring. It descends. For one instant you are left in the air, the next you resume your seat—with violence. This sort of thing does not last long, however, for you quickly become wise. You acquire the habit of voluntarily stiffening your backbone at the ditches, of yielding to the ruts, and of holding on at the precipices. Still, with all your precautions, you suffer severely. I have been seriously informed that, during some of their plunges on what may be called stormy roads, men have been jolted bodily out of mail-carts at the Cape, and I can easily believe it.

The Diamond-field mail was full, but they kindly made room for me, and plastered my portmanteau, like an excrescence, on the other baggage.

The drive to Bedford was too short to admit of much familiar intercourse with the diggers,—if diggers they were. Subsequently I met with a successful digger, who told me a good deal about the diamond-fields. He was a Scot, who had left a lucrative claim to be managed by a partner while he took a trip to the “old country.” His account of diamond digging inclined me to think that coal-heaving is a much easier occupation, and more remunerative on the whole, except in the case of lucky diggers. This Scot showed me what he called a “big diamond,” and allowed me to make a careful drawing of it. He could not guess at its value. If it had been a pure diamond like the “star of South Africa,” it would have been worth many thousands of pounds, but it was not pure. According to digger parlance it was “off-colour,” and, therefore, not excessively valuable. Still it was a precious gem, and would doubtless fetch several hundreds of pounds. Of course it was unpolished, but even in that state was very beautiful. It weighed seventy-eight carats. The “star of South Africa,” above referred to, was a pure and magnificent gem. It was found by a Hottentot, named Swartzboy, sold by him for 400 pounds, and disposed of the same day for 12,000 pounds—so, at least, runs one account of the matter.

Late in the evening we reached Bedford.

As we started next morning at break of day my personal knowledge of that flourishing town is too limited to warrant many remarks thereon. It may be that the vision of ghostly houses passing our cart in the morning mists suggested to my sleepy imagination the idea of a town, but I cannot remember that it did. Possibly the fact that the population numbered above 1000 may have occurred to my mind, but I think not. It is more probable that the mind, if it operated at all, pictured the population as recumbent and snoring. Indeed, the only thing that memory will recall, when severely taxed, in regard to Bedford, is—bed, its first syllable.

Letter 9.

Crossing the Great Fish River—Travelling at the Cape as it is to be—Grahamstown, her Early Struggles and Present Prosperity

Travelling in South Africa is occasionally interrupted by sudden storms of rain which convert dry beds of streams into roaring torrents, and perennial rivers into devastating floods.

At the Great Fish River I came on a specimen of the mighty power of water in the ruins of a splendid bridge. The great floods of the previous year had carried one-half of it away. The other half—denuded of its flooring and all its woodwork, and standing out against the sky a mere skeleton of iron girders—still connected the left bank of the river with the massive tower of masonry in the middle. From this tower to the other bank was a gulf impassable to horse or cart. The great river itself flows in a deep channel. It was still somewhat flooded. From its high banks we saw it roaring more than forty feet beneath the level of the bridge. It was clear to the most ignorant eye that fording the stream was impossible. I looked inquiringly at the driver.

“You’ll have to go over on the rope,” he said, with a sardonic smile.

“The rope?” said I, with an earnest gaze at the impassable gulf.

“Yes, the rope. There’s a man crossing now.”

I looked again, and observed something like a cobweb on the sky between the central pier and the opposite bank. There was a black spot that resembled a spider moving slowly along the cobweb. It was a fellow-man!

“And the mails and the luggage?” I asked.

“Go over same way.”

“The cart and horses?”

“Don’t go over at all. Get fresh ones on other side. There was once a box on the river for hauling them over, but it’s been damaged.”

The process of crossing was begun at once.

The driver and some workmen shouldered the bags and baggage, while the passengers—of whom there were three—followed to the central pier.

To men with heads liable to giddiness the passage from the bank to the pier would have been trying, for, the floor having been carried away, we had to walk on the open girders, looking down past our feet to the torrent as to a miniature Niagara. The distance of forty feet seemed changed to four hundred from that position. Fortunately none of us were afflicted with giddy heads.

The flat space on the tower-top gained, we found two workmen engaged in tying our baggage to a little platform about four feet square, which was suspended by ropes to a couple of little wheels. These wheels travelled on a thick cable,—the spider web before referred to. The contrivance was hauled to and fro by a smaller line after the manner of our rocket apparatus for rescuing life at sea, and, when we passengers afterwards sat down on it with nothing but the tight grip of our hands on an iron bar to save us from falling into the flood below, we flattered ourselves that we had attained to something resembling the experience of those who have been saved from shipwreck.

Many people hold the erroneous doctrine that travellers and traffic create railways, whereas all experience goes to prove that railways create travellers and traffic. Of course at their first beginnings railways were formed by the few hundreds of travellers who were chiefly traffickers, but no sooner were they called into being than they became creative,—they turned thousands of stay-at-homes into travellers; they rushed between the great centres of industry, sweeping up the people in their train, and, with a grand contempt of littleness in every form, caught up the slow-going cars and coaches of former days in their huge embrace, and whirled them along in company with any number you chose of tons and bales of merchandise; they groaned up the acclivities of Highland hills, and snorted into sequestered glens, alluring, nay, compelling, the lonely dwellers to come out, and causing hosts of men, with rod and gun and hammer and botanical box, to go in; they scouted the old highroads, and went, like mighty men of valour, straight to the accomplishment of their ends, leaping over and diving under each other, across everything, through anything, and sticking at nothing, until over lands where, fifty years ago, only carts and coaches used to creep and poor pedestrians were wont to plod, cataracts of travellers now flow almost without intermission night and day—the prince rolling in his royal bedroom from palace to palace; the huntsman flying to the field, with his groom and horse in a box behind him; the artisan travelling in comfort to his daily toil, with his tools and a mysterious tin of victuals at his feet; thousands on thousands of busy beings hurrying through the land where one or two crawled before; shoals of foreigners coming in to get rid of prejudices and add “wrinkles to their horns,” while everything is cheapened, and, best of all, knowledge is increased by this healthy—though, it may be, rather rapid—moving about of men and women.

Thus railways have created travellers and traffic. But they have done much more; they have turned road-side inns into “grand hotels”; they have clambered up on the world’s heights, and built palatial abodes on the home of the mountain-hare and the eagle, where weak and worn invalids may mount without exertion, and drink in health and happiness with the freshest air of heaven.

The principle cannot be disputed that the creation of railways between great centres of industry has a direct tendency to stimulate that industry and to create other subsidiary industries with their travellers on business and travellers for pleasure. If railways ran over the Karroo, adventurous capitalists would come from all ends of the earth to see it; they would buy land when they found a convenient mode of running their produce to the markets of the large towns and the ports on the coast; they would start ostrich farms and breed horses, and grow wool, and build mighty dams, and sink artesian wells, as the French have done with some success I believe in Algiers. If railways were run up to the diamond-fields, adventurous diggers would crowd in hundreds to the great pit of Kimberley; some would succeed; those who failed would gravitate into the positions for which they were fitted by nature in a land where the want of labourers is a confessedly perplexing evil. The population would not only be increased by much new blood from without, but by that which results from prosperity and wealth within; off shoot, and as yet unimagined, enterprises would probably become numerous; additional lines would be pushed on into the gold regions; all sorts of precious gems and minerals, including “black diamonds,” are known to be abundant in the Transvaal, and,—but why go on? Those who agree with me understand these matters so well as to require no urging. As for those who don’t agree:

“The man convinced against his willIs of the same opinion still.”

What I have written is for the benefit of those who know little or nothing about South Africa. I will only add to it my own conviction,6 that the day is not far distant when a Cape man will breakfast one morning in Capetown, and dine next day at Port Elizabeth, (510 miles), run on to Grahamstown, (84 miles), to sup with a friend there take the early train to Graaff-Reinet, (160 miles), so as to have time for luncheon and a chat with a friend or relation before the starting of the night train for Kimberley, (280 miles), where he has to assist at the marriage of a sister with a diamond-digger who intends to spend his honeymoon at the Cliff Hotel amid the romantic scenery of the Catberg, and finish off with a week or two at Snowy Retreat, a magnificent hotel, (yet to be), on the tiptop of the Compassberg mountain.

This brings me back to the point at which I diverged—the Great Fish River, which takes its rise in the Sneewberg range.

What tremendous floods are implied in the carrying away of this bridge! What superabundance of water in that so-called land of drought! What opportunities for engineering skill to catch and conserve the water, and turn the “barren land” into fruitful fields! Don’t you see this, Periwinkle? If not, I will say no more, for, according to the proverb, “a nod is as good as a wink to the blind horse.”

Having crossed the bridge in safety we continued our journey in the new vehicle with fresh horses, and reached Grahamstown at four in the afternoon.

Between sixty and seventy years is not a great age for a city. Indeed, as cities go, Grahamstown may be called quite infantile. Nevertheless this youthful city has seen much rough work in its brief career.

Grahamstown was born in smoke, and cradled in war’s alarms. It began life in 1812, at which time the thieving and incorrigible Kafirs were driven across the Great Fish River—then the colonial boundary—by a strong force of British and Burgher troops under Colonel Graham. During these disturbed times it was established as headquarters of the troops which guarded the frontier.

When the infant was seven years old its courage and capacity were severely put to the proof. In the year 1818-19—just before the arrival of the “British settlers,”—it was deemed necessary to interfere in the concerns of contending Kafir chiefs, and to punish certain tribes for their continued depredations on the colony. For these ends, as well as the recovery of stolen cattle, a strong force was sent into Kafirland. While the troops were absent, a body of Kafirs assembled in the bush of the Great Fish River, from which they issued to attack Grahamstown. They were led by a remarkable man named Makana. He was also styled the Lynx.

This Kafir, although not a chief, rose to power by the force of a superior intellect and a strong will. He was well-known in Grahamstown, having been in the habit of paying it frequent visits, on which occasions he evinced great curiosity on all subjects, speculative as well as practical.

Makana appears to have been an apt scholar. Being a man of eloquence as well as originality, he soon acquired ascendency over most of the great chiefs of Kafirland, was almost worshipped by the people, who acknowledged him a warrior-chief as well as a prophet, and collected around him a large body of retainers. It has been thought by some that Makana was a “noble” savage, and that although he imposed on the credulity of his countrymen, his aim was to raise himself to sovereign power in order to elevate the Kafir race nearer to a level with Europeans.

But whatever be the truth regarding his objects, the invasion of Kafirland by the white men gave Makana an opportunity of which he was not slow to avail himself. His followers had suffered, with others, from the proceedings of the troops, and his soul was fired with a desire to be revenged and “drive the white men into the sea,”—a favourite fate, in the Kafir mind, reserved for the entire colonial family!

Makana was general enough to perceive that nothing effective could be accomplished by the mere marauding habits to which his countrymen were addicted. He had learned that “union is strength,” and, making use of his spirit-rousing power of eloquence, went about endeavouring to concentrate the aims of the savages and to direct their energies. In these efforts he was in some measure successful. He pretended to have received heavenly revelations, and to have been sent by the great spirit to avenge their wrongs; predicted certain success to the enterprise if his followers only yielded implicit obedience to his commands, and thus managed to persuade most of the various clans to unite their forces for a simultaneous attack on the headquarters of the British troops. He told them that he had power to call from their graves the spirits of their ancestors to assist them in the war, and confidently affirmed that it was decreed that they were to drive the white men across the Zwartkops River into the ocean, after which they should “sit down and eat honey!”

Early on the morning of the 22nd April 1819 this singular man led his force of 9000 sable warriors towards Grahamstown, and the affair had been conducted with so great secrecy that the few troops there were almost taken by surprise.

Enemies in the camp are always to be more dreaded than open foes. Makana had taken care to provide himself with a spy and informer, in the person of Klaas Nuka, the Government Interpreter to Colonel Wilshire, who was at that time in command of the troops. Three days previous to the attack, this villain—well aware of Makana’s approach—informed the Colonel that Kafirs had been seen in the precisely opposite direction. The unsuspecting Colonel at once fell into the trap. He detached the light company of the 38th regiment to patrol in the direction pointed out. Thus was the garrison of the town, which consisted of 450 European soldiers and a small body of mounted Hottentots, weakened to the extent of 100 men.

On that same April morning Colonel Wilshire was quietly inspecting a detachment of the mounted Cape Corps, when the Hottentot Captain Boezac, chief of a band of buffalo-hunters, informed him that he had just received information of Makana’s advance. The Colonel, mounted on a fleet charger, at once rode off with an escort of ten men to reconnoitre. He came unexpectedly on the enemy in a ravine not far from the town. They were taking a rest before rushing to the assault, and so sure were these poor savages of their irresistible power, that thousands of their wives and children followed them with their mats, pots, and cooking-jars ready to take possession of the place!

Colonel Wilshire retreated instantly, and there was need for haste. The Kafirs pursued him so closely that he reached his troops only a few minutes before them.

The small band of defenders more than made up for the difference in numbers, by the deadly precision of their fire. The Kafirs came on in a dense sable mass, led by their various chiefs, and generalled by the Lynx, who had impressed his followers with the belief that the muskets of the foe were charged only with “hot water!”

The field pieces of the troops were loaded with shrapnel shells, which at the first discharge mowed long lanes in the advancing masses, while musketry was discharged with deadly effect. But Kafirs are stern and brave warriors. On they came with wild cries, sending a shower of short spears, (assagais), before them, which, however, fell short. Regardless of the havoc in their ranks, they still came on, and the foremost men were seen to break short their assagais, with the evident intention of using them more effectively as daggers in hand-to-hand conflict. This was deliberately done by Makana’s orders, and showed his wisdom, for, with the great bodily strength, size, and agility of the Kafirs, and their overwhelming numbers, the attack, if promptly and boldly made at close quarters, could not have failed of success.