The Settler and the Savage. Robert Michael Ballantyne
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you don’t object to me on that account?”
“Object? oh no! But it is so funny to have to look up so high. It’s like speaking to father when he’s on horseback.”
“Well, Gertie, extra height has its advantages and its inconveniences. Doubtless it was given to me for some good end, just as a pretty little face and figure were given to you.”
“You are very impudent, Mr Hans.”
“Am I? Then I must ask your pardon. But tell me, Gertie, what do you think of the new life that is before you?”
“How stupid you are, Hans! If the new life were behind me I might be able to answer, but how can I tell how I shall like what I don’t know anything about?”
“Nay, but you know something of the beginning of it,” returned the young Dutchman, with an amused smile, “and you have heard much of what is yet to come. What do you think of the prospect before you?”
“Think of the prospect?” repeated Gertie, knitting her brows and looking down with a pretended air of profound thought; “let me see: the prospect as I’ve heard father say to mother,—which was just a repetition of what I had heard him previously say to these queer brothers Skyd—is a life in the bush—by which I suppose he means the bushes—in which we shall have to cut down the trees, plough up the new soil, build our cottages, rear our sheep and cattle, milk our cows, make our butter, grow our food, and sometimes hunt it, fashion our clothing, and protect our homes. Is that right?”
“Well, that’s just about it,” was the answer; “how do you like that prospect?”
“I delight in it,” cried the girl, with a flash in her brilliant black eyes, while she half laughed at her own sudden burst of enthusiasm. “Only fancy! mother milking the cows, and me making butter, and Scholtz ploughing, and Dally planting, and nurse tending Junkie and making all sorts of garments, while father goes out with his gun to shoot food and protect us from the Kafirs.”
“’Tis a pleasant picture,” returned Hans, with a bland smile, “and I hope may be soon realised—I must bid you goodbye now, Gertie, we separate here.”
“Do you go far away?” asked the girl, with a touch of sadness, as she put her little hand into that of the young giant.
“A goodish bit. Some six or eight days’ journey from here,—according to the weather.”
“You’ll come and see us some day, won’t you, Hans?”
“Ja—I will,” replied Hans, with emphasis.
The whips cracked again, the oxen strained, the lumbering waggons groaned as they moved away, and while the Scotch band passed over the Zuurbergen range and headed in the direction of the Winterberg mountains, their English friends spread themselves over the fertile plains of Albany.
A few days of slow but pleasant journeying and romantic night-bivouacking brought the latter to their locations on the Kowie and Great Fish River.
On the way, the party to which Edwin Brook belonged passed the ground already occupied by the large band of settlers known as “Chapman’s party,” which had left Algoa Bay a few weeks before them in an imposing procession of ninety-six waggons. They had been accompanied to their future home by a small detachment of the Cape Corps, the officer in command of which gave them the suggestive advice, on bidding them goodbye, never to leave their guns behind them when they went out to plough! Although so short a time located, this party had produced a marvellous change in the appearance of the wilderness, and gave the settlers who passed farther eastward, an idea of what lay before themselves. Fields had already been marked out; the virgin soil broken up; timber cut, and bush cleared; while fragile cottages and huts were springing up here and there to supplant the tents which had given the first encampments a somewhat military aspect. Grotesque dwellings these, many of them, with mats and rugs for doors, and white calico or empty space for windows. It was interesting, in these first locations, to mark the development of character among the settlers. Those who were practical examined the “lie” of the land and the nature of the soil, with a view to their future residence. Timid souls chose their sites with reference to defence. Men of sentiment had regard to the picturesque, and careless fellows “squatted” in the first convenient spot that presented itself. Of course errors of judgment had to be corrected afterwards on all hands, but the power to choose and change was happily great at first, as well as easy.
As Brook’s party advanced, portions of it dropped off or turned aside, until at last Edwin found himself reduced to one family besides his own. Even this he parted from on a ridge of land which overlooked his own “location,” and about noon of the same day his waggons came to a halt on a grassy mound, which was just sufficiently elevated to command a magnificent view of the surrounding country.
“Your location,” said his Dutch waggon-driver, with a curious smile, as though he should say, “I wonder what you’ll do with yourselves.”
But the Dutchman made no further remark. He was one of the taciturn specimens of his class, and began at once to unload the waggon. With the able assistance of Brook and his men, and the feeble aid of the “Tottie,” or Hottentot leader of the “span” of oxen, the boxes, ploughs, barrels, bags, cases, etcetera, which constituted the worldly wealth of the settlers, were soon placed on the green sward. Then the Dutchman said “goeden-dag,” or farewell, shook hands all round, cracked his long whip, and went off into the unknown wilderness, leaving the Brook family to its reflections.
Chapter Seven.
The “Location.”
In the midst of the confused heap of their property, Edwin Brook sat down on a large chest beside his wife and daughter, and gazed for some time in silence on his new estate and home.
To say truth, it was in many respects a pleasant prospect. A bright blue sky overhead, a verdant earth around. Grassy hills and undulations of rich pasture-land swept away from their feet like a green sea, until stopped in the far distance by the great blue sea itself. These were dotted everywhere with copses of the yellow-flowered mimosa-bush, through openings in which the glitter of a stream could be seen, while to the left and behind lay the dark masses of a dense jungle filled with arboreous and succulent plants, acacias and evergreens, wild-looking aloes, tall euphorbias, quaint cactuses, and a great variety of flowering shrubs—filled also, as was very soon discovered, with antelopes, snakes, jackals, hyenas, leopards, and other wild creatures. The only familiar objects which broke the wild beauty of the scene were the distant white specks which they knew to be the tents just put up by those settlers who chanced to be their “next neighbours.”
“May God protect and bless us in our new home!” said Edwin Brook, breaking the silence, and reverently taking off his cap.
A heartfelt “Amen” was murmured by Mrs Brook and Gertie, but a strange, though not unpleasant, feeling of loneliness had crept over their spirits, inducing them to relapse into silence, for they could not avoid realising strongly that at last they were fairly left alone to fight the great battle of life. Edwin Brook in particular, on seeing the long team of the Dutch driver disappear over a distant ridge, was for the first time deeply impressed with, as it were, the forsaken condition of himself and his family. It was plain that he must take root there and grow—or die. There was no neighbouring town or village from which help could be obtained in any case of emergency; no cart or other means of conveyance to remove their goods from the spot on which they had been left; no doctor in case of sickness; no minister in cases either of joy or sorrow—except indeed (and it was a blessed exception) Him who came to our world “not to be ministered unto, but to minister.”
Strong in the comfort that this assurance gave, Edwin Brook shook off the lethargy that had been stealing over him, and set about the duties of the present hour. The tent had to be pitched, the trunks and boxes conveyed into it, a fire kindled, the kettle boiled, the goods and chattels piled and secured from the weather, firewood cut to prepare for the night-bivouac, etcetera.
Much of this work was already in progress, for George Dally,—with that ready resource and quiet capacity of adaptation to circumstances which he had displayed on the voyage out and on the journey to the location,—had