The Settler and the Savage. Robert Michael Ballantyne
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recover his previous train of thought Gertie bore him off in triumph, leaving the hospitable Dally and Mrs Scholtz to entertain their visitors to small talk and tea.
While seated thus they became aware of a sudden increase of the din, whip-cracking, and ox-bellowing with which the camp of the settlers resounded.
“They seem fond o’ noise here,” observed Sandy Black, handing his cup to Mrs Scholtz to be refilled.
“I never ’eard such an ’owling before,” said Jerry Goldboy; “what is it all about?”
“New arrivals from zee interior,” answered Scholtz; “dere be always vaggins comin’ ant goin’.”
“The camp is a changin’ one,” said Dally, sipping his tea with the air of a connoisseur. “When you’ve been here as long as we have you’ll understand how it never increases much, for although ship after ship arrives with new swarms of emigrants from the old country, waggon after waggon comes from I don’t know where—somewheres inland anyhow—and every now an’ then long trains of these are seen leaving camp, loaded with goods and women and children, enough to sink a small schooner, and followed by crowds of men tramping away to their new homes in the wilderness—though what these same new homes or wilderness are like is more than I can tell.”
“Zee noise is great,” growled Scholtz, as another burst of whip-musketry, human roars, and bovine bellows broke on their ears, “ant zee confusion is indesgraibable.”
“The gentlemen whose business it is to keep order must have a hard time of it,” said Mrs Scholtz; “I can’t ever understand how they does it, what between landing parties and locating ’em, and feeding, supplying, advising, and despatching of ’em, to say nothing of scolding and snubbing, in the midst of all this Babel of bubbledom, quite surpasses my understanding. Do you understand it, Mr Black?”
“Ay,” replied Sandy, clearing his throat and speaking somewhat oracularly. “’Ee must know, Mrs Scholtz, that it’s the result of organisation and gineralship. A serjeant or corporal can kick or drive a few men in ony direction that’s wanted, but it takes a gineral to move an army. If ’ee was to set a corporal to lead twunty thoosand men, he’d gie them orders that wad thraw them into a deed lock, an’ than naethin’ short o’ a miracle could git them oot o’t. Mony a battle’s been lost by brave men through bad gineralship, an’ mony a battle’s been won by puir enough bodies o’ men because of their leader’s administrative abeelity, Mrs Scholtz.”
“Very true, Mr Black,” replied Mrs Scholtz, with the assurance of one who thoroughly understands what she hears.
“Noo,” continued Sandy, with increased gravity, “if thae Kawfir bodies we hear aboot only had chiefs wi’ powers of organisation, an’ was a’ united thegither, they wad drive the haul o’ this colony into the sea like chaff before the wind. But they’ll niver do it; for, ’ee see, they want mind—an’ body withoot mind is but a puir thing after a’, Mrs Scholtz.”
“I’m not so shure of zat,” put in Scholtz, stretching his huge frame and regarding it complacently; “it vould please me better to have body vidout mint, zan mint vidout body.”
“H’m! ’ee’ve reason to be pleased then,” muttered Black, drily.
This compliment was either not appreciated by Scholtz, or he was prevented from acknowledging it by an interruption from without; for just at the moment a voice was heard asking a passer-by if he could tell where the tents of the Scotch party were pitched. Those in the tent rose at once, and Sandy Black, issuing out found that the questioner was a handsome young Englishman, who would have appeared, what he really was, both stout and tall, if he had not been dwarfed by his companion, a Cape-Dutchman of unusually gigantic proportions.
“We are in search of the Scottish party,” said the youth, turning to Sandy with a polite bow; “can you direct us to its whereabouts?”
“I’m no’ sure that I can, sir, though I’m wan o’ the Scotch pairty mysel’, for me an’ my freen hae lost oorsels, but doobtless Mister Dally here can help us. May I ask what ’ee want wi’ us?”
“Certainly,” replied the Englishman, with a smile. “Mr Marais and I have been commissioned to transport you to Baviaans river in bullock-waggons, and we wish to see Mr Pringle, the head of your party, to make arrangements.—Can you guide us, Mr Dally?”
“Have you been to the deputy-quartermaster-general’s office?” asked Dally.
“Yes, and they directed us to a spot said to be surrounded by evergreen bushes near this quarter of the camp.”
“I know it—just outside the ridge between the camp and the Government offices.—Come along, sir,” said Dally; “I’ll show you the way.”
In a few minutes Dally led the party to a group of seven or eight tents which were surrounded by Scotch ploughs, cart-wheels, harrows, cooking utensils fire-arms, and various implements of husbandry and ironware.
“Here come the lost ones!” exclaimed Kenneth McTavish, who, with his active wife and sprightly daughter Jessie, was busy arranging the interior of his tent, “and bringing strangers with them too!”
While Sandy Black and his friend Jerry were explaining the cause of their absence to some of the Scotch party, the young Englishman introduced his friend and himself as Charles Considine and Hans Marais, to the leader, Mr Pringle, a gentleman who, besides being a good poet, afterwards took a prominent part in the first acts of that great drama—the colonisation of the eastern frontier of South Africa.
It is unnecessary to trouble the reader with all that was said and done. Suffice it to say that arrangements were soon made. The acting Governor, Sir Rufane Donkin, arrived on the 6th of June from a visit to Albany, the district near the sea on which a large number of the settlers were afterwards located, and from him Mr Pringle learned that the whole of the Scotch emigrants were to be located in the mountainous country watered by some of the eastern branches of the Great Fish River, close to the Kafir frontier. The upper part of the Baviaans, or Baboons, River had been fixed for the reception of his particular section. It was also intended by Government that a piece of unoccupied territory still farther to the eastward should be settled by a party of five hundred Highlanders, who, it was conjectured, would prove the most effective buffer available to meet the first shock of invasion, should the savages ever attempt another inroad.
Mr Pringle laid this proposed arrangement before a council of the heads of families under his charge; it was heartily agreed to, and preparations for an early start were actively begun.
On the day of his arrival Sir Rufane Donkin laid the foundation of the first house of the now wealthy and flourishing, though not very imposing, town of Port Elizabeth, so named after his deceased wife, to whose memory an obelisk was subsequently erected on the adjacent heights.
A week later, a train of seven waggons stood with the oxen “inspanned,” or yoked, ready to leave the camp, from which many similar trains had previously set out. The length of such a train may be conceived when it is told that each waggon was drawn by twelve or sixteen oxen. These were fastened in pairs to a single trace or “trektow” of twisted thongs of bullock or buffalo hide, strong enough for a ship’s cable. Each waggon had a canvas cover or “till” to protect its goods and occupants from the sun and rain, and each was driven by a tall Dutchman, who carried a bamboo whip like a salmon fishing-rod with a lash of thirty feet or more. A slave, Hottentot or Bushman, led the two front oxen of each span.
Like pistol-shots the formidable whips went off; the oxen pulled, tossed their unwieldy horns, and bellowed; the Dutchmen growled and shouted; the half-naked “Totties” and Bushmen flung their arms and legs about, glared and gasped like demons; the monstrous waggons moved; “Settlers’ Town” was slowly left behind, and our adventurers, heading for the thorny jungles of the Zwartkops River, began their toilsome journey into the land of hope and promise.
“It’s a queer beginning!” remarked Sandy Black, as he trudged between Hans Marais and Charlie Considine.
“I hope it will have a good ending,” said Considine.
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