BACK FROM ‘ELDORADO.’
It was a scorching afternoon in October, when, with much clatter and racket, cracking of long whips, and a volley of eccentric profanity from the Dutch conductor and his sable satellites, the mule-train of that eminent Cape patriot Adrian de Vos scrambled headlong, as it were, out of the market-place of Kimberley in ‘the land of diamonds,’ jolted and swung through the ‘city of iron dust-bins,’ finally disappearing in a cloud of dust adown the Dutoitspan Road.
I may state that I was awaiting the arrival of the ‘veldt express’ at the little oasis in the desert, dear to all acquainted with the ‘Eldorado’ of the Cape Colony, by the name of Alexandersfontein. Distant only a few miles from the hot fever-stricken ‘camp,’ it is blessed with a spacious hotel and—luxury of luxuries—a veritable open-air swimming-bath, together with a meandering brook, which gladdens the eye of the parched, home-sick, and, most likely, disappointed searcher after diamondiferous wealth. I had spent the most part of the day with an Irish surgeon stationed there, who had been doing his best to persuade me to travel to Cape Town in the orthodox manner, by stage-coach, and not by the ‘heavy goods,’ as it is termed; but during the last year or so I had roughed it too much to care for a little additional hardship, and I wanted to complete the tale of my experiences in South Africa by personal contact with those unfortunates who from time to time abandoning their last dream of success, cast down and forsaken, broken in health, wealth, and estate, set forth gloomily on the journey back from Eldorado.
We were not altogether without amusement at Alexandersfontein, for, in addition to the attractions of the swimming-bath, there was the mild excitement of vaccinating ‘niggers,’ brought in at intervals by an Africander scout, the smallpox scare being at the time at its height, and my friend a government officer. Nevertheless, I confess I was glad when a pillar of dust, rising up from the arid road far away to the deep-blue sky overhead, announced that the mule-train was fairly en route for us. I am glad now that it was dark when they arrived, because, if I had seen the accommodation provided by that philanthropic conveyer of broken hearts and shattered fortunes to the coast, I think it very likely that I might have declined to obey the order shouted at me through the still, sub-tropical night, to ‘get aboard.’ As it was, clutching my rifle with one hand, and grasping a leathern portmanteau, destined for a pillow, in the other, I struggled upward over the disselboom, thrust my head underneath a flapping canvas covering stretched over the whole length and breadth of the wagon, and receiving a friendly but rather violent impetus from my friend the surgeon, shot forward into the midst of a conglomeration of human forms, tin cases, deal boxes, ropes, and sacking. I was welcomed with anathemas, apparently proceeding from the internal economy of a ‘mealy’ bag in the corner. I could hear my Irish friend shouting a last adieu, which mingled strangely with the vociferations of the half-caste driver to his mules; and then, as the whole machine lurched heavily but rapidly forward, I collapsed against the corner of a huge tin case, slid thence into a hollow caused by the merchandise, and thus cramped up in a hole about two feet in width, prepared to pass the night. A dismal lantern, swinging and jolting overhead, threw a sickly gleam around; the keen wind of the karroo whistled past as we pushed onward in the darkness, and forward into the wilderness, leaving behind us the land of untold riches, the wonderful camp with its mines assessed at millions, its busy streets, its citizens with but one aim, the greed of gold—and its quiet burial-place, where hundreds of brave young Englishmen lie, wrapped in that deep sleep to which no dreams of avarice may come.
Our route lay over wide-stretching plains of fine sand, studded with stunted thorn; flanked on either side by lone mountain ranges, whose lofty heads assume fantastic shape of cone, table-land, or pyramid; here and there a miserable watercourse threading its way to the babbling Modder or stately Orange River. A solitary, silent land, where the glad song of birds is unheard, but the ever-watchful vulture circles overhead; where the sweet scent of flowers is unknown, but the gaunt mimosa stretches out its bare branches, and seems to plead with the brazen skies for a cloud of moisture. Far distant from each other are the white, flat-roofed Boer farmhouses; while midway to the railway centre of Beaufort West lies the quaint Dutch village of Hopetown with its ‘nightmare’ church; and farther on, Victoria, nestling at the foot of a great brown hill.
Monotonous? Well, truly I tired of the all-pervading sand, of the glare of the fierce sun, of the jolting and bumping of the springless wagon; but there was the abiding excitement of the commissariat question, the occasional sight of a flock of wild ostriches, the rough incidents of the nightly outspan, and, as the cumbrous machine rolled onward over the starlit plain, the exchange of confidences, or the singing of songs to the accompaniment of a wheezy accordion, which one of the party—a miserable little Israelite from Houndsditch—had provided.
I think the most remarkable amongst the ‘voyagers’ was a tall gaunt man, whose snow-white beard and sunken cheeks bore evidence to the fact that time had not dealt gently with him. He reminded me irresistibly of King Lear; and when camping for the night, he crouched over his solitary pannikin with his hands stretched out, to prevent any disaster to the blazing structure of sticks and ‘peat,’ his white locks blowing in the wind, and his keen, hard, glittering eye eagerly watching for the right moment at which to insert his pinch of hoarded tea, he presented a mournful embodiment of hopeless failure. He was a lonely, morose man; defeat and disaster had occurred to him so often, that he sought for no sympathy, and expressed no hopes for the future. When the lighter spirits in this storm-beaten company were essaying to laugh at dull care, and even making jests at the bitterness of the divers fates which had overtaken them, he would sit apart with folded arms, now and again muttering to himself, and once surprising me with an apt quotation from a Latin author in the original. I am afraid we were all inclined to laugh at him for his queer ways and solitary habits; but I never did so after one night, when I found him, some distance from our camp, kneeling on the bare sands, his arms tossed aloft to the stars, that shone like lamps in the dark-blue dome of the midnight sky, and his lips babbling incoherently of the wife and children, home and kindred, he had left long, long ago, never to see again in this world, in his thirst for the gold which had lured him from continent to continent.
We had another victim of the gold-mania with us in the person of a bald-headed Irish bookbinder. Of all the gentle enthusiasts I have ever met, he was the most extraordinary. He had just returned from a particularly disastrous prospecting trip to the newly discovered gold-field euphoniously termed ‘the Demon’s Kantoor;’ and previous to that, he had made equally unsatisfactory migrations into Swazieland, the Delagoa Bay, and other regions, returning from each of them ragged, penniless, but happy, to recruit his finances with a spell of work at his trade in the towns, whilst devising some fresh scheme of martyrdom for the cause of the glittering metal that had bewitched him. He was a devout Protestant, and would gravely rebuke any who gave way to the very common colonial vice of hard swearing; and during our halts by the wayside, generally stole away to any available shade, and taking forth from the bosom of his ragged red shirt a book of devotion, would read therein, heedless of the shouts and laughter of the drivers and the screams of the mules; though, to be sure, I have reason to believe that the precious volume contained a good deal about ‘the gold of Ophir’ and ‘the land of Midian.’ He admitted, with a genial smile, that he had dug a grave for the fruits of six months’ self-denying labour amid the hillocks and boulders of the Demon’s Kantoor; but he hoped by about a year’s industry in Cape Town to realise sufficient to enable him to penetrate into the Kalahari Desert, where, if he escaped the poisoned arrow of the Bushman, or the slow death from starvation or thirst, he was perfectly certain of finding nuggets of wondrous size, and ‘rotten reef’ worth fabulous amounts. Indeed, so happy was he at the prospect of his good fortune, that in the fullness of his heart, he sought to raise the spirits of a dark, melancholy young man, by offering to share it with him. But the latter only shook his head and buried his face in his hands, being engaged just then in a retrospect of his fallen fortunes, from which nothing but an occasional fit of assumed reckless levity could rouse him. Poor fellow! He was leaving every farthing he had in the world—the remnant of a noble patrimony—in a worthless diamond mine in the vicinity of Kimberley; and he was haunted with the memory of a golden-haired wife and two blue-eyed children on whom the ‘camp-fever’ had laid its deadly hand.
As for the light-hearted actor, who, by some strange mischance, had found himself left on ‘the Fields’ with the theatre closed and the company gone, and had just raised enough by the sale of his wardrobe to ‘catch a storm,’ as he expressed it, to waft him to Cape Town—he could not understand what despair or earnestness meant. His delight was to astonish the Kaffirs and half-breeds, as they crouched around the fires at night, with extravagant selections from the transpontine drama. He would make their eyes roll and their teeth chatter by holding converse, in sepulchral tones, with the incorporeal air, and then set them all grinning with glee at some fanciful imitation of domestic animals. He was never tired of telling stories of his wanderings, and joined heartily in the laughter at some ludicrous blunder which had for the nonce involved him in ruin. I am afraid he was not very particular as to his method of getting out of scrapes, for he related with great glee how, being deserted by a manager in Japan, he and a brother artist got up an acrobatic performance for the benefit of the natives. As neither of them knew anything about the business, the grumbling was excessive; and the climax was reached when, having attained to some ‘spread-eagle’ position on the framework they had erected on the stage, and being quite unable to get down gracefully, he let go, and fell with a crash. ‘We then,’ he said, ‘announced an interval of ten minutes, secured the receipts from the innocent heathen at the “Pay-here” box, and—fled the city!’ He had gone to the Diamond Fields, because he had been told he could make ‘kegs of dollars’ there; and he trusted in chance or good fortune to convey him to Australia.
Despite the coarse food and its coarser preparation, the nights spent upon the ground beneath the wagons, the awful shaking over the mountain tracks, the dust, the thirst, the intolerable heat, there are many pleasant recollections of that memorable excursion. But when I see the young, the hearty, the strong, setting off, in the pride of their manhood, in search of that prize which flattering Hope assures them waits in distant lands for enterprise and courage to secure, I wonder how many will escape the dangers of ‘flood and field,’ to undertake, broken in spirit, bankrupt in health and wealth, the journey back from Eldorado.