“That’s it. A parcel of old women in Downing Street, ruled by Exeter Hall and the Peace Society. What do they know about the Colony, and what do they care? After British subjects have been murdered and plundered all along the border, an official is sent to inquire into it. Of course the chiefs all pretend ignorance, and throw the blame on somebody else. Then follows great palaver and buttering over. The chiefs are told to be good boys and not do it again, and are given waggon-loads of presents—and a treaty is made. A treaty! With savages—savages whose boast is that they are a nation of liars. Can’t you imagine the wily rascals sniggering in their blankets, and wondering how much longer they are going to allow themselves to be governed by such a race of milksops!”
His listeners could not forbear a laugh.
“I can tell you it’s no laughing matter to be burned out of house and home three times as I have been,” went on the old man, “and that through the sentimental cant of our rulers. No; coddling savages doesn’t do—never did do, and never will. Treat them fairly and with the strictest justice; but, if you are to rule them at all, you must do so with a strong hand.”
Walter Brathwaite had, as he said, lived on the frontier, man and boy, all his life; for he was a mere child when his father, tempted by the inducement of free grants of land, had transferred the family fortunes to the shores of Southern Africa in the early days of the settlement of the Cape Colony. His youth and earlier manhood were passed amid the hardships and obstacles of an emigrant’s life. And also its dangers—for the tribes infesting the rugged and difficult country which then was Kafirland, were wont to lay marauding hands on the settler’s flocks and herds—nor did the savages scruple about adding murder to pillage. Still the emigrants throve; for those were the days of good seasons and healthy flocks and herds—when pasturage was plentiful and succulent, droughts were infrequent, and disease almost unknown. Three successive wars at short intervals swept away the fruits of the unfortunate settlers’ toil; but they managed to pick up again, and now, at this period of our narrative, it is twenty years since the last of these, and there are once more the same signs of restlessness among the tribes which the experienced remember to have heralded former outbreaks. So if Walter Brathwaite expresses strong distrust of his barbarous neighbours, it is not without ample justification. He has done good service, too, in the time of need; has fought valiantly and ungrudgingly on behalf of his adopted country, and whether in peace or in war has ever enjoyed the respect and good opinion of his fellows. In truth, right justly so. Gifted with strong, practical common sense; his straightforward nature abhorring anything in the shape of humbug or meanness; of a thoroughly kind-hearted, genial disposition and open-handed to a degree, he is a splendid specimen of the colonist who is also by birth and tradition a true English gentleman; and now in the latter years of his long, useful, and honourable life, he is an object of esteem and affection to all who know him—and they are many.
Note 1. Dutch, “Evening, master.” Dutch is nearly always employed in the Cape Colony for intercourse with the natives, comparatively few frontiersmen, even, being well versed in the Kafir language.
Note 2. “The goat which goes before.”—A goat is always used instead of a bell-wether on the Cape sheep farms, and so accustomed do the flocks become to their leader that it is a hard and toilsome business to induce them to enter their fold without it.