Perils in the Transvaal and Zululand

by H. C. Adams

“Yes, but one day was just like another day, and one year like another year, and one generation like another generation all that time. The Dutch occupied the land, and made the natives work for them; and when more land was wanted, they took more land, and enslaved more natives. So they went on, spreading farther into the country, until the English came.

“My father—I believe his name was Andrew Bailey—was a ship’s carpenter on board one of the line-of-battle ships in Sir Home Popham’s fleet. There was very little resistance offered to the English. It was generally believed that when the European wars came to an end the colony would be restored to Holland, as it had been before. Consequently the Dutch regarded the English as visitors, rather than masters.

“A good many men got their discharge after the fighting was over, and among them my father. He liked the country, and found plenty of employment, and higher wages than he could get at home. He was a skilled workman, particularly clever at house-building. An English settler wanted a house built at Stellenbosch, and my father undertook the job. He lodged, while employed in the work, in the house of a Dutch farmer named Van Schuylen, and there he soon became very intimate. The farmer was a kind and hospitable old man, as the old Hollanders for the most part were.”

“Kind to the whites, that is,” interpolated Redgy.

“Ay, Mr Margetts, I understand what you mean, and I am afraid there is too much truth in it. There is a prejudice against ‘black blood,’ which, with all the years that I’ve lived in this land, I cannot understand. ‘Black blood!’ the very words to me seem to be a denial of what the Bible says, that ‘God has made of one blood all the nations of the earth.’ Yes, you are right about Farmer Van Schuylen. He’d make no more of putting a native to do the most unwholesome work, that might kill him outright, than he would of pitching a stone into a pond. And if they were fractious or lazy, he’d stand by and see them flogged with the jamboks—the rhinoceros whips, that is—till their backs were cut to ribbons. But my father was a free man and an Englishman, and Van Schuylen had none but friendly words for him.

“Well, as I’ve said, my father became intimate with his family, and by and by fell in love with Rose, the only daughter, and she with him. The old man did not object, but Cornelius Van Schuylen, her brother, did not like the match. He was an out-and-out Hollander. He thought the English had no business in the colony. They were interlopers, he said, and jeered at our ways. He and my father had had some high words, I fancy, about the natives, very soon after they came to Stellenbosch. But Rose, though she was very fond of her brother, took my father’s part. He was a handsome and well-made man of five-and-twenty, and she would have had him, I believe, even if her father had objected. Fortunately Cornelius lived ten or twelve miles away. I say fortunately, for there certainly would have been a hot quarrel between him and his brother-in-law, if he had had any share in the business. My father became a great favourite with the old man, and in a few years nearly the whole management of the farm was left to his son-in-law, who persisted in showing favour to the blacks. He wouldn’t overwork them, and wouldn’t allow them to be flogged. What was worse, he allowed them to attend the church services, and to have their children baptised.”

“That was no offence, I suppose, sir,” said Redgy.

“On the contrary, it was one of the greatest he could commit,” said Baylen. “By the Dutch law, all baptised Christians were free. Therefore baptising a native was the same thing as setting him free, and the presence of free blacks in the colony was what they could not endure. There had been differences with the English authorities on this subject; but little had come of them, because the English were only holding the colony for a time. Two or three years after my father’s marriage, however, there came the downfall of Napoleon, and a general peace. To the surprise and indignation of the Dutch, the colony was not restored to Holland, but given permanently over to the English.”

“Well,” said George, “I must say they had some right to complain of that. I heard what Moritz said about it, and I couldn’t help agreeing with him.”

“I think the English would have acted more wisely if they had retained simply a naval station, with a fort or two to guard it,” said the farmer. “Well, when it was seen that the occupation of the English was to be permanent, and that the English discouraged slavery, and allowed the baptism of the natives, there was great discontent, which occasionally broke out into rebellion. Cornelius was among those who were hottest against the English. It was with the greatest difficulty he was kept from joining the rebels. But his father sent for him, and threatened him with his curse if he did, and the Dutch mind what their fathers say, more than any people I know. In 1834, however, when the English Government made a proclamation absolutely forbidding slavery, he could bear it no longer.”