LIFE IN THE WILDS.
LIFE IN THE WILDS.
Chapter I.
WHAT HAVE THEY LEFT US?
There are few climates in the world more delightful to live in than that of the south of Africa.[Africa.] The air of the mountains behind the Cape of Good Hope is pure and wholesome, and the plains which stretch out towards the north at a great height above the sea, are fertile in native plants when uncultivated, and richly repay the toil of the farmer. The woods are remarkable for the variety of trees and shrubs, and there are as many animals which may serve for food or for beasts of burden as in this country. These advantages would lead numbers of our countrymen to settle in southern Africa, who now go elsewhere, if it were not for one great drawback. It is not that there are beasts of prey; for lions, leopards, and panthers, may be kept away from a settlement by the use of proper precautions: it is that a race of men, more fierce than wild beasts, and full of cunning, inhabit the mountains on the northern frontier of the European settlements, and descend, from time to time, upon the lonely farms or small villages scattered over the plain, and slaughter the inhabitants, burn their dwellings, and carry off their cattle and their goods. It is nearly impossible to guard against the attacks of these savages; and as a considerable force is required to resist them, it is no wonder that settlers are disposed to sacrifice many advantages of climate, soil, and productions, rather than be subject to the continual dread of a visit from the Bushmen, as these people are called. The settlements towards the northern frontier are therefore few and small, and consist of those whose poverty induces them to brave danger, and whose courage is improved by constant exercise.
The Bushmen were the original possessors of much of the country about the Cape, which the British and the Dutch have since taken for their own. The natives were hunted down like so many wild beasts. This usage naturally made them fierce and active in their revenge. The hardships they have undergone have affected their bodily make also; and their short stature and clumsy form are not, as some suppose, a sufficient proof that they are of an inferior race to the men they make war upon. If we may judge by the experiments which have been tried upon the natives of various countries, it seems probable that if Europeans were driven from their homes into the mountains, and exposed to the hardships of a savage life, they would become stunted in their forms, barbarous in their habits, and cruel in their revenge. They might, like the Bushmen, visit the sins of the first invaders upon their innocent successors, and cause as much undeserved distress as that we are about to relate.
It was in the month of September—a season of extreme heat in the climate we have described—when the inhabitants of a small British settlement in the north of the European territories of South Africa, met to consider what should be done to relieve the want to which they were suddenly reduced. The evening before, their village looked thriving, and its inhabitants gay and prosperous; and now, just when morning had dawned, they assembled to look on the ruin of their habitations, and the nakedness of their meadows, from which all the cattle had been driven away. The savages had carried off their tools and their arms, burned their little furniture with the houses, and left them nothing but the clothes they wore, and the seed which was buried in the ground. Happily, but few lives were lost, for the attack had been so sudden, that little resistance had been attempted: but yet some were gone whose services could ill be spared, even if they had not attached their companions to them by having shared the same toils, or by their several good qualities. Williams, the carpenter, was found dead among the ashes in the saw-pit; and Humby had been slaughtered on the threshold of the new hut he was building on his little farm. Some of the children, too, had perished in the flames; but the loss of life was found to be much less than every one had supposed before the numbers were called over. The most general and eager inquiries were for the safety of Captain Adams, and of Mr. and Mrs. Stone and their child, who were all alive and unhurt.
Mr. Stone was the best-educated man in the settlement, and was therefore much valued as a chaplain and teacher, as well as in his character of a practical farmer. His wife was an amiable, strong-minded woman, who assisted her husband in his labours abroad and at home. She was, by common consent, called the Lady of the settlement; but she refused the title; not because she was not really a lady, but because she thought there was no reason for such a distinction in a place where all were obliged to exert their own power for their own subsistence. She had one child, a girl of three years old.
Mr. Adams was called Captain only because he, in a manner, took the direction of the affairs of the settlement. Having been long accustomed to the climate, and acquainted with all the peculiarities of the country, he was well qualified to advise respecting the proceedings of his neighbours, who looked up to him as if he had really been what they called him, and had a captain’s authority over them. It was he who now assembled them under the shelter of a few trees which grew in a nook between two hills.[hills.]
When they met, they looked on one another, and no one seemed disposed to speak. The captain was about to break silence, when the sobbing of one of the women who had lost her child, and the wailing of the carpenter’s widow, affected him so much that he could not command his voice. Mr. Stone, who was remarkable for his self-command, next came forward, and said that the friends around him had been called together that they might determine what measures should be taken for their safety and subsistence; and that it appeared to him that the right way to begin was by addressing God in a spirit of resignation for what they had lost, and of thankfulness for what remained. This was the readiest means of consoling the mourners who were among them, and of so calming the minds of all, as that they might deliberate soberly, and judge wisely in an extremity so awful.