Our traveller had with laudable patience acquired a knowledge of the Hottentot language, but the people who now thronged his camp spoke a different dialect, not one word of which could he conjecture the meaning. But the languages of savages are easy in proportion as they are simple and poor, and the acquisition of Greek or Arabic would probably cost more pains and study than would render a man master of half the uncultivated languages of the world. It was not long, therefore, before he learned to disentangle, as it were, the intertwisted sounds which re-echoed around him, and to assign a meaning to them. The Kaffers employed much gesticulation and grimace in speaking, which aided him, likewise, in divining their thoughts; and he soon began to entertain reasonable hopes that an interpreter might not always be necessary in his intercourse with this lively people.
He imagined that his firearms, and the skill with which he made use of them, inspired the Kaffers with wonder; but he was no doubt mistaken. His fancy placed him among those simple tribes described by early travellers and navigators, to whom our weapons were utterly unknown; while the savages who were now his guests had frequently fought hand to hand with the colonists, and not only beheld their firearms, but learned, at the expense of their blood, how destructive they were. This illusion, however, appears to have afforded him pleasure, and he honestly cherished it; and as no injury can arise from it to the reader, it will have been sufficient to allude to it thus briefly.
The history of his intercourse with this people affords a striking example of the incalculable benefits which one civilized man, who possessed courage to make the experiment, might confer upon a wild nation, whose Menû or Manco Capæ he would thus become. For genius the Kaffers are decidedly superior to the Hottentots; and if the picture which Le Vaillant draws of them be correct, it would require no very extraordinary impulse to launch them into the career of civilization. He saw them, however, but for a moment, as it were; for not long after their arrival, it was discovered that several half-castes, or bastards, as they are termed at the Cape, had been commissioned by the colonists to insinuate themselves into his camp, for the purpose of discovering whether or not he was entering into an alliance with the Kaffers. This, at least, was the interpretation which, after all the information he could obtain, he was induced to put upon the matter; but, like Rousseau, he seems to have amused himself with the idea that spies were continually placed upon his movements, and by this hypothesis he explained many little events resulting much less from design than from a fortuitous concourse of circumstances. Still, the poor Kaffers, who had suffered grievously by the Dutch, fully participated in his alarm, and made a precipitate retreat into their own country, but not before they had given him a pressing invitation to follow them.
Upon considering the state of the camp, and the inclinations of his people, it was judged imprudent to attempt against their will to lead them away farther from the colony; and therefore, selecting from among them a small number of the bravest, and leaving the remainder under the care of Swanspoel, he departed on his long-desired journey into Kaffer-land. Upon quitting the encampment they ascended the banks of the Great Fish River, and having forded its stream, entered Kaffer-land, moving in a north-easterly direction. The whole plain was covered with mimosa-trees, which, as Burckhardt observes, cast but a scanty shade. They were, therefore, greatly exposed to the heat of the sun, which was now intense. After marching for several days in this manner through a country which had once been inhabited, but was deserted now, and abandoned to the wild beasts, fires at night, deserted kraal, gardens overrun with weeds, and fields, the culture of which had recently been interrupted, inspired the belief that some half-stationary, half-wandering hordes must be in the neighbourhood.
The fatigue of the journey, united with a scarcity of water, began at length to cause the luxuries of the camp and the neighbourhood of the Great Fish River to be regretted; but although Le Vaillant himself evidently shared to a certain degree in these regrets, he was still unwilling to relinquish his enterprise before he caught a single glimpse of the Kaffers. At length a small party was discovered, whose dread of the whites equalled at least the terror with which they themselves inspired the pusillanimous Hottentots. From these men Le Vaillant learned that the greater part of the nation had retreated far into the interior, and as his imagination, at this time, seems to have exaggerated every difficulty and danger, for he was weary of the journey, he gladly seized upon the first excuse for relinquishing his enterprise, and returned with all possible celerity to his camp.
All his thoughts and wishes now pointed towards the Cape. Narina and the friendly Gonaquas in vain exerted their influence. The desert had lost its charms. For the moment he was weary of travelling. However, not to encounter in vain the fatigue of a long journey, he formed the design of verging a little to the north of his former route, through the immense solitudes of the Sneuw Bergen. The caravan, therefore, quitted the vicinity of the sea, and proceeded towards the west through forests of mimosa-trees, which were then in full flower, and imparted all the charms of summer to the landscape. The extreme silence of the nights during this part of the journey was sublime. All the functions of life seemed for the time to be suspended; except that, at intervals, the roaring of the lion resounded through the forests, startling the echoes, and according to the interpretation of the fancy, hushing the whole scene with terror.
At length, on the 3d of January, 1782, he discovered in the north-west the formidable summits of the Sneuw Bergen, which, though surrounded on all sides by burning plains, it being in those southern latitudes the height of summer, bore still upon its sides long ridges of snow. Prodigious herds of antelopes, amounting to more than fifty thousand in number, now crossed their route, driven by insufferable heat and drought towards the north. The scenery every league became more dreary. Wastes of sand, rocks piled upon each other, chasms, precipices, barrenness, sublimity, but no pasturage; and men in want of the necessaries of life regard as insipid whatever refuses to minister to their wants. Thus we can account for the little interest with which the sight of the Sneuw Bergen inspired Le Vaillant, who would otherwise appear to have been constitutionally deprived of that masculine energy which impels us rather to rejoice than be depressed at the sight of steril and desolate mountains, seldom trodden but by the brave, and seeming to have been expressly thrown up by nature as a rampart upon which freedom might successfully struggle against the oppressors of mankind. This is the true source of that indescribable delight with which we all tread upon mountain soil. A secret instinct seems to whisper to the heart the original design, if it may be said without impiety, with which those inexpugnable fastnesses were fashioned by the hand of God. “Here,” say we to ourselves, “here at least we may be free;” and we look down from these arid heights with scorn upon the possessors of the fattest pastures, if the mark of tyranny, like that of the Beast in the Apocalypse, is set upon the soil.
Le Vaillant’s enthusiasm, which greatly depended upon the state of his animal spirits, was now evaporating rapidly. His care and circumspection were likewise proportionably diminished, and, in consequence, the want of provisions and water was frequently experienced. To give a keener edge to these calamities and privations, it was rumoured among his followers that the recesses of the snowy mountains afforded a retreat to numerous Bushmans or banditti, men whom necessity or inclination had arrayed in opposition to the laws, and those who lived under their protection. Every privation was therefore borne with greater impatience. They considered themselves as persons wantonly exposed to danger by the caprice of their leader; hence his authority was daily less and less respected. Nevertheless, he drew near the mountains, and climbing up with difficulty to the summit of one of their peaks, enjoyed the wide prospect it afforded. This satisfied his curiosity, more particularly as three men, supposed to be bandits, were discovered among the ravines, but made their escape at their approach. A few days afterward one of these fierce robbers was killed in an attempt to murder one of the Hottentots of the escort.
The want of water, which they had already begun to experience, continued to increase as they advanced. The oxen, like the men, suffered extremely, and several of them dropped down, and were unable to rise again. The feet of the dogs were exceedingly lacerated; they limped along painfully, and with the greatest exertion. In one word, every man and animal in the camp required repose; and with inexpressible joy they at length saw the day of their arrival at the Cape, which put an end to the toils and sufferings of sixteen months.
Le Vaillant had not yet satisfied his locomotive passion, and had, indeed, notwithstanding the interest which his adventures inspire, seen but little of Africa. He now amused himself with visiting the various districts of the colony, and, among other spots, the extreme point of the promontory, which opposes its rocky snout to the eternal storms and waves of the Southern Ocean. Here, as with a sombre melancholy, he viewed the constant succession of the billows, which, confused and foaming under the influence of the winds, hurled themselves against the cliffs, a depression of soul came over him, and he compared the phenomenon before him to the life of man, and the annihilation which, according to his creed, succeeds it. This miserable dogma, the offspring of insane reasoning, and a distrust in the power or goodness of the Divinity, was at that period in dispute among the sophists of Europe; but I pity the man who could make so bestial a creed the companion of his soul amid the vast solitudes of the desert, where we might expect that the very winds of heaven would have winnowed away so vile a chaff, and rendered back its native whiteness and purity to the mind.