Chapter Six.
Spreading over the Land.
With the dawn next morning the emigrants were up and away. The interest of the journey increased with every novel experience and each new discovery, while preconceived notions and depressions were dissipated by the improved appearance of the country.
About the same time that the Scotch “party” left the Bay, several of the other parties set out, some large and some small, each under its appointed leader, to colonise the undulating plains of the Zuurveld.
Soon the pilgrims became accustomed to the nightly serenade of hyena and jackal—also to breakneck steeps, and crashing jolts, and ugly tumbles. But they were all hopeful, and most of them were young, and all, or nearly all, were disposed to make light of difficulties.
The country they were about to colonise had been recently overrun by Kafir hordes. These had been cleared out, and driven across the Great Fish River by British and Colonial troops, leaving the land a wilderness, with none to dispute possession save the wild beasts. It extended fifty miles along the coast from the Bushman’s River to the Great Fish River, and was backed by an irregular line of mountains at an average distance of sixty miles from the sea.
Leaving the Zwartkops River, not only the Scottish party, but all the other parties, filed successively away in long trains across the Sundays River, over the Addo Hill and the Quagga Flats and the Bushman’s River heights, until the various points of divergence were reached, when the column broke into divisions, which turned off to their several locations and overspread the land.
There was “Baillie’s party,” which crossed Lower Albany to the mouth of the Great Fish River, and on the way were charmed with the aspect of the country, which was at that time enriched and rendered verdant by recent rains, and enlivened by the presence of hartebeests, quaggas, springboks, and an occasional ostrich. There was, however, a “wash” of shadow laid on part of the pleasant picture, to counteract the idea that the Elysian plains had been reached, in the shape of two or three blackened and ruined farms of the old Dutch colonists—sad remains of the recent Kafir war—solemn reminders of the uncertainties and possibilities of the future.
Then there was the “Nottingham party.” They took possession of a lovely vale, which they named Clumber, in honour of the Duke of Newcastle, their patron. “Sefton’s party” settled on the Assegai Bush River and founded the village of Salem, afterwards noted as the headquarters of the Reverend William Shaw, a Wesleyan, and one of the most able and useful of South Africa’s missionary pioneers. Wilson’s party settled between the Waay-plaats and the Kowie Bush, across the path of the elephants, which creatures some of the party, it is said, attempted to shoot with fowling-pieces. Of the smaller parties, those of Cock, Thornhill, Smith (what series of adventurous parties ever went forth without a “Smith’s party”?), Osler, and Richardson, located themselves behind the thicket-clad sand hills of the Kowie and Green Fountain. But space forbids us referring, even in brief detail, to the parties of James and Hyman and Dyson, and Holder, Mouncey, Hayhurst, Bradshaw, Southey; and of Scott, with the Irish party, and that of Mahony, which at the “Clay Pits,” had afterwards to meet the first shock of every Kafir invasion of Lower Albany. Among these and other parties there were men of power, who left a lasting mark on the colony, and many of them left numerous descendants to perpetuate their names—such as Dobson, Bowker, Campbell, Ayliffe, Phillips, Piggott, Greathead, Roberts, Stanley, and others too numerous to mention.