The Settler and the Savage

by R. M. Ballantyne

The country through which the long line of waggons passed was as varied as can well be imagined, being one of the wildest and least inhabited tracts of the frontier districts. The features of the landscape changed continually from dark jungle to rich park-like scenery, embellished with graceful clumps of evergreens, and from that again to the sterility of savage mountains or parched and desert plains. Sometimes they plodded wearily over the karroo for twenty miles or more at a stretch without seeing a drop of water. At other times they came to a wretched mud hovel, the farm-house of a boer, near a permanent spring of water. Again, they were entangled among the rugged, roadless gorges and precipices of a mountain range, through which no vehicle of European construction could have passed without absolute demolition, and up parts of which the Cape-waggons were sometimes compelled to go by means of two teams,—that is, from twenty to thirty or more oxen,—being attached to each. At other times they had to descend and re-ascend the precipitous banks of rivers whose beds were sometimes quite dry and paved with mighty boulders.

“It’s an unco’ rough country,” observed Sandy Black to Charlie Considine, as they stood watching the efforts of a double team to haul one of their waggons up a slope so rugged and steep that the mere attempt appeared absolute madness in their eyes.

Considine assented, but was too much interested in the process to indulge in further remark.

“Gin the rope brek,” continued Sandy, “I wadna gie muckle for the waggon. It’ll come rowin’ an’ stottin’ doon the hill like a bairn’s ba’.”

“No fear of the rope,” said Hans Marais, as he passed at the moment to render assistance to Ruyter, Jemalee, Booby, and some others, who were shouting at the pitch of their voices, and plying the long waggon-whips, or the short sjamboks, with unmerciful vigour.

Hans was right. The powerful “trektow” stood the enormous strain, and the equally powerful waggon groaned and jolted up the stony steep until it had nearly gained the top, when an unfortunate drop of the right front wheel into a deep hollow, combined with an unlucky and simultaneous elevation of the left back wheel by a stone, turned the vehicle completely over on its side. The hoops of the tilt were broken, and much of the lading was deposited in a hollow beside the waggon, but a few of the lighter and smaller articles went hopping, or, according to Sandy Black, “stottin’” down the slope, and were smashed to atoms at the bottom.

Ruyter, Booby, and Jemalee turned towards Hans Marais with a shrinking action, as if they expected to feel the sjambok on their shoulders, for their own cruel master was wont on occasions of mischance such as this to visit his men with summary punishment; but Hans was a good specimen of another, and, we believe, much more numerous class of Cape-Dutchmen. After the first short frown of annoyance had passed, he went actively to work, to set the example of unloading the waggon and repairing the damage, administering at the same time, however, a pretty sharp rebuke to the drivers for their carelessness in not taking better note of the form of the ground.

That night in talking over the incident with Ruyter, Considine ventured again to comment on the wrongs which the former endured, and the possibility of redress being obtained from the proper authorities.

“For I am told,” he said, “that the laws of the colony do not now permit masters to lash and maltreat their slaves as they once did.”

Ruyter, though by nature a good-humoured, easy-going fellow, was possessed of an unusually high spirit for one of his race, and could never listen to any reference to the wrongs of the Hottentots without a dark frown of indignation. In general he avoided the subject, but on the night in question either his wonted reticence had fled, or he felt disposed to confide in the kindly youth, from whom on the previous journey from Capetown he had experienced many marks of sympathy and good-will.