Lodges in the Wilderness

by W. C. Scully

I fancy there must have been a chorus; possibly a semi-chorus as well. Thespis and Aeschylus probably adopted those obvious aids to rudimentary drama from the shepherd,—who is first-cousin to the savage. And the more one sees of various savages, belong they to Bushmanland or to the Bowery, the more astonishing is the kinship revealed between them. I could find no box-office—no gallery from which the gods could have jibed. The auditorium must have been all pit.

And what dramas of real life must have been enacted in that rocky valley; what rudimentary idylls had not the moon looked upon as her slanting beams searched slowly down among the rocks on summer nights. There men and women loved; there jealousy, cruel as the grave, had brooded. There vengeance had stalked abroad and taken toll for Fate. Finally, from there—after an age-long struggle—Death had evicted Life. It was, after all, only appropriate that the Kanxas fountain should have ceased to flow.

How often had not some old lion—some gaunt, lonely brute with blunted teeth and claws worn to the quick, crouched among those rocks, bent on spoil of the cave-men? During how many nights of livid fear must not the horrible purring of the man-eater, as he quested up the gorge, have sunk to the deadlier horror of silence. For then every member of the little community would have known that the prowler had at length selected a dwelling from which presently to drag a shrieking victim.

And later, the arch-enemy, the more cruel spoiler, man. Man—the spoiler to-day,—to-morrow the spoiled. The European revenged the Bushman on the Hottentot; who would revenge the Hottentot on the European? “For that which hath been is, and that which will be hath been, and there is no new thing.” The thought made “a goblin of the sun.” “O stars that sway our fate; O orbs that should be very wise, for you have circled the heavens and regarded the earth from the most ancient days,—you who, impassively, have seen an endless succession of civilisations arise, decline and die,—when, and at whose hand, will our nemesis come?”

A spirit of laziness had overcome us all. Andries lay fast asleep under the wagon; his large frame was loosened, his placid, handsome, weather-beaten face relaxed. He would have looked just as he did then, had he been dead, for his days had been days of quietness and all his pathways peaceful. Yet in that man’s deliberate arteries flowed the blood of those who withstood Alva in the Netherlands, and of others who abandoned France, with all that seemed to make life worth the living, rather than bend the knee at the shrine of a false god. I wondered whether that large-boned, contented, easy-going farmer were capable of standing on the ramparts of another Leyden and, from hunger-bitten, indomitable lips roaring heroic and vitriolic defiance at a seemingly-unconquerable foe. Would he have abandoned honour, riches, comfort, roof-tree and friends for the sake of conscience,—that discipliner whose whip-lash does not, unfortunately, bite as severely as it once was wont to do? I wondered, and in wondering breathed one of those wishes which are the essence of prayer, that he might never be put to the test.

The afternoon was young. I decided to stroll on, ahead. I found Danster and Piet Noona’s nephew just above the krantz—preventing, with some difficulty, the oxen from stampeding to Gamoep, which was now only about ten miles distant. I sent them back to the wagon with instructions to do the thing my heart had failed of,—to waken a human being from that highest condition of well-being—perfect sleep. But it was now time to inspan; for the first time since they had last drunk the oxen were really suffering from thirst. They, too, had their rights. Andries, moreover, was one of those fortunate beings who could slumber at will.

So I again strolled on. I left the track and climbed to the top of the Koeberg, the hill from which the big beacon—that farthest outpost of the trigonometrical survey on this side—springs like a startled finger. This was one of the actual portals of the desert. I was now, alas! once more within sight of the dwellings of men. Several tents had been pitched, and quite a number of mat-houses set up at Gamoep since we had left it, a little more than a week previously.

I turned eastward and cast mournful eyes back over the sun-bathed immensity from which I had emerged, and from the deepest depths of which sounded a call that I knew would for ever echo in my soul. What a strange regret it was that tugged at my aching heartstrings...

The wind had here died down. The morrow would be torrid,—perhaps with a tornado from the north. As the last skirts of the sea-cooled breeze trailed away into the infinite east, their track was marked by a line of towering sand-spouts. So gently did these move across the plains that it seemed as though they stood like a row of lofty columns sustaining the temple-dome of the sky. Yet a careful eye might detect their rhythmic and concerted movement. What was the stately measure they were treading,—to what sphere-music did their gliding feet keep time?

And then, O desert—O steadfast face that I loved—I had to bid you farewell. These eyes would gaze upon you again, but the day was swiftly coming when I should have to take leave of you for ever. But if when the body dies the spirit still lives, this soul which was nourished by your hand until it grew to a stature sufficient to enable it to realise its own littleness, will return and merge itself in your immensity.