Lodges in the Wilderness

by W. C. Scully

The individual who had received the flogging was present. He was a young married man with a weak chin, a shifty eye and a voluble tongue. His face possessed a certain measure of meretricious good-looks, evidently he was a lady-killer; one of the cheaper varieties of that species. He, an officer of the church, had committed an offence against the moral law. The partner in his guilt was present, looking sufficiently woe-begone. She did not possess the fatal gift of beauty,—at all events according to Caucasian standards. The injured spouse, attired in a goatskin robe, was present and wept softly at intervals throughout the proceedings. She was distinctly less uncomely than the erring sister.

The Raad had dealt with the case and sentenced the culprit, who had admitted his guilt, to receive three dozen with a “strop,” which were immediately and energetically inflicted. The punishment, although illegal, had been richly deserved. I considered that the Raad had acted with propriety,—but it was necessary to be guarded in what I said. If the principle involved had been given formal official sanction, it might have been logically applied to more serious cases,—those, for instance, in which capital punishment would have been due. If, at some future time, the Vicar under my implied authority had erected a gallows and engaged the services of a Lord High Executioner, it would have been awkward, to say the least of it.

Accordingly I temporised. Lothario of the shifty eye was informed that his case would be duly considered at head-quarters. So it would,—by the moths inhabiting the pigeonholes of the Record Office in Cape Town. Nevertheless I should have to deal cunningly with this episode so as to avoid raising a humanitarian howl. However, I meant, so far as I could to support the authority of the Raad. The result of discrediting that would have been to loosen the bonds of the moral law,—to hand the Richtersveld over to be exploited by the violent and lawless. This Raad interested me extremely; it was so wise and so conscientious. The Colonial Parliament might really have learnt quite a lot of useful things from it.

We are a curious people. The solicitude we are apt to evince for the posterior of a blackguard is really marvellous—considering how little we have for the victims of an industrial system under which hundreds of thousands of men, women and children are leading lives of the most degrading slavery. We see, with complacency, whole generations growing stunted and vacant-eyed under stress of their bitter lot; we know—or should know, for we have been told it often enough—that one of the pillars in the edifice of our commercial prosperity is the sweated woman in the garret,—old, haggard and hopeless at thirty. She stitches or pastes for fourteen hours a day in the blind, numbing effort to keep her blighted soul in her stunted body, and we complacently draw the dividends her long-drawn torture helps to swell. But we forget it is that woman’s grandchildren who may have to defend ours from the Huns.

Yes,—a fatal habit of acquiescing in demoralising conditions permits us to look on at, without attempting to prevent, the slow, relentless murder of a race. But the blackguard’s back—that is something sacred; the mere idea of its being defiled by the richly deserved lash fills us with horror. The divine force of indignation which is in the heart of every man,—a holy thing when used for the right purpose—is thus wasted, dissipated—fired off at a straw dummy held aloft, as it were, by Commercialism for the purpose of drawing our attention from its own foul works.

And if we came to honestly examine our own feelings on the subject we should find that it was not so much the blackguard who was in question as our own morbid sensibility. We—that is the ones who live on the labour of others,—the small minority who, feasting on the deck of the ship of western civilisation which is being steered straight for the abyss—have sunk into what Schiller called “der weichlichen Schoss der Verfeinerung” our hyperaesthesia has grown so morbid that every stripe we see administered raises a weal on ourselves. This is a condition perilously near that in which the contemplation of suffering becomes the sole channel of pleasure, for morbid sensibility and cruelty have usually hobnobbed at the same inn. It is the healthy man who does not shrink from either enduring or inflicting necessary pain.

The Raad was dissolved—dismissed with my blessing which, however, I felt constrained to express in more or less guarded terms. I regarded that body with deep and sincere admiration. It might be of incalculable benefit to the British Empire if the speakers of the respective parliaments of the self-governing Colonies, led by the speaker of the House of Commons, were to visit the Richtersveld and sit on that arid hillside listening to the Raad’s deliberations. I should be prepared personally to conduct the tour.

With the Vicar’s kind assistance I proceeded with the necessary preparations for my gold-seeking adventure. He lent me some carpenter’s tools, and I soon altered a small gin-case I had brought into a very fair imitation of a gold-digger’s cradle. The next step was to hire two pack-oxen and secure the services of a few labourers. On the following morning we would start for the supposed El Dorado. In the meantime I again called on my interesting friend the Vicar, drank some more of his excellent coffee, and, after contributing according to my means towards the building fund of the unfinished church, bade my host a cordial farewell.

It was a quaint caravan which next morning scarped the north-eastern shoulder of the T’Oums Mountain, in search of El Dorado. The guide—a little, wizened creature, certainly more than half Bushman—and I, led the procession. Next came the pack-oxen, conducted by their respective owners, but generally under Hendrick’s charge. The loads were miscellaneous in character, but not heavy. They comprised my bedding, provisions, delving tools and receptacles for such reptiles, insects and plants as we might find it worth while to collect. From the top of one load the handle of the cradle pointed towards heaven—or rather it would have had it not swayed so much from the gait of the ox. I wished for a small flag to attach to it. Next came a mixed crowd, about twenty in number. These were mere camp followers, but they insisted on accompanying me. They included men, women and children. Among the latter were two ape-like babies, slung on their mothers’ backs. Andries, for the time, had remained behind with the wagon.

The track was unexpectedly good; much better in fact than the one over which we had travelled before reaching Kuboos. To the left, in the direction of the Orange River, the scenery was comparatively tame,—that is to say it looked as though one might pass over the country without inevitably breaking one’s neck. But to the right lay chaos, confused and titanic. The strata were completely inverted—in some instances almost turned upside down. But the general suggestion was as though several miles of the earth’s surface-crust had been placed on end. The soft layers had disappeared; the hard remained standing. Alternate deep chasms and jutting, mountainous buttresses of rock were the consequence.