In those days streams such as the Kat, the Koonap, the Buffalo, and the Keiskamma were really rivers; often they foamed down in mighty brown torrents. As there were no bridges, except the occasional military, ones, post carts would often be delayed for days at a time, and one's letters would sometimes arrive more or less in a state of pulp. The whole country was covered with rank vegetation up to June, when nearly all the grass would be burnt off. It is to the cessation of this immemorial practice one noted by, all the voyagers along the south-east coast that I attribute the enormous increase of the tick pest.
One of my favorite diversions, when the Buffalo was in flood, was to ride to a spot near the upper end of the town and there strip. I would tie my clothes into a bundle and entrust them, with my pony, to another boy. Then I would jump into the river and allow myself to be carried down by the torrent. All one had to do was to keep well in the middle of the stream and avoid contact with occasional uprooted trees.
Once or twice I found myself, when thus swimming, unpleasantly close to puff-adders and other snakes which had been washed by the flood out of their hiding-places in the holes piercing the river-banks. But such reptiles were always too much stiffened by the cold water to be capable of doing any injury.
Meanwhile the boy, with my clothes and the pony, would be waiting for me at a stated spot some distance below the wool-washing yards to the south-east of the town. I should not now care to venture on such an excursion.
CHAPTER IV
Trip to the Transkei—Tiyo Soga and his family—Trip to the seaside—The Fynns—Wild dogs—Start as a sheep farmer—My camp burnt out—First commercial adventure—Chief Sandile—Discovery of diamonds—Start for Golconda—Traveling companions—Manslaughter narrowly escaped—Old De Beers—Life at the Diamond Fields—Scarcity of water—First case of diamond stealing—I nearly discover Kimberley Mine—The rush to Colesberg Kopje—My first diamond—Its loss and my humiliation—Kimberley claims dear at 10—Camp-life in early days—I. D. B.—Canteen burning.
It was in the June holidays of 1869 that I undertook my first real adventure. I then accompanied Mr. Samuel and two of my schoolfellows on an expedition to the Transkei, which at that time was still practically independent Kaffirland. The Fingoes were in a sense under British protection, and Mr. Fynn was resident with Sariii (usually known as "Kreli"), the celebrated Goaleka chief.
The Kei River was the colonial boundary. Traveling on horseback we crossed the river by a drift some distance below the site of the present Komgha Bridge. One of my companions was Tom Irvine, now a partner in the firm of Dyer and Dyer, of East London. The other was Alfred Longden, whose father was Wesleyan missionary near the site on which the town of Butterworth now stands, Richard Irvine had a trading station at the Incu Drift. The old building still exists. When we arrived there the tobacco crop had just been harvested, and the trader was kept busy from early morning until late at night buying tobacco at the rate of a penny per pound, the price being taken in the form of trade goods.
We moved on to Tutura, the mission station of that remarkable man Tiyo Soga. Mrs. Soga and her sister, Miss Burnside, received us with the best hospitality. Their dwelling consisted of a row of huts which were connected with each other by means of wattled passages. The huts had doors and ordinary windows.
The Sogas were just on the point of starting for the seaside on their annual holiday when we joined them. Their destination was the mouth of the Kobonqaba River. We decided to join the party. I rode most of the way, some forty miles, at Mr. Soga's side. He beguiled the time by reciting Wordsworth's poetry, which at that time I had never heard of. As each fresh aspect of the magnificent scenery unfolded itself he would pause and declaim some appropriate quotation from "The Excursion."