Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer

by W. C. Scully

My next essay, towards wooing fortune was in the line of Kaffir trading. I hired myself to a trader, whose shop was in the Gaika Reserve, close to the kraal of the celebrated Chief Sandile, not far from Tembani. Sandile, who possessed enormous influence with his powerful and war-like tribe, was a man utterly wanting in dignity. He was club-footed, and consequently went very lame. I remember being once sent on a message to his kraal. He came to know that I had a threepenny piece, so began begging for this. He paid no heed to my refusal, but clung to my stirrup-leather and dragged himself after me for nearly half a mile, begging in the most abject terms. I am glad to be able to say that I kept the coin. But Sandile was a brave man; he died the death of a soldier in the Gaika Rebellion of 1878. He was killed in a skirmish in the Pirie Forest, near King William's Town.

My career as a trader was shorter and even more inglorious than that as a farmer. Within a month I was discharged as utterly incompetent. Although I resented this at the time, I am now convinced that the dismissal was well-merited.

It is difficult in these days when Cook & Son issue excursion tickets to the Zambezi, and beyond to realize the mystery and glamour that hung over the greater part of South Africa forty years ago. I can remember how as a child I used to pore over the maps of the period so poor in detail, occasionally with "elephants for want of towns" and wonder as to whether, after I had grown up, I might hope one day to reach the Orange River. Farther than that my wildest anticipatory dreams did not take me.

But at length the dazzling sheen of the diamonds unearthed on the banks of the distant Vaal, thrilled every one with a desire for adventure. Before we could realize the process, the caravan crowded road was open to all; thus one of the ramparts of mystery, had fallen.

We have all become more or less accustomed to diamonds nowadays, but forty, years ago a diamond stood rather for crystallized romance than for a form of carbon worth so much per carat. It stood for the making of history, for empire, and for unbounded wealth. We knew that wars had been waged for the possession of such gems, that blackest crime nor oceans of blood could dim their piercing luster. We felt that every celebrated stone, whether shining on the breast of a lovely woman or blazing in the scepter of a king, was a symbol of power, a nucleus of tragedy, a focus of human passion.

It is, therefore, no wonder that the disturbance of our uneventful South African life a life as simple and as serene as any lived on the face of the earth caused by the realization that diamonds had actually been discovered near the borders of the Cape Colony, raised a flood of wildest excitement. This flood soon swept in a wave of men over the wide, sun-scorched plains of the glamorous North.

Many of my friends had ventured to the new Golconda, and I was fired with desire to follow the gleam. At length I met a man who, after much persuasion, consented to let me accompany him on a contemplated trip to the Vaal River. This was William Brown, who will be remembered by most old Kaffrarians. Brown was a farmer of sorts, usually squatting on Government land, and occasionally occupying a hut on the fringe of the Isidengi Forest, not far from Kabousie Nek. I had now and then stayed with him there, and had spent many days wandering with my gun through the lovely woodland that surrounded his dwelling.

Living in another hut in the vicinity was a very strange character called "Jarge"; his surname has completely escaped me. Jarge was a very old man. Hailing originally from Somersetshire, he had never lost the dialect of his early years. Many an hour have I spent at his saw-pit, listening to recitals of his fifty-year-old adventures, some of which were most unedifying. I remember being much amused at an expression he used. He had met with a large leopard; the animal behaved in a threatening manner. On being questioned as to his feelings on the occasion, Jarge replied: "O, zur, I beed awful frowt."

Brown's preparations for departure were slow; my patience was severely tried. But at length everything was ready. The caravan consisted of two Scotch carts, each drawn by six oxen. With these we started on our long journey, crossing Kabousie Nek by a road of a gradient steeper than that of any other I have traversed in a vehicle. We were accompanied by another strange character a man named Dixon, who had lived for many years at the foot of the Kabousie Mountain. Dixon had been a military tailor at Gibraltar. He had a red face and fiercely protuberant eyebrows, a curled up moustache, and an imperial. When he became intoxicated, as he occasionally did, Dixon grew more solemn than any of the various judges it has been my privilege to meet. Twenty years afterwards I saw, him at the front in one of the Kaffir wars. He must then have been nearly seventy years of age, yet, literally, he did not look a day older than when we first met.

We struck a bad snowstorm on the top of the Stormberg; had we not been able to drive the oxen into a sheltered kloof they would assuredly have perished. We shivered sleepless all night under one of the carts in a freezing gale. Next morning was cloudless; the ranges far and near were heavily, covered with glistening snow. A few days later we picked up two men, who were tramping towards the diamond-fields. One was named Beranger; I believe he was the son of a former lessee of Covent Garden Opera House. His companion was a man named Hull, an ex-publican from Lambeth. With these two chance companions we entered into a sort of partnership; for some months after reaching the diggings we all worked together.