About half a century before the days I write of, the then thickly populated region surrounding these goldfields was turned into a shambles and a solitude by, the horde of the terrible Ma 'Ntatisi, chieftainess of the Bathlokua. This tribe was driven from its territory at and around the sources of the Vaal River by the Amahlubi, at the beginning of the upheaval caused by Tshaka, the Zulu king. On many a level mountain terrace can still be seen the circular stone walls indicating where populous villages once stood. Many clans, some large and some small, had inhabited the fertile valleys of the Drakensberg between what is now Wakkerstroom and the Olifant River. They lived in comparative peace with one another. Occasional tribal fights took place, but the victors never attempted to ruin the vanquished or to take their territory.
Ma 'Ntatisi's horde literally obliterated these communities. Probably the number of people who escaped the slaughter did not amount to five per cent of the whole.
Old "Kameel" was one of the survivors. He was a native who, with his family and a few goats, lived at a kraal on a ledge to the right of the creek, about half a mile above the Lower Camp.
Kameel showed me the cave, overlooking the Blyde River Valley, in which he and his mother had hidden themselves while spear and firebrand were erasing his tribe from the face of the surrounding country. This cave could only be entered by climbing up the trunk of a white ironwood-tree and stepping on to a ledge from one of its branches. Other fugitives, Kameel told me, sought the hiding-place during the night, but his mother, fearing that their tracks would be followed, escaped with her children to another refuge during the darkness. It was fortunate that they did this, for the spoilers found the tracks leading to the cavern and massacred every soul it contained. Probably today it still conceals the gruesome pile of bones principally of women and children which I saw in it in 1874.
Kameel was a character in his way. He had spent his life a law unto himself and his family on the little ledge where the kraal he inhabited stood. Being, in spite of his years, a strong active man and a skilled hunter, Kameel was in great demand among those who, like myself, endeavored to combine sport with prospecting on their trips. He accompanied me on several of the longer expeditions which I undertook.
Through listening to the conversation of his employers, whose language was apt to be "painful and frequent and free" on slight provocation, Kameel had picked up some stock expressions which were very amusing. I cannot, unfortunately, bowdlerize the best of these without spoiling them, so I will endeavor to give a few examples of the less forceful. If, for instance, Kameel wanted to indicate size, importance, force, or greatness as an attribute of anything whatever from a flash of lightning to a hippopotamus or an attack of fever he would say "Helovabigwaan," using that term as an adjective. To express disapproval or disgust, he would exclaim "Toodamaach," and shake his head emphatically. The first time I heard the latter expression was when, after a long, painful, and really clever stalk against a heavy wind, I missed a splendid koodoo bull at a distance of about ten yards. The miss was due to a bad cartridge fired from an unspeakable rifle, but Kameel held it to be my fault and despised me accordingly.
It was a quaint little cosmos, this community of gold seekers in one form or another whose tents made white the broken slopes of the winding Pilgrim's Valley. We were exceedingly unconventional in most respects, but the essential decencies of life were observed among us as well as they were in any other community of which I have been a member. As time went on many of the diggers brought their families to the creek. I can remember several pretty girls whose dwellings were so many shrines for respectful worship. A disrespectful word towards a woman would have entailed serious consequences to the user. One lady, a Miss Russell, worked a claim very successfully. She eventually married the owner of the claim adjoining hers, a Mr. Cameron. He, if memory does not play me false, represented Pilgrim's Rest in the Transvaal Volksraad. There were no franchise troubles in those days.
As memory dwells on this period, the people with whom I foregathered become very real and very human. I suppose that, in the natural order of things, most of my fellow-pilgrims have reached the end of their pilgrimage. Those mighty limbs and strong thews which held crowbar and pick to be mere playthings, are dust; those feet which scaled, untired, the highest and steepest ranges are at rest for ever. Yet my recollection of these people is as clear as though it were yesterday, and not five and thirty years ago when I saw them last.
The head of the community was the Gold Commissioner, Major Macdonald. He was at once fountain of justice, dispenser of such patronage as existed, and collector of taxes. "Mac" was an American, and had fought in the War of Secession on the Confederate side. He was not an ideal administrator, but his hands were clean, and he would always do one a good turn if it lay in his power. A tall, thin man with a stooping figure, a goatee beard and iron-grey ringlets showing under the brim of his slouch hat, Major Macdonald's appearance exactly suggested the conventional Yankee of the period of Sam Slick. He played a good game of poker, and was never, so far as I know, seen without a cigar in his mouth. I believe he died a few years since at Uitenhage, where he held the railway cartage contract.
There were several ministers of religion on the creek, but it is nevertheless to be feared that we were a rather irreligious lot. All old Pilgrims will remember the Rev. G B, whose church stood in the lower left-hand corner of the Market Square. Mr. B belonged to the Church of England, and was, for those comparatively unenlightened days, an advanced ritualist. He furnished his church with those symbols which used to fill all good Protestants with horror, but to which they have recently become more or less accustomed. In the matter of vestments and altar observances he flew absolutely in the face of the Court of Arches.