Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer

by W. C. Scully

Were I now to be offered the Prime Ministership of the Union my surprise would hardly be greater than it then was. Curiously enough I was on the same day offered a post in a mercantile firm, that of Joseph Walker & Sons, at a salary of 7 per month. But, for family reasons, the difference of 3 per month was just then an important consideration, so I accepted the first offer, a step I have ever since regretted.

I had grave doubts as to my ability to do the duties required of me. While at East London I had worked every day at a copy-book, striving to improve my handwriting, but my fingers were more at home with the trigger and the pick than with the pen. Moreover, my spelling was phonetic and wonderful. Although I knew most of Shakespeare's sonnets by heart, I did not know a single rule of English grammar. This ignorance has remained with me to the present day, but I cannot say I feel it much of a handicap. However, there was no examination to pass, and my chief would have to put up with my shortcomings for the present. I had faced lions on the Lebomba and crocodiles in the Komati; why should I quail before a mere magistrate?

It may be advisable to explain how my appointment came to be offered. My father and the then Lord Carnarvon, who happened to be Colonial Secretary, had been friends in the old days. Lord Carnarvon wrote to Government House, Cape Town, asking that something might be done for us. My father was beyond the age-limit; I, clearly, was not. Responsible Government had arrived; nevertheless, a certain amount of informal patronage was still occasionally exercised.

Thus it was that I, after a strange and varied apprenticeship in some of the roughest of life's workshops, became cogged down as a little wheel in that clumsy, expensive, and circumlocutory mill, which, consuming much grist but producing little meal, is still believed to be an indispensable adjunct to our civilization.

Here I must break off. But my reminiscences are by no means complete; some day and I trust before very long they will be brought up to date.

Whether or not the supplementary volume will reach the printer's hands, depends on how far the public becomes interested in the work of which I am now writing the last words of the closing chapter.

After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that so long as the official collar galls my neck, I cannot adequately deal with the period during which I have been a public servant; I would have to walk too delicately. [I have since modified this decision.] For one of the disadvantages of being in the public service lies in the circumstance that it is impossible to speak or write of experiences gained therein, without embarrassing reserve.

But the days of my retirement are rapidly drawing nigh; when they arrive, and the collar drops, I shall have much to say about many things, for my life as a public servant during six-and-thirty years has been an interesting one. Most of it has been spent in places as far as possible from centers where conventionality reigns.

My still unrecorded experiences include, inter alia, war, hunting, the administration of native tribes in remote areas, rovings under special commission in those waterless regions to the north-west through which the boundary common to British and German territory runs and perhaps most interesting of all, a microscopic study of human infusoria inhabiting isolated and therefore stagnant towns and hamlets.

I intend to retire soon with a typewriting machine and some beehives, to a little farm I have acquired in a sleepy locality on the south coast. There I hope to be spared for some few years to develop the economic products of the honey-bee, to meditate on the Universal Postulate, and to watch, from afar, my children cultivating the difficult fields of Experience. May their task be easier than mine has been!