Part 3 (2/2)
Hailstorms occasionally happened. I recall a very remarkable one that pa.s.sed over that portion of King William's Town known as ”the German Village” in, I think, the summer of 1869. The hailstones, which were of immense size, did not fall very thickly. Moreover, the area of the town over which the storm pa.s.sed contained no houses but thatched ones.
Great lumps of ice, all of the same shape, but of various sizes, began to rain out of the sky. The shape was that of a full-blown rose; it suggested that each had been formed in a tiny vortex-mould. Some of the lumps measured four inches across. Dr. Egan, at the Grey Hospital, secured one monster which weighed a pound and three-quarters.
The throbbing roar heralding the approaching hail cataract was a thing never to be forgotten. I heard of no fatalities among human beings, but a flock of sheep was wiped out at a spot where the storm concentrated.
This happened on a high, abrupt hill about twenty miles away.
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 gra.s.s 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-was.h.i.+ng 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 b.u.t.terworth 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 pa.s.sages. 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.”
I have seldom been so impressed by any one as by this Kaffir, who, born in absolute barbarism, had acquired culture both deep and wide, and then returned to try and civilize his people. At the time I met him Mr.
Soga was hard at work translating, for the benefit of the Natives, the Bible and ”Pilgrim's Progress.” The Kaffir language is eminently suited to the former; good Kaffir linguists will tell you that many of the Psalms sound better in Mr. Soga's version than in English. His rendering of ”Pilgrim's Progress,” too, is a masterpiece.
Tiyo Soga was a tall man of slender build and with a stooping figure.
Even at the time I tell of a short, hacking cough gave evidence of the consumption which some years later caused his death. He was not alone a deeply cultivated scholar, but a Christian gentleman in the fullest sense of the term.
We pa.s.sed Kreli's kraal, but the chief was in retirement under the hands of a witch-doctor, so we did not see him. The scenery along the watershed between the Kei and the Kobonqaba is wonderfully beautiful.
The weather was calm and clear; the ocean like a world of sapphire fringed with snow. The populous villages of the Natives stood on every ledge; sleek cattle grazed in every valley. The people looked prosperous and contented. We met civility everywhere; milk was offered us at every kraal. I visited the same locality a few years ago and sojourned for a few weeks near the site of the old Soga camp, but the season was summer, and both ticks and snakes were in evidence to a most unpleasant degree. The natives also had changed; no longer were they so civil or so hospitable. Revisiting the scenes of one's youth is usually an unsatisfactory experience.
We spent a week with the Sogas, and then went to the camp of the Fynns, a few miles away. Here, also, we were hospitably entertained. There were three Fynn brothers, and their aggregate height was nineteen feet.
Late one afternoon, when returning from a ride, I had my first sight of wild dogs. In crossing a deep, bushy kloof by a bridle-path I reached an open s.p.a.ce. Here I saw five large, smoke-colored animals. Two were squatting on their haunches, the others were standing. I pa.s.sed within about twenty-five yards of them. They made no hostile demonstration, neither did they attempt to run away. When I related my experience at the camp, I was told that the animals I had seen were wild dogs, a pack of which had for some time been marauding in the vicinity.
I returned to King William's Town via Tsomo and Tembani. We traveled mostly, by night. My companion for I had left Mr. Samuel's party was a trader. He carried four hundred sovereigns in a holster. We off-saddled at several kraals, and on each occasion the gold jingled audibly, yet we never felt the slightest uneasiness. In those days it was a common practice for traders to send large sums of money by native runners from the heart of Kaffirland, yet I do not think there is a single instance of such a trust having been betrayed.
When I reached King William's Town it was quite evident that our sheep were not flouris.h.i.+ng. They were, in fact, dwindling daily. Something had to be done, so my father hired a farm about ten miles away, in the direction of Kabousie. I volunteered my services as caretaker of the flock, and to my intense gratification this offer was accepted. The farm had no homestead, so I was given an old bell-tent, purchased at a military rummage sale, to live in.
My a.s.sistant was a Kaffir lad named Toby, whose memory is kept green, so far as I am concerned, by his enormous lips. These resembled sausages strung across his face literally from ear to ear. I now considered myself to be a full-fledged farmer. An old sheep kraal was put into a state of repair. Toby and I built a wattle hut, and a shelter for the pony. The hut was so small that Toby, had to lie curled up in it; if he stretched himself, either head or heels had to be out in the cold.
After the novelty had worn off, the monotony of my life became appalling. There were no neighbors with whom to foregather; there was no game to shoot; the surrounding country was uninteresting to a degree. Far away, just peeping over the rim of the horizon, were the peaks of the Amatole and Kabousie Ranges regions of enchantment, cliff-crowned and forest-clothed towards which my soul vainly sighed.
But an accident quickly brought this chapter of my life to a tragic close. One very, windy day I went out with the sheep, leaving Toby at the camp to cook the dinner. The blasts were so strong that it was impracticable to light a fire in the open. Toby, suggested lighting one in the tent, and to this I unwisely consented, warning him, however, to be very careful lest our dwelling should catch alight.
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