The Settler and the Savage, R. M. Ballantyne [best way to read ebooks .txt] 📗

the slaveholders will be ruinous. But it is useless to go into such matters now, Gertie. Right or wrong, many of the Dutch farmers are talking seriously of going out of the colony, and my father, I grieve to say, is among the number.”

“And you, Hans?”

“I will remain on the old homestead—at least for a time. If things improve we may induce father to return; if not, I will follow him into the wilderness.”

“And what of Considine?” asked Gertie.

“He remains to help me to manage the farm. There is no chance for him in the present exasperated state of my father’s mind. He unhappily extends his indignation against England to Englishmen, and vows that my sister Bertha shall never wed Charlie Considine.”

“Is he likely to continue in that mind?”

“I think so.”

“Then there is indeed no chance for poor Charlie,” was the rejoinder, “for Bertha Marais will never marry in direct opposition to her father’s wishes. Heigho! ’Tis the old story about the course of true love.”

“He may change—he will change his mind, I think,” said Hans, “but in the meantime he will go off into the wilderness, carrying Bertha along with him. I would have gone with him myself without hesitation, had it not been that I cannot bear to think of tearing you away just yet from the old people, and I may perhaps do some good here in the way of saving the old home.”

Hans looked round with a somewhat mournful gaze at the home of his childhood, which bore evidences of the preparations that were being made by Conrad Marais to leave it.

That evening a large party of disaffected boers arrived at the homestead of Conrad Marais, with waggons, wives, children, goods, and arms, on their way to the far north. Some of these men were sterling fellows, good husbands and fathers and masters, but with fiery independent spirits, which could not brook the restraints laid on them by a Government that had too frequently aroused their contempt or indignation. Others were cruel, selfish savages who scorned the idea that a man might not “wallop his own nigger,” and were more than half pleased that the abolition of slavery and its consequences gave them a sort of reason for throwing off allegiance to the British Crown, and forsaking their homes in disgust; and some there were who would have been willing to remain and suffer, but could not bear the idea of being left behind by their kindred.

Next morning Conrad completed the loading of his waggons, placed his wife and children—there was still a baby!—in them, mounted his horse with the sons who yet remained with him, and bade farewell to the old home on the karroo. He was followed by a long train of his compatriots’ waggons. They all crossed the frontier into Kafirland and thenceforth deemed themselves free!

This was the first droppings of a shower—the first leak of a torrent—the first outbreak of that great exodus of the Dutch-African boers which was destined in the future to work a mighty change in the South African colony.

Hans and Gertie accompanied the party for several hours on their journey, and then, bidding them God-speed, returned to their deserted home.

But now a cloud was lowering over the land which had been imperceptibly, though surely, gathering on the horizon for years past.

We have said that hitherto the colony, despite many provocations, thefts, and occasional murders, had lived in a state of peace with the Kafirs—the only time that they took up arms for a brief space being in their defence, at Hintza’s request, against the Fetcani.

Latterly, we have also observed, the British settlers had toiled hard and prospered. The comforts of life they had in abundance. Trade began to be developed, and missions were established in Kafirland. Among other things, the freedom of the press had been granted them after a hard struggle! The first Cape newspaper, the South African Commercial Advertiser, edited by Pringle the poet and Fairbairn, was published in 1824, and the Grahamstown Journal, the first Eastern Province newspaper, was issued by Mr Godlonton in 1831. Schools were also established. Wool-growing began to assume an importance which was a premonition of the future staple of the Eastern Provinces. Savings-banks were established, and, in short, everything gave promise of the colony—both east and west—becoming a vigorous, as it was obviously a healthy, chip of the old block.

But amongst all this wheat there had been springing up tares. With the growing prosperity there were growing evils. A generous and well-meant effort on the part of Christians and philanthropists to give full freedom and rights to the Hottentots resulted to a large extent in vagabondism, with its concomitant robbery. The Kafirs, emboldened by the weak, and exasperated by the incomprehensible, policy of the Colonial Government at that time, not only crossed the border to aid the Hottentot thieves in their work, and carry off sheep and cattle by the hundred, but secretly prepared for war. Behind the scenes were the paramount chief Hintza, the chief Macomo, and others. The first, forgetting the deliverance wrought for him by the settlers and British troops in 1828, secretly stirred up the Kafirs, whilst the second, brooding over supposed wrongs, fanned the flame of discontent raised among the Hottentots by the proposal of a Vagrancy Act.

When all is ready for war it takes but a spark to kindle the torch. The Kafirs were ready; the British, however, were not. The settlers had been peacefully following their vocations, many of the troops, which ought to have been there to guard them, had been unwisely withdrawn, and only a few hundred men remained in scattered groups along the frontier. The armed Hottentots of the Kat River—sent there as a defence—became a point of weakness, and required the presence of a small force to overawe them and prevent their joining the Kafirs. At last the electric spark went forth. A farmer (Nell) was robbed of seven horses, which were traced to the kraal of a chief on the neutral territory. Restoration was refused. A military patrol was sent to enforce restitution. Opposition was offered, and the officer in command wounded with an assagai. Hintza began to retreat and plunder British traders who were residing in his territory under his pledged protection, and at length a trader named Purcell was murdered near the chief’s kraal and his store robbed. Then Macomo began hostilities by robbing and murdering some farmers on the lower part of the Kat River, and two days afterwards the Kafir hordes, variously estimated at from eight to fifteen thousand men, burst across the whole frontier, wrapped the eastern colony in the smoke and flames of burning homesteads, scattered the unprepared settlers, demolished the works of fourteen years’ labour, penetrated to within twenty miles of Algoa Bay, and drove thousands of sheep and cattle back in triumph to Kafirland.