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

Andrew Rivers, being a man of progressive and independent mind, cast about him in a state of uncertainty for some years, devoting himself chiefly to hunting, until the value of ostrich feathers had induced far-sighted men to domesticate the giant bird, and take to “farming” ostriches—incubating them by artificial as well as natural means. Then Rivers became an ostrich-farmer. He was joined in this enterprise by Jerry Goldboy, and the two ultimately bought a farm on the karroo and settled down. Rivers had a turn for engineering, and set himself to form a huge dam to collect rain near his dwelling. From this reservoir he drew forth constant supplies, not only to water flocks and herds, but to create a garden in the karroo, which soon glowed with golden fruit.

In this he set a good example, which has been followed with great success by many men of enterprise in those regions; and there is no doubt, we think, that if such dams were multiplied, Artesian wells sunk, and railways run into the karroos, those fine, though comparatively barren regions of South Africa, would soon begin to blossom like the rose.

Thus, what between ostrich feathers, wool, horses, cattle, and enterprise, Rivers and Goldboy made themselves comfortable. Like other men of sense, they married. Thereafter the garden had to be considerably enlarged, for the golden fruit created by the streams which had been collected and stored by Rivers, proved quite inadequate to the supply of those oceans of babies and swarms of Goldboys that flooded the karroo, and filled its solitudes with shouts and yells that would have done credit to the wildest tribe of reddest Kafirs in the land.

Some of these descendants, becoming men of energy, with roving dispositions like their sires, travelled into the far north, and west, and helped to draw forth the copper ore, and to open the mines of Great Namaqua-land—thus aiding in the development of South Africa’s inexhaustible treasure-house, while others of them, especially the sons of Jerry, went into the regions of the Transvaal Republic, and there proved themselves Goldboys in very truth, by successfully working the now celebrated gold-fields of that region.

Stephen Orpin did not give up trade, but he prosecuted it with less and less vigour as time went on, and at last merely continued it as a means of enabling him to prosecute the great object of his life, the preaching of the gospel, not merely to those whom men style par excellence the “heathen,” but to every one who was willing to listen to the good news—redemption from sin! Ah! there was great fervour in Stephen Orpin’s tones when he said, as he often did— “Men and women, I do not come here to make you good, which, in the estimation of more than one half of the so-called Christian world, means goody. My desire is to open your eyes to see Jesus, the Saviour from sin. Who among you—except the young—does not know the power of sin; our inability to restrain bad and vicious habits; our passionate desire to do what we know is wrong; our frequent falling from courses that we know to be right? It is not that hell frightens us; it is not that heaven fails to attract us. These ideas trouble us little—too little. It is present misery that torments. We long and desire to have, but cannot obtain; we fight and strive, but do not succeed, or, it may be, we do succeed, and discover success to be failure, for we are disappointed, and then feel a tendency towards apathetic indifference. If, however, our consciences be awakened, then the torment takes another form. We are tempted powerfully, and cannot resist. We cannot subdue our passions; we cannot restrain our tempers. No wonder. Has not God said, ‘Greater is he who ruleth his own spirit, than he who taketh a city?’ The greatest conqueror is not so great as he who conquers himself. What then? Is there no deliverance from sin? Yes, there is. ‘Sin shall not have dominion over you,’ are the words of Him who also said, ‘Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’”

“Stephen Orpin,” cried a sturdy sinner, in whose ears these words were preached, “do you know all that to be true? Can you speak from experience of this deliverance, this rest?”

“Yes,” cried Stephen, starting up with a sudden impulse, “I do know it—partly by some deliverances that have been wrought for me, partly from some degree of rest attained to, and much, very much, from the firm assurance I have that, but for God’s forbearing and restraining mercy, I should have been a lost soul long long ago. Man, wherein I have failed in obtaining deliverance and rest, it has been owing to my sin, not to failure in the Lord’s faithfulness.”

But Stephen did not travel so far or so long as had been his wont in days gone by. A wife and family, in the village of Salem, exercised an attractive influence, fastening him, as it were, to a fixed point, and converting his former erratic orbit into a circle which, with centripetal force, was always drawing nearer to its centre.

In the course of his early wanderings Orpin managed to search out Ruyter the Hottentot robber, and so influenced him as to induce him to give up his lawless career, and return to the colony. Ruyter drew with him Abdul Jemalee, Booby the Bushman, and one or two others, who settled down to peaceful occupations.

The Malay in particular—slavery being by that time abolished—returned to Capetown, and there found his amiable wife and loving children ready to receive him with open arms. It is true the wife was somewhat aged, like himself, and his children were grown up—some of them even married,—but these little matters weighed nothing in his mind compared with the great, glorious fact, that he was reunited to them in a land where he might call his body his own!

If Jemalee had been a man of much observation, he might have noted that many important changes had taken place in Capetown and its surroundings during his long absence. A new South African college had been erected; a library which might now stand in the front rank of the world’s libraries had been collected; the freedom of the press had been largely taken advantage of, and education generally was being prosecuted with a degree of rigour that argued well for the future of the colony—especially in Stellenbosch, Wellington, and neighbouring places. But Abdul Jemalee was not a man of observation. He did not care a straw for these things, and although we should like much to enlarge on them, as well as on other topics, we must hold our hand—for the new and eastern, not the old and western provinces of South Africa claim our undivided attention in this tale.

There is no necessary antagonism, however, between these two—‘East’ and ‘West.’ Circumstances and men have at present thrown a few apples of discord into them, just as was the case with England and Scotland of old; with the North and South in the United States of late; but, doubtless, these apples, and every other source of discord, will be removed in the course of time, and South Africa will ere long become a united whole, with a united religious and commercial people, under one flag, animated by one desire—the advancement of truth and righteousness among themselves, as well as among surrounding savages,—and extending in one grand sweep of unbroken fertility from the Cape of Good Hope to the Equator.