Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer Part 7

Shortly afterwards Garstin was astonished to hear that his former pupil had set up a studio on his own account at St. Ives, a few miles away.

It was quite true. Here he sat all day long, painting pictures of St.

Michael's Mount in a.s.sorted sizes. I forget how many pictures he finished each week, but the output was large. This is the explanation; Johannesburg at the time contained many Cornishmen; to the average Cornishman St. Michael's Mount is what Mecca is to the Moslem.

Garstin's shrewd disciple had his daubs framed and sent to the Rand.

Here they were all absorbed, fetching prices which left an average profit of 5 each. And all this time Garstin's own beautiful creations were wanting purchasers.

In 1873 rich alluvial gold was reported to have been struck in the Lydenburg district, which was then the extreme limit which civilization had reached in the north-eastern Transvaal. I decided to go and try my fortune at the scene of the discovery. While pa.s.sing through Pretoria I met a man in the street whose face I thought I knew. He advanced towards me with outstretched hand. Yes, it was Cooper the man during whose wedding festivities the big circus-tent had been blown down. He greeted me with great effusion, a circ.u.mstance I thought remarkable, as I had not known him well. The day was warm, so I suggested that we should have a drink together. He agreed with alacrity, so we adjourned to the nearest bar.

"Well, Cooper," said I, "how are you getting on here?"

At once his face fell.

"Very badly indeed," he replied, and heaved a sigh.

"Why, what is the matter?"

"Well, the fact is, I am going to be hanged."

I thought he was joking, but it was not so; he was actually under sentence of death. He had gone on the spree and started painting Pretoria red some months previously. When a constable attempted to arrest him, he drew a revolver and shot the unfortunate officer fatally. In due course he was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead.

"But, Cooper," I queried, "why don't they hang you?"

"Well," he replied, "they don't like hanging white men up here, and just now President Burgers is laying out a rose-garden. I understand that kind of thing, so I go down every day and attend to the work. I was just taking a stroll when I met you."

"Look here, Cooper," I said with emphasis, "if I were you I would clear out without delay. The State Attorney may change his mind; some new man may take on the job a man with strict ideas. Clear out while you can."

"Oh, I don't think there's any danger," replied Cooper, but he looked uneasy.

"Was it a white man or a black man that you shot?"

"It was a white man, right enough."

"Then clear out while there is still time," said I.

Some months afterwards I met a Pretoria man named Brodrick at Pilgrim's Rest. I inquired about Cooper. What Brodrick told me proved the soundness of my advice. The Executive Council had suddenly awakened to a sense of its duty, and decided to allow the law to take its course.

Fortunately Brodrick and some others got wind of this, so they managed to get the culprit out of gaol. Mounted on one horse and leading another, Cooper rode for his life westward towards Bechua.n.a.land, pursued by the Transvaal police. However, he escaped. I have never heard of him since.

Game was plentiful at certain places along the road. I remember a locality called "Leeuw Dooms" where blesbuck, wildebeeste, and quagga were in almost incredible abundance. As far as the eye could reach the veld was dappled with herds of these and other animals. So far as I can remember, this place was about three days' wagon journey beyond Pretoria.

Before reaching Pretoria we outspanned near the winkel of a man named Jacobi, a former resident of Cradock. This was within a few miles of where Johannesburg stands today. I remember Jacobi telling me that a nugget of gold had been found in the drift of a river close to his house. Here I had an adventure.

I took my rifle and strolled down the riverbank after some reedbuck, which I had been told were to be found there. I wounded a buck; it hobbled away with difficulty. I ran after it, but the gra.s.s was long, and I had a difficulty in keeping the animal in sight. In my course stood an ant-hill about four feet high. Endeavoring to get within view of the buck, I sprang to the top of the ant-hill, but it was hollow, and the crust collapsed under me. I looked down and found that several snakes were crawling and writhing about my feet. I had some difficulty in getting out, for as soon as I got foothold on the edge it broke under my weight. The weather was cold, and the snakes had taken refuge in the cavity.

I reached the town of Nazareth (now called Middelburg ) early one morning. The houses numbered, I should say, from thirty to forty, and stood somewhat wide apart from each other. In making my way to a shop which stood about in the middle of the township, and which had a very high stoep, I noticed that the streets were full of game spoors. I spoke of this to the storekeeper.

"Oh, yes," he replied, "the game comes in here every night. Look there."

I glanced in the direction indicated. Just beyond the outskirts of the town were herds of wildebeeste, blesbuck, and quagga grazing quietly about, like so many herds of cattle. But they were not so tame as they looked, as I found later in the day, when I went towards them with my rifle.

In pa.s.sing through the High Veld, as the country to the north-east of Nazareth was called, I first saw the spoor of a lion. I left the wagon, which had been obliged to make a very wide detour for the purpose of avoiding swampy ground, and was making straight across country towards a point close to which I knew the road pa.s.sed. On my left was a very large leegte, a shallow, nearly level valley. For miles of its course this was filled with swamp, out of which tall reeds grew.

Game was very abundant. I shot several blesbuck and wildebeeste, I am sorry to say, for the gratification of mere l.u.s.t of slaughter, as I could not possibly carry away the meat. In pa.s.sing over a graveled ridge I noticed a dried drop of blood. I looked more closely and found the tracks of some large animal. This I followed, in the direction of the reeds, until I reached some sandy ground. Then I saw that the track was undoubtedly that of a lion. The animal had evidently killed during the previous night and carried the meat to its lair among the reeds.

But this was a mere guess; I did not pursue my investigations.

Next day I left the wagon long before daylight, and started for another tramp this time along a course I had mapped out the previous afternoon.

It was bitterly and unseasonably cold. There was no wind, but the h.o.a.r-frost lay almost as thick as if a fairly heavy shower of snow had fallen. I was wearing veldschoens, but had no socks. As I trampled through the gra.s.s the frost spicules from the tussocks I brushed against filled the s.p.a.ces between the leather and my feet.

I began to suffer excruciating pain. I thought day would never break.

My feet felt as though they did not belong to me. Soon they ceased to be painful, but the pain-area had traveled up my legs. Having heard of frost-bite and its serious effects, I became much alarmed.

Day broke at length. There was so far no game in sight. I thought of kindling a fire, but could find no fuel. Just ahead a low, narrow d.y.k.e crossed my course. I crept to this on my hands and knees, and peered through the stones. Yes, there stood a small herd of blesbuck; they were not more than eighty yards away. With great difficulty, for the light was still bad and I was shaking like an aspen, I got my bead on the largest buck. I fired; the animal sprang into the air and rolled over. I hobbled forward to where the creature lay. It was stone dead; shot through the heart. I pulled the carca.s.s up to a convenient stone, cut it open with my hunting knife and thrust my feet into its interior.

During the ensuing half-hour I think I suffered more intense physical agony than I have ever endured in the same period of time. My feet must have been very nearly frost-bitten, and the process of circulation being restored was exquisitely painful. I verily believe that my life was saved through the accident of those blesbucks being behind the d.y.k.e and close enough for me to be able to kill one. The sun was high in the heavens before I was able to resume my journey.

One day I came across an encampment of Boer hunters. Tired of killing game, they were indulging in the diversion of a shooting-match. I was cordially welcomed, and invited to join in the compet.i.tion. The farmers had brought their families with them; some dozen or so wagons had been outspanned together, and several tents had been pitched.

Girls, some of them very pretty, dispensed coffee in kommetjes to the compet.i.tors. The compet.i.tion was arranged on very peculiar lines. The targets were circular, and could not have measured more than about five inches in diameter. The range was a hundred paces. Each compet.i.tor lay on a feather-bed, which was covered with a kaross, and rested his rifle on a pile of pillows. The price of a lootje that is to say, the fee for entry was sixpence, and each could take as many lootjes as he liked.

The number of shots fired in each case was five, and these were fired in succession. The prizes were sheep, sacks of meal, and small casks of vinegar.

In spite of the smallness of the target there were but few misses.

Shots were judged to a hair's-breadth, and the judging was perfectly fair. Strangely enough I managed to win a sack of meal and a barrel of vinegar. As these were of no use to me, I exchanged them for fifteen shillings and a hundred Westley Richards cartridges. My shooting caused me to find favor in the eyes of these farmers; I was cordially invited to remain and hunt with them for as long as I liked. I might have done worse than accept; the life they were leading was a lordly one.

However, I had to bid them a regretful farewell. Then I tramped on after the wagon.

The people with whom I was traveling did not go beyond Lydenburg, so from there I had to tramp to Pilgrim's Rest, my destination, a distance of about forty miles. I tied my worldly possessions into a "swag" a process in which I was skillfully a.s.sisted by an old miner, with whom I casually foregathered. Then I set forth with three companions, likewise casual acquaintances. We all belonged to that despised cla.s.s known as "new chums" that is, men who were without practical experience in the art of goldmining.

We started early in the afternoon. Our pilgrimage was a painful one; my swag was heavy, and the straps galled my unaccustomed shoulders. After walking about fifteen miles we camped in a small grove of trees. Here we shivered through an apparently interminable night around an inadequate fire. None of us were experienced bushmen, and we had neglected to gather sufficient fuel. The wind was cold, and I had not then acquired that toughness of fiber and insensibility to extremes of heat and cold which long wanderings and many hardships afterwards gave me.

Two only of my companions are worth recalling. One was an ex-larrikin from Melbourne, who went by the name of "Artful Joe"; his real name I never learnt. Joe had been the victim of a horrible accident in the Kimberley mine about a year previously. He had fallen from one of the "roads" sixty feet sheer on to a sorting table at the bottom of the claim. Both his legs had been broken in several places. I was not present when the accident occurred, but I witnessed the tedious and terrible process of hoisting the injured man out of the pit and conveying him to the hospital. With the exception of a slight lameness, and of being more or less bandy-legged, Joe had not suffered much permanent injury.

He sang many comic songs to cheer us up during that night of dolor, filling the intervals between the ditties with anathemas against his South African luck and realistic stories of his Australian experiences.

He had lived, he told us, for several years by earning pennies in the Melbourne streets. Outside the sculleries of the large hotels, or where banquets had been held, barrels of 'feast fragments used to be set. In these barrels the street-public were allowed to "dab" with a fork, at the rate of a penny a time, for discarded fragments of food.

Occasionally a rich reward would fall to the enterprising "dabber."

Joe's most dazzling stroke of luck happened once when he dabbed out a whole fowl (feaoul, he called it). This must have been rendered possible through some extraordinary lapse of culinary carefulness.

The description was so appetizing that I am sure the wraith of that long-digested bird hovered over our meager banquet.

The second pilgrim was a Jew named L.

He was extremely short of stature, but wore the biggest boots I have ever seen; literally, they covered him to the waist. L, never having previously roughed it, was the greatest sufferer; his misery was so great that he wept bitterly, refusing to be comforted. He sickened us through his utter want of grit. When, towards morning, he slept, I took his boots and hid them behind a bush some distance away. His lamentations on missing them were long and loud.

The third of my companions was a mere tramp, sodden with drink a man utterly without significance, except as an example of what to avoid.

Some months afterwards, at Pilgrim's Rest, L attempted to commit suicide by hanging himself. He was cut down before life was extinct, and on recovery was prosecuted for felo-de-se. At the time Major Macdonald, the Gold Commissioner, happened to be away, his place being temporarily filled by Mr. Mansfield, the postmaster. The terms used by the latter in sentencing L caused great amus.e.m.e.nt.

They were as follows:

"As you have been guilty of an attempt only, I will fine you 5, but if you had succeeded I should have felt bound to pa.s.s a much more severe sentence."

"Artful Joe" and I were the only two members of the party who were fit to travel next day, so after leaving the others the largest share of our joint stock of provisions (meal and tea), and restoring the boots to their disconsolate owner, we went on. We abandoned the road and traveled by a footpath across country in the compa.s.s direction of our objective. It was in the middle of a calm, sunny afternoon that we reached the eastern edge of the mountain plateau overlooking the Blyde River Valley. The prospect was a magnificent one. North and south the great mountain ranges rolled away, seemingly to infinity. Before us, winding down through the range on the opposite side of the valley, lay Pilgrim's Creek, the goal of our long endeavor.

Between two and three miles from where the creek flowed into the Blyde River lay the little township. Among the farther sinuosities of the valley were groups of tents. With the eye of imagination we could almost detect the nuggets gleaming at the bottom of the stream. We had not yet learnt the gold-diggers' variant of a well-known proverb: "Nothing is gold that glitters."