Chapter Five.

Chapter Five.A Boer Pastoral.It is dim early morning, and upon the vast plains of Great Bushmanland, in the far north-west of Cape Colony, the air blows fresh and chill, though the land is Africa, and the time summer. At 4:15 precisely the bright morning star shoots above the horizon, and rises steadily upward in a straight, rocket-like ascent.Now a ruddy colouring tinges the pale grey of the eastern sky, to be followed by broad rays in delicate blues and greens that strike boldly for the zenith. The changes of dawn in Africa are swift and very subtle. Presently these colours fade, and a pale, subdued light rests upon the earth; the air is full of a clear but cold brightness. Soon follows the full red-orange, that so gorgeously paints the eastern horizon, and closely foreruns the sun; and then suddenly the huge burning disc itself is thrust upon the sky-line, and it is, in South African parlance, “sun up.”The plains here stretch in illimitable expanse to the horizon. Far to the west is a range of mountain, forty good miles away, which, in the clear morning air, stands out as sharply as if but a dozen miles distant. You may see the dark lines and patches of the time-worn seams and krantzes that scar its sides. This translucency of atmosphere is very common in Southern Africa.The rains have lately fallen, and everywhere around the dry plains have started at the breath of moisture into a splendid, if short-lived, beauty. Miles upon miles of flats, all glowing and ablaze with purple and a rich, flame-like red, are spread around. The wonderfulCompositesare in flower, and the barren, desert-like flats are for a few brief weeks transformed into a carpet of the noblest colouring and pattern. Look closely, and you may see the bleached and blackened limbs of former growths of low shrub, which stand amid the gallant blaze—gaunt reminders of the transitory existence of African flower life.Near at hand lies a vlei, a shallow temporary lake recruited by the recent rains. At the end of this vlei, farthest removed from the group of wagons outspanned there, is gathered at this early hour a notable display of bird life. Duck, geese, widgeon, and teal are there, cackling and crying in a joyous plenty. Stints and sandpipers whirl hither and thither, and graceful black-and-white avocets, with their singular, upturned, slender bills, and long, red-legged stilt-plovers, haunt the shallows. Upon the plain some small birds have been afoot some time. You may see and hear the lively, inquisitive Jan Fredric thrush, with his pleasing song, and his curious note—“Jan-fredric-dric-dric-fredric.” He is racing swiftly hither and thither through the shrub and flowers, bustling for his food supply. There, too, are the thick-billed lark, the Sabota lark, with its clear, ringing call, and a few other—but not many—small birds. Aloft an eagle is already on the move, and a hawk or two, no doubt meditating descent upon some of the wildfowl on the vlei. Out upon the plains, half a mile distant from the wagons, are to be seen a knot or two of graceful springbok busily feeding in the choice herbage. But now there is a stir at the wagons yonder. For half an hour past “Ruyter,” a little wizened Hottentot, has been busy blowing up the embers of the half-dead fire, and making coffee for thebaasandmeisje.From the biggest of the wagons descends a vast, uncouth figure—that of Klaas Stuurmann, the Trek-Boer. Almost at the same moment theachter-klap(flap) at the hinder part of the wagon is thrown back, and the figure of a young woman, rather dishevelled—for, like her father, she has been manifestly sleeping in her day-clothes (night-clothes they have none)—descends. The two approach the fire, greet one another in stolid, almost mute fashion—the father kissing impassively the girl’s proffered cheek—and then, standing, they drink the coffee handed to them by the little Hottentot man, and eat a few mouthfuls of bread. Watch them well, these two figures; they are the representatives of a type slowly disappearing from the Cape Colony—the race of Trek-Boers, nomads, who for generations have had no home but their wagons, and who live (more often than not from absolute choice) the free vagrant life of the veldt, with their flocks and herds around them.The man, Klaas Stuurmann, is a Boer of loose, ungainly frame. He stands six feet one; is about fifty-two years of age; has a broad, deeply tanned face, in which are planted two watery-blue eyes; a shock of hay-coloured hair; and a long beard of the same uninteresting hue. He wearsveldt-broeks(field-trousers) of soft home-tanned skin. He is about the last Dutchman in Cape Colony to use these old-world garments; but his father and grandfather wore such clothes, and they are good enough for him. He has no socks or stockings, and a pair of rude, home-made, hidevelschoenscover his feet. He has a flannel shirt to his back, and over that a short jacket of much-worn corduroy. Upon his head is the usual tall-crowned, broad-brimmed, felt hat, which carries a hideous band of broad, rusty crape in memory of his deceased wife. The man’s face is dirty, to be sure; but, besides the dirt, there is a dull, vacant, unthinking look, rather painful to see. It is the look of one bred through dull, listless generations of men, self-banished from their own kind, whose only interests have been in sheep and goats and trek oxen, their only excitement an occasional hunt, or a scrimmage with Bushmen in time gone by. Such a listless and vacant look you may see even now in some of the more remotedalsof Norway, among the poorer of the peasant-farmer folk. It is the look of men who gaze always without a spark of interest upon the silent face of nature around them, and who for generations have seldom exchanged an idea with their fellows.For 150 years Klaas Stuurmann and his ancestors have led the wandering life of the Trek-Boer, knowing no hearth but the pleasant camp-fire, no roof but the glaring blue of the unchanging African sky and the tents of their wagons, no floor but the wild veldt. Many among the more settled Dutch farmers wonder how these uneasy nomads, with their shiftless ways and habits of unrest, first came to pursue such an existence. In the present instance it happened much in this wise: Klaas Stuurmann’s great-great-grandfather, a restless spirit, farming near the old settlement at Cape Town, became, like many others, tired of the petty and exasperating restrictions of the then Batavian governor. And so he trekked in search of fresh pastures, beyond the reach of taxes and monopolies. He was a sportsman, and the land opening before him disclosed the most wonderful and redundant fauna the world has ever seen. Still carrying his flocks and family with him, the Boer wandered from veldt to veldt, always in a country virgin to the hunter, and teeming with the noblest game.Year after year went by, his family grew up around him—how, he himself would have been puzzled to explain—and still the open-air, hand-to-mouth existence pleased him, the splendid liberty, and the free, unfettered chase in that vast, crowded, game preserve. At the beginning he sometimes cast his eye here and there in search of a farm, but somehow noplantssuited him. He wandered ever farther in search of his ideal, and finally theveldtlife had so bitten into him that he preferred to live and die in it. If he wanted powder and lead, some coffee and sugar, or a piece of stuff for his wife’s and daughters’ gowns, or a newroer(gun) for his growing lads, he had but to trek with a load of ivory and feathers to “Kaapstad” (Cape Town), and get what he desired. For the rest, the earth and her plenty sufficed to him. And so the years rolled on. The old Karel Stuurmann died, and was buried near a fountain on the wild karroo, and his sons and daughters became Trek-Boers, or the wives of Trek-Boers, after him. For many a year all went well: the game was still there to pursue; the land was lonely, yet pleasant; and theverdoemed uitlander(accursed foreigner) was as yet unknown. But presently came the British, and after them percussion-guns, and later the deadly breech-loader. The game began to vanish, the country became more settled, and, except for the remote wildernesses of the north-west, the Cape Colony was no longer the Trek-Boer’s paradise. Slavery was abolished, and even the native servants, the Hottentots and Kaffirs—nay, even the captive Bushboys, mere baboons the Boers called them, torn young from their slaughtered parents—could no longer be treated quite as of yore. Many of these Trek-Boers joined the emigrant farmers, and passed beyond the Orange and the Vaal Rivers. Some of them helped to found the Orange Free State and Transvaal Republics; some of them still pursued the old wandering life, and, as elephant-hunters, dared the unknown wilds and the dangers of the remote regions towards the Zambesi. But still a leaven of them clung to the old Cape Colony. The life became ever more sombre and less alluring. The great game had gone; only the springboks and smaller antelopes remained to remind them of the teeming plenty of the brave days of smooth-bores and flint-locks. These Trek-Boers of the colony sank lower in the social scale; they had to depend only on their scant flocks and herds; their more settled and richer neighbours learned to look upon them with dislike and even hate, for the reason that they often, by means of their flocks and herds, carried disease—scab and lung-sickness, and red-water—from one farm to another. And so in these latter days the Trek-Boer of the Cape Colony is looked upon as little better than the gipsy of Europe. Many of them are miserably poor; their flocks are reduced and deteriorated from disease and in-and-in breeding; their wagons are battered and dilapidated; they themselves look degraded and sunken and miserable. Some of them burn ashes from certain of the karroo bushes, and sell them to the settled farmers to make soap with. Some collect salt from the pans, and with a few springbok skins earn a trifle to eke out their wretchedness. Some few, like the Stuurmanns, still have decent wagons and fair flocks. But in the Cape Colony they are a declining race, and twenty or thirty years more will see the last of them. Yet even the poorest of them still retain their pure European blood, still lord it over their miserable native servants, and at times—perhaps thrice in the year—still trek to the nearest village forNachtmaal(communion). And still the great Bible, more often than not two hundred years old, is carried in the wagon-chest and cherished. For these Trek-Boers of Cape Colony, the unpeopled solitudes of Bushmanland—that is, the northern portion of the divisions of Little Namaqualand, Calvinia, Fraserburg, and Carnarvon, bordering on the Orange River—are still a last stronghold. Here, after the rains, they can range freely with their flocks and pursue the trekking springboks, and live the old wild life. Elsewhere, if they halt for the night on the farm of another, they must pay for the privilege, and a goat or sheep or two have to be handed over in exchange for pasture and right of water.I have hinted at the darker aspect of the latter-day life of the Trek-Boers of Cape Colony. Let us glance at the more pleasant part of it.Their coffee finished, Klaas Stuurmann moves to the temporary kraals, a hundred yards away, where his flocks are confined for the night. There are two kraals—one for the sheep, one for goats—and they are simply made of bush and branches of the acacia and wait-a-bit thorns, fashioned into a light ring-fencing, just sufficient to keep the flocks within and prowling hyaenas and jackals without. Already the native herd-boys are there waiting for their charges; and the hungry kraal-denizens, knowing their breakfast-hour is nigh, bleat loudly for the near freedom of the veldt. The tall Dutchman now plants himself by the entrance of the sheep-kraal, from which a herdsman drags away the thorns. Forth flock the impatient sheep, and as their stream issues through the narrow exit, Klaas Stuurmann numbers them head by head. As a rule the Boer is a bad hand at figures; but in the necessary ancient custom of counting flocks night and morning, he can reckon with as much skill as any man. Practice makes perfect, and so Klaas Stuurmann finds no difficulty in taking his fleecy census, fast as the sheep pass forth.The sheep—600 of them—are checked and found in order, and the same process is gone through at the other kraal, whence, to the number of 800, the goats go forth, in the ancient African fashion of five thousand years, to pasture in the wild. The warm air, full of the rich, aromatic scent of the veldt vegetation, now springing in its prime, comes alluringly into the nostrils of these nomadic flocks, and soon they are scattered upon the plain feeding vigorously, their silent, patient herd-boys tending them for the hot, livelong day.What do these dusky herd-boys think of, day after day, as they follow their flocks? Heaven knows! As well ask the bird and beast of the great plains what are their thoughts! Sometimes in the days of the Pharaohs there sprang a great warrior or statesman from the brown-skinned herdsmen and hunters of the far Land of Cush; nay, Egypt herself was ruled not seldom during these remote ages by almost pure Ethiopian blood. But nowadays there be no black Hampdens, or yellow Miltons, still less, possible Pharaohs, from among the lazy Kaffirs and poor besotted Hottentots of the Cape Colony.Refilling his pipe from colonial tobacco, carried loose in his jacket-pocket, and relighting it, the big Boer moves massively back to his wagon, near which his daughter is busily engaged in a wash at the welcome vlei. There are three other wagons outspanned by the pool: one of them belongs to the Boer’s two sons; one of them is inhabited by yet another Trek-Boer, whose vrouw is engaged in the same task of washing, and whose children—five of them—young, merry rascals, are playing in the strong sunlight upon the edge of the water.Their voices sound pleasantly upon the sweet, warm air, and recall, even to Klaas Stuurmann’s unimpressive mind, the younger days of his own children and his now dead wife. The recollection brings an unwonted tenderness to his rugged soul, and as the noisy imps, busy at their games of wagon-and-oxen, play and clamour about him, he goes to his wagon, opens his sugar-bag, fills akommetje(A small common earthenware basin, universally used by the Boers instead of a tea or coffee cup) with the dark-brown treacly stuff, and calls the tanned and ragged little company about him. Jan, Katrina, Hendrik, Gert, Jacobina, and the tiny, toddling Jacie, all receive their morsel of the sweet-stuff—not without some awe and wonderment, for the grim, burly Boer man seldom unbends so far.The oxen are feeding quietly round the vlei; the Boer’s eye follows them with contentment, for water and the rich veldt have brought fat and sleekness to their great frames. His daughter’s toilet catches his eye, and he watches the girl with an air of grave and secret pleasure, for she is the last survivor of three girl children, and by no means an ill-looking maiden in a Dutchman’s eye. Ruyter, the Hottentot, has brought an iron bucket from the wagon, and at the margin of the vlei he fills it with water for themeisje, who already has soap, a towel, and a comb. Taking off her sun-bonnet, she washes her face and hands, then, unfettering her stout plait of fair brown hair, she leans forward, and using the calm surface of the water as a mirror, combs out the somewhat tangled locks. Again the brown hair is coiled into a neat plait, drawn tightly from her temples, and her toilet is complete. As she ties on her sun-bonnet again the Boer comes up, pats her broad back, and looks admiringly at the now refreshened face. Two hundred years of South Africa have little altered the old Batavian type. The eyes are blue, but of small brilliancy, the cheeks too broad and flat for English taste, and the young figure is already stiff, waistless, and heavy. Yet in this far-off back-country women folk are scarce, and in much request, and already, at eighteen, Anna Stuurmann has found a mate. Next to her brothers’ wagon there stands the wagon of her betrothed—Rodolf Klopper—who is just now away in the grass plains a little to the north, shooting springboks with the younger Stuurmanns. This wagon is newly repaired, smart, and gaily painted, and is destined in another month or two, after the flocks have been well recruited in the Bushmanland Trek-veldt, to become the home of the Boer maiden. The combined families are to trek to Calvinia village, where the marriage will take place, and thenceforth Anna becomes mistress of her own man and wagon.His daughter’s modest toilet complete, the big Boer dips a corner of the not over-clean towel in water, runs it carelessly over brow, cheeks, eyes, and mouth, dips his hands, and the trick is done. The proximity of cleanliness to godliness is no axiom of the Cape Dutch farmer, still less of the roaming Trek-Boer. A dry, parched land, and lack of water, have doubtless had a good deal to do with this trait.At eleven o’clock, sitting in the shade of the sail suspended between two wagons, father and daughter partake, after a long grace, of the usual meal—pieces of mutton, swimming in sheep’s-tail fat, boiled rice, coarse bread, and the eternal coffee, which, however, is just now, thanks to the sweet herbage, plenteously tempered by a supply ofbokke melk(goat’s milk). Again the big Dutchman lights his pipe, and presently, yielding to the heat and the effects of his meal, falls to sleep, sitting on the sand with his back against the wagon-wheel—a moving picture of pastoral listlessness, or, if you please, pastoral sloth. The hot day wears on. At three o’clock Anna mounts to the wagon-box, and, shading her eyes from the intense glare, scans the hot plain, now dancing and shimmering with mirage. The flocks have turned for home—she can hear the far-off tinkle of their bells, borne drowsily upon the warm air; but it is not the flocks she searches for. In another half-hour she looks forth again. This time, far in the north, she picks out from the shimmer and tremble of the atmosphere a tiny cloud of dust. That is what she is expecting, and she now gives orders to the Hottentot and another boy to tend the fire, get the pot and pan in order, and fill the great kettle.In a while you may catch the steady trample of galloping hoofs, and presently three Boers—the girl’s brothers and her betrothed—each guiding a led horse, canter up to the wagons. Following at their heels is a Hottentot after-rider, also with a spare horse heavy laden. The men are hot, dusty, and sweat-stained. Ever since yesterday morning they have been away in the grass veldt, following a trek of springboks, and their display of venison and jaded nags prove that they have hunted hard, successfully, and far. Seventy miles have they ridden; a dozen springbok have they brought in; and, greatest luck of all, the flesh, skin, and horns of a great cow gemsbok decorate the led horse of Rodolf Klopper. The gemsbok (Oryx capensis), one of the noblest of antelopes, is rare indeed in Cape Colony nowadays, even upon the verge of the Orange River, and Anna’s betrothed is proportionately elate. The gemsbok is protected, too, under heavy penalties, in the Cape Colony; but what boots this to the wandering Trek-Boer in these wild solitudes, where the echo of laws can scarce be heard, and gamekeepers are not?At five o’clock the party are gathered beneath the wagon-sail, feasting merrily, and with some noise and laughter, on titbits of venison: the rest of the meat meanwhile being salted, to be dried forbilltongon the morrow. As they sit at meat, the hunting scenes are re-enacted for the benefit of Anna and her father, and, in particular, Rodolf’s desperate chase of the gemsbok. Meanwhile, as the sun nears the horizon after his day’s tramp, the flocks, bringing with them a cloud of red dust, come in for the night. First, they drink deeply and long at the vlei, which now reflects upon its glassy surface the ruddy glories of the sunset. Then the tired creatures are kraaled, their masters rising to count them as they file in.Darkness falls swiftly; the huge vault of sky assumes its deep indigo hue of night; the stars spring forth in glittering array; there is a wonderful and refreshing coolness in the air; the cry of one or two night birds may be heard—the dikkop and kiewitje plovers—and the distant wail of a prowling jackal.The Boer and his sons now move their squat wagon-chairs nearer to the warm blaze of the camp-fire; they smoke vigorously, and occasionally cast stolidly a sentence at one another. Anna and her heavy lover stroll a little beyond the firelight by the edge of the vlei; their voices intermingle curiously with the clang of water-fowl—duck, geese, widgeon, and teal—from the other end of the pool. Theirs is the old, old story, told perhaps in a rougher and less romantic fashion than in Europe; yet is its refrain as earnest and its aftermath at least as kindly as in northern lands. The South African Boer makes a true and constant husband, and a good father—some people say he is a trifle too uxorious.At eight o’clock the day is done. The party separates for the night, after a longish melancholic prayer and a chapter of the great Bible from Stuurmann. Anna goes to her kartel-bed at the end of the big wagon, lets down theachter-klap, takes off her shoes and sun-bonnet, loosens a button or two at the throat of her gown, pulls her blanket and sheepskin kaross well over her sturdy frame, and is almost instantly asleep. Her father snores loudly from the forepart of the wagon; the whole camp (including the native “boys” huddled beneath the wagons) is hushed; while all around broods the wonderful silence of night on the plains of Bushmanland.

It is dim early morning, and upon the vast plains of Great Bushmanland, in the far north-west of Cape Colony, the air blows fresh and chill, though the land is Africa, and the time summer. At 4:15 precisely the bright morning star shoots above the horizon, and rises steadily upward in a straight, rocket-like ascent.

Now a ruddy colouring tinges the pale grey of the eastern sky, to be followed by broad rays in delicate blues and greens that strike boldly for the zenith. The changes of dawn in Africa are swift and very subtle. Presently these colours fade, and a pale, subdued light rests upon the earth; the air is full of a clear but cold brightness. Soon follows the full red-orange, that so gorgeously paints the eastern horizon, and closely foreruns the sun; and then suddenly the huge burning disc itself is thrust upon the sky-line, and it is, in South African parlance, “sun up.”

The plains here stretch in illimitable expanse to the horizon. Far to the west is a range of mountain, forty good miles away, which, in the clear morning air, stands out as sharply as if but a dozen miles distant. You may see the dark lines and patches of the time-worn seams and krantzes that scar its sides. This translucency of atmosphere is very common in Southern Africa.

The rains have lately fallen, and everywhere around the dry plains have started at the breath of moisture into a splendid, if short-lived, beauty. Miles upon miles of flats, all glowing and ablaze with purple and a rich, flame-like red, are spread around. The wonderfulCompositesare in flower, and the barren, desert-like flats are for a few brief weeks transformed into a carpet of the noblest colouring and pattern. Look closely, and you may see the bleached and blackened limbs of former growths of low shrub, which stand amid the gallant blaze—gaunt reminders of the transitory existence of African flower life.

Near at hand lies a vlei, a shallow temporary lake recruited by the recent rains. At the end of this vlei, farthest removed from the group of wagons outspanned there, is gathered at this early hour a notable display of bird life. Duck, geese, widgeon, and teal are there, cackling and crying in a joyous plenty. Stints and sandpipers whirl hither and thither, and graceful black-and-white avocets, with their singular, upturned, slender bills, and long, red-legged stilt-plovers, haunt the shallows. Upon the plain some small birds have been afoot some time. You may see and hear the lively, inquisitive Jan Fredric thrush, with his pleasing song, and his curious note—“Jan-fredric-dric-dric-fredric.” He is racing swiftly hither and thither through the shrub and flowers, bustling for his food supply. There, too, are the thick-billed lark, the Sabota lark, with its clear, ringing call, and a few other—but not many—small birds. Aloft an eagle is already on the move, and a hawk or two, no doubt meditating descent upon some of the wildfowl on the vlei. Out upon the plains, half a mile distant from the wagons, are to be seen a knot or two of graceful springbok busily feeding in the choice herbage. But now there is a stir at the wagons yonder. For half an hour past “Ruyter,” a little wizened Hottentot, has been busy blowing up the embers of the half-dead fire, and making coffee for thebaasandmeisje.

From the biggest of the wagons descends a vast, uncouth figure—that of Klaas Stuurmann, the Trek-Boer. Almost at the same moment theachter-klap(flap) at the hinder part of the wagon is thrown back, and the figure of a young woman, rather dishevelled—for, like her father, she has been manifestly sleeping in her day-clothes (night-clothes they have none)—descends. The two approach the fire, greet one another in stolid, almost mute fashion—the father kissing impassively the girl’s proffered cheek—and then, standing, they drink the coffee handed to them by the little Hottentot man, and eat a few mouthfuls of bread. Watch them well, these two figures; they are the representatives of a type slowly disappearing from the Cape Colony—the race of Trek-Boers, nomads, who for generations have had no home but their wagons, and who live (more often than not from absolute choice) the free vagrant life of the veldt, with their flocks and herds around them.

The man, Klaas Stuurmann, is a Boer of loose, ungainly frame. He stands six feet one; is about fifty-two years of age; has a broad, deeply tanned face, in which are planted two watery-blue eyes; a shock of hay-coloured hair; and a long beard of the same uninteresting hue. He wearsveldt-broeks(field-trousers) of soft home-tanned skin. He is about the last Dutchman in Cape Colony to use these old-world garments; but his father and grandfather wore such clothes, and they are good enough for him. He has no socks or stockings, and a pair of rude, home-made, hidevelschoenscover his feet. He has a flannel shirt to his back, and over that a short jacket of much-worn corduroy. Upon his head is the usual tall-crowned, broad-brimmed, felt hat, which carries a hideous band of broad, rusty crape in memory of his deceased wife. The man’s face is dirty, to be sure; but, besides the dirt, there is a dull, vacant, unthinking look, rather painful to see. It is the look of one bred through dull, listless generations of men, self-banished from their own kind, whose only interests have been in sheep and goats and trek oxen, their only excitement an occasional hunt, or a scrimmage with Bushmen in time gone by. Such a listless and vacant look you may see even now in some of the more remotedalsof Norway, among the poorer of the peasant-farmer folk. It is the look of men who gaze always without a spark of interest upon the silent face of nature around them, and who for generations have seldom exchanged an idea with their fellows.

For 150 years Klaas Stuurmann and his ancestors have led the wandering life of the Trek-Boer, knowing no hearth but the pleasant camp-fire, no roof but the glaring blue of the unchanging African sky and the tents of their wagons, no floor but the wild veldt. Many among the more settled Dutch farmers wonder how these uneasy nomads, with their shiftless ways and habits of unrest, first came to pursue such an existence. In the present instance it happened much in this wise: Klaas Stuurmann’s great-great-grandfather, a restless spirit, farming near the old settlement at Cape Town, became, like many others, tired of the petty and exasperating restrictions of the then Batavian governor. And so he trekked in search of fresh pastures, beyond the reach of taxes and monopolies. He was a sportsman, and the land opening before him disclosed the most wonderful and redundant fauna the world has ever seen. Still carrying his flocks and family with him, the Boer wandered from veldt to veldt, always in a country virgin to the hunter, and teeming with the noblest game.

Year after year went by, his family grew up around him—how, he himself would have been puzzled to explain—and still the open-air, hand-to-mouth existence pleased him, the splendid liberty, and the free, unfettered chase in that vast, crowded, game preserve. At the beginning he sometimes cast his eye here and there in search of a farm, but somehow noplantssuited him. He wandered ever farther in search of his ideal, and finally theveldtlife had so bitten into him that he preferred to live and die in it. If he wanted powder and lead, some coffee and sugar, or a piece of stuff for his wife’s and daughters’ gowns, or a newroer(gun) for his growing lads, he had but to trek with a load of ivory and feathers to “Kaapstad” (Cape Town), and get what he desired. For the rest, the earth and her plenty sufficed to him. And so the years rolled on. The old Karel Stuurmann died, and was buried near a fountain on the wild karroo, and his sons and daughters became Trek-Boers, or the wives of Trek-Boers, after him. For many a year all went well: the game was still there to pursue; the land was lonely, yet pleasant; and theverdoemed uitlander(accursed foreigner) was as yet unknown. But presently came the British, and after them percussion-guns, and later the deadly breech-loader. The game began to vanish, the country became more settled, and, except for the remote wildernesses of the north-west, the Cape Colony was no longer the Trek-Boer’s paradise. Slavery was abolished, and even the native servants, the Hottentots and Kaffirs—nay, even the captive Bushboys, mere baboons the Boers called them, torn young from their slaughtered parents—could no longer be treated quite as of yore. Many of these Trek-Boers joined the emigrant farmers, and passed beyond the Orange and the Vaal Rivers. Some of them helped to found the Orange Free State and Transvaal Republics; some of them still pursued the old wandering life, and, as elephant-hunters, dared the unknown wilds and the dangers of the remote regions towards the Zambesi. But still a leaven of them clung to the old Cape Colony. The life became ever more sombre and less alluring. The great game had gone; only the springboks and smaller antelopes remained to remind them of the teeming plenty of the brave days of smooth-bores and flint-locks. These Trek-Boers of the colony sank lower in the social scale; they had to depend only on their scant flocks and herds; their more settled and richer neighbours learned to look upon them with dislike and even hate, for the reason that they often, by means of their flocks and herds, carried disease—scab and lung-sickness, and red-water—from one farm to another. And so in these latter days the Trek-Boer of the Cape Colony is looked upon as little better than the gipsy of Europe. Many of them are miserably poor; their flocks are reduced and deteriorated from disease and in-and-in breeding; their wagons are battered and dilapidated; they themselves look degraded and sunken and miserable. Some of them burn ashes from certain of the karroo bushes, and sell them to the settled farmers to make soap with. Some collect salt from the pans, and with a few springbok skins earn a trifle to eke out their wretchedness. Some few, like the Stuurmanns, still have decent wagons and fair flocks. But in the Cape Colony they are a declining race, and twenty or thirty years more will see the last of them. Yet even the poorest of them still retain their pure European blood, still lord it over their miserable native servants, and at times—perhaps thrice in the year—still trek to the nearest village forNachtmaal(communion). And still the great Bible, more often than not two hundred years old, is carried in the wagon-chest and cherished. For these Trek-Boers of Cape Colony, the unpeopled solitudes of Bushmanland—that is, the northern portion of the divisions of Little Namaqualand, Calvinia, Fraserburg, and Carnarvon, bordering on the Orange River—are still a last stronghold. Here, after the rains, they can range freely with their flocks and pursue the trekking springboks, and live the old wild life. Elsewhere, if they halt for the night on the farm of another, they must pay for the privilege, and a goat or sheep or two have to be handed over in exchange for pasture and right of water.

I have hinted at the darker aspect of the latter-day life of the Trek-Boers of Cape Colony. Let us glance at the more pleasant part of it.

Their coffee finished, Klaas Stuurmann moves to the temporary kraals, a hundred yards away, where his flocks are confined for the night. There are two kraals—one for the sheep, one for goats—and they are simply made of bush and branches of the acacia and wait-a-bit thorns, fashioned into a light ring-fencing, just sufficient to keep the flocks within and prowling hyaenas and jackals without. Already the native herd-boys are there waiting for their charges; and the hungry kraal-denizens, knowing their breakfast-hour is nigh, bleat loudly for the near freedom of the veldt. The tall Dutchman now plants himself by the entrance of the sheep-kraal, from which a herdsman drags away the thorns. Forth flock the impatient sheep, and as their stream issues through the narrow exit, Klaas Stuurmann numbers them head by head. As a rule the Boer is a bad hand at figures; but in the necessary ancient custom of counting flocks night and morning, he can reckon with as much skill as any man. Practice makes perfect, and so Klaas Stuurmann finds no difficulty in taking his fleecy census, fast as the sheep pass forth.

The sheep—600 of them—are checked and found in order, and the same process is gone through at the other kraal, whence, to the number of 800, the goats go forth, in the ancient African fashion of five thousand years, to pasture in the wild. The warm air, full of the rich, aromatic scent of the veldt vegetation, now springing in its prime, comes alluringly into the nostrils of these nomadic flocks, and soon they are scattered upon the plain feeding vigorously, their silent, patient herd-boys tending them for the hot, livelong day.

What do these dusky herd-boys think of, day after day, as they follow their flocks? Heaven knows! As well ask the bird and beast of the great plains what are their thoughts! Sometimes in the days of the Pharaohs there sprang a great warrior or statesman from the brown-skinned herdsmen and hunters of the far Land of Cush; nay, Egypt herself was ruled not seldom during these remote ages by almost pure Ethiopian blood. But nowadays there be no black Hampdens, or yellow Miltons, still less, possible Pharaohs, from among the lazy Kaffirs and poor besotted Hottentots of the Cape Colony.

Refilling his pipe from colonial tobacco, carried loose in his jacket-pocket, and relighting it, the big Boer moves massively back to his wagon, near which his daughter is busily engaged in a wash at the welcome vlei. There are three other wagons outspanned by the pool: one of them belongs to the Boer’s two sons; one of them is inhabited by yet another Trek-Boer, whose vrouw is engaged in the same task of washing, and whose children—five of them—young, merry rascals, are playing in the strong sunlight upon the edge of the water.

Their voices sound pleasantly upon the sweet, warm air, and recall, even to Klaas Stuurmann’s unimpressive mind, the younger days of his own children and his now dead wife. The recollection brings an unwonted tenderness to his rugged soul, and as the noisy imps, busy at their games of wagon-and-oxen, play and clamour about him, he goes to his wagon, opens his sugar-bag, fills akommetje(A small common earthenware basin, universally used by the Boers instead of a tea or coffee cup) with the dark-brown treacly stuff, and calls the tanned and ragged little company about him. Jan, Katrina, Hendrik, Gert, Jacobina, and the tiny, toddling Jacie, all receive their morsel of the sweet-stuff—not without some awe and wonderment, for the grim, burly Boer man seldom unbends so far.

The oxen are feeding quietly round the vlei; the Boer’s eye follows them with contentment, for water and the rich veldt have brought fat and sleekness to their great frames. His daughter’s toilet catches his eye, and he watches the girl with an air of grave and secret pleasure, for she is the last survivor of three girl children, and by no means an ill-looking maiden in a Dutchman’s eye. Ruyter, the Hottentot, has brought an iron bucket from the wagon, and at the margin of the vlei he fills it with water for themeisje, who already has soap, a towel, and a comb. Taking off her sun-bonnet, she washes her face and hands, then, unfettering her stout plait of fair brown hair, she leans forward, and using the calm surface of the water as a mirror, combs out the somewhat tangled locks. Again the brown hair is coiled into a neat plait, drawn tightly from her temples, and her toilet is complete. As she ties on her sun-bonnet again the Boer comes up, pats her broad back, and looks admiringly at the now refreshened face. Two hundred years of South Africa have little altered the old Batavian type. The eyes are blue, but of small brilliancy, the cheeks too broad and flat for English taste, and the young figure is already stiff, waistless, and heavy. Yet in this far-off back-country women folk are scarce, and in much request, and already, at eighteen, Anna Stuurmann has found a mate. Next to her brothers’ wagon there stands the wagon of her betrothed—Rodolf Klopper—who is just now away in the grass plains a little to the north, shooting springboks with the younger Stuurmanns. This wagon is newly repaired, smart, and gaily painted, and is destined in another month or two, after the flocks have been well recruited in the Bushmanland Trek-veldt, to become the home of the Boer maiden. The combined families are to trek to Calvinia village, where the marriage will take place, and thenceforth Anna becomes mistress of her own man and wagon.

His daughter’s modest toilet complete, the big Boer dips a corner of the not over-clean towel in water, runs it carelessly over brow, cheeks, eyes, and mouth, dips his hands, and the trick is done. The proximity of cleanliness to godliness is no axiom of the Cape Dutch farmer, still less of the roaming Trek-Boer. A dry, parched land, and lack of water, have doubtless had a good deal to do with this trait.

At eleven o’clock, sitting in the shade of the sail suspended between two wagons, father and daughter partake, after a long grace, of the usual meal—pieces of mutton, swimming in sheep’s-tail fat, boiled rice, coarse bread, and the eternal coffee, which, however, is just now, thanks to the sweet herbage, plenteously tempered by a supply ofbokke melk(goat’s milk). Again the big Dutchman lights his pipe, and presently, yielding to the heat and the effects of his meal, falls to sleep, sitting on the sand with his back against the wagon-wheel—a moving picture of pastoral listlessness, or, if you please, pastoral sloth. The hot day wears on. At three o’clock Anna mounts to the wagon-box, and, shading her eyes from the intense glare, scans the hot plain, now dancing and shimmering with mirage. The flocks have turned for home—she can hear the far-off tinkle of their bells, borne drowsily upon the warm air; but it is not the flocks she searches for. In another half-hour she looks forth again. This time, far in the north, she picks out from the shimmer and tremble of the atmosphere a tiny cloud of dust. That is what she is expecting, and she now gives orders to the Hottentot and another boy to tend the fire, get the pot and pan in order, and fill the great kettle.

In a while you may catch the steady trample of galloping hoofs, and presently three Boers—the girl’s brothers and her betrothed—each guiding a led horse, canter up to the wagons. Following at their heels is a Hottentot after-rider, also with a spare horse heavy laden. The men are hot, dusty, and sweat-stained. Ever since yesterday morning they have been away in the grass veldt, following a trek of springboks, and their display of venison and jaded nags prove that they have hunted hard, successfully, and far. Seventy miles have they ridden; a dozen springbok have they brought in; and, greatest luck of all, the flesh, skin, and horns of a great cow gemsbok decorate the led horse of Rodolf Klopper. The gemsbok (Oryx capensis), one of the noblest of antelopes, is rare indeed in Cape Colony nowadays, even upon the verge of the Orange River, and Anna’s betrothed is proportionately elate. The gemsbok is protected, too, under heavy penalties, in the Cape Colony; but what boots this to the wandering Trek-Boer in these wild solitudes, where the echo of laws can scarce be heard, and gamekeepers are not?

At five o’clock the party are gathered beneath the wagon-sail, feasting merrily, and with some noise and laughter, on titbits of venison: the rest of the meat meanwhile being salted, to be dried forbilltongon the morrow. As they sit at meat, the hunting scenes are re-enacted for the benefit of Anna and her father, and, in particular, Rodolf’s desperate chase of the gemsbok. Meanwhile, as the sun nears the horizon after his day’s tramp, the flocks, bringing with them a cloud of red dust, come in for the night. First, they drink deeply and long at the vlei, which now reflects upon its glassy surface the ruddy glories of the sunset. Then the tired creatures are kraaled, their masters rising to count them as they file in.

Darkness falls swiftly; the huge vault of sky assumes its deep indigo hue of night; the stars spring forth in glittering array; there is a wonderful and refreshing coolness in the air; the cry of one or two night birds may be heard—the dikkop and kiewitje plovers—and the distant wail of a prowling jackal.

The Boer and his sons now move their squat wagon-chairs nearer to the warm blaze of the camp-fire; they smoke vigorously, and occasionally cast stolidly a sentence at one another. Anna and her heavy lover stroll a little beyond the firelight by the edge of the vlei; their voices intermingle curiously with the clang of water-fowl—duck, geese, widgeon, and teal—from the other end of the pool. Theirs is the old, old story, told perhaps in a rougher and less romantic fashion than in Europe; yet is its refrain as earnest and its aftermath at least as kindly as in northern lands. The South African Boer makes a true and constant husband, and a good father—some people say he is a trifle too uxorious.

At eight o’clock the day is done. The party separates for the night, after a longish melancholic prayer and a chapter of the great Bible from Stuurmann. Anna goes to her kartel-bed at the end of the big wagon, lets down theachter-klap, takes off her shoes and sun-bonnet, loosens a button or two at the throat of her gown, pulls her blanket and sheepskin kaross well over her sturdy frame, and is almost instantly asleep. Her father snores loudly from the forepart of the wagon; the whole camp (including the native “boys” huddled beneath the wagons) is hushed; while all around broods the wonderful silence of night on the plains of Bushmanland.

Chapter Six.Piet Van Staden’s Wife.It was the year 1877. For months past the wagons of the Trek-Boers had been standing idly outspanned on the banks of the Crocodile River, (The Limpopo River is known universally in South Africa as the Crocodile) waiting for the word to move north-westward and plunge into the unknown and dreadful deserts that lay between the trekkers and the far-off land they sought. Scattered among the great trees and bushes that margined the noble river, the white wagon-tents of these strange people might be discerned dotting the landscape for the space of a mile and a half and more. Here were gathered the wildest, toughest, and most daring spirits of the Transvaal. Elephant-hunters, who longed for new and virgin lands in which to procure that ivory for which they had risked their lives so often; broken farmers, upon whom the vicissitudes of the African pastoralists’ existence had fallen heavily; and sour Doppers, whose grim religious views reminded one of the savage tenets of the Israelites of old, and who now looked eagerly across the desert for a new land of Canaan.With these men, living in wagons and tents, were their wives and children, and such furniture and worldly gear as they could carry with them. Around them, scattered over the veldt for miles, grazed the oxen, horses, sheep, and goats that should accompany the trek. Pigs and poultry littered the encampment, and were to be seen near every wagon. All the people—elephant-hunters, malcontents, broken men, and Doppers—were animated by one and the same sentiment. They were sick of the Transvaal. There had been too much fighting—and badly managed fighting—with Sekukuni and other Kaffirs; too many commandos; taxes, those hateful creations of civilisation, were increasing, and were actually being enforced; President Burgers had been too go-ahead, toohoogmoedag(high and mighty); the seasons had been bad; and the English—those hateful English—were slowly finding their way to the north. And so the great Promised Land trek—a trek talked of for years past—was at last gathered together.Some of these Boers, the Doppers, and they who had lived farthest from the rude semi-civilisation of that day, were possessed with the wildest beliefs. They imagined that Egypt lay just across the Zambesi River, not so very far to the north; they were convinced that they were setting forth to a land somewhere in the dim north-west, beyond Lake N’gami, where ranged snow-clad mountains beneath which sheltered a veldt rich in water, in cattle, and in corn and pasture lands, where the great game wandered just as plentifully as they had wandered in the Transvaal and Free State forty years before, when their fathers had crossed the Orange River and possessed the soil. Seventy wagons and more now stood beside the Crocodile, whose owners, heartily weary of the delays that had taken place, now anxiously awaited the return of two deputies sent to Khama, Chief of Bamangwato, through whose country they first had to pass.One afternoon about this time a great wagon lumbered in to swell the already unwieldy proportions of the trek, and outspanned under a big tree. Word went slowly round the camp that Piet Van Staden, from Zoutpansberg, with his wife and child, had come in. Piet’s arrival in itself would have created no great stir, for Piet was a very average type of Transvaal Boer—big, not ill-looking, heavy and inert, and with very little to say for himself—but Piet’s wife was no ordinary person. She was a woman of striking beauty, far surpassing the dull ruck of South African Dutch vrouws, and possessed, moreover, of so much originality and determination of character as to have scandalised more than once her sober-minded countrywomen.The men of Zoutpansberg swore by her. Had she not taken a rifle and ridden out time after time with her husband into the low veldt towards Delagoa Bay, and shot with her own hand giraffe and buffalo—ay, and even the mighty elephant itself? Rumour had it that on more than one occasion Hendrika Van Staden had hardened her husband’s heart at close quarters with a troop of half-mad elephants; and it was certain that she herself had, as they said, a “heart of steel,” and feared neither lion nor elephant nor fierce Kaffir.Hendrika was a busy, active woman; and the oxen were no sooner outspanned than she got out her poultry from the bed of the wagon, extricated a table and some wagon-chairs, set one of the native boys to light the fire and prepare for the evening meal, and then, taking her six-year-old son, little Barend, set out to call upon one or two neighbours and inspect the camp. Barend, who inherited his mother’s good looks, her yellow hair, and deep blue eyes and clear complexion, was a fine, sturdy little fellow, and, clad in his short coat and loose trousers of soft mouse-coloured moleskin, a flannel shirt, and wide felt hat, looked a typical little Dutchman, a small counterpart, even to the clothes he wore, of his sturdy father. The two set off together, Barend flicking his little hide whip as he walked, and chattering to his mother with keen excitement as the various camps and outspans came into view. While his mother was engaged in conversation with some friends from her own district, the little fellow suddenly caught sight of his father walking to the next group of wagons, and toddled hastily after him.In half an hour Hendrika had finished her gossip and extracted as much news as could be gleaned. She had not yet been down to the water; and, as the sun was declining and she wished to set eyes on the long-sought Crocodile before dark, she turned to the left hand, and, following a cattle-path, quickly found herself on the margin of the great river. Just at this point there was a bend or hook, and the stream, now at its low winter level, ran deep and swiftly only near the farther bank, leaving a broad spit of sand exposed upon the hither shore. A little higher to the left the stream again broadened into a great reach of shining water, now painted with a warm and ruddy hue by the glow of sunset. To the right, down the course of the river, a beautiful island, laden with trees and a wealth of bush and greenery, and fringed with tall yellow reeds, met the eye. Everywhere great forest trees abounded. Yellow-billed hornbills flew hither and thither among the acacias; gem-like bee-eaters flashed among the reeds; gaudy parrots, clad in blue and green and yellow, darted with shrill whistle overhead; and pearl-drab plantain-eaters uttered their loud, human-like cries at the advent of the solitary figure. Francolins down for their evening drink were calling to one another in scores, and doves cooed softly among the branches. It was a beautiful picture; but Hendrika cared little for the aesthetic aspect, the glamour of the hour, the glowing mantle of sunset. Her heart warmed, it is true, at the sight of the noble river, flowing with strength and volume even at this season of winter, and amid a parched country. But hers was the true, practical Dutch mind: she appreciated the scene only for the assurance it gave her of illimitable watering power for flocks and herds. Two hundred yards beyond, a troop of oxen came down to drink. A Dutchman was with them, and Hendrika bent her steps that way to learn whose the cattle were. The man’s back was turned, and it was not till she was within thirty yards that he heard her approach and faced her. There was a start of recognition and hesitation on either side, and then the man, a tall, good-looking Boer, furnished with a big straw-coloured beard and moustache, and dressed with rather more care than the average Transvaal farmer, came forward, and the pair shook hands in the impassive Dutch fashion. The Boer first spoke.“And so, Vrouw Van Staden, you have come to join the trek. I scarcely looked to see you and your husband here. I had thought you were well settled on your farm in Zoutpansberg.”“No; we are tired of that country. Our farm was good enough, and the winter veldt in the low country near at hand; but there is too much fever, and the Kaffirs are very troublesome; and as the President for years has been fighting Sekukuni, we have no strength ourselves for commandos in our own country. Cattle-stealing is worse than it has been for years. And so we thought we would join the trek and try a new country, where the game is more plentiful, and one is not to be pinched up on a farm of three thousand morgen.” (Amorgenis rather more than two acres. The usual Boer farm averages three thousandmorgen, more than six thousand acres.)The woman spoke stiffly, and her face had assumed a touch of pride as she answered. But she went on: “I think it is rather I who should ask why Schalk Oosthuysen, with all his wealth, has left Marico, the garden of the Transvaal, as men call it.”The man had gazed long and fixedly as Hendrika spoke. His eyes seemed to have softened, and a very visible pleasure was in them. And, indeed, Hendrika Van Staden was worth looking at. Clad though she was in a plain gown of rough brown material, bought at some up-country store and fashioned by herself, the admirable curves of her straight, well-rounded figure could not be concealed. Few Boer women can boast a figure. Here was a waist whose trim outlines would have done no disgrace to a well-set-up English girl. Matron though she was, the tall, shapely woman stood like a straight sapling upon the firm yellow sand. The broad chest and shoulders supported erect upon a strong and shapely neck a beautiful head. And the face? Well, most people would have agreed with Schalk Oosthuysen, whose eyes gazed with unconcealable admiration into Hendrika’s. The parting sunlight lent a wonderful charm to the oval face and the fair, clear complexion, so unlike the muddy skin of most Boer women. The soft rosy cheeks—just touched with a suspicion of African tan,—the white forehead, straight nose and proud lips, and the dark blue eyes, all set in a frame of golden yellow hair, every strand of it now glorified by the loving sun-rays, which the great sun-bonnet (kapje) ill-concealed—all went to complete a picture of feminine beauty that few Transvaalers—certainly not Schalk Oosthuysen—could resist.Hendrika had, like most Dutch girls, married young; and now, mother though she was of a child more than six years old, was in the very pride and summer of her rich beauty.Oosthuysen, without moving his gaze, spoke again.“No one should know better than you, Hendrika, why I am leaving Marico and going to tempt fortune in the unknown veldt. How can I rest? Ever since I saw you, ever since the sunny years of our childhood, I have thought of you, dreamed of you. I can never marry now, unless—well, unless you should ever become free again, which is not likely before we are old people. It was you, Hendrika, that broke my happiness and disturbed my lot. Allemaghte! I am sorry almost that you have joined this trek.”“Schalk, you have no right to speak like that. You know it was not my fault that I could not become your wife. My father had his reasons—good reasons, as I suppose; and I have a good husband, and am contented. Never speak of these things again; they are past and done with. Our ways are different, and it is better that we should see as little of one another as possible.”She spoke almost with excitement, and her hands, folded, as all good Dutch women fold them, beneath her black apron, to protect them from the strong African sun, had become disengaged, and lent themselves with a slight gesture of impatience to enforce her words.She turned away, saying as she went, “Good-night, Meneer Oosthuysen,” and took the path to her wagon.“Good-night, and the Lord bless you, Hendrika,” replied the Boer, as he moved towards his oxen.Two mornings later the Boer envoys returned from interviewing Khama. They brought word that the chief was willing to allow passage for the whole trek across his country, but that he strongly advised them to proceed in small bands at a time, or the scant waters of the thirst-land between him and the Lake River would fail them. If the whole seventy or eighty wagons attempted to cross in a body, they would find barely sufficient water to supply half a dozen spans of oxen at a time, and disaster must ensue. This was Khama’s advice; he had, as he sent word, no present quarrel with the Boers, and would help them through his country; but he urged them, if they wished to pass safely across the desert, to weigh well his words, and trek in parties of twos and threes.There was much consultation over this message. Some few hunters, who knew the chief and had made the trek, were strongly for taking his advice; but against these few men there was strong and fierce opposition. All the ignorant, the obstinate, and the self-opinionated—and they formed the majority—held that no Kaffir’s word was to be trusted. Who was this Khama but a natural foe of the Transvaal? No doubt he wished them to travel in families of twos and threes, that he might the better attack their wagons and cut them up piecemeal.After several days of hot discussion, it was finally decided that all should move together, and that the trek should begin with the following week, by which time the scattered flocks and herds would be collected.It was a month after the beginning of the trek that Piet Van Staden and his wife and child found themselves in the middle of the thirst-land, between the waters of Kanne and Inkouane—that is to say, in about the worst bit of the Kalahari—in heavy sand, under a broiling sun, and without one single drop of water for their oxen, in a stretch of three days’ and three nights’ continuous travel.There were wagons in front of them and wagons behind them; they were about the middle of the expedition. At the distance of two days and two nights from Kanne, and a whole day and night from Inkouane, their oxen could go no farther; they had had no drink at the wretched pits of Kanne, where water oozes through the sand at the rate of about half a bucket an hour; three of them lay dead in their yokes already—the rest were foundered and could trek no more. The poor brutes lowed piteously and incessantly; they came frantically round the wagon, smelling at the nearly empty water-barrel, and licking the iron tires of the wheels to give relief to their parched tongues. There was only one thing to be done.“Hendrika,” said her husband, “I must take two of the boys and go on with the oxen. We shall reach Inkouane (it was now afternoon) early to-morrow morning. I will take avatje, (A little vat or hand-barrel, holding about two gallons, usually slung by an iron handle under the wagon) fill it, and ride back as fast as possible. You have enough water to last till evening to-morrow. They say there is plenty at Inkouane; I shall be here to-morrow evening again, having watered the horse; and the oxen should be in by next morning. I hate leaving you and the child, but what else can be done?”“Nothing else can be done better, Piet,” answered his wife energetically. “Get the oxen up and go on at once. Don’t lose a moment; and, mind, be back here not later than sundown to-morrow. Barend is tired and feverish already, and I shall have trouble to make the water last till then. Go at once, and the Heer God be with you.”Hendrika’s blue eyes were full of hope and courage; she could trust her husband, and he would, no doubt, be back by nightfall of next day.Taking two of their three native servants with him, and leaving Andries, a little Hottentot, behind with his mistress, with the strictest injunctions to have but one drink between that time and his return, Piet Van Staden kissed his wife and child, thrashed up the foundered oxen, and set forth as fast as he could get them along.It was a dreary waste of country that Hendrika and her boy were left in—one of the most forbidding parts of the wild, forbidding desert between Khama’s and the Lake River. Hot and sandy and flat it was; a low growth of parched Mopani trees sprang here and there, whose odd butterfly-like leaves, now shrivelled and scorched to a brown sapless condition by months of drought, bore eloquent testimony to the nature of this terrible “thirst-land.”At evening, when the sun had set, and the air became a trifle cooler, Hendrika prepared a scanty meal. She boiled half a kettleful of very weak coffee, made some slops for Barend, ate some bread and meat herself, drank a bare halfkommetjeof coffee, parched though she was, gave the Hottentot his rations, and then, bidding Andries to keep up a good fire, she put her little son to bed on the kartel, and, lying by his side, presently hushed him off to sleep. A little after she herself fell asleep also. Towards the small hours Barend was up and wide awake, hot and feverish, and clamouring, poor little soul, for something to quench his thirst with. Hendrika lit a lantern, got out of the wagon, procured the rest of the coffee, which, mixed with a little condensed milk, she had left to cool, and brought the beakerful that remained to her boy. The little fellow, with trembling hands, took the beaker and eagerly emptied it at two draughts. His mother had not the heart to stop him, and he lay down and went to sleep again.Dawn came round, and the sun sprang up all ruddy, as if but too eager to send his scorching beams upon the shadeless veldt. When Hendrika, after heavy dreamful slumber, cast back the wagon-clap and looked forth, behold, a hundred yards from her was outspanned another wagon, which had evidently arrived during the night and which she quickly discovered belonged to no other than Schalk Oosthuysen. Andries the Hottentot coming up soon after, informed her that Baas Oosthuysen’s oxen had been outspanned and sent on to Inkouane about four that morning, being able to trek no farther, and that the Baas himself, who had lost a quantity of stock already, was asleep in his wagon. It was very vexing, Hendrika thought. Here was the very man of all others she wished to avoid, outspanned close beside her; neither of them could move backward or forward, and a long day, perhaps even more, had to be got through somehow in this unpleasant proximity. About noon, Oosthuysen, having finished his sleep, emerged from his wagon and looked about him. He had evidently heard from his servants whose was the wagon near, but he appeared disinclined to trouble the occupants. For so much Hendrika secretly thanked him. The burning sun moved slowly across the heaven, and, as the fierce rays shifted, so Hendrika and her child moved into the meagre shade given by the great wagon. The sun at this season was north of the line, and never quite overhead. But it was terribly hot, and the scant water was all but finished now. Hendrika had but just moistened her lips, and Andries had had a bare quarter of a pint; all the rest had been reserved for poor feverish little Barend, who evidently had had a touch of the sun on the preceding day’s trek, and was very ill.Sometimes Hendrika’s glance turned swiftly towards the other wagon; and there was debate and anxiety in it, and a compression of the firm red lips, as if a struggle were waking in her mind. Oosthuysen rose and shouldered his rifle once during the day, and wandered into the bush, presumably to look for a chance eland or giraffe; but nothing came of it, no shot was heard, and before sundown he had returned, and flung himself into his wagon-chair, in which he sat moodily smoking.Towards evening Hendrika’s eyes and ears were fastened intently upon the road from Inkouane. Surely her husband must soon arrive! There was water there, and he would hasten back, knowing the struggle with thirst his dear ones were fighting through. Yes, undoubtedly he must be here soon. But hour after hour slipped by; the red sun sank, the night came, the stars sprang forth in their armies, and presently the moon rose as fresh and serene and gracious as though she had never seen one hour of suffering upon the tired earth. All was still upon the veldt. There was not even the occasional deep breathing of the oxen as they lay by the trek chain, for the oxen were far away, all but the three dead beasts which lay near, and had already become offensive.At eight o’clock, Hendrika, who had been nursing little Barend by the fire since dark, gave him—for he was now clamourous again—the last kommetjeful of weak coffee. She had nothing better to give the child; the water was none too sweet, and was better boiled and made into coffee than drunk alone. After this Barend was put to bed on the wagon-kartel, and the sheepskin kaross thrown lightly over him.Again Hendrika got down from the wagon and stood by the fire. There had been a bitter struggle agitating her bosom for hours past, and now the time was come. She must smother her stiff Dutch pride, and go as a suppliant to Schalk Oosthuysen and beg for a little water for her child. Her own thirst, heightened by the oven-like heat and the long day of waiting and anxiety, was intense, and Andries, the Hottentot—faithful and uncomplaining though he was—was in like plight. These things were as nothing; their sufferings could be borne for another day and night; but Barend, her beautiful, sunny little Barend, with his now flushed cheeks and feverish skin and hoarse voice—he must be saved pain at all cost. Her mind was made up. She looked across to the fire by the other wagon. There sat Schalk sullenly, his figure bulking against the blaze, smoking his big pipe as usual.Hendrika walked steadily across and up to the firelight. Only the Boer sat there; his servants were already asleep under the wagon. Schalk turned in his chair and looked up at his visitor as she approached. It was not a pleasant face to-night. The man was evidently in a sullen, obstinate fit of temper at the general outlook, and his aspect was discouraging enough. Hendrika broke the silence.“Meneer Oosthuysen,” she said, rather hurriedly for her, “I have come to beg some water. My boy is sick and feverish, and myvatjeis empty. I have not a drop of water left. I expected my husband back this evening with a fresh supply; he has not arrived, and there are no signs of him. You can help me, can you not?”A curious expression flitted over the impassive countenance of the Boer: it passed like a fleeting shadow, but the firelight just caught it.“Hendrika Van Staden, why should you come to me now?” he said. “All was over between us, you said; and I wanted to see your face no more. I have scarcely enough water for myself and my men for another day. My oxen may not be back, the Lord knows when! In these times one must look after oneself. Your husband will be back by morning, no doubt, and your boy can wait till then. No, I cannot help you. Allemaghte! why should I, indeed? All my troubles come from you. You have treated me scurvily in the past; my turn has come now!”The last few days of suffering and disaster—for he had already lost heavily among his cattle—seemed to have changed the man’s nature. All his evil impulses had come uppermost.Hendrika argued, pleaded, threatened, cast away her pride and implored Oosthuysen, by all the memories of their youth together, to help her, even with a beaker or two of water. But all of no avail. The Boer sat grim, obstinate, ferocious, and would not be moved.In despair she sought her wagon again. A terrible night followed. Barend was awake long before the light with raging thirst in his throat. The mother bathed his hands and brow with vinegar, moistened his lips with it, did all she could to soothe and comfort him: it was of slight avail. The fever increased; the poor sufferer’s cries for water were incessant. What Hendrika went through during that dreadful night no pen can tell. The desert was a hell; the stars above mocked her; the moon gleamed in contemptuous serenity; the airs whispering through the bush passed idly by, tittering their light gossip one to another. Where was God, that He could let her child suffer so? Surely, surely, all the Predikants and the Doppers and the rest of them were wrong! There could be no God, and the Bible was a lie! Sometimes, when Barend fell asleep for a few minutes, she prayed and wrestled with her agony, and fifty times sprang up thinking she heard her husband’s approach.At dawn Oosthuysen was stirring, and got down from his kartel. Hendrika had been watching like a hawk for this. She hurried swiftly across, and in rapid sentences told him of her child’s danger. She fell on her knees before him—this proud, beautiful, strong woman, whose boast had been that she could have had every Boer of the Transvaal at her feet—and begged him in a flood of tears to give her some water and save her child. At this moment, even after these scores of hours of fatigue and thirst and bitter suffering, and under the grey morning light, the woman looked very beautiful, worn and dishevelled though she was. Herkapjewas off, and her golden hair, unfettered by the usual tight Dutch cap, crowned her with a strange glory.The Boer was visibly moved.“Hendrika,” he whispered hoarsely, “I love you still. Yes, I love you more than ever. I will give you all the water I have. Allemaghte! Yes, I’ll foot it without water to Inkouane if you will leave your husband and come away with me. We can trek far to the north and make a home of our own. Come, Hendrika! After we reach Inkouane, your husband will be behind for his cattle, and we can get away; and if you like, bring the boy too. There is the water,” pointing under his wagon, “nearly a vatjeful; you shall have it all. Think well of what I say. We have been happy before, and can be happy again.”Hendrika sprang to her feet with flashing eyes.“You must be mad,” she said, with fierce scorn, “to dream of such a thing! Can you think so ill of me? No,schelm, scoundrel that you are, you know you cannot! Is this your final answer. Do you still refuse me water?”“I do,” he returned; “unless...”She turned away with a fierce, hopeless gesture, and left him.How Hendrika Van Staden passed the next eight hours she could never satisfactorily describe, even to herself. Slowly the hot day came up, and slowly passed upon leaden wings. Andries was sent out to scour the bush for any bulbs or roots that might contain moisture. But, alas! just in this locality none such could be found. Meanwhile, Barend rapidly grew worse; the fever pressed more hardly upon him, the thirst became more intolerable; convulsions were succeeded by coma. It seemed that the end was near. The water-bearers from Inkouane still tarried; every moment became more distracting, more agonising, for the wretched mother.Suddenly a terrible thought flashed through her brain, and no sooner was it conceived than her mind was made up. She went softly to her wagon, took down her husband’s Martini-Henry carbine from the hooks on which it reposed, drew it from its lion-skin cover, and pulled two cartridges from a bandolier; one she pushed into the breech of the carbine, the other she thrust into her bosom, and then, carrying the gun behind her, she walked straight across to Oosthuysen’s camp. The Boer happened to be sitting in the shade at the back of the wagon, and heard nothing of her approach till her voice rang sharply through the hot air.“Meneer Oosthuysen, I want you!”Schalk sprang up with alacrity. No doubt, he thought to himself, he had conquered. His vile offer was to be accepted. There was a strange set look in the woman’s beautiful eyes as he faced her. Her head was thrown back in the way he knew so well of yore, her white throat was displayed, her arms were behind her back. A little defiant, perhaps, in her yielding, but still she was to be his. Never, he thought, had she looked more noble.“Schalk,” she said, in her firm, clear voice, “I must have that water.”“Well,” he replied, “it is yours. You know my terms.”“Almighty God!” she gasped; “then youwillhave it! See here, this gun is loaded. If you hand me half your water, I’ll forgive all your brutality; if not, I’ll shoot you dead. Choose, and in one instant!”The Boer evidently imagined it was a mere case of “bluff,” and he grew angry.“I tell you,” he cried, “you shall have not one drop of water unless you swear to leave your husband and come with me! Those are my last words.”“Your last indeed!” echoed Hendrika, in a deep, low voice. Her carbine went up. The Boer made one dash to disarm her, and in the same instant her forefinger pressed the trigger and a bullet crashed through Oosthuysen’s brain. He fell forward and lay there in the sand without another motion, stone-dead.Scarcely noticing the body, Hendrika went straight to the watervatjefor which she had done this terrible act. She lifted it from the hook, and, exerting all her strength, carried it across to her wagon. Then, procuring brandy, she mingled water with it, and with a teaspoon poured some of the mixture between the parched lips of her half-lifeless child. In ten minutes there were signs of returning consciousness, and presently Barend opened his eyes. Her child was saved, and the woman’s heart, spite of the deadly horror that was upon her, echoed faint thanks. She had saved her boy, but at what a price! In half an hour Barend was so much better that she was able to leave him dozing quietly, and once more she betook herself to Oosthuysen’s camp. The Boer’s Kaffirs had returned, and were standing over the dead body, talking and gesticulating in an excited way. Hendrika walked straight up to them, and, first picking up her carbine, said in a firm voice, “Yes, the Baas is dead. He refused me water, and I shot him. It was my child’s life or his. You had better go on to Inkouane and tell his friends to send back for the wagon.”The natives, awed by her manner and the words she spoke, slunk away, and, picking up their blankets and assegais and a little store of water, struck into the bush, glad to be quit of this terrible woman.As soon as they had departed, all Hendrika’s stock of firmness vanished. She had been overwrought these forty-eight hours past. Now the tension had become too great. She knelt beside the dead body of Oosthuysen and wept in an agony of remorse, pity, and tenderness.Why had she slain this man, with whom for years she had been associated in childhood? She remembered, ah! so well, their pleasant homes in Marico, the fertile valleys, the fair uplands, and the pleasant treks four times a year toNachtmaal(communion) at Zeerust. Her tears flowed afresh. Presently she became calmer, climbed into Oosthuysen’s wagon, and took down a blanket, which she placed reverently, almost tenderly, over the dead body.At that instant the dulled crack of a rifle-shot came from the direction of the Inkouanë road! Another! Alas! Hendrika knew what they meant. Her husband was approaching, water was at hand, help near. Now the full horror of her position smote upon her and froze her blood. All this terrible crime might have been avoided if but those shots had been heard one short hour ago. Her heart stood still, and she fell forward in a deathlike swoon beside the body of the man she had slain.When Piet Van Staden rode up five minutes later and found his wife lying in a dead faint beside the yet warm corpse of Schalk Oosthuysen, even his dull Dutch nature was stirred and harrowed. What in God’s name could it all mean?Presently, with the aid of brandy and water, Hendrika came to herself, and was able to tell her terrible story. It was a great shock to her husband; but he had a strong faith in his wife’s character, and he understood well enough that only the direst straits and the prospect of the almost instant death of their child could have induced her to take the blood of a fellow-creature upon her hands.They buried Oosthuysen’s body that evening, and covered the grave with thorns, and set a strongschermof thorns about it to keep off the wild beasts. During the night their oxen came in, and they trekked next day, with doubt and trepidation in their hearts, for Inkouane, where dreadful scenes were enacting. The pits had been meanwhile choked up with dead oxen, which had been cut out piecemeal; and now, the scant mess of foul blood and fouler water being exhausted, men, women, and children were enduring agonies of thirst. Men in such case were not likely to be hard judges: their one thought was for their own safety. Piet and his wife, therefore, having reported the full circumstances of Oosthuysen’s tragic death to the Boer leaders, were bidden to betake themselves away and never trouble the expedition again. Glad enough they were to escape thus lightly: blood for blood is usually the cry of people in a state of semi-civilisation such as these Trek-Boers.And so, like Hagar of old, the Van Stadens passed out into the wilderness, and won their way with much toil and suffering to the Okavango River, beyond Lake N’gami. But Hendrika never shook off her trouble, or the feeling that unwittingly she had wrecked her husband’s life and doomed themselves to a weary banishment. Day by day she grew paler and more listless; her old fire and spirits had left her and could not be recalled, and, by the time they reached the marshes of the Okavango, she was utterly unfit to cope with the deadly fever of that unhealthy land.At last, thin and worn and weak, the merest shadow of the once proud Transvaal beauty, she could travel no longer. They outspanned under a big Motjeerie tree, and there, tended by her husband and the still faithful Hottentot, Andries, and with Barend’s hand in hers, she passed from life into the unknown.Hendrika Van Staden sleeps, as sleeps many another stout and heroic. Dutchwoman who has yielded up her soul in Africa, in the dim wilderness, beneath the great Motjeerie tree, amid whose spreading oak-like leafage the wild doves of the forest coo soft requiem. In the still solitudes around wander free and undisturbed the great game of the veldt she loved so well. And at night to the fountain near her grave come the tall giraffe, the mighty elephant, the painted zebra, the sinuous tawny lion, the tiny steinbok, and many another head of game, to quench their thirst.What fitter resting-place could be hers? And if, indeed, Hendrika erred in the supreme trial of her life, what mother, what true woman, would have done otherwise? Who shall judge her? who cast a stone?

It was the year 1877. For months past the wagons of the Trek-Boers had been standing idly outspanned on the banks of the Crocodile River, (The Limpopo River is known universally in South Africa as the Crocodile) waiting for the word to move north-westward and plunge into the unknown and dreadful deserts that lay between the trekkers and the far-off land they sought. Scattered among the great trees and bushes that margined the noble river, the white wagon-tents of these strange people might be discerned dotting the landscape for the space of a mile and a half and more. Here were gathered the wildest, toughest, and most daring spirits of the Transvaal. Elephant-hunters, who longed for new and virgin lands in which to procure that ivory for which they had risked their lives so often; broken farmers, upon whom the vicissitudes of the African pastoralists’ existence had fallen heavily; and sour Doppers, whose grim religious views reminded one of the savage tenets of the Israelites of old, and who now looked eagerly across the desert for a new land of Canaan.

With these men, living in wagons and tents, were their wives and children, and such furniture and worldly gear as they could carry with them. Around them, scattered over the veldt for miles, grazed the oxen, horses, sheep, and goats that should accompany the trek. Pigs and poultry littered the encampment, and were to be seen near every wagon. All the people—elephant-hunters, malcontents, broken men, and Doppers—were animated by one and the same sentiment. They were sick of the Transvaal. There had been too much fighting—and badly managed fighting—with Sekukuni and other Kaffirs; too many commandos; taxes, those hateful creations of civilisation, were increasing, and were actually being enforced; President Burgers had been too go-ahead, toohoogmoedag(high and mighty); the seasons had been bad; and the English—those hateful English—were slowly finding their way to the north. And so the great Promised Land trek—a trek talked of for years past—was at last gathered together.

Some of these Boers, the Doppers, and they who had lived farthest from the rude semi-civilisation of that day, were possessed with the wildest beliefs. They imagined that Egypt lay just across the Zambesi River, not so very far to the north; they were convinced that they were setting forth to a land somewhere in the dim north-west, beyond Lake N’gami, where ranged snow-clad mountains beneath which sheltered a veldt rich in water, in cattle, and in corn and pasture lands, where the great game wandered just as plentifully as they had wandered in the Transvaal and Free State forty years before, when their fathers had crossed the Orange River and possessed the soil. Seventy wagons and more now stood beside the Crocodile, whose owners, heartily weary of the delays that had taken place, now anxiously awaited the return of two deputies sent to Khama, Chief of Bamangwato, through whose country they first had to pass.

One afternoon about this time a great wagon lumbered in to swell the already unwieldy proportions of the trek, and outspanned under a big tree. Word went slowly round the camp that Piet Van Staden, from Zoutpansberg, with his wife and child, had come in. Piet’s arrival in itself would have created no great stir, for Piet was a very average type of Transvaal Boer—big, not ill-looking, heavy and inert, and with very little to say for himself—but Piet’s wife was no ordinary person. She was a woman of striking beauty, far surpassing the dull ruck of South African Dutch vrouws, and possessed, moreover, of so much originality and determination of character as to have scandalised more than once her sober-minded countrywomen.

The men of Zoutpansberg swore by her. Had she not taken a rifle and ridden out time after time with her husband into the low veldt towards Delagoa Bay, and shot with her own hand giraffe and buffalo—ay, and even the mighty elephant itself? Rumour had it that on more than one occasion Hendrika Van Staden had hardened her husband’s heart at close quarters with a troop of half-mad elephants; and it was certain that she herself had, as they said, a “heart of steel,” and feared neither lion nor elephant nor fierce Kaffir.

Hendrika was a busy, active woman; and the oxen were no sooner outspanned than she got out her poultry from the bed of the wagon, extricated a table and some wagon-chairs, set one of the native boys to light the fire and prepare for the evening meal, and then, taking her six-year-old son, little Barend, set out to call upon one or two neighbours and inspect the camp. Barend, who inherited his mother’s good looks, her yellow hair, and deep blue eyes and clear complexion, was a fine, sturdy little fellow, and, clad in his short coat and loose trousers of soft mouse-coloured moleskin, a flannel shirt, and wide felt hat, looked a typical little Dutchman, a small counterpart, even to the clothes he wore, of his sturdy father. The two set off together, Barend flicking his little hide whip as he walked, and chattering to his mother with keen excitement as the various camps and outspans came into view. While his mother was engaged in conversation with some friends from her own district, the little fellow suddenly caught sight of his father walking to the next group of wagons, and toddled hastily after him.

In half an hour Hendrika had finished her gossip and extracted as much news as could be gleaned. She had not yet been down to the water; and, as the sun was declining and she wished to set eyes on the long-sought Crocodile before dark, she turned to the left hand, and, following a cattle-path, quickly found herself on the margin of the great river. Just at this point there was a bend or hook, and the stream, now at its low winter level, ran deep and swiftly only near the farther bank, leaving a broad spit of sand exposed upon the hither shore. A little higher to the left the stream again broadened into a great reach of shining water, now painted with a warm and ruddy hue by the glow of sunset. To the right, down the course of the river, a beautiful island, laden with trees and a wealth of bush and greenery, and fringed with tall yellow reeds, met the eye. Everywhere great forest trees abounded. Yellow-billed hornbills flew hither and thither among the acacias; gem-like bee-eaters flashed among the reeds; gaudy parrots, clad in blue and green and yellow, darted with shrill whistle overhead; and pearl-drab plantain-eaters uttered their loud, human-like cries at the advent of the solitary figure. Francolins down for their evening drink were calling to one another in scores, and doves cooed softly among the branches. It was a beautiful picture; but Hendrika cared little for the aesthetic aspect, the glamour of the hour, the glowing mantle of sunset. Her heart warmed, it is true, at the sight of the noble river, flowing with strength and volume even at this season of winter, and amid a parched country. But hers was the true, practical Dutch mind: she appreciated the scene only for the assurance it gave her of illimitable watering power for flocks and herds. Two hundred yards beyond, a troop of oxen came down to drink. A Dutchman was with them, and Hendrika bent her steps that way to learn whose the cattle were. The man’s back was turned, and it was not till she was within thirty yards that he heard her approach and faced her. There was a start of recognition and hesitation on either side, and then the man, a tall, good-looking Boer, furnished with a big straw-coloured beard and moustache, and dressed with rather more care than the average Transvaal farmer, came forward, and the pair shook hands in the impassive Dutch fashion. The Boer first spoke.

“And so, Vrouw Van Staden, you have come to join the trek. I scarcely looked to see you and your husband here. I had thought you were well settled on your farm in Zoutpansberg.”

“No; we are tired of that country. Our farm was good enough, and the winter veldt in the low country near at hand; but there is too much fever, and the Kaffirs are very troublesome; and as the President for years has been fighting Sekukuni, we have no strength ourselves for commandos in our own country. Cattle-stealing is worse than it has been for years. And so we thought we would join the trek and try a new country, where the game is more plentiful, and one is not to be pinched up on a farm of three thousand morgen.” (Amorgenis rather more than two acres. The usual Boer farm averages three thousandmorgen, more than six thousand acres.)

The woman spoke stiffly, and her face had assumed a touch of pride as she answered. But she went on: “I think it is rather I who should ask why Schalk Oosthuysen, with all his wealth, has left Marico, the garden of the Transvaal, as men call it.”

The man had gazed long and fixedly as Hendrika spoke. His eyes seemed to have softened, and a very visible pleasure was in them. And, indeed, Hendrika Van Staden was worth looking at. Clad though she was in a plain gown of rough brown material, bought at some up-country store and fashioned by herself, the admirable curves of her straight, well-rounded figure could not be concealed. Few Boer women can boast a figure. Here was a waist whose trim outlines would have done no disgrace to a well-set-up English girl. Matron though she was, the tall, shapely woman stood like a straight sapling upon the firm yellow sand. The broad chest and shoulders supported erect upon a strong and shapely neck a beautiful head. And the face? Well, most people would have agreed with Schalk Oosthuysen, whose eyes gazed with unconcealable admiration into Hendrika’s. The parting sunlight lent a wonderful charm to the oval face and the fair, clear complexion, so unlike the muddy skin of most Boer women. The soft rosy cheeks—just touched with a suspicion of African tan,—the white forehead, straight nose and proud lips, and the dark blue eyes, all set in a frame of golden yellow hair, every strand of it now glorified by the loving sun-rays, which the great sun-bonnet (kapje) ill-concealed—all went to complete a picture of feminine beauty that few Transvaalers—certainly not Schalk Oosthuysen—could resist.

Hendrika had, like most Dutch girls, married young; and now, mother though she was of a child more than six years old, was in the very pride and summer of her rich beauty.

Oosthuysen, without moving his gaze, spoke again.

“No one should know better than you, Hendrika, why I am leaving Marico and going to tempt fortune in the unknown veldt. How can I rest? Ever since I saw you, ever since the sunny years of our childhood, I have thought of you, dreamed of you. I can never marry now, unless—well, unless you should ever become free again, which is not likely before we are old people. It was you, Hendrika, that broke my happiness and disturbed my lot. Allemaghte! I am sorry almost that you have joined this trek.”

“Schalk, you have no right to speak like that. You know it was not my fault that I could not become your wife. My father had his reasons—good reasons, as I suppose; and I have a good husband, and am contented. Never speak of these things again; they are past and done with. Our ways are different, and it is better that we should see as little of one another as possible.”

She spoke almost with excitement, and her hands, folded, as all good Dutch women fold them, beneath her black apron, to protect them from the strong African sun, had become disengaged, and lent themselves with a slight gesture of impatience to enforce her words.

She turned away, saying as she went, “Good-night, Meneer Oosthuysen,” and took the path to her wagon.

“Good-night, and the Lord bless you, Hendrika,” replied the Boer, as he moved towards his oxen.

Two mornings later the Boer envoys returned from interviewing Khama. They brought word that the chief was willing to allow passage for the whole trek across his country, but that he strongly advised them to proceed in small bands at a time, or the scant waters of the thirst-land between him and the Lake River would fail them. If the whole seventy or eighty wagons attempted to cross in a body, they would find barely sufficient water to supply half a dozen spans of oxen at a time, and disaster must ensue. This was Khama’s advice; he had, as he sent word, no present quarrel with the Boers, and would help them through his country; but he urged them, if they wished to pass safely across the desert, to weigh well his words, and trek in parties of twos and threes.

There was much consultation over this message. Some few hunters, who knew the chief and had made the trek, were strongly for taking his advice; but against these few men there was strong and fierce opposition. All the ignorant, the obstinate, and the self-opinionated—and they formed the majority—held that no Kaffir’s word was to be trusted. Who was this Khama but a natural foe of the Transvaal? No doubt he wished them to travel in families of twos and threes, that he might the better attack their wagons and cut them up piecemeal.

After several days of hot discussion, it was finally decided that all should move together, and that the trek should begin with the following week, by which time the scattered flocks and herds would be collected.

It was a month after the beginning of the trek that Piet Van Staden and his wife and child found themselves in the middle of the thirst-land, between the waters of Kanne and Inkouane—that is to say, in about the worst bit of the Kalahari—in heavy sand, under a broiling sun, and without one single drop of water for their oxen, in a stretch of three days’ and three nights’ continuous travel.

There were wagons in front of them and wagons behind them; they were about the middle of the expedition. At the distance of two days and two nights from Kanne, and a whole day and night from Inkouane, their oxen could go no farther; they had had no drink at the wretched pits of Kanne, where water oozes through the sand at the rate of about half a bucket an hour; three of them lay dead in their yokes already—the rest were foundered and could trek no more. The poor brutes lowed piteously and incessantly; they came frantically round the wagon, smelling at the nearly empty water-barrel, and licking the iron tires of the wheels to give relief to their parched tongues. There was only one thing to be done.

“Hendrika,” said her husband, “I must take two of the boys and go on with the oxen. We shall reach Inkouane (it was now afternoon) early to-morrow morning. I will take avatje, (A little vat or hand-barrel, holding about two gallons, usually slung by an iron handle under the wagon) fill it, and ride back as fast as possible. You have enough water to last till evening to-morrow. They say there is plenty at Inkouane; I shall be here to-morrow evening again, having watered the horse; and the oxen should be in by next morning. I hate leaving you and the child, but what else can be done?”

“Nothing else can be done better, Piet,” answered his wife energetically. “Get the oxen up and go on at once. Don’t lose a moment; and, mind, be back here not later than sundown to-morrow. Barend is tired and feverish already, and I shall have trouble to make the water last till then. Go at once, and the Heer God be with you.”

Hendrika’s blue eyes were full of hope and courage; she could trust her husband, and he would, no doubt, be back by nightfall of next day.

Taking two of their three native servants with him, and leaving Andries, a little Hottentot, behind with his mistress, with the strictest injunctions to have but one drink between that time and his return, Piet Van Staden kissed his wife and child, thrashed up the foundered oxen, and set forth as fast as he could get them along.

It was a dreary waste of country that Hendrika and her boy were left in—one of the most forbidding parts of the wild, forbidding desert between Khama’s and the Lake River. Hot and sandy and flat it was; a low growth of parched Mopani trees sprang here and there, whose odd butterfly-like leaves, now shrivelled and scorched to a brown sapless condition by months of drought, bore eloquent testimony to the nature of this terrible “thirst-land.”

At evening, when the sun had set, and the air became a trifle cooler, Hendrika prepared a scanty meal. She boiled half a kettleful of very weak coffee, made some slops for Barend, ate some bread and meat herself, drank a bare halfkommetjeof coffee, parched though she was, gave the Hottentot his rations, and then, bidding Andries to keep up a good fire, she put her little son to bed on the kartel, and, lying by his side, presently hushed him off to sleep. A little after she herself fell asleep also. Towards the small hours Barend was up and wide awake, hot and feverish, and clamouring, poor little soul, for something to quench his thirst with. Hendrika lit a lantern, got out of the wagon, procured the rest of the coffee, which, mixed with a little condensed milk, she had left to cool, and brought the beakerful that remained to her boy. The little fellow, with trembling hands, took the beaker and eagerly emptied it at two draughts. His mother had not the heart to stop him, and he lay down and went to sleep again.

Dawn came round, and the sun sprang up all ruddy, as if but too eager to send his scorching beams upon the shadeless veldt. When Hendrika, after heavy dreamful slumber, cast back the wagon-clap and looked forth, behold, a hundred yards from her was outspanned another wagon, which had evidently arrived during the night and which she quickly discovered belonged to no other than Schalk Oosthuysen. Andries the Hottentot coming up soon after, informed her that Baas Oosthuysen’s oxen had been outspanned and sent on to Inkouane about four that morning, being able to trek no farther, and that the Baas himself, who had lost a quantity of stock already, was asleep in his wagon. It was very vexing, Hendrika thought. Here was the very man of all others she wished to avoid, outspanned close beside her; neither of them could move backward or forward, and a long day, perhaps even more, had to be got through somehow in this unpleasant proximity. About noon, Oosthuysen, having finished his sleep, emerged from his wagon and looked about him. He had evidently heard from his servants whose was the wagon near, but he appeared disinclined to trouble the occupants. For so much Hendrika secretly thanked him. The burning sun moved slowly across the heaven, and, as the fierce rays shifted, so Hendrika and her child moved into the meagre shade given by the great wagon. The sun at this season was north of the line, and never quite overhead. But it was terribly hot, and the scant water was all but finished now. Hendrika had but just moistened her lips, and Andries had had a bare quarter of a pint; all the rest had been reserved for poor feverish little Barend, who evidently had had a touch of the sun on the preceding day’s trek, and was very ill.

Sometimes Hendrika’s glance turned swiftly towards the other wagon; and there was debate and anxiety in it, and a compression of the firm red lips, as if a struggle were waking in her mind. Oosthuysen rose and shouldered his rifle once during the day, and wandered into the bush, presumably to look for a chance eland or giraffe; but nothing came of it, no shot was heard, and before sundown he had returned, and flung himself into his wagon-chair, in which he sat moodily smoking.

Towards evening Hendrika’s eyes and ears were fastened intently upon the road from Inkouane. Surely her husband must soon arrive! There was water there, and he would hasten back, knowing the struggle with thirst his dear ones were fighting through. Yes, undoubtedly he must be here soon. But hour after hour slipped by; the red sun sank, the night came, the stars sprang forth in their armies, and presently the moon rose as fresh and serene and gracious as though she had never seen one hour of suffering upon the tired earth. All was still upon the veldt. There was not even the occasional deep breathing of the oxen as they lay by the trek chain, for the oxen were far away, all but the three dead beasts which lay near, and had already become offensive.

At eight o’clock, Hendrika, who had been nursing little Barend by the fire since dark, gave him—for he was now clamourous again—the last kommetjeful of weak coffee. She had nothing better to give the child; the water was none too sweet, and was better boiled and made into coffee than drunk alone. After this Barend was put to bed on the wagon-kartel, and the sheepskin kaross thrown lightly over him.

Again Hendrika got down from the wagon and stood by the fire. There had been a bitter struggle agitating her bosom for hours past, and now the time was come. She must smother her stiff Dutch pride, and go as a suppliant to Schalk Oosthuysen and beg for a little water for her child. Her own thirst, heightened by the oven-like heat and the long day of waiting and anxiety, was intense, and Andries, the Hottentot—faithful and uncomplaining though he was—was in like plight. These things were as nothing; their sufferings could be borne for another day and night; but Barend, her beautiful, sunny little Barend, with his now flushed cheeks and feverish skin and hoarse voice—he must be saved pain at all cost. Her mind was made up. She looked across to the fire by the other wagon. There sat Schalk sullenly, his figure bulking against the blaze, smoking his big pipe as usual.

Hendrika walked steadily across and up to the firelight. Only the Boer sat there; his servants were already asleep under the wagon. Schalk turned in his chair and looked up at his visitor as she approached. It was not a pleasant face to-night. The man was evidently in a sullen, obstinate fit of temper at the general outlook, and his aspect was discouraging enough. Hendrika broke the silence.

“Meneer Oosthuysen,” she said, rather hurriedly for her, “I have come to beg some water. My boy is sick and feverish, and myvatjeis empty. I have not a drop of water left. I expected my husband back this evening with a fresh supply; he has not arrived, and there are no signs of him. You can help me, can you not?”

A curious expression flitted over the impassive countenance of the Boer: it passed like a fleeting shadow, but the firelight just caught it.

“Hendrika Van Staden, why should you come to me now?” he said. “All was over between us, you said; and I wanted to see your face no more. I have scarcely enough water for myself and my men for another day. My oxen may not be back, the Lord knows when! In these times one must look after oneself. Your husband will be back by morning, no doubt, and your boy can wait till then. No, I cannot help you. Allemaghte! why should I, indeed? All my troubles come from you. You have treated me scurvily in the past; my turn has come now!”

The last few days of suffering and disaster—for he had already lost heavily among his cattle—seemed to have changed the man’s nature. All his evil impulses had come uppermost.

Hendrika argued, pleaded, threatened, cast away her pride and implored Oosthuysen, by all the memories of their youth together, to help her, even with a beaker or two of water. But all of no avail. The Boer sat grim, obstinate, ferocious, and would not be moved.

In despair she sought her wagon again. A terrible night followed. Barend was awake long before the light with raging thirst in his throat. The mother bathed his hands and brow with vinegar, moistened his lips with it, did all she could to soothe and comfort him: it was of slight avail. The fever increased; the poor sufferer’s cries for water were incessant. What Hendrika went through during that dreadful night no pen can tell. The desert was a hell; the stars above mocked her; the moon gleamed in contemptuous serenity; the airs whispering through the bush passed idly by, tittering their light gossip one to another. Where was God, that He could let her child suffer so? Surely, surely, all the Predikants and the Doppers and the rest of them were wrong! There could be no God, and the Bible was a lie! Sometimes, when Barend fell asleep for a few minutes, she prayed and wrestled with her agony, and fifty times sprang up thinking she heard her husband’s approach.

At dawn Oosthuysen was stirring, and got down from his kartel. Hendrika had been watching like a hawk for this. She hurried swiftly across, and in rapid sentences told him of her child’s danger. She fell on her knees before him—this proud, beautiful, strong woman, whose boast had been that she could have had every Boer of the Transvaal at her feet—and begged him in a flood of tears to give her some water and save her child. At this moment, even after these scores of hours of fatigue and thirst and bitter suffering, and under the grey morning light, the woman looked very beautiful, worn and dishevelled though she was. Herkapjewas off, and her golden hair, unfettered by the usual tight Dutch cap, crowned her with a strange glory.

The Boer was visibly moved.

“Hendrika,” he whispered hoarsely, “I love you still. Yes, I love you more than ever. I will give you all the water I have. Allemaghte! Yes, I’ll foot it without water to Inkouane if you will leave your husband and come away with me. We can trek far to the north and make a home of our own. Come, Hendrika! After we reach Inkouane, your husband will be behind for his cattle, and we can get away; and if you like, bring the boy too. There is the water,” pointing under his wagon, “nearly a vatjeful; you shall have it all. Think well of what I say. We have been happy before, and can be happy again.”

Hendrika sprang to her feet with flashing eyes.

“You must be mad,” she said, with fierce scorn, “to dream of such a thing! Can you think so ill of me? No,schelm, scoundrel that you are, you know you cannot! Is this your final answer. Do you still refuse me water?”

“I do,” he returned; “unless...”

She turned away with a fierce, hopeless gesture, and left him.

How Hendrika Van Staden passed the next eight hours she could never satisfactorily describe, even to herself. Slowly the hot day came up, and slowly passed upon leaden wings. Andries was sent out to scour the bush for any bulbs or roots that might contain moisture. But, alas! just in this locality none such could be found. Meanwhile, Barend rapidly grew worse; the fever pressed more hardly upon him, the thirst became more intolerable; convulsions were succeeded by coma. It seemed that the end was near. The water-bearers from Inkouane still tarried; every moment became more distracting, more agonising, for the wretched mother.

Suddenly a terrible thought flashed through her brain, and no sooner was it conceived than her mind was made up. She went softly to her wagon, took down her husband’s Martini-Henry carbine from the hooks on which it reposed, drew it from its lion-skin cover, and pulled two cartridges from a bandolier; one she pushed into the breech of the carbine, the other she thrust into her bosom, and then, carrying the gun behind her, she walked straight across to Oosthuysen’s camp. The Boer happened to be sitting in the shade at the back of the wagon, and heard nothing of her approach till her voice rang sharply through the hot air.

“Meneer Oosthuysen, I want you!”

Schalk sprang up with alacrity. No doubt, he thought to himself, he had conquered. His vile offer was to be accepted. There was a strange set look in the woman’s beautiful eyes as he faced her. Her head was thrown back in the way he knew so well of yore, her white throat was displayed, her arms were behind her back. A little defiant, perhaps, in her yielding, but still she was to be his. Never, he thought, had she looked more noble.

“Schalk,” she said, in her firm, clear voice, “I must have that water.”

“Well,” he replied, “it is yours. You know my terms.”

“Almighty God!” she gasped; “then youwillhave it! See here, this gun is loaded. If you hand me half your water, I’ll forgive all your brutality; if not, I’ll shoot you dead. Choose, and in one instant!”

The Boer evidently imagined it was a mere case of “bluff,” and he grew angry.

“I tell you,” he cried, “you shall have not one drop of water unless you swear to leave your husband and come with me! Those are my last words.”

“Your last indeed!” echoed Hendrika, in a deep, low voice. Her carbine went up. The Boer made one dash to disarm her, and in the same instant her forefinger pressed the trigger and a bullet crashed through Oosthuysen’s brain. He fell forward and lay there in the sand without another motion, stone-dead.

Scarcely noticing the body, Hendrika went straight to the watervatjefor which she had done this terrible act. She lifted it from the hook, and, exerting all her strength, carried it across to her wagon. Then, procuring brandy, she mingled water with it, and with a teaspoon poured some of the mixture between the parched lips of her half-lifeless child. In ten minutes there were signs of returning consciousness, and presently Barend opened his eyes. Her child was saved, and the woman’s heart, spite of the deadly horror that was upon her, echoed faint thanks. She had saved her boy, but at what a price! In half an hour Barend was so much better that she was able to leave him dozing quietly, and once more she betook herself to Oosthuysen’s camp. The Boer’s Kaffirs had returned, and were standing over the dead body, talking and gesticulating in an excited way. Hendrika walked straight up to them, and, first picking up her carbine, said in a firm voice, “Yes, the Baas is dead. He refused me water, and I shot him. It was my child’s life or his. You had better go on to Inkouane and tell his friends to send back for the wagon.”

The natives, awed by her manner and the words she spoke, slunk away, and, picking up their blankets and assegais and a little store of water, struck into the bush, glad to be quit of this terrible woman.

As soon as they had departed, all Hendrika’s stock of firmness vanished. She had been overwrought these forty-eight hours past. Now the tension had become too great. She knelt beside the dead body of Oosthuysen and wept in an agony of remorse, pity, and tenderness.

Why had she slain this man, with whom for years she had been associated in childhood? She remembered, ah! so well, their pleasant homes in Marico, the fertile valleys, the fair uplands, and the pleasant treks four times a year toNachtmaal(communion) at Zeerust. Her tears flowed afresh. Presently she became calmer, climbed into Oosthuysen’s wagon, and took down a blanket, which she placed reverently, almost tenderly, over the dead body.

At that instant the dulled crack of a rifle-shot came from the direction of the Inkouanë road! Another! Alas! Hendrika knew what they meant. Her husband was approaching, water was at hand, help near. Now the full horror of her position smote upon her and froze her blood. All this terrible crime might have been avoided if but those shots had been heard one short hour ago. Her heart stood still, and she fell forward in a deathlike swoon beside the body of the man she had slain.

When Piet Van Staden rode up five minutes later and found his wife lying in a dead faint beside the yet warm corpse of Schalk Oosthuysen, even his dull Dutch nature was stirred and harrowed. What in God’s name could it all mean?

Presently, with the aid of brandy and water, Hendrika came to herself, and was able to tell her terrible story. It was a great shock to her husband; but he had a strong faith in his wife’s character, and he understood well enough that only the direst straits and the prospect of the almost instant death of their child could have induced her to take the blood of a fellow-creature upon her hands.

They buried Oosthuysen’s body that evening, and covered the grave with thorns, and set a strongschermof thorns about it to keep off the wild beasts. During the night their oxen came in, and they trekked next day, with doubt and trepidation in their hearts, for Inkouane, where dreadful scenes were enacting. The pits had been meanwhile choked up with dead oxen, which had been cut out piecemeal; and now, the scant mess of foul blood and fouler water being exhausted, men, women, and children were enduring agonies of thirst. Men in such case were not likely to be hard judges: their one thought was for their own safety. Piet and his wife, therefore, having reported the full circumstances of Oosthuysen’s tragic death to the Boer leaders, were bidden to betake themselves away and never trouble the expedition again. Glad enough they were to escape thus lightly: blood for blood is usually the cry of people in a state of semi-civilisation such as these Trek-Boers.

And so, like Hagar of old, the Van Stadens passed out into the wilderness, and won their way with much toil and suffering to the Okavango River, beyond Lake N’gami. But Hendrika never shook off her trouble, or the feeling that unwittingly she had wrecked her husband’s life and doomed themselves to a weary banishment. Day by day she grew paler and more listless; her old fire and spirits had left her and could not be recalled, and, by the time they reached the marshes of the Okavango, she was utterly unfit to cope with the deadly fever of that unhealthy land.

At last, thin and worn and weak, the merest shadow of the once proud Transvaal beauty, she could travel no longer. They outspanned under a big Motjeerie tree, and there, tended by her husband and the still faithful Hottentot, Andries, and with Barend’s hand in hers, she passed from life into the unknown.

Hendrika Van Staden sleeps, as sleeps many another stout and heroic. Dutchwoman who has yielded up her soul in Africa, in the dim wilderness, beneath the great Motjeerie tree, amid whose spreading oak-like leafage the wild doves of the forest coo soft requiem. In the still solitudes around wander free and undisturbed the great game of the veldt she loved so well. And at night to the fountain near her grave come the tall giraffe, the mighty elephant, the painted zebra, the sinuous tawny lion, the tiny steinbok, and many another head of game, to quench their thirst.

What fitter resting-place could be hers? And if, indeed, Hendrika erred in the supreme trial of her life, what mother, what true woman, would have done otherwise? Who shall judge her? who cast a stone?

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