The Settler and the Savage

by R. M. Ballantyne

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

  THE LAST.

  With peace came prosperity. This was not indeed very obvious at first,for it took a long time to reconcile the unfortunates of the easternprovinces to their heavy losses, and a still longer time to teach themto forget. Nevertheless, from this time forward the march of thesettlers of 1820, commercially, intellectually, and religiously, becamesteady, regular, and rapid.

  No doubt they suffered one or two grievous checks as years rolled on.Again and again they had to fight the Kafir savage and drive him backinto his native jungles, and each time they had more trouble in doing sothan before, because the Kafir was an apt pupil, and learned tosubstitute the gun for the assagai; but he did not learn to substituteenlightened vigour for blind passion, therefore the white man beat himas before.

  He did more than that. He sought to disarm the savage, and, to a largeextent, succeeded. He disarmed him of ignorance by such means as theLovedale Missionary Institution near Alice; the Institution nearHealdtown, and other seminaries,--as well as by mission stations ofFrench, Dutch Reformed, Wesleyan, English, and Scotch churches scatteredall over Kafirland; he taught the savage that "the fear of the Lord isthe beginning of wisdom," and that industry is the high-road toprosperity. Some of the black men accepted these truths, othersrejected them. Precisely the same may be said of white men all over theworld. Those who accepted became profitable to themselves and thecommunity. Those who rejected, continued slaves to themselves, and anuisance to everybody. Again we remark that the same may be said ofwhite men everywhere. White unbelievers continued to pronounce the"red" Kafir an "irreclaimable savage," fit for nothing but coercion andthe lash. Black unbelievers continued to curse the white man as beingunworthy of any better fate than being "driven into the sea," and,between the two, missionaries and Christians, both black and white, hada hard time of it; but they did not give in, for, though greatlydisheartened at times, they remembered that they were "soldiers" of thecross, and as such were bound to "endure hardness."

  Moreover, missionaries and Christians of all colours and kinds,doubtless remembered their own sins and errors. Being imperfect men,they had in some cases--through prejudice and ignorance, but _never_through design--helped the enemy a little; or, if they did not rememberthese errors and aims, they were pretty vigorously reminded of them bywhite opponents, and no doubt the thought of this humbled them to someextent, and enabled them to bow more readily to chastisement. Then theybraced themselves anew for the gospel-fight--the only warfare on earththat is certain to result in blessing to both the victors and thevanquished.

  If any of the missionaries held with Lord Glenelg in his unwise reversalof the good Sir Benjamin D'Urban's Kafir policy, they must have had theveil removed from their eyes when that nobleman himself confessed hiserror with a candour that said much for his heart; reversed his owndecrees, and fell back upon that very plan which at first he hadcondemned in such ungenerous terms. His recantation could not, however,recall the thousands of Dutch-African farmers whom he helped toexpatriate. Perhaps it was well that it should be so, for good came outof this evil,--namely, the reclamation of vast tracts of the mostbeautiful and fertile regions of the earth from the dominion of darknessand cruelty.

  But what of those whose fortunes we have been following, during thisperiod of peace and prosperity?

  Some of them remained in the colony, helped on these blessings, andenjoyed them. Others, casting in their lot with the wanderers, foughtthe battles and helped to lay the foundations of the new colonies.

  First, Charlie Considine. That fortunate man--having come into thepossession of a considerable sum of money, through the uncle who hadturned out so much "better than he should be," and having becomepossessed of a huge family of sons and daughters through that Gertiewhom he styled the "sugar of his existence,"--settled in Natal alongwith his friends Hans and Conrad Marais. When that fertile and warmregion was taken possession of by the British, he refused to hive offwith the Marais, and continued to labour there in the interests oftruth, mercy, and justice to the end of his days.

  Junkie Brook, with that vigour of character which had asserted itself onthe squally day of his nativity, joined Frank Dobson and John Skyd in ahunting expedition beyond the Great Orange River; and when the OrangeFree State was set up by the emigrant Dutchmen, he and his friendsestablished there a branch of the flourishing house of Dobson, Skyd, andCompany. Being on the spot when South Africa was electrified by thediscovery (in 1866-67) of the Diamond Fields of that region, they senttheir sons, whose name was legion, to dig, and soon became diamondmerchants of the first water, so that when Junkie visited his agedparents on the Zuurveld--which he often did--he usually appeared withhis pockets full of precious stones!

  "I've found a diamond _this_ time, nurse," he said, on the occasion ofone of these visits, "which is as big--oh!--as--as an ostrich-egg! See,here it is," and he laid on the table a diamond which, if not quite asbig as the egg of the giant bird, was large enough to enable him, withwhat he had previously earned, to retire comfortably from the businessin favour of his eldest son.

  The sudden acquisition of riches in this way was by no means uncommon atthat time, for the "Fields" were amazingly prolific, and having beendiscovered at a crisis of commercial depression, were the means, notonly of retrieving the fortunes of South Africa, but of advancing her toa condition of hitherto unparalleled prosperity.

  Mrs Scholtz--by that time grown unreasonably fat--eyed the diamond witha look of amused contempt; she evidently did not believe in it. Pattingthe hand of her former charge, she looked up in his laughing face, andsaid, with a shake of her head--

  "Ah! Junkie, I always said you was a _wonderful_ child."

  Sitting on a bench in front of the house--no longer domestics, butsmoking their pipes there as "friends" of the family, who had raisedthemselves to a state of comparative affluence--George Dally andScholtz, now aged men, commented on the same diamond.

  "It'll make his fortune," said George.

  "Zee boy vas always lucky," remarked Scholtz; "zince I began to varm formyself I have not zeen so big a stone."

  "Ah! Scholtz," returned his friend, "the hotel business has done verywell for me, an I don't complain, but if I was young again I'd sell offand have a slap at the `Fields.'"

  "Zat vould only prove you vas von fool," said Scholtz quietly.

  "I believe it would," returned George.

  In regard to the Scotch party at Glen Lynden, we have to record thatthey continued to persevere and prosper. Wool became one of the staplearticles of colonial commerce, and the hills of the Baviaans River senta large contingent of that article to the flourishing seaport of theeastern provinces.

  Of course the people multiplied, and the sturdy sons of the SouthAfrican highlands did credit to their sires, both in the matter ofwarring with the Kafir and farming on the hills.

  Sandy Black stuck to his farm with the perseverance of a true Scot, andheld his own through thick and thin. He married a wife also, and when,in later years, the native blacks made a sudden descent on hishomestead, they were repulsed by a swarm of white Blacks, assisted by anarmy of McTavishes, and chased over the hills with a degree of energythat caused them almost to look blue!

  Andrew Rivers, being a man of progressive and independent mind, castabout him in a state of uncertainty for some years, devoting himselfchiefly to hunting, until the value of ostrich feathers had inducedfar-sighted men to domesticate the giant bird, and take to "farming"ostriches--incubating them by artificial as well as natural means. ThenRivers became an ostrich-farmer. He was joined in this enterprise byJerry Goldboy, and the two ultimately bought a farm on the karroo andsettled down. Rivers had a turn for engineering, and set himself toform a huge dam to collect rain near his dwelling. From this reservoirhe drew forth constant supplies, not only to water flocks and herds, butto create a garden in the karroo, which soon glowed with golden fruit.

  In this he set a good example, which has been followed with great
success by many men of enterprise in those regions; and there is nodoubt, we think, that if such dams were multiplied, Artesian wells sunk,and railways run into the karroos, those fine, though comparativelybarren regions of South Africa, would soon begin to blossom like therose.

  Thus, what between ostrich feathers, wool, horses, cattle, andenterprise, Rivers and Goldboy made themselves comfortable. Like othermen of sense, they married. Thereafter the garden had to beconsiderably enlarged, for the golden fruit created by the streams whichhad been collected and stored by Rivers, proved quite inadequate to thesupply of those oceans of babies and swarms of Goldboys that flooded thekarroo, and filled its solitudes with shouts and yells that would havedone credit to the wildest tribe of reddest Kafirs in the land.

  Some of these descendants, becoming men of energy, with rovingdispositions like their sires, travelled into the far north, and west,and helped to draw forth the copper ore, and to open the mines of GreatNamaqua-land--thus aiding in the development of South Africa'sinexhaustible treasure-house, while others of them, especially the sonsof Jerry, went into the regions of the Transvaal Republic, and thereproved themselves Goldboys in very truth, by successfully working thenow celebrated gold-fields of that region.

  Stephen Orpin did not give up trade, but he prosecuted it with less andless vigour as time went on, and at last merely continued it as a meansof enabling him to prosecute the great object of his life, the preachingof the gospel, not merely to those whom men style _par excellence_ the"heathen," but to every one who was willing to listen to the good news--redemption from _sin_! Ah! there was great fervour in Stephen Orpin'stones when he said, as he often did--"Men and women, I do not come hereto make you _good_, which, in the estimation of more than one half ofthe so-called Christian world, means _goody_. My desire is to open youreyes to see Jesus, the Saviour from _sin_. Who among you--except theyoung--does not know the power of sin; our inability to restrain bad andvicious habits; our passionate desire to do what we _know_ is wrong; ourfrequent falling from courses that we _know_ to be right? It is notthat hell frightens us; it is not that heaven fails to attract us.These ideas trouble us little--too little. It is _present_ misery thattorments. We long and desire to have, but cannot obtain; we fight andstrive, but do not succeed, or, it may be, we do succeed, and discoversuccess to be failure, for we are disappointed, and then feel a tendencytowards apathetic indifference. If, however, our consciences beawakened, then the torment takes another form. We are temptedpowerfully, and cannot resist. We cannot subdue our passions; we cannotrestrain our tempers. No wonder. Has not God said, `Greater is he whoruleth his own spirit, than he who taketh a city?' The greatestconqueror is not so great as he who conquers himself. What then? Isthere _no_ deliverance from sin? Yes, there is. `Sin shall _not_ havedominion over you,' are the words of Him who also said, `Come unto Me,all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'"

  "Stephen Orpin," cried a sturdy sinner, in whose ears these words werepreached, "do you _know_ all that to be true? Can you speak fromexperience of this deliverance, this rest?"

  "Yes," cried Stephen, starting up with a sudden impulse, "I _do_ knowit--partly by some deliverances that have been wrought for me, partlyfrom some degree of rest attained to, and much, very much, from the firmassurance I have that, but for God's forbearing and restraining mercy, Ishould have been a lost soul long long ago. Man, wherein I have failedin obtaining deliverance and rest, it has been owing to _my_ sin, not tofailure in the Lord's faithfulness."

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

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

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

  If Jemalee had been a man of much observation, he might have noted thatmany important changes had taken place in Capetown and its surroundingsduring his long absence. A new South African college had been erected;a library which might now stand in the front rank of the world'slibraries had been collected; the freedom of the press had been largelytaken advantage of, and education generally was being prosecuted with adegree of rigour that argued well for the future of the colony--especially in Stellenbosch, Wellington, and neighbouring places. ButAbdul Jemalee was not a man of observation. He did not care a straw forthese things, and although we should like much to enlarge on them, aswell as on other topics, we must hold our hand--for the new and eastern,not the old and western provinces of South Africa claim our undividedattention in this tale.

  There is no necessary antagonism, however, between these two--`East' and`West.' Circumstances and men have at present thrown a few apples ofdiscord into them, just as was the case with England and Scotland ofold; with the North and South in the United States of late; but,doubtless, these apples, and every other source of discord, will beremoved in the course of time, and South Africa will ere long become aunited whole, with a united religious and commercial people, under oneflag, animated by one desire--the advancement of truth and righteousnessamong themselves, as well as among surrounding savages,--and extendingin one grand sweep of unbroken fertility from the Cape of Good Hope tothe Equator.

  THE END.