SCOUTS AND SCOUTING.
DRISCOLL, KING OF SCOUTS.
ORANGE RIVER COLONY.
I have a weakness for scouts. Good scouts seem to me to be of more importance to an army in the field than all the tape-tied intelligence officers out of Hades. They don't get on well with the regular officers as a rule, because scouts are like poets—they are born, not manufactured. They are people who do not feel as if God had forsaken them for ever if they don't get a shave and a clean shirt every morning, they are just a trifle rough in their appearance and manners; but they ride as straight as they talk, and shoot straighter than they ride. They have to be built for the business. All the training in the world won't make a scout unless nature has commenced the job; mere pluck is not worth a dog's bark in this line of life, though without pluck no scout is worth a wanton woman's smile. A good scout wants any amount of courage; he wants a level head—a head of ice, and a heart of fire. He wants to know by instinct when to rush onward and chance his life to the heels of his horse and the goodness of God, and he wants to know with unfailing certainty when to crawl into cover and hide. He must understand how to ride with no other guide than the lay of the country, the course of the sun, or the position of the stars. He must have eyes that note every broken hill, every little hollow, every footprint of man or horse on the veldt.
He must be an excellent judge of distance, of time, of numbers. He must be able to tell at a glance whether a cloud of dust is caused by moving troops or by the action of the elements. Above all, he must be truthful, not given to exaggeration of his friends' strength or his enemy's weakness. When he makes his report it should need no corroboration. If a scout is worth his salt, his advice should be accepted and acted upon promptly.
I often go out with the scouts; they are the eyes of the army. A man who knocks around with scouting parties knows more, sees more, hears more of the real state of affairs than nine-tenths of the staff officers ever know, hear, or see. Men fresh from the Old Country seldom make good scouts. Take the Yeomanry, for instance. They are plucky enough, but not one in a hundred of them has the making of a scout in him. All his fathers and his grandfather's and his great-grandfather's breeding trends in other directions, and there is an awful lot more in the breeding of men than most folk imagine. The American makes a good scout. If he knows nothing of the life, he soon picks it up. So does the Australian, and the Canadian, and the Colonial-born South African. Something in the life appeals to them. They get the "hang" of it with very little trouble. There are some English-born men, however, who develop into rattling great scouts. These men are mostly adventurous fellows, who have roamed about the world, and had the corners knocked off them. I have two of them in my mind's eye just at present. One of them is an Irishman named Driscoll, Captain of the Scouts who are the eyes and ears of Rundle's army. The other is an Englishman named Davies, a captain in the same gallant little band. The first lieutenant is a Cape colonial of English extraction, named Brabant, a gallant son of a gallant general. Captain Driscoll is a typical Irishman, just such a man as the soul of Charles Lever would have revelled in, a man of dauntless daring, with a heart of iron, and a face to match. Strangely enough, the captain does not pride himself a bit on his pluck, but he thinks a deuce of a lot of his beauty. As a matter of fact, he has the courage of ten ordinary men, but he would not take a prize in a first-class beauty show. (Lord send I may be far from the reach of his revolver when this reaches his eye.) He has that dash of vanity in his composition which I have found in all good Irishmen, and he prides himself far more on the execution his eyes have done amidst the Dutch girls than of the work his deadly rifle has wrought in the ranks of the Dutch mea Yet, if you want to know if Driscoll can shoot, just go to Burmah, where for ten years he held the position of captain in the Upper Burmah Volunteer Rifles. That was where I heard of him first, as the most deadly rifle and revolver shot in all the East.
The Boers know him now as the prince of rifle shots and the king of scouts. He is standing in the wintry sunlight just in front of my tent as I am writing, one hand on the bridle of his horse, rapping out Dutch oaths with a strong Cork accent to a nigger who has not groomed his pet animal properly. The nigger is very meek, for past experience has told him that Irish blood is hot, and an Irishman's boot quick and heavy. He is a picturesque figure, this Celtic scout leader, just such a picture as Phil May could bring to life on a sheet of paper with a few strokes of his master hand. He is about eleven stone in weight, and, roughly, five feet eight, clean cut and strong, with a face which tells you he was born in Cork, and had knocked about a lot in tropic lands; eight-and-thirty if he is a day, though he swears at night around the camp fire that the pretty Dutch girls have guessed his age as twenty-seven. He wears a slouch hat, around which a green puggaree coils lovingly. In his right hand his rifle rests as if it felt at home there. His coat is worn and shabby, khaki in colour; riding pants of roughest yellow cords, patched in places unspeakable, leggings around his sinewy calves, and feet planted in neat boots make up the whole man. He is clean shaven except for a moustache, dark brown in colour, which sprouts from his upper lip.
In his softer moments Driscoll tells us that it used to "cur-r-r-l" before he had the "faver" in Burmah, and on such occasions we assure him that it "cur-r-rls" even yet. It is more polite to agree with him than to cross him—and a lot safer. He is as full of anecdote as heaven is of angels, and I mean to use him in the sweet days of peace, unless some stay-at-home journalist niches him from me in the meantime. Driscoll and Davies are fast friends. The Englishman is not such a picturesque figure as the Irishman. Englishmen seldom are, somehow; but he is a man, a real white man, all over. He is rather a good-looking, well set-up young fellow, who always looks as if he had just had a bath; not a dude by any manner of means, but a fellow with a soft eye for a pretty ankle, and a hard fist for a foe—one of those quiet chaps a man always likes to find close beside him in a row. Driscoll almost weeps over him to me sometimes. "He's the devil's own at close quarters," says the Irishman. "Never want a better chum when it comes to bashing the enemy. If he could only shoot a bit 'straighther and talk a bit sweether to the colleens he'd be perfect." All the same, I have, and hold, my own opinion concerning the "talking." Many a smile which the gallant Celt appropriated to himself as we rode out of a conquered town seemed to me to belong of right to the rosy-faced Welsh lad on the off-side. To hear these two men chatter over a glass of hot rum in my tent at night one would think they had never faced danger. Yet never a day goes by but one or the other of them has to run the gauntlet of Boer rifles; whilst Jack Brabant, who is death on cigars or anything else that will emit smoke, and who curls up and says little, has been near death so often that it will be no stranger to him when it comes in all its finality.
Driscoll was in Burmah when the news came of the first disaster to the Irish troops in South Africa. He threw up his business as lightly as a coquette throws up a midsummer lover, and started for the war. At Bombay he was stopped by a yard or two of red tape, and had to go back to Calcutta, where he used his Irish tongue to such purpose that he got a permit to leave India, and made his way to the scene of trouble. He first joined General Gatacre as orderly officer. Later he was attached to the Border Mounted Rifles as captain, and did splendid service at the battles of Dordrecht and Labuschagne's Nek In the latter place he was the first man to gallop into the Boer laager before the fight had ceased. Captain, then Lieutenant, Davies was as close to his side as a shadow to a serpent, and they only had fourteen men with them at the time. After this Driscoll, whose skill as a scout had been remarked on all sides, was ordered to form a body of fifty scouts to act as the very eyes of the rapidly moving Colonial Division under General Brabant. This was promptly done, most of the men picked being Colonial-born Britishers. Soon after the formation of his band, Driscoll, with fifty men, attacked Rouxville from four sides at once. Dashing in, he demanded surrender of the place, as if he had an army at his back to enforce his demands, a piece of Irish impudent valour that would have cost every man amongst the little band his life had the Boers known that he was unbacked. But they did not know it, and consequently surrendered, and he hoisted the British flag and disarmed the residents—a really brilliant piece of work, for which Driscoll's Scouts have up to date received no public credit.
The Scout and his men took a warm part in the, very warm fight at Wepener, where many a good Briton fell. He had lost a good few fellows in the many fights, but Driscoll's name soon charmed others to his little band. At Jammersberg Drift the Scouts were so badly mauled that over a fourth of their number were counted out, but the places of the fallen men were soon filled, and to-day the number is almost complete. Driscoll has one especially good quality. He never speaks slightingly of his enemy unless he well deserves it. Few men have had so many hand-to-hand encounters with the burghers as he has; few men have held their lives by virtue of their steady hand on a rifle as frequently as this wild, good-natured, merry Irishman has done. Yet of the Boer as a fighter he speaks most highly. "He don't like cold steel, and shmall blame to'm," says Driscoll, "but for the clever tactics he's a devil of a chap, 'nd the men who run him down are mostly the men who run away from him. They're not all heroes, any more than all women are angels. Some of 'em are fit only for a dog's death, but most of 'em are good men; and if I wasn't an Irishman I wouldn't mind being a Boer, for they've no call to hang their heads and blush when this war is over."
I asked him if he had ever of his own knowledge come into contact with anything savouring of white flag treachery. "Once I did," said the great scout, and for a while his eyes were filled with a sombre fire which spoke of the volcano under the genial human crust. "Onct," and he lapsed into the brogue as he spoke; "only onct, and there's a debt owin' on it yet which has got to be paid. It was at Karronna Ridge. I was out wid me scouts, 'nd I saw a farmhouse flying the white flag—a great flag it was, too, as big as a bed sheet. I'm not sure that it was not wan, too. I rode towards it, thinking the people wanted to surrender, and sent two of me men, two young lads they were—good boys, eager for duty. I sent 'em forward to ask what was the matther inside; and when they got within fifteen paces of the house the Boers inside opened fire from twenty rifles, and blew 'em out of the saddle. I had to ride with me little troop for dear life then, for the rocks all around us were alive with rifles. That house still stands; but if Driscoll's name is Driscoll it's going to burn, and the cur who flew the white flag in it, if I can get him, for the sake of the dead boys out on the veldt there. That's the only dirty trick I knew them play, and they must have been a lot of wasters, not like the general run of their fighters."
Three nights ago Driscoll, Davies, Brabant, and twenty men camped in a farmhouse a long way from the British lines, for these men scour the country for many miles in all directions. The night was cold and rough, a bleak wind whistling amidst the kopjes half a mile away. Just as the scouts were sitting down to supper, the farmer's wife rushed in, and said to Driscoll, in a voice between a sob and a scream, "Do you know, sir, that our burghers are in the kopjes, and are watching the farm?" and as she spoke she wrung her hands wildly. The Irish scout rose from the table and bowed, as only an Irish scout can bow, for the "vrow" was about thirty years of age, and pleasing to the eye beyond the lot of most women. "I am awfully glad to hear it, madam," he said in his execrable Dutch. "I've been looking for that commando for a week past. As they have doubtless sent a message by you, please send this back for me. Tell their officers, if they will accept an offer to come and dine with Driscoll's Scouts here to-night, they shall be made welcome to the best we have in the way of kindness. For it must be cold waiting outside in the wind. Tell them they shall go as they come, unmolested and unwatched, and in the morning we'll come out and give 'em all the fight they want in this world." Then, sweeping the floor with a graceful wave of his green puggareed soft slouch hat, Driscoll bowed the astonished dame out of the dining-room, whilst his officers and men nearly choked themselves with their hot soup, as they noticed him surreptitiously drawing a pocket mirror from his breeches pocket. For well they knew that the dare-devil leader was thinking far more of the effect his looks had had on the Dutch housewife than of the effect of his message on the enemy. Yet, at the first promise of dawn, he unrolled himself from his blanket on the hard floor, and was the foremost man to show in the open, where the enemy's rifles might reach him. But no rifles sounded, for the Boers had declined the invitation both to supper and breakfast.
HUNTING AND HUNTED.
ORANGE RIVER COLONY.
There is a funny side to pretty nearly every kind of tragedy if one only has the humorous edge of his nature sufficiently well developed to see it. Not that the humour is always apparent at the time—that comes later. I am led to these reflections as I watch Lieutenant "Jack" Brabant, of the Scouts, dancing a wild war dance round our little camp fire. He is a picturesque figure in the firelight, this thirty-year-old son of the renowned General Brabant, ten stone weight I should say, all whipcord and fencing wire, rather a hard-faced man; no feather-bed frontiersman this, but a tough, hard-grained bit of humanity, who has fought niggers and hunted for big game at an age when most young fellows are thinking more of poetry and pretty faces than of hard knocks and harder sport. I know him for a rattling good shot at either man or beast, a fine bushman, and a dandy horseman. He is a rather quiet fellow, as a rule, but all the quietness is out of him to-night, and he only wants to be stripped of his tight yellow jacket, cord breeches, leather gaiters, soft slouch hat with green puggaree, and then, given a coat of black paint, he would pass well for some warrior chief doing a death dance in the smoke. He is boiling with passion, his left fist, clenched hard as the head of an axe, moves up and down, in and out, like the legs of a kicking mule midst a crowd of cart-horses. In his right he swings his Mauser carbine, and a man don't need to be a descendant of a race of prophets to know that something has gone gravely wrong with the lieutenant, otherwise he would not be making a circus of himself in this fantastic fashion.
I lay my pencil aside for a minute or two to catch what he is saying, and when I have got the hang of the story I don't wonder he feels as mad as a wooden-legged man on a wet mud-bank. He had been out all day since the very break of dawn with a couple of scouts, searching the kopjes for a notorious Boer spy, whose cleverness and audacity had made him a thorn in our side. If there was a man in the British lines capable of running the "slim" Boer to earth, that man was Lieutenant Jack Brabant. It had been a grim hunt, for the spy was worthy of his reputation, and the pursuers had to move with their fingers on their triggers, and a rash move would have meant death. All the forenoon he dodged them, in and out of the kopjes, along the sluits, up and down the dongas; sometimes they pelted him at long range with flying bullets, sometimes he sent them a reminder of the same sort. And so the day wore on; but at last, towards evening, they fixed him so that he had to make a dash out across the veldt. He was splendidly mounted, and when the time came for a dash he did not waste any time making poetry. Neither did Brabant and his two men; they galloped at full speed after the fleetly flying figure, and when they saw that a broad and deep donga ran right across his track, cutting him off from the long line of kopjes for which he was making, they counted him as theirs. He only had one chance, to gallop into the donga, jump out of the saddle and fire at them as they closed in on him; and, as they rode far apart, it was a million to one on missing in his hurry in the fading light. But the gods had decided otherwise, for the whiplike crack of rifles suddenly cut the air, and the bullets fell so thick around the pursuers that the three men could almost breathe lead. Half a mile away, on the far side of the donga, appeared a squad of Yeomanry, blazing away like veritable seraphs at Brabant and his men, whilst they let the flying Boer go free. Brabant whipped out his handkerchief, and waved it frantically; but the lead only whistled the faster, and he had only one chance for his life, and that was to wheel and ride at full speed for the nearest cover, where he and his men hid until the Yeomen rode up. Then Brabant hailed them, and asked them what the devil they meant by trying to blow him and his men out of the saddle.
There was a pause in the ranks of the Yeomen, then a voice lisped through the gathering gloom, "Are you fellahs British?"
"Yes, d—n you; did you think we were springbok?"
"No, by Jove, but we thought you were beastly Booahs. Awfully sorry if we've caused you any inconvenience. What were you chasing the other fellah foah, eh?"
"Oh!" howled the disgusted backwoodsman with a snort of wrath, "we only wanted to know if he'd cut his eye tooth yet."
"Bah Jove," quoth the Yeoman, "you fellahs are awfully sporting, don't yer know."
"Yes," snarled the angry South African, "and the next time you Johnnies mistake me for a Booah and plug at me, I'll just take cover and send you back a bit of lead to teach you to look before you tighten your finger on a trigger."
Talking of the Yeomen brings back a good yarn that is going round the camps at their expense. They are notorious for two things—their pluck and their awful bad bushcraft. They would ride up to the mouth of a foeman's guns coolly and gamely enough, but they can't find their way home on the veldt after dark to save their souls, and so fall into Boer traps with a regularity that is becoming monotonous. Recently a British officer who had business in a Boer laager asked a commander why they set the Yeomen free when they made them prisoners. "Oh!" quoth the Boer, with a merry twinkle in his eye, "those poor Yeomen of yours, we can always capture them when we want them." This is not a good story to tell if you want an encore, if you happen to be sitting round a Yeoman table or camp fire.
But it is time I got back to the subject which lay in my mind when I sat down to write this epistle. The lieutenant's war dance took me off the track for a while, but I thought his story would come in nicely under the heading of "Hunting and Hunted." Camp life gets dull at times, so does camp food, the eternal round of fried flour cakes and mutton makes a man long for something which will remind him that he has still a palate, so when one of the scouts came in and told me that he had seen three herds of vildebeestes, numbering over a hundred each, and dozens of little mobs of springbok and blesbok, within ten miles of camp, away towards Doornberg, I made up my mind to ride out next day, and have a shot for luck. My friend Driscoll, captain of the Scouts, rammed a lot of sage advice into me concerning Boers known to be in force at Doornberg. I assured him that I had no intention of allowing myself to drift within range of any of the veldtsmen, so taking a sporting Martini I mounted my horse and set forth, intending to have a real good time among the "buck." At a Kaffir kraal I picked up a half-caste "boy," who assured me that he knew just where to pick up the "spoor" of the vildebeeste, and he was as good as his boast, for within a couple of hours he brought me within sight of a mob of about fifty of the animals, calmly grazing. I worked my way towards them as well as I could, leaving the "boy" to hold my horse; but, though I was careful according to my lights, I was not sufficiently good as a veldtsman to get within shooting distance before they saw me or scented me. Suddenly I saw a fine-looking fellow, about as big as a year-and-a-half-old steer, trot out from the herd. He came about twenty yards in my direction, and I had a grand chance to watch him through my strong military glasses. He looked for all the world like a miniature buffalo bull, the same ungainly head and fore-quarters, big, heavy shoulders, neat legs, shapely barrel, light loin, and hindquarters, the same proppy, ungainly gait. I unslung my rifle to have a shot at him, when he wheeled and blundered back to the herd, and the lot streamed off at a pace which the best hunter in England would have found trying, in spite of the clumsiness of their movements. The half-caste grinned as he came towards me with the horses, grinned with such a glorious breadth of mouth that I could see far enough down his black and tan throat to tell pretty well what he had for breakfast. This annoyed me. I like an open countenance in a servant, but I detest a mouth that looks like a mere burial ground for cold chicken. We rode on for a mile or two, and then saw a pretty little herd of springbok about eighteen hundred yards away on the left. Slipping down into a donga, I left the horse and crawled forward, getting within nice, easy range. I dropped one of the pretty little beauties. I tried a flying shot at the others as they raced away like magic things through the grass, which climbed half-way up their flanks, but it was lead wasted that time.
My coffee-coloured retainer gathered up the spoil, and paid me a compliment concerning my shooting, though well I knew he had sized me up as a "wastrel" with a rifle, for his shy eyes gave the lie to his oily tongue. We hunted round for awhile, and then from the top of a little kopje I saw a beautiful herd of vildebeestes one hundred and sixteen in number, lumbering slowly towards where we stood. The wind blew straight from them towards us, so that I had no fear on the score of scent. Climbing swiftly down until almost level with the veldt, I lay cosily coiled up behind a rock, and waited for the quarry. They came at last, Indian file, about a yard and a half separating one from the other, not a hundred and twenty yards from where I lay. I had plenty of time to pick and choose, and plenty of time to take aim, so did not hurry myself. Sighting for a spot just behind the shoulder, I sent a bit of lead fair through a fine beast, and expected to see him drop, but he did nothing of the kind. For one brief second the animal stood as if paralysed; then, with a leap and a lurch, he dashed on with his fellows. I fired again, straight into the shoulder this time, and brought him down; but he took a third bullet before he cried peccavi. I had a good time for pretty near the whole of that day, and was lamenting that I had not brought a Cape cart and pair of horses with me to bring home the spoil, when, happening to look into the face of my brown guide, I saw that his complexion had turned the colour of blighted sandalwood. He did not speak, but swift as thought ripped out his knife, and cut the thongs which bound the springbok and other trophies of the day's sport to his saddle, letting everything fall in an undignified heap on to the veldt. Then, without a word of farewell, or any other kind of word for that matter, he drove his one spur into the flank of his wretched nag, and fled round the bend of a kopje, which, thank Providence, was close handy, and as he went I saw something splash against a rock a dozen yards behind him. I had glanced hurriedly over the veldt the moment I caught that queer expression on the saffron face of my assistant, but as far as the eye could reach I could see nothing. Now, however, looking backwards, I saw three or four men riding out of a donga two thousand five hundred yards away.
Twenty-five seconds later I had caught and passed my fleeing servant, who was heading for some kopjes, which lay right in front, about a mile and a half away. As I passed him he yelled, "Booers, baas, Booers! Ride hard, baas, ride hard; there are three hundred in the donga." When I heard that item of news I just sat down and attended strictly to business, and I am free to wager that never since the day he was foaled had that horse covered so much ground in so short a space of time as he did by the time he reached the kopjes. My servant had adroitly dodged into a sluit which hid him from view, and I knew that he could work his way out far better than I could. Besides, if they captured him, the worst he would get would be a cut across the neck with a sjambok for acting as hunting-guide to a detested Rooitbaaitje; whilst as for me, they would in all probability discredit my tale concerning the hunting trip, and give me a free, but rapid, pass to that land which we all hope to see eventually, but none of us are anxious to start for; because a correspondent has no right to carry a rifle during war time, a thing I never do unless I am out hunting. I gave my tired horse a spell, whilst I searched the veldt with my glasses, then slipping through a gully I made my way out on to the veldt, got in touch with a donga that ran the way I wanted to travel, got into its bed, gave my horse a drink, and rode on until dark; then I made my way into camp, and religiously held my peace concerning the doings of that day, because I did not want the life chaffed out of me. A few days later I happened to call at the Colonial camp, and was asked to dine by one of the officers.
"Like venison?" he asked cheerily.
"Yes, when it comes my way," I replied.
"Got some to-day," he said. "It's nicely hung, too; not fresh from the gun."
"Shoot it yourself, eh?"
"Well, no, not exactly; was out on patrol on Monday, and saw a couple of lousy Dutchmen. They didn't think we were round, so were enjoying themselves shooting buck. We nearly got one of 'em with a long shot."
"Didn't they show fight?" I asked innocently.
"Fight?" he said, with scorn unutterable in his accent. "Not a bit of it. They dropped their game, and cleared as if a thousand devils were after them. I never saw men ride so fast."
"Positive they were Dutchmen?" I ventured.
"Yes," he laughed; "why, I'd know one of those ugly devils five miles off."
That settled me, and I said no more.
WITH THE BASUTOS.
When the Eighth Division was skirting the borders of Basutoland I thought it would not be a waste of time to cross the border, and if possible interview one of the chiefs. My opportunity came at last. Our general decided to give his weary men a few days' rest, so getting into the saddle at Willow Grange I rode to Ficksburg, and there crossed the River Caledon, whose yellow waters, like an orange ribbon, divide Basutoland from the Free State. At this point the river runs between steep banks, and when I crossed it was about deep enough to kiss my horse's girths, though I could well believe that in the flood season it becomes a most formidable torrent. An artificial cutting has been made on both sides to facilitate the passage of traders, black and white, but even there the ford is so constituted that the Boers on the one side and the blacks on the other could successfully dispute the passage of an invading army with a mere handful of men.
Once across the river one soon felt the influence of Jonathan, the "black prince." The niggers, naked except for the loin cloth, swaggered along with arms in their hands, and grinned with insolent familiarity into our faces. They may have an intense respect and an unbounded love for the British—I have read scores of times that they have—but I beg leave to doubt it. Physically speaking they are a superb race of men, these sable subjects of our Queen. Their heads sit upon their necks with a bold, defiant poise, their throats are full, round, and muscular, their chests magnificent, broad and deep, tapering swiftly towards the waist. Their arms and legs are beautifully fashioned for strong, swift deeds. Strip an ordinary white man and put him amongst those black warriors, and he would look like a human clothes rack. They walk with a quick, springy step, and gave me the impression that they could march at the double for a week without tiring. But they are at their best on horseback. To see them barebacked dash down the side of a sheer cliff, plunge into the river, swim their horses over, and then climb the opposite bank when the face of the bank is like the face of a wall is a sight worth travelling far to see.
There are many things in this world that I know nothing at all about, but I do know a horseman when I see him, for I was bred in a land where nine-tenths of the boys can ride. But nowhere have I seen a whole male population ride as these Basuto warriors ride, and the best use England can make of them is to turn them into mounted infantry. Give them six months' drill, and they will be fit to face any troops in Europe. I never saw them do any fighting, but they carry the fighting brand on every lineament—the bold, keen eye, the prominent cheek-bone, the hard-set mouth, the massive jaw, the quivering nostril, the swing and spring of every movement, all speak the fighting race.
And their women; what of them? From the back of the head to the back of the heel you could place a lance shaft, so straight are they in their carriage. Their dress is a bunch of feathers and the third of a silk pocket handkerchief, with a copper ring around the ankle and another around the wrist. They do most of the daily toil, such as it is, though I know of no peasant population in any other part of the world who get a living as easily as these folk. The men allow the women to do most of the field labour, but when the grain is bagged the males place it in single bags across the back of a pony, and so take it to market. They walk beside the tiny little ponies and balance the grain slung crosswise on the animal's back, and when the grain has been sold or bartered they bound on to their ponies and career madly homewards, each one trying to outdo his neighbour in deeds of recklessness in the hope of winning favour in the eyes of the dusky maidens. They are mean in regard to money or gifts, and know the intrinsic value of things just as well as any pedlar in all England. Judging the "nigger" merely as a human being, irrespective of sentiment, colour, and so forth, I can only say that in my estimation he and his are far better off in every respect than the average white labourer and his family in England. These folk have plenty to eat, little to do, and are very jolly. They would be perfectly happy if they only had a sufficient number of rifles and a large enough supply of ammunition to enable them to drive every white man clean away from their borders.
When I arrived at Jonathan's village that warrior was away with a band of his young men, so that I could not see him, though I saw his son at a wedding which was being held when I reached the scene. I was taken through rows of naked, grinning savages, of both sexes, to be introduced to the bride and bridegroom, whom I found to be a pair of mission converts. When I saw the pair the shock nearly shook my boots off. The bride, a full-blooded young negress, was dressed in a beautiful white satin dress, which fitted her as if it had been fired at her out of a gun. It would not meet in front by about three inches, and the bodice was laced up by narrow bands of red silk, like a foot-baller's jersey. In her short, woolly hair she had pinned a wreath of artificial orange blossoms, which looked like a diadem of snow on a mid-winter mudheap. Down her broad back there hung a great gauzy lace veil, big enough to make a fly-net for a cow camel in summer. It was not fixed on to her dress, nor to her wreath, but was tied on to two little kinky curls at each side of her head by bright green ribbons, after the fashion of a prize filly of the draught order at a country fair. Her hands were encased in a pair of white kid gloves, man's size, and a pretty big man at that, for she had a gentle little fist that would have scared John L. Sullivan in his palmiest days.
When I was introduced to the newly shackled matron she put one of those gloved hands into mine with a simpering air of coyness that made me feel cold all over, for that hand in the kid glove reminded me of the day I took my first lesson from Laurence Foley, Australia's champion boxer, and he had an eight-ounce glove on (thank Heaven!) on that occasion. In her right hand the bride carried a fan of splendid ostrich feathers, with which she brushed the flies off the groom. It was vast enough to have brushed away a toy terrier, to say nothing of flies, but it looked a toy in that giant fist.
The groom hung on to his bride's arm like a fly to a sugar-stick. He was a tall young man, dressed in a black frock coat, light trousers, braced up to show that he wore socks, shoes, white gloves, and a high-crowned hat. He carried his bride's white silk gingham in one hand, and an enormous bunch of flowers in the other. He tried to look meek, but only succeeded in looking sly, hypocritical, and awfully uncomfortable. At times he would look at his new spouse, and then a most unsaintly expression would cross his foxy face; he would push out his great thick lips until they threw a shadow all round him; open his dazzling white teeth and let his great blood-red tongue loll out until the chasm in his face looked like a rent in a black velvet gown with a Cardinal's red hat stuffed in the centre. He may have been full of saving grace—full up, and running over—but it was not the brand of Christianity that I should care to invest my money in. When he caught my gaze riveted upon him, he tried to look like a brand plucked from the burning; he rolled his great velvet-black eyes skyward, screwed up the sluit which ran across his face, and which he called a mouth, until it looked like a crumpled doormat, folded his hands meekly over his breast, and comported himself generally like a fraudulent advertisement for a London mission society.
From him I glanced to his "Pa," who had given him away, and seemed mighty glad to get rid of him. "Pa" was dressed in pure black from head to heel—just the same old suit that he had worn when he struck this planet, only more of it. He was guiltless of anything and everything in the shape of dress except for a large ring of horn which he wore on top of his head. He did not carry any parasols, or fans, or geegaws of any kind in his great muscular fists. One hand grasped an iron-shod assegai, and the other lovingly fondled a battle-axe, and both weapons looked at home where they rested. He was not just the sort of father-in-law I should have hankered for if I had been out on a matrimonial venture; but I would rather have had one limb of that old heathen than the whole body of his "civilised" son, for with all his faults he looked a man. A chum of mine who knew the ways of these people had advised me to purchase a horn of snuff before being presented to the bride and groom, and I had acted accordingly.
When the ceremony of introduction was over, and I had managed to turn my blushing face away from "Ma" and the bevy of damsels, as airily clothed as herself, I offered the snuff box to the happy pair. The groom took a tiny pinch and smiled sadly, as though committing some deadly sin. The bride, however, poured a little heap in the palm of her hand about as big as a hen's egg, regardless of her nice white kid gloves. This she proceeded to snuff up her capacious nostrils with savage delight, until the tears streamed down her cheeks like rain down a coal heap. Then she threw back her head, spread her hands out palm downwards, like a mammoth duck treading water, and sneezed. I never heard a human sneeze like that before; it was like the effort of a horse after a two-mile gallop through a dust storm. And each time she sneezed something connected with her wedding gear ripped or gave way, until I began to be afraid for her. But the wreck was not quite so awful as I had anticipated, and when she had done sneezing she laughed. All the crowd except the groom laughed, and the sound of their laughter was like the sound of the sea on a cliff-crowned coast.
A little later one of the bridesmaids, whose toilet consisted of a dainty necklace of beads and a copper ring around one ankle, invited me to drink a draught of native beer. The beer was in a large calabash, and I felt constrained to drink some of it. These natives know how to make love, and they know how to make war, but, as my soul liveth, they don't know how to make beer. The stuff they gave me to drink was about as thick as boardinghouse cocoa; in colour it was like unto milk that a very dirty maid of all work had been stirring round in a soiled soup dish with an unwashed forefinger. It had neither body nor soul in it, and was as insipid as a policeman at a prayer meeting. Some of the niggers got gloriously merry on it, and sang songs and danced weird, unholy dances under its influence. But it did not appeal to me in that way, possibly I was not educated up to its niceties. All I know is that I became possessed of a strange yearning to get rid of what had been given me—and get rid of it early.
The wedding joys were of a peculiar nature. Bride and bridegroom, linked arm in arm, marched up and down on a pad about twenty yards in length, a nude minstrel marched in front, and drew unearthly music from a kind of mouth organ. Girls squatting in the dust en route clapped their hands and chanted a chorus. The groom hopped first on one leg and then on the other, and tried to look gorgeously happy; the bride kicked her satin skirts out behind, pranced along the track as gracefully as a lady camel in the mating season; behind the principal actors in the drama came a regiment of youths and girls, and the antics they cut were worthy of the occasion. Now and again some dusky Don Juan would dig his thumb into the ribs of a daughter of Ham. The lady would promptly squeal, and try to look coy. It is not easy to look coy when you have not got enough clothes on your whole body to make a patch to cover a black eye; but still they tried it, for the sex seem to me to be much alike on the inside, whether they dress in a coat of paint or a coat of sealskin.
By-and-by the groom took his bride by the arm, and made an effort to induce her to leave her maids of honour and "trek" towards the cabin which henceforth was to be her home. The lady pouted, and shook his hand off her arm; whilst the maidens laughed and clapped their hands, dancing in the dust-strewn sunlight with such high kicking action as would win fame for any ballet dancer in Europe. The young men jeered the groom, and incited him to take charge of his own. He hung down his ebony head and looked sillily sullen, and the bride continued to "pout." Have you ever seen a savage nigger wench pout, my masters? Verily it is a sight worth travelling far to see. First of all she wraps her mouth in a simper, and her lips look like a fold in a badly doubled blanket. Then slowly, she draws the corners towards, the centre, just as the universe will be crumpled up on the Day of Judgment. It is a beautiful sight. The mouth, which, when she smiled, looked like a sword wound on the flank of a horse, now, when the "pout" is complete, looks like a crumpled concertina. The groom again timidly advanced his hand towards the satin-covered arm of his spouse, and the "pout" became more pronounced than ever. The white of one eye was slyly turned towards the bridesmaids, the other rolled with infinite subtlety in the direction of him who was to be her lord and master; and the "pout" grew larger and larger, until I was constrained to push my way amidst the maids to get a look behind the bride, for I fancied the back of her neck must surely have got somehow into the front of her face. When I got to the front again the "pout" was still growing, the rich red lips in their midnight setting looking like some giant rose in full bloom that an elephant's hoof had trodden upon. So the show proceeded. At last one of the bridesmaids stepped from amidst her sisters, and playfully pushed the bride in the direction of her home. Then the "pout" gave way to a smile, the white teeth gleaming in the gap like tombstones in a Highland churchyard. I had been a bit scared of her "pout," but when she smiled I looked round anxiously for my horse. After a little manoeuvring, the blissful pair marched cabinwards, with the whole group of naked men and maids circling round them, stamping their bare feet, kicking up clouds of dust like a mob of travelling cattle. The men yelled some barbarous melody, flourished their arms, smote upon their breasts, and anon gripping a damsel by the waist circled afar like goats on a green grass hill slope. The maids twisted and turned in fantastic figures, swaying their nobly fashioned bodies hither and thither, whilst they kept up a continuous wailing, sing-song cry. So they passed from my sight into the regions of the honeymoon, and the clubbings and general hidings which follow it.
I only stayed a few days amongst these savages, but, short as my stay was, I arrived at the conclusion that the sooner they are disarmed the better. There are hundreds of white women living upon isolated farms within easy riding distance of the Basuto villages, and as we are disarming the husbands and brothers of these women it is our solemn duty to see that the savage warriors have not the means within their reach to injure or outrage those whom we have left practically defenceless. It is true that these women are the wives, daughters, and sisters of our enemy, but surely in all England there does not breathe a man so poor in spirit as to wish to place them at the mercy of a horde of barbarians. Ours is a grave responsibility in regard to this matter. Just at present the native warriors are quiet in their kraals, but a day will surely dawn when the younger and more turbulent fighting men will lust for the excitement of war. They look upon the Boer farmers who dwell near their borders as so many interlopers, whose title deeds were signed by the rifle, and they long for the time to come when they can sweep them backwards with the strong arm. They never speak of the land close to their border as the Free State. They call it with deadly significance the "conquered territory," and the idea of reconquest is strong in their minds. Of old time the Boer farmers stood ever ready to defend what they had conquered with the rifle, and the nigger had learned to dread the Dutch rifle as he dreads few things in this world. To-day he knows that the Boer is helpless, and is unsparing in his insolence to his old-time foe. Later on friction between the white man and the black is certain to ensue, and if he has the upper hand the black man will not stop at mere insolence.
I don't know how the Imperial Parliament may feel about it, but I do know that if there is wrong done the Boers by the blacks, the South African farmers of British blood will rise like one man to defend the men and women of their own colour. They will never permit the black man to dominate the white, and that will cause friction between the Colonists and the Imperial Government. There is more in this than may meet the eye at the first glance, for if the Colonists rise to battle with the blacks the Imperial troops will have to assist them whether the Government of the day likes or dislikes it, or else we shall see the Colonists of our own blood clamouring for the withdrawal of British rule in South Africa, and we shall hear again the cry for a South African Republic. Not a "Dutch" South African Republic next time, but a blended nationality, and Colonial Britons and Colonial Dutchmen will be found fighting side by side under one flag, for one common cause.
Surely, if it is not wise to allow the whites to carry arms, it is not wise or right to allow sixty thousand fierce fighting men to remain fully equipped and mounted. To me it seems that now, whilst we have two hundred and fifty thousand fighting men in Africa to overawe and intimidate the warriors, we should take from them, by force if necessary, everything in the shape of warlike weapons. White men are not permitted in any of our Colonies to ride or strut about the country armed to the teeth. Therefore, I ask, why should these negroes be privileged to do what Australians or Canadians are forbidden to do? They have no valid excuse for being in possession of weapons of war. They have now no enemies capable of attacking them upon their borders. There is no animal life of a savage or dangerous character near them, and their armament is a menace to the public safety. If their young men will not settle down to the peaceful calling of husbandmen, tillers of the soil, and breeders of stock, let them be drafted into our Army for service abroad. If there is not enough for the more elderly men to do in the farming line, let them turn their energies towards the development of the diamond mines and gold mines that lie within their borders—mines which at present they will not work themselves nor allow any white man to work.
I have spent a good many years of my life exploring new mineral territory, and have seen much of the best auriferous country known to modern times; but that Basuto country, presided over and held by a mere gang of black barbarians, ought, in my estimation, to be one of the richest gems in the British diadem. That good payable gold-bearing rock exists there I know beyond question. I also know beyond all doubt that diamonds are to be easily won from the soil, and I am thoroughly cognisant of the fact that at least one, and I believe many, quicksilver mines can be located there. Others who know the country well have told me of coal and tin and silver mines, and samples have been shown to me which made my mouth water. Yet, all this wealth, which nature's generous hand has scattered so liberally for the use of mankind, is jealously locked away year by year by men who, in their savage state, have no use for it themselves, yet will not, upon any consideration whatever, grant a mining concession to a white man, no matter what that white man's nationality may be. Verily, the heathen badly want educating, and we have now 250,000 of the right kind of schoolmasters within handy reach of them.