ROOM 12

i^ c*. fV.

/ ^ / 3' ^

FAR OUT:

ROVINGS RETOLD,

FAR OUT:

ROVINGS RETOLD.

LIEUT.-COL. W. F. BUTLER, C.B.

AUTHOR OF "THE GREAT LONE LAND," "THE WILD
NORTH LAND," ETC., ETC.

— for wide expand
Beneath the wan stars and descending moon,
Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams,
Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous f Ir-cn:
Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills
Mingling their flames with twilight on the verge
Of the remote horizon.

Shblley

LONDON :
Wm. ISBISTER, limited,

56, LUDGATE HILL,
1880.

V-

BoAW.,

CONTENTS.

— .{. —

PAUB

Introductorv Chapter vii

A Dog and His Doings :

I I

" 20

A Journey of a Doq and a Man from Cariboj to
California :

1 68

" 84

ni loi

IV X2I

The Yosemite Valley 137

Afghanistan and the Afghans 158

The Zulus i--

South Africa:

193

II 220

III 239

IV ,55

A Plea for the Peasant 283

A Trip to Cyprus:

■'•• • • • • • ■ • . • 3^^

II 329

III- • 347

IV 368

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

T HAVE been told that an introductory chapter is
necessary ere the scattered papers of travel
which are here, brought together can bo taken from
the lower region of magazine literature, in which they
have hitherto had existence, and, with a title bestowed
upon them, be elevated or " shelved" into the upper
world of books.

I feel convinced, however, that no amount of pre-
face, introductory chapter, or other preparatory pre-
amble could succeed in imparting topographical
sequence or literary unity to rambles, the theatres
of which have lain so far removed from each other.

To group together such separated scenes as the
pine-woods and snow-sheeted lakes of the regions of
the Hudson's Bay fur-trade with the treeless plains
of Natal and the Dutch Eepublics, would be a task
beyond even the focussing faculty of my old fishing
friend, John Burns, of Derry-cluny. Bums was
frequently in the habit of expatiating upon the

Vlll FAll OUT.

advantages of climate enjoyed by those who breathed
the air of his native river bank, whose sahnon
pools and streams he knew so well. On one occa-
sion when I had succeeded in dragging my bones out
of the Gold Coast, less many stone weight of their
normal covering, the old fisherman came to see me.
There was, ho said, only one thing necessary to in-
sure perfect restoration to health and strength, it
was to sit every day upon the battlement of a bridge
over his river, and to breathe the air that blew down
from the Glen of Aherlow.

" Had not Father Maher, the Coadjutor, been to
Eomo, Asia Minor, and them northern parts, and
didn't he give it up, for goodness, to the air on
Ballycarron Bridge ?" This "isothermal lino" of my
poor old friend comes back now to me when I try
to bind together Shasta and Athabasca, and them
,'* southern parts" of Africa; but unless my readers
can be induced to adopt some such method of geogra-
phical grouping, and to make a "bee lino" across the
globe, these divergent paths of "Far Out" travel
must still remain sundered by space of seas.

Taking the papers in the order in which they were
written, that of South Africa comes first. Of the paper
itself I will only remark that, although a wild storm of
conflict has swept over South Africa since that date,
I find no cause to alter a single opinion or reverse
a judgment then expressed. A recent well-known

INTRODUCTORY. IX

traveller visiting the Diamond Fields thought ho had
discovered in the fact of black labour there given to
white employers the key to the pacific solution of the
great difficulties between race. To my mind the great
pit at Kimberley had an exactly opposite tendency.
It brought to South Africa the white race of gold-
seekers ; it brought to Kimberley the black race of
gun-seekers. Greed and passion on the one hand;
arms and ammunition on the other ; the spark could
not be distant.

Who rightly gauged the situation can best be an-
swered by the host of little wars, which in four years
have cost the empire about nine millions sterling.
As it has fallen to my lot in life to have seen a good
deal of native races in different parts of our vast
empire, I may here devote a few words to this ques-
tion of native war — a question which, if the moral
matter contained in it should in these days be looked
upon as old-fashioned and out of date, may at least
claim notice from the fact of the " big bill " which
usually follows a " little war."

One of the effects of living in what is called a
rapid age is, that although we have multiplied our
sources of information on all subjects almost beyond
computation, our time and opportunities of studying
those sources of information have not increased.

People have no leisure now to inquire into an in-
justice. Men grow quickly tired of the whole subject.

X . FAR OUT.

They do not want the trouble of sifting or weighing
a question ; the novelty, even of an unjust war, soon
wears off, and the readers of daily papers become
more intent upon getting rid of a worry, that has
bored themselves, than of redressing some wrong
that has been inflicted upon others.

"There is nothing more easy," said a veteran Cape
statesman to the writer, " than to get up a war in
South Africa. If I had only known that the Govern-
ment wanted such things, I could have given them
a score of Kaffir wars in my time."

He spoke the soberest truth. A wild or semi-wild
man is always ready to fight if wrong be put upon
him. It is the only method of obtaining redress or
vengeance that he knows of. He has no means of
separating the acts of irresponsible white men from
the government under which they live. The only
government he can understand is that personal rule
which makes the chief and the subject alike answer-
able ; and hence every trader carries with him, in his
dealings with natives, the character of the nation to
which he belongs. Yet wherever I have gone, amo 'g
wild or semi- wild men, I have found one idea prevalent
in the minds of white men trading with natives.
That idea was that it was perfectly fair and legitimate
to cheat the wild man in every possible way.

One hundred years ago it was considered right to
cheat the black man out of his liberty and to sell

INTRODUCTORY. XI

him as a slave. To-day it is the natural habit of
thought to cheat the black man out of his land or
out of his cattle. In the coast region of Natal the
coin known as a florin is called among the natives
"a Scotch half-crown." The reason of the title is
simple. A few years ago an enterprising North-
Briton went to trade with the natives in that part
of the country. He did not barter — he paid cash for
what he bought. Curiously enough he always tendered
half-crowns in payment. Months later the natives
found that their half-crowns were worth only two
shillings each ; and since that time the florin, ale " g
the coast, bears the name of "Scotchman." Instances
of a similar kind could be multiplied, until the reader
would be tired of their iteration.

As the widest rivers have their sources in rills, so
have our wars frequently their beginnings in the
state of petty theft and retaliation thus produced.
A native is cheated in trade ; he discovers the fraud,
and later on commits a theft in retaliation. In-
stantly the Colony rings with the outrage. The news
is quickly taken up by that large class of idler, loafer,
transport-rider, trader — persons to whom war brings a
harvest of gold, and with whom, in all parts of the
world, war will ever be popular. The position becomes
what is called "strained," and then there is only
needed a Governor, hungry for the addition of letters
to his name, to let loose the tide and begin a little

Xll FAR OUT.

■war, which costs Great Britain four hundred or five
hundred pounds for every negro shot. .. ,. . , ( . ■

Here is the history of a little war, the bill for
which still remains to be paid. A " commando " was
sent out against a chief, who had given trouble on
the frontier. It is easy to mistake the cattle and
women belonging to one black man, for the cattle and
women belonging to another. The wives and pro-
perty of the recalcitrant negro could not be foimd, but
a " commando " is not the kind of expedition to re-
turn empty-handed from a campaign, so the women
and cattle of another black man or tribe were trium-*
phantly seized. As those people had lived on terms
of perfect amity with the white man, it may be sup-
posed the seizure caused astonishment. The men of
the tribe fell, without hesitation, upon the nearest
white man they could find — an old trader — and killed
him and his sons. War was of course declared, to
punish this unprovoked murder, and the little co?iflict
thus inaugm'ated cost Great Britain a quarter of a
million sterling. I have no hesitation in saying
that five-sixths of our African wars, and a still larger
proportion of the Indian wars in America, have their
beginnings in wrongs done in the first instance by
white men upon natives.

To the incoming settler the land of his adoption
is essentially a neiv land. There may have been
people in it for twenty centuries before he came to

INTRODUCTORY. Xlll

it ; but their lights to possession are not perceptible
to him. His title to land in the country often con-
sists in the fact of his voyage out, and in the other
fact that he never had any land in his own country.
It is curious how easy it is to transfer to a fresh
soil the seed of an injustice. Denied the possession
of the soil in his old home, the first thought of the
immigrant in the land of his adoption is to deny to
others the right to exist. Too often, having had only
the right to labour for others allowed him in England,
he eagerly adopts the idea that labour is the natural
inheritance of the black man. So it is ever in the
world. The man beaten and bullied in his youth will
beat and bully when his opportunity arrives — the
servant is over the hardest taskmaster. "There
is," says Balzac, "nothing more terrible than the
vengeance of the shopkeeper." Thus the frontier
between civilisation and the wilds finds ever arrayed
along it, whether the scene be the backwoods of
Canada, the Dakotan boundary, or the outlying
"veldt" in the Transvaal, representatives of the two
races least likely to agree together — the white man
who has never had a servant, and the black man
who has never known a master.

I recollect once spending a couple of days in the
pm'suit of a bear in a western Canadian forest. I
had as guide a white trader, a man from a neigh-
bouring forest settlement. We chanced to meet one

XIV . FAR OUT. •

day a solitary Indian hunter. My companion shook
his fist and cursed aloud at him.

" What harm has he done you?" I asked.

"Harm?" answered the man; "he'll never stop
until he has killed that bear. I wouldn't leave a
red-skin in the land if I had my way."

"But the bear is as much his property as it is
ours," I said. "Probably for twenty generations
back the red ancestors of that poor devil have
hunted bears in this forest." What cared my
guide ? He was quite as ready to put down the
"red-skin" as though the scene had been an English
Petty Sessions Court, the Indian had been a rabbit
poacher, and he himself the presiding magistrate.
In the Sierra Nevadas, in California, I had once the
good fortune of meeting the late Mr. Boss Browne,
for years an Indian Government Commissioner.
From him I heard the history of the origin of the
Apachee War, which has so long been waged in the
deserts of Arizona and New Mexico. "When the
first coach line was put through Arizona," said my
informant, "the Indians were at complete peace with
us; they watched the horses at the ranches, they
were employed in the stables, and did the work of
the road cheerfully and well. All went smoothly for
some time until there came upon the line a certain
Mr. King. This gentleman was not at all pleased
with the peaceable manner in which the busi-

INTRODUCTORY. XV

ness was proceeding. The Indians were doing the
work cheaply ; the stations were supplied at small
cost; no money could be made out of such a set
of inoffensive people. King determined to change
all this, and to make the country fit for an American
speculator to live in. His mode of procedure
was very simple. Hard by the ranche at which
he dwelt there was an old fort of the Mexican times,
whose adhoby battlements were weed-grown and
ruined. Within some crumbling bastion there lay
an old iron carronade, rusting amid the nettles. This
forgotten relic of Spanish dominion was the instru-
ment by which Mr. King was to effect the change he
wished for. He brought the gun out of the ruins,
he scraped the mud from the muzzle, cleared the
vent-hole, and squibbed off some loose powder to see
that all was right within the bore. Then he placed
the gun in a neighbouring thicket, mounted upon two
trunks of timber, and with its muzzle just hidden
within the edge of brushwood. Down that muzzle
he put a bag of gunpowder, and on top of the powder
be placed several handfuls of leaden bullets — twelve
to the pound. When he had completed the priming
of his piece he laid the sight of the gun upon ^ne
centre of a little depression in the ground that lay
about one hundred and fifty yards distant ; then, to
keep the gun in its place, he put another log of timber
across it. All this done, he quietly covered up his ord-

XVI FAR OUT.

nance with a sheet, and went his way. An hour later
he issued invitations among the Indians for a feast on
the morrow. He would kill three oxen ; there would be
three fires, at which the oxen would he roasted, and
then there would be a great feed and much jollity.
The oxen were killed, the fires made, the guests were
not wanting. About mid-day the following day there
were over two hundred Apachees busily engaged in
roasting meat a*; three large fires. The fires stood in
a single line in a slight hollow, the floor of which was
level, and which level was continued to a small
thicket distant from it about one hundred and fifty
yards. ■.::'■■'...,' a<- ■.:;■ ..uyA .■?!: *;■;.;■.; '.'R;:...,,

" When the feast was at its height, and the Indians
•were thickly grouped around the fires, roasting, eating,
running back to roast, and then to eat again, Mr.
King quietly left the crowd and sauntered up into the
thicket. No one minded him ; every one was too eager
at the feast. All at once the roar of an explosion
burst out from the thicket, and then — there is no
need to tell the rest ; dead and mangled Indians lay
thick in the hollow. No one knew what had happened ;
but when, later on, other Indians flocked wildly to the
scene, they found two-thirds of their comrades dead
or dying, a score or more wounded with different
degrees of severity, and some twelve or more un-
touched, but utterly dazed and stupified at the catas-
trophe. They could only point to the thicket ; the iron

INTRODUCTORY. XVll

carronade told the rest. It was found lying somo
distance back in the wo: d, flung there by the force of
its own recoil. A black mark along the ground
showed where a train of gunpowder had been laid to
the vent. Of Mr. King there was no trace ; he was
already far away towards the nearest fort. But from
that day to the present the Indians have been cease-
lessly on the war trail, and over the sandy wastes of
Arizona and New Mexico many a site is marked to-day
with the stone, or cross, which tells the traveller that
a white man there met his end at the hands of an
Apachee."

It may be easily supposed that, when the stage of
actual conflict has been reached, the mode of warfare
springing from such a condition of society is utterly
destitute of any of those rules which civilisation
endeavours to impose upon strife. There is literally
no line drawn in the savagery of war with the native.
There is no " belt," in reality or in metaphor, beneath
which it is unfair to hit a black man. Between the
Irish wars of Elizabeth's captains and the wars waged
against the natives in South Africa there is only the
difference of breechloaders, and rifled ordnance; civili-
sation is alone traceable in the greater range of the
projectile or the increased power of the explosive.
The old methods of destruction are as much in favour
as ever, but they are left to the nimbler feet or more
active hands of our Fingo or Basuto allies.

X\'lll FAll OUT.

It would be unfair to our colonial brethren to sup-
pose that they arc responsible for the savagery of acts
done by what are termed " irregular corps " in native
wars. In the ranks of many of those regiments the
concentrated rascality from half the states of Europe
will be found. Here is a little picture from a corps raised
for semce in one of the recent South African wars.

When visiting his sentries at night, the Command-
ing Officer was in the habit of taking round with
him an orderly, who carried a lantern. There was,
of course, nothing unusual in this fact; but tho
method of the inspection had best be told in the
officer's own words. "I knew my blackguards wanted
to shoot me," he said, " so, as I walked along the lino
of sentries, I took care to kee]) the fellow with the
lantern on my right or left-hand side. When chal-
lenged, I would call out, and then jump quickly to
one side, so that if the rascal on sentry fired, he
would have aimed at the light and missed me."

And yet it is to men such as this corps was
composed of that the nation freely pays six times a
higher rate of daily wage than it gives to the trained
troops of its regular army. Often, when I have seen
the wild extravagance that characterises our ** little
•wars," and looked at the rabble brought together, to
harry some miserable negro and his tribe —

^to chase

Through rocks, where monkeys seemed a nobler race,

INTRODUCTORY. XIX

I have not known whom to pity most, the black man,
hunted out of his land and life, or the white rate-
payer at home, whose pocket was being so freely
bled.

Let no man imagine either that for our own troops
these wars have in them even the common attribute
of " schooling." Sorry schools these to learn the
steadiness, the discipline, or the morale, which would
meet in a fair field of Em'opean fight the Pome-
ranian battalions, or the men who crossed the Balkans
in mid- winter. " May it never be my fate," said, to
the writer of these pages, one whose experience of
troops in war ranged over every campaign of the last
thu'ty years in all parts of the globe, " to find myself
on a European battle-field with an army trained in a
South African campaign." He was right. The cave-
smokers of Algeria made but a sorry show when pitted
against sterner stuff than Kabyle fugitives : yet Algeria
was not the only part of Afi-ica where cave-smoking
warfare was widely practised, and where science
coolly blew helpless women and children into atoms
in the burrows to which they had fled in terror. • -.

Let us quit this subject. If this were soldiering, it
would indeed be only a sorry trade.

When the present Afghan war was in its initiative
stages, we ventm-edto express a doubt upon the favourite
theory of the " forward school," that the Afghans
had only to be freely shot, plundered, and otherwise

A '2

mi FAR OUT.

knocked about, to become our fast and firm allies, and
to hate the Bussians with something of the discrimi-
nating fervour of a London music-hall audience. As
the best method of stating these views wo had re-
course to the past history of the Afghan people, and
of our own relations towards them, concluding the
attempt to prove the moral of the moment, by the
lesson of the past, with these words : " Twenty millions
of money ! twenty thousand human lives ! three
times that number of camels and horses lost ! a
name hated throughout the length and breadth of
this mountain land — such were the results accruing
to us from three years' wandering in search of a
scientific frontier."

Whether history has since repeated itself to almost
every syllable of the above sentence we must let our
readers determine. Meantime I will leave these sub-
jects and turn to other lands which are filled with
brighter sights and softer sounds— with the echo of
the wilderness, the ring of dog-bells over snowy
■solitudes, the plash of canoe-paddle in quiet waters ;
with sights of suns setting over measureless meadows,
of moons glistering upon snow-sheeted lakes, of the
weird lights of the north flashing above motionless
pine-tr-ees — sights and sounds of all that varied north
land which through time and distance wears ever un-
changed its memories of lonely beauty.

Of the dog, whose fortunes had so close a connection

INTRODUCTORY, XXI

■with mine own through many scenes of winter travel,
there remain a few words to he ^vritten.

It may he rememherecT that in the spring of 1873
his career as a hauling dog ceased, and that in the
autumn of the same year he became a dog of civilisa-
tion, if not of progress. Henceforth life wa» to be to
him a time of rest and food. The collar and the moose-
skin trace could only visit him in troubled dreams.
No more the early call to harness in the savage cold
of the dark morning would break upon his sleeping
ear as he lay deep beneath the falling snow. No more
the long day tugging at the collar, the mid-day halt,
the frozen white fish for supper, the shivering bivouac
under the pine-trees — all was changed, his work
"was over; and, like some old veteran of a hundred
lights in the seclusion of his club, thenceforth he
could lay down his body for himself and the law for
•his friends, and beguile the tedium of time in the
pursuit of small game, or devote himself to pastimes
"which would recall earlier scenes of life in the great
northern wilderness. As time went on that aversion
which he had demonstrated towards cats on his first
introduction to civilisation deepened into a more last-
ing animosity. Perhaps they seemed to him a link
that bound him to older enmities — enmities to the
lynx and the marten, the beaver and the otter, the pur-
suit of which had in bygone times so often caused him.
moments of excitement ; for how often had I seen him

• •

XXll FAR OUT.

baffled by n mnrtcn up a pino-troo, or intensely
puzzled by tlio sudden disappearance of a fisher into
a burrow, down which ho would intrude his head as
far as it was possible for it to go, while his great body
drew in deep respirations of sand and air, as though
he would draw the animal from his earth by mere
strength of inhalation. Frequently too was he noticed
to indulge in hole-digging of a desultory description,
the object whereof was not apparent. It may have been
that the old doj was affected at the memory of the
many caches he had made during his life of travel —
those neve revisited hiding-places of superfluous food
scattered along his ten thousand miles of winter
work ; and perhaps a vague idea possessed him that,
burrowing at random, he might find some long-hidden
treasure of moose-leg, white fish, or buifalo-bone. It
is impossible to say whether he was happy or not, for
happiness in dogs, as well as in their masters, is a
quantity that cannot always be measured by the weight
or value of their creature comforts. Dog comfort he
undoubtedly possessed — dog comfort of the bed and
the bone ; but who shall say that there came not now
and again to his brain old memories of cozy camps on
pine islets in great frozen lakes, of mid-day halts by
snow-drifts where the red and golden willows glistened
in the winter's sun, of old antagonists and fellow-
haulers, of the hosts of Muskeymotes, Cariboos, Tete-
Noirs, Kuskytayatimoos, that had been boon com-

INTRODUCTOKY. XXlll

panioiis, or fierce rivals, to him in the fur forts of the
north ? Glimpses, too, of idle moments in those far-
away forts of the great wilderness when he hayed the
Northern Lights that flashed and flickered over the
pine-tops on the opposite shore, or answered hack at
intervals the lonely howl of some wandering wolf
against the clear cut sky-lino of a moonlit prairie hill.

Once again dog and master were destined to meet.
Three years had passed since they parted on the
Atlantic shore of North America. Since that time the
world had changed much with hoth of them. Ease
and ago had bowed the sharp head, bent the broad
back, uncurled the bushy tail, and slouched the
springy gait of the once unequalled Esquimaux. Toil
and the fever of the African forest had left their trace
upon the man. It had been night when they had
parted ; it was also night when they met again. For
a moment the old dog seemed to be puzzled ; he had
been roused from sleep to meet the new comer, but
when his ear caught voice and words that had been so
familiar to him, memories of the old time seemed to
come back, for the bent tail wagged, the lip curled
into the laugh, and the well-remembered whimper of
satisfaction sounded again — echoes of old companion-
ship of camp and trail in a far-oflf world.

Two years more and echoes, if such they were,
ceased. In the summer of 1878, Cerf Vola the Untiring
made his last camp on the shore of life. His grave is

XXIV FAR OUT. r

under a pine-tree, although far away from the land of
pines ; and, if it be given to the dog spirit to roam
again the scenes of life, he has for his " happy haul-
ing grounds" a wondrous heaven — a mm-mur of many
waters, an echo of ever-sounding pine-trees, and many
glimpses of that vast]world of wilderness — ^lake, forest,
prairie, and mountain, "far out" beyond the white
man's farthest farm. . v

FAR OUT:
ROVINGS RETOLD.

A DOG AND HIS DOINGS.

Tj^AE out, in that portion of the grim Laurentiau
wilderness of North America which stretches its
iron belt between the more recent formation of the
Bay of Hudson and the valley of the Mackenzie
Eiver, there lies a sheet of water named Deer's Lake
by the old English fur-traders, who first reached its
shores from the estuary of the Churchill Eiver.

It is essentially a lonely place; the rocky shores,
broken into deep and quiet bays, hold a vegetation
of fir and spruce trees, dwarf, rigid, and of dark
sombre hue. The waves beat in monotonous cadence
against the bare rocks which mark the "points" or
capes between the deep indentations of the shores ; and
the bays are often filled with long growing reeds and

I FAR OUT.

waving grasses, through which the wind makes cease-
less moan, as early autumn follows with rapid foot-
steps the Septemher sun.

In summer, short though it he, there are sights to
he seen on this lake, filled with that rare beauty only
to be found where the rain and the sun have together
and alone woven the covering of the earth ; for in
summer there falls upon these hills the strange, un-
wonted beauty of saffron sunsets, lengthening out the
shadows of dark pine-trees on water so still that the
ripple from a wild duck's breast steals far over the
sm'face, and gently rocks the shadowed image of
the shore, and waves the motionless pine-branch on
the cliff, and dies in the water-worn hollows of the
old grey rocks with an echo just audible in the
great stillness of the scene ; then, too, as the light
of evening deepens, and the western end of some long
arm of the lake yet lives in the strange contrast of
dark rigid tree-tops, outlined against a lustrous after-
glow, there sounds over lake and shore a cry, the
vivid distinctness of which startles the echoes deep
into the bosom of the woods. It is the wail of the
loon — a wild and lonely call that tells the shy moose
in his willow lair he may rise and seek his mate ;
that calls the dark-fm-red otter from his haunt
beneath the rock to his nightly toil of fishing in
the quiet pools where the fish glance like silver
arrors in the moonlight ; that signals to the grey
owl thpl Lis time has come, too, to flit amid the dusky
shadov>s ; that tells wild beast and wild bird they

A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 3

may set forth for feast, or love, or war, safe under
the cover of the night, in their great home of the
wilderness.

On the south shore of this lake there stands a
small trading-house or "fort" of the Hudson Bay
Company. It is the usual type of structure common
throughout the fur country of the great north. Log-
house and picket-fence, trading-store, and hut for
half-breed servants, all alike built from the wood of
the straight fir-tree, roofed with logs, covered with
the bark of junipers, and made secure from the
searching winds of winter by inud and moss stuffed
tightly between the interstices of the logs.

In winter, house, fence, and hut lie deep drifted,
amid snow piled high by storm ; in summer, dogs
stretch in lazy delight ur:cn the sloping pathway
between the picket-fence and the lake shore. A boat
lies updrawn upon the beach ; an Indian birch-bark
canoe, turned downwards upon its face, lies near it.
Far out upon the lake another canoe, a speck on the
water, is seen coming from the further shore with
some Indian family intent on trade ; and around,
over the palisades and roof-tops, in endless lines,
the motionless and rigid pine-trees stand dark and
changeless.

In fact, this fort at Deer's Lake differs not from a
hundred other forts scattered over this great northern
wilderness. Its aspect, life, people, boats, canoes,
surroundings, are all the same; everything is alike
here as elsewhere: everything, save one item, and

B 2

'4 FAR OUT.

that one item is an important one — it is the dog.
The dogs of Deer's Lake differ from other dogs in
most of the forts of the great northern land.

Dogs, it is true, are fond of differing all the world
over ; but on this point of difference between dogs
at Deer's Lake and dogs elsewhere in the north
there is a notable distinction, and it is this — that
while the dogs at the many fur forts further inland,
the trading forts scattered over the vast basins of
the Saskatchewan, Peace, and Athabasca Rivers, are
a poor and wolf-like breed, those at Deer's Lake are
remarkable for possessing a strength, size, and sym-
metry, a uniformity of colour and characteristic,
stamping them at once as a distinct species which
has developed into that perfection always attained
by Nature when in the wild state she moulds her
creatures to their own wants and purposes. The dogs
are, in fact, of Esquimaux breed, a species of which it
will be necessary to say a few words. •

Around the wide circle of the Arctic Sea, on all
northern shores of Europe, Asia, and America, that
extraordinary race of human beings known as Esqui-
maux possess a breed of dogs unequalled for the value
of the assistance they afford to their human masters.
The Arab has his horse, the Lidian his canoe, the
Libyan his camel; but in the dog the dwarfed and
hardy races of the frozen north possess an auxiliary
more constant, more untiring, more useful, than any
other thing of animate or inanimate nature the wide
world over.

A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 5

From northern Norway, along the cold slopes of
Lapland and the White Sea, far into that unknown
region where Russia's north-east cape stands the
nearest continental outpost to the pole upon the earth ;
down along the wintry shores of the Lena and the
wild Yakoutsk waste, to the Straits of Behring ; and,
again, into the regions of North America by the
mouths of the three great rivers which seek the
Arctic Ocean, until, sweeping around the wide Bay of
Hudson, the line crosses to Greenland and ends on the
east coast of that desolate island — all around the
immense circle of this northern shore-line there is
found a breed of dogs, differing in size, it is true, but
closely identical in shape, habit, and characteristic.

When the scattered tribes of Esquimaux move east
or west along the shores of their lonely realms, when
the spring-time tells them to quit their snow-houses,
and to set out upon their dreary quests of fishing, while
yet the ice gives safe and ready means of travel ; when
early winter, closing in the dusky darkness upon the
short summer, sends them again to their huts, the
dog is ever there to haul his load of dried fish or
musk-ox meat, of oily blubber or skin, of drift-wood
or dried moss ; of walrus-bone for spear-heads ; of
all the curious craft of kettle, axe, knife, arrow-head,
and tent, which the Esquimaux fashions from the few
rude materials flung to him by the sea, or grudgingly
yielded by the inho; itable shore.
- Deep-chested, broad-backed, long-voolled, clean-
legged, sharp-nosed, pointed-eared, bright-eyed, with

() . FAR OUT.

tail close curled over back, in token of an everlasting
good humour towards man and of fierce resentment
to all outside dogs, the Esquimaux dog stands of his
species the only animal which gives to his master the
twofold service of horse and dog.

The lake called Deer's Lake, of which we have
already spoken, is not many marches distant from the
west shore of Hudson's Bay. Indians descending the
Beaver or Churchill River can easily reach the fort
which stands at its mouth, in the summer ; and in
winter, when the cariboo are plentiful along the belt
of woods lying between Lake Athabasca and Hudson's
Bay, stray pai-ties of Indians move at times back and
forward from Deer's Lake to Fort Chm'chill. Thus
there has arisen an intercourse between the two
stations, and as Fort Churchill is the most southerly
point to which the Esquimaux come on the shores of
the bay, it has fallen out that the dogs bartered by
the Esquimaux have been carried inland to the post
of Deer's Lake, and that around the palisades and
huts of that remote establishment the burly forms
and upraised tails of these best and truest Arctic
travellers are to be seen.

Nearly a dozen years ago from this present time
an event occurred at this post of Deer's Lake which,
although it received neither comment nor chronicle at
the moment, is still worthy of a passing notice in
this record. It was only the birth of a dog. Beyond
the fact that the event took place at the time I have
indicated, little more is known; indeed, it may be

A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 7

admitted that even that fact would for ever have
remained in the limbo of unrecorded history, if cir-
cumstancea had not occurred in the after-life of this
dog which gave prominence to his earlier existence.

It may, however, be safely presumed that the earlier
st; '^es of puppyhood were passed by this dog in
conditions of unusual felicity. Doubtless the year
was one of plenty, so far as white fish in the lake was
concerned, or the herds of reindeer were unusually
numerous in the neighbouring woods ; and doubtless,
too, the mother of this dog was of a free and generous
nature, who grudged not to her progeny a share in
spoil of bone, or in the feast that followed the return
of the lake-boat from the nets — an event usually
watched with anxious eyes by the whole pack of dogs
at a northern fur fort, who welcome with hilarious
howl the grating of the keel upon the beach, sure
prelude to a rich feast, if the night's yield has been
propitious.

Thrown a chance wanderer in some of these remote
and lonely posts in this wilderness of the north, it
has often been my occupation to watch the habits of
these dogs in the idle hours of their lives. Their
fights and mutual jealousies, their impertinent intru-
sion into the provision sheds, their wolf-like howls
when the earliest streak of dawn glimmered over the
eastern hills, their joy when released from harness,
their sorrow when about to be placed in it, have often
filled up the moments of a day spent in one of those
remote spots.

8- FAR OUT.

I remember once, at the fort called St. John's, on
the Upper Peace River, being witness to a strange
conflict between the instincts of a dam to her whelps
and the cravings of her own hungry nature. She
had become, by some fortunate chance, the possessor
of a large bone ; this she had carried to a place of
safety under my window, followed by her family of
four puppies, just verging from the age of toddling to
that of toothsome tendencies. The mother's gaunt
sides and staring bones showed that the progeny were
no easy burden to her, and their rounded and chubby
figures contrasted strongly with her angular outline.

Nevertheless, the four youthful haulers seemed to
be of opinion that it was wiser for them to claim a
share in the bone now under discussion than to await
a future moment when its sustenance might be derived
second-hand from their maternal relative. They
growled and tugged at the bone almost in the mouth
of their hungry nurse, and rolled over each other and
over the bone in a mixture of infantile ferocity and
feebleness most laughable to look at. The expression
of their mother's face was one of hungry perplexity.
Here was a clear case of injustice on the part of the
offspring : they still looked to her for support, and yet
they also sought to share her support — this precious
bone ; nay, they even presumed upon her feelings to
rush in and take it by force, knowing that from her
alone could they secure it without being severely
bitten. Her only resource was in flight : raising the
bone in her mouth, she tried to get away from her

A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 9

family to eat it alone ; but they invariably toddled
after her to renew again their importunities. A
bright idea seemed suddenly to strike the brain of
one of the puppies : he relinquished his attempts at
the bone and devoted himself to his more legitimate
province of deriving nourishment from his mother;
but I could not determine whether this manceuvre
was only a ruse to detain her for the benefit of his
three brethren yet struggling for the bone, or simply
an effort to improve the occasion with reference to a
" square meal " on his own account.

Arguing from these and similar scenes witnessed
among dogs generally in the north, and having regard
to the excellent proportion attained by the dog whose
history began at Deer's Lake, I can safely aver that
his mother must have been of a free and generous
nature to him in his early youth. But whatever
may have been the conditions of that earlier life, it
must suffice for us to know that four winters of haul-
ing and four summers of repose had passed over him
ere fate determined that the name of the dog and his
doings should fall upon the ear of the big outside
world.

It was the winter of 1871. ' •

For three months the great northern forest had
lain prone beneath snow, ice, and bitter cold. Many
a storm had swept over the immense waste, piling the
dry snow into huge drifts by the banks of frozen
rivers ; silting up willow islands, covering the wreck
of fallen vegetation in the dark pine woods, and

10 FAR OUT.

moaning away into endless space over lake, and plain,
and forest.

The scene is in the neighhourhood of the fur fort
called Cumberland, on the shove of Pino Island Lake,
near the lower Saskatchewan River. It is the hour of
sunrise. Along the white bed of a tortuous river, fast
frozen beneath five feet of ice, and deep drifted in
snow, came three dog-trains ; twelve dogs in all.
Four men accompany or follow these trains in the
rapid stride and long swing of snow-shoe walking.
The bells upon the dog-harness ring and jangle clearly
in the keen frosty air, for the thermometer is standing
at some twenty-tive degrees below zero. A white
steam rises from the breaths of dogs and men, and
great icicles hang on the beards of the travellers, whose
fur caps are frosted over with ice dust fine as flour.

The pace is about four and a half miles an hour,
and its rapid movement has done more to make the
blood course freely through their bodies than capote
or mittaine or fur-cap could ever achieve on such a
morning. Suddenly, from a bend in the river chan-
nel, there became visible on the left shore a solitary
Indian wigwam ; a thin column of smoke issues from
the opening in the pointed roof, a dog barks vigor-
ously toward the new comers from the bank in front ;
all at once the train dogs quicken their pace to a sharp
trot, the men break into a run, and in a few minutes
the sledges are abreast of the wigwam; then the
leading dogs make a wild lurch to leave the river and
ascend the bank, with a view to a rest, and perhaps

A DOO AND ms DOINGS. 11

to a Bpell out of harness; but that is not to bo, and
a loud and stern word of command from the leading
driver makes them crouch to}:5ether in the dry yielding
snow in the centre of tlie river.

The three men ascend the river bank and enter, ono
by one, on their luinds and knees, the low opening of
the Indian wigwam. Tlie scene inside is a curious
one. Through the opening in the roof the hght comes
fully in ; a fire is burning on the ground in the centre ;
its smoke, only half escaping through the aperture
above, hangs in the upper port of the tent, and it is
only by sitting on the ground that one can escape its
influence and see with ease and comfort. At the
further side of the fire from the doorway sits an old
withered, wrinkled Indian, who scarcely regards the
new-comers, but continues to sing a low, monotonous
song ; a young woman and two children are squatted
near.

The new-comers sit on some dried rushes around
the fire ; the old man, having shaken hands with them
one by one, continues his dirge. The leader of the
paiiiy asks his followers what the old man is singing
about. " About the death of his son," they reply.
" His son, this woman's husband, and the father of
these two children died here two days since ; and last
night a dog-train came from the fort (Cumberland),
and took the body away for bm-ial in the graveyard
there."

"And the man, who was he ? What did he die of?"
asked the leader of the pai-ty.

13 FAK OUT.

" lie was a Fronch half-brrcd wlio had adopted tlio
Indian lifo, and he lived \utn\ in thiw wigwam, huntin}»
for the family. He died of cold eau^ht in chasinf^ a
black fox, which had carried away one of hia traps.
He was a {jjood hunter."

The story of this man's life and death was soon
told ; meantime the Indian continued his sor'g.
, " What is he singing ? "

. '* He says that he is old and cannot hunt ; that his
support has gone from him ; that it would bo better if
he went too."

. A few minutes later the party left the wigwam and
continued their journey along the frozen river. There
was now a trail on the ice, and the dogs followed it
with rapid steps. Soon the river opened upon a
large lake ; the sleds bounded briskly over the hard
drifted surface of the snow, which bore the trace of
a recent dog-train upon it ; then there appeared, far
oflf in front, the misty outline of buildings grouped
together on the dim opposite shore of the lake.
Quicker went the dogs, faster beat and clanged the
bells, until, leaving the ice, the dogs dragged their
loads into an irregular open space surrounded by
wooden houses, in the centre of which other dogs and
men stood watching the new-comers.

Prominent amongst the dogs a large burly-figured,
bushy-tailed animal at once caught the eye ; he ap-
peared to be intent upon combining two almost
impossible lines of conduct in one and the same
moment ; namely, to ingratiate himself into the good

A !)()(; AND .IIS DOINGS. 13

RVacoB of the mon of the party junt eomo, and to
intimidate by a hvv'wh of quick hut ferociouH " awich'S "
thf new (h)t^s. ThuH ho proHcnted a sinf^iilar contniHt
of HoHfitudc and Hvvai^'j^er ; tho upturned tail \vaHK''<l to
man aiul sliook menace to heant ahnost at the Hame
instant ; the face hy tm-nw ^hired and {^rinuiced, and
thu ground was trod hy a sort of h^^ht sprin^^y motion,
which indicated a (h'siru to give his paw to anyl)ody
who might take the trouble to ask for it, or to show
his jaw to any and every dog who looked in his
direction.

There have been ingenious German artists who
have succeeded in producing similar effects in the
portraits of some of their great national heroes.
Looked at from one side, the picture presents to the
beholder the graceful outline of a ballet-dancer, or of
a rustic maiden ; regarded from Die front, the lower-
ing lineaments of Bismarck, the wrinkled ferocity of
Moltke, or the Mosaic ramrodism of the German
Emperor's face and ligure strike grimly upon the eye.
This, however, must be what is termed " high art " —
in the case of the bushy-tailed dog at Cumberland
Fort it can only be regarded as low nature. But to
proceed.

The general appearance of this dog and his gro-
tesque goings on quickly caught the eye of the leader
of the party, and inquiries followed as to his name
and ownership ; these were soon answered. The dog
was of pure Husky breed ; he was born at Deer's
Lake, three hundred miles further north ; his owner

14 FAR OUT.

was one Isbister, a well-known trapper and traveller
over a wide extent of country ; he was but just re-
turned from bearing his part in hauling the dead body
of Joe Miller from the Indian wigwam ; his name was
Cerf Volant, or the Flying Deer.

Thus at Cumberland, on Pine Island Lake, was
first introduced to the writer of these pages an
animal destined hereafter to fill a prominent part in
long and varied scenes of toil and travel. And now,
having brought to a point of contact at the fui fort
called Cumberland the life of this dog and of his
future owner, it will be better for the smoothness of
the narrative, and the truer weaving together of two
threads of life, to continue our story in the personal
pronoun.

I became the possessor of Cerf Volant. He was
the "foregoer," or leader, of three other dogs, who
bore the names of Tigre, Muskeymote, and Cariboo ;
the first a good and trusty hauler, the two others
wild and shaggy dogs, of savage disposition and un-
kempt aspect.

The financial operation which resulted in trans-
ferring these dogs to my possession was of a nature
to surpass all jther operations of the kind ever
known in the north — in other words, more money
was on this occasion asked and given for this train
of four dogs than the oldest inhabitant had ever
remembered in similar transactions ; but had that
sum been three times what it was, and had that
triple amount been demanded for the single " fore-

A DOG AND IIIS DOINGS. 15

goer," Cerf Volant, exclusive of his three comrades,
it would, still have been an eligible investment, to be
repaid afterwards with the interest of an amount of
true and faithful service impossible to over-estimate.

The long journey, which had begun three months
earlier, was, at the time we write of, drawing to a
close. Five hundred miles yet remained to be
traversed ere the point from which I had started
in October would be again reached, and this distance,
lying as it did for the most part over >ast stretches
of frozen lake, promised to be traversible without
greater difficulty than that of cold and hardship ; for
over these large lakes the very force and violence
of the winds have made the mere labour of travel
comparatively easy. The snow closely packed upon
the ice forms a hardened surface, upon which the
snow-shoe leaves but scant impression, and the dogs
and sleds run lightly over the smooth and dazzling
highway which cold and storm have laid across the
vast spaces of these inland seas.

It was the 31st of January when I set out with my
new train for this last stage of five hundred miles.
The cold was very great ; the country as desolate as
frozen swamp, spreading in endless succession for
eighty miles' distance, could make it ; but the story
of that journey has been already told in another
place, and its introduction here is only necessary
in order to carry on the history of the "foregoing"
dog into times and through events which have found
no record.

16 FAR OUT.

Twenty days passed away ; the marsh and the
lakes had been crossed. There had been days of
bitter blast, and nights of still, cold rigour, and cosy
camps on islands drifted deep in snow, where the tall
pine-tree stood to shadow back the glow of tKe fire
lit beneath it, and to shelter the wayfarers whose
passing footsteps had broken, for one short night,
the quiet of these lonely isles.

And now it was all over ! I had got back again to
house and fireside, bed and board. True, it was only
four months since I had left these adjuncts of civili-
sation, but time in those matters has only a relative
significance, and distance had so lengthened out the
vista of these hundred and twenty days that it
seemed half a lifetime had been spent in the
wilderness,

I took up my quarters in an unoccupied house
lying about six miles from Fort Garry, in order to
quickly complete some official reports relative to my
journey. I had as attendant an old pensioner; as
companions my four dogs.

The pensioner dwelt in the kitchen, the dogs occu-
pied a large stable. I had the rest of the house to
myself. When not suffering from a too liberal allow-
ance of Hutlson's Bay rum, the pensioner was wont
to devote his leisure moments in the evening to en-
deavouring to elucidate, with my assistance, some
problems that perplexed him.

He had quitted the army and left England before
the era of the introduction of electricity, and " them

A DOG AND IIIS DOINGS. 17

themagruffs," as he used to term the telegraph, was
ever a fruitful source of conversation with him. For
the rest, he cooked for me and for the dogs, kept my
fire alight, and fulfilled that truest of all services by
leaving me to myself as often as I pleased. At times
I gave the dogs a run over the snow, or put them in
harness and ran them to the Fort for exercise or
business.

But even the border civilisation of the Eed Eiver
Settlement had many temptations for Cerf Volant
and his comrades. There wore some farmsteads in
the neighbourhood of my i:ouse, and ducks and
turkeys and a cock were things .is completely beyond
the comprehensions of my team as the telegraph had
been puzzling to my attendant ; with this difference,
however — that while the old soldier lost his head over
the mystery of the electric wire, the cock and his
companions invariably lost their heads to my team's
inability to comprehend their true functions in
civilisation.

More than once was the mid-day scamper up the
roadway in front of my house attended with wild
scenes of flutter and confusion in straw-yard and byre
into which my dogs had penetrated, and more than
once were my repeated calls by name of each dog
answered by the reappearance of these " missing
links" between civilisation and savagery in a state of
hilarious joy over the capture and decapitation of
these puzzling poultry.

At last the time came to quit the settlement for

l8 FAR OUT.

other and largor scenes of civilisation, into which the
dogs could not go.

A Hudson's Bay officer about to start for Norway
House, on the north shore of Lake Winnepeg, became
the purchaser of the team and cariole, and Cerf Volant
passed from ray possession to resume his old place in
a Hudson's Bay fort. I parted from the dog with
keen regret : he stood alone among his comrades not
only as a hauler but as a friend. The work of our
lives is the real test of our natures. Any man can be
jolly Cx good-tempered at his dinner, or during his
leisure moments ; but if the uaily routine of his work
leaves no fro^vn upon his nature, if his heart does not
close or harden beneath the hourly hammering of his
toil, then you may swear there lurks no cranny of
discontent in his being — there is no nook of selfish-
ness in his heart. So was it with this dog. He
alone was ever jolly at his post ; he hauled through
all the hours of a long day without slack of collar
trace or stint of effort ; but the ear was ever ready to
turn responsive to a kindly call, the tail to wag a wel-
come within the tight-drawn traces of his toil ; and
when the evening came, and the collar was laid aside,
and the last strap unbuckled, not lighter did he shake
from him the dry powdery snow than the vestiges of
his long day's work.

Companion in the camp, faithful seiTant during
the day — what more could man desire ?

The day of departure came. I drove through the
single street of Winnepeg village on my way south.

A DOG AND IIIS DOINGS. 19

At the entrance to the town, at the spot where, on the
night of my first arrival eight months earlier, I had
parted from my guide, to pursue alone the way to the
friendly Indian settlement, I saw my dog-train coming
at a brisk pace along the frozen road. Cerf Volant
was leading, a half-breed driver ran behind the sled.
" Cerf Volant, old dog ! " I called out. He turned in
his harness at the well-known voice, there was a
crack of the half-breed's whip like a pistol shot, and
the dog, realising that a mighty change had passed
over his life and fortunes, bent his head to the collar
and trotted on bravely towards the north. The last
link of the lone spaces was gone !

II.

A YEAE and a half had passed away.

The reality of the wilderness had become a
dream. Idealised by distance and separation — the
camp, the lonely meadow, the dim pine woods, the
snow-capped mountains, the mighty hush of nature
as the great solitude sank at sunset into the sleep of
night — all had come back to me in a thousand scenes
of memory ; and in the midst of the rush and roar of
a great city, I had seen, as though in another world,
the long vista of unnumbered meadows lying at the
gateway of the sunset. I had heard the voice of lonely
lakes and pines that whispered into the ear of night
the melody of unmade music.

I would go back to it again. Why not ? Is there
anything on earth better than this wilderness? Is
there aught in this short life of om's with less of that
pleasure which is sure to turn to pain ? with less of
those things which are sweet while we toil towards
them, and bitter when they lie behind us on the road
of life ? The gold of this wilderness is nature's own ;
ring it, change it, spend it, hoard it, there lies not in
its millions or in its fractions ore atom of alloy.

A DOG AND IIIS DOINGS. 21

There is no mountain too lofty to find a frame in the
mind's eye of the wanderer; there is no flower too
lowly to till with its fragrance the winter garden of
his memory.

I got back to the old scenes again. It was the early
autumn ; the oak woods along the Eed River shores
were beginning to yellow under the breath of the
north wind ; the mosquitoes were all gone ; the wild
ducks were settling on the prairie pools and the reedy
" sloughs " of half-dried water-courses ; the grouse
were beginning to " pack " ; the warm balmy days
were followed by fresh cold nights ; and the prairies,
basking in the mellow sunshine of September, stretched
in unbroken line from the oak woods of the river to
the distant verge of the western horizon.

About a hundred and fifty miles south of Fort
Garry there stood, on the Eed River bank, a small
Hudson Bay post in the territory of Dakota. The
wave of immigration had in my absence flowed fast
over this fertile valley of the Red River, and the huts
and shanties of settlers were now dotted along the
trail that led north towards British territory ; the
great hungry tide from overcharged Europe was, in
fact, eating deeper into the lone land, and month by
month the wilderness was losing ground before its
sharp and restless surge. But the wilderness had sent
its best and truest representative to meet and greet
me on the very shore of its lost dominion.

As I drove to the door of the Hudson Bay post,
accompanied by a friend who had brought two large

22 FAR OUT.

Bcotch deer-hounds from England, a huge hushy-tailed
dog came charging full tilt upon the new comers. He
was followed hy three other animals with tails upraised
in various forms of fight ; the charge was sharp and
decisive. The dog of Scotland was ignominiously
overthrown, and as he lay extended upon his back
I beheld, standing over him with legs firmly planted
on all sides of the prostrate foe, and tail shaking
unutterable defiance, almost at the back of his
own head, the burly form of the unconquered Cerf
Volant.

It was a strange coincidence. On the day of my
departure I had left him travelUng north into distant
regions ; on the day of my return I found him at the
extreme southern limit of Hudson's Bay possession.
But changes had come upon the rest of the train.
Tigre and Muskeymote had gone to the land where all
dogs go. Cariboo yet remained, and two other dogs,
' Spanker and Pony, had taken their places in the
vacant traces of my old train. Nor was Cariboo long
to remain ; when the time arrived for my departure
towards northern regions he too had hauled himself
out of life, and Cerf Volant alone remained to link
the journey which I was now beginning with the past
scenes of former travel.

As I have said, the story of this second jomrney has,
like that of its predecessors, been already told. It
will suffice now to broadly enumerate the distances
traversed and the work done by this dog ere, passing
once again from the wilderness, I introduce my old

A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 2.'»

friend tr .e waters of the Pacific, and to the scenes
and custo of a now civiliKation.

I was 1- entering the wilderness with no very
fixed purpose. Beyond tlie north and west of my
previous wandering thisre hiy a vast region ; it was
my intention to hold steadily to the north-west, and
come out — chance would only determine where. The
autumn was yet long enough to carry me across the
region of jjrairie to the southern limit of the sul)-
arctic forest : within that forest the horse could not
penetrate; it is the land of the snow-shoe and dog-slod
in winter, of the canoe in summer. I reckoned upon
the winter snow to carry me nearly to the Pacific ; if
not, the canoe against the current must do the rest.

Perhaps as to this i)lan the reader may ask two
questions — Why, in going towards the Pacific Ocean,
should the current be against you ? And why did you
select the rigorous winter season for crossing these
northern latitudes ?

To answer one question is partly to answer both.
The great river systems of the north have their sources
at the Pacific side of the Rocky Mountains, not in
that range, but in the Coast or Cascade range, which
follows the general line of the Pacific shore. Their
various tributary streams unite their waters into two
main channels, which pierce the Eocky Mountains in
two great passes, and flow out into the Sihu-ian plain
lying east of the range, to finally join the Mackenzie
Eiver, flowing into the Ai'ctic Ocean.

In winter these rivers form vast frozen highways,

2i FAR Ol'T.

alonp; which <logH and men can travel with rapidity ;
and in Hununcr, the ruHhinj^ currentn, HWoUen hy the
meltinj; Hnow.s of three* mountain ran{j;eH, limit the
canoe rate of travel to slow and tedious toil. But in
addition to this there is another reason why winter
affords, so far as rapid travel is concerned, the easiest
time for piercing these northern solitudes. In sum-
mer it is not possihle to travel through the forest ;
innumerahk; swamps, unhridged rivers, quantities of
fallen timher, lakes without numher, are everywhere
to he found, and the longest detour hy water is
generally more expeditious than the shortest line hy
land ; hut in the winter the snow has covered the
tangled wreck of bride and fallen forest, the frost
has bound fast as iron the widest swamp or muskeg,
and river, lake, and rapid lie hushed under many
feet of solid ice. True, the cold is then intense, but
cold had been tried before, dog travel was a certainty,
and to cross in winter the vast region of this northern
forest had in it the charm that ever attends the attain-
ment of perfect freedom to wander where you will.

And now for the means of crossing it — the Husky
dog, Cerf Volant, who all this time has been menacing
the prostrate form of his Scotch antagonist with an
animosity worthy of several condensed generations of
Lords Warden of the English marches. The removal
of this bushy-tailed Hotspur from the fallen Douglas
was accomplished, however, without difficulty, and it
is pleasing to record that, so far as welcome by tail,
salutation by bark, and general recogni'ion by ear,

A IHKJ AND HIS DOINGS. 25

eye, and paw wore concerned, bin demeanour towards
me left nothinf,' to bo desired. As eighteen months
oarHor I had left Cumberland on the SaHkatcliewan
with this do<^ and his followers, so now again I qaitted
the post of I'rog Point, on the lied lUver, once moro
his owner. Two other dogs also accompanied me ;
Pony, a dog much given to dodges and perverseness,
and Spanker, a Husky of hauling powers but peevish
proclivities, the memory of whose tail, removed in
early youth, seemed still to rankle in the recesses of
his mind.

It is needless now to dwell on the time that fol-
lowed. How, for six hundred miles, the dogs ran
light across the prairies to my hut at the Forks of tho
Saskatchewan ; how, when the winter deepened, the
time for their toil came, and the daily work of prepa-
ration for piercing the northern forest went on ; then
the long journey began. For sixty-four days, through
wood and waste, along endless stretches of frozen
river, over the ice of unknown lakes, the untiring dog
held his way. The deep Green Lake, the icy Lac Isle
a la Crosse, the long ridge of Methy, the valley of the
Clearwater, the great Lake Athabasca, the steep
shores that overlook tho winding channels of the
Peace Eiver, saw, one by one, the bushy tail and
downbent head of the dauntless hauler ; and, night
after night, the camp fires along this stretch of fifteen
hundred miles shed their hght upon the Untiring, and
beheld him as faithful and as jolly as when we had
quitted my log-hut at the Forks of the Saskatchewan.

28 FAR OUT.

So long continued had been his toil, and 8o bravely
had he borne his part by frozen flood and over icy
field, that I had lon{^ since conferred u[)on him the
Bobriqiiet of " the llntirinf;." I had also cut his
original name into the shorter one of Cerf Vola — a
change which, whatever may have been its origin,
seemed mightily to please the principal party con-
cerned in it, and to afford him so much satisfaction
that its reiteration in camp or during off-work mo-
ments generally caused him to indulge in a series of
jocular howls, accompanied by boisterous tlounderings
in the snow, most comical to look at. I have reason
to believe that the jocularity of this noise arose from
a method which I had adopted of impressing the new
name more vividly upon his memory by presenting
him, at the moment of its utterance, with a portion
of white fish or of pemmican. The intimate con-
nection existing between the stomach and the brain
h a well-known physical fact ; but the advantages
arising from utilising that connection as a means of
imparting instruction to the youthful mind has not,
so far as I am aware, been yet adopted in the educa-
tional system of the country. But to proceed.

This laughing howl, if I might so call it, had about
it an expression of face irresistibly ridiculous. When
a dog cries with pain, he does so with both sides of
his mouth ; but when he laughs it is only one side
that he calls into play. This peculiar expression of
one-sided mirth was indulged in by Cerf Vola on all
occasions when he considered that he had claims

A !)()(} AND HIS DOINGS. 27

upon society, which society, in the shape of my httlo
party, was hIow to riico{j;iiiHe. When the day'n niai-ch
waH at an end, Hhould any dehiy occur in reniovinf?
him from harnesH, his hiiif^h wiin instantly heard
from the traces of his train, and if his white lish liad
ken smaller than usual, or there existed an acute
cravinf? for a moose hone or stray scrap of pemmican,
or any of those unused odds and vids which the great
dof.^ world instinctively recognises as its percjuisite,
then the Untiring was wont to curl his upper lip into
a smile, and to pour forth a whimper of imiversal
satisfaction with everyhody in general.

Sixty-three days passed away. I stood some fifteen
hundred miles from the starting point at the Forks of the
Saskatchewan; prairie, forest, lake, muskeg, and river
reach had drifted away into the jleep of the wilder-
ness. It was midnight over the deep-sunk channel of
the Upper Peace Biver ; there was no need of moon
or star to show the river track, for its white frozen
channel lay hroadly marked between the dark over-
hanging banks, now nearly clear of snow. I was
alone witl one Indian. During the last ten days we
had travelled only at night, the surface of the ice was
then only firm enough to bear the weight of dogs and
men. But the snow surface, although hard at night,
was frozen, by the action of the cold upon the thaw
of the previous day, into honeycombed projections
which hurt the feet of the dogs and of their drivers as
they toiled along over it. We had stopped our march
for the midnight halt and cup of tea ; the dogs lay

2S FAR OUT.

crouched within their traces, in that happy power of
forgetfulness which, whatever may be their trouble,
enables them to sink at any moment into the oblivion
of sleep and rest.

" How far now, Kalder ? " I asked.

" Not far. Five hours more."

Fifteen miles out of fifteen hundred should seem a
short distance, and yet it did not to me that night. I
was tired, heart and soul, of snow-shoe.

" Let us go on, it will be the sooner over."

Rousing up the sleeping dogs, we went on for the
last time. They were loth to quit their snow beds.
What knew they that the end of the long journey was
so nigh ? In that at least we had the advantage.
The Untiring, still leading, ran very lame. He was
booted on both fore feet ; but even boots could not
save him from the sharp glass-like ice.

A misty dawn broke over the scene. Great ridges
bare of snow loomed up around us ; the rushing of
many rills from the shores, and the noise of the river
beneath could be heard at intervals ; the surface snow
and ice grew soft and slushy, and at every step we
sank through the yielding footing.

Poor old dof ! thin, worn, and lame ; his woolly
hair no longer able to hide the sharp angles of shoul-
der and hip bones ; with neck frayed by constant
friction of collar and moose-skin traces ; with tail no
longer curled over back, but hanging in a kind of sad
slant behind him; nevertheless, gamely tugging at
trace and collar — thus he drew nigh his last halt.

A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 29

It was the 8th of April. Behind us lay that great
plain of northern North America, which stretches
from the Bay of Hudson to the Eocky Mountains ; in
front rose a range of snow-clad hills. We had reached
the western bounds of the great plain, and at the little
fort of St. John's dogs and men might lie down to rest.

We did lie down to rest for some days, hut Cerf
Vola got up much sooner than his master ; in fact,
when three days had passed, he was so fit for further
exploration that he insisted upon setting out, on his
own account, for an additional fifty miles on the river
during the middle of the fourth night after oiu- arrival.
Of this, however, more anon.

It must suffice now to know that for ten or twelve
days I lived the life of the northern fur fort. I wrote
notes of travel, read a stray Californian paper (it was
eigbt months old), watched the dogs, looked at the
river, noted the daily advance of spring on willow
thicket and birchen copse, and at night heard the
fireside story of chase, love, war, or adventure in the
great northern land.

What if here I tell a story of these northern wilds,
one told to me on a dark night of drift and storm at
the pine fire of a Hudson's Bay log-house ?

THE DOG-DRIVEll's STORY.

A region of intense desolation is the northern
coast of North America. The night of the Ai-ctic
winter lies heavily upon it, crushing out all sense
or sound of hfe for long months together.

30 FAR OUT.

Berg, floe, and pack upon the sea join frozen
hands with a dreary waste of drifted snow upon the
land, and low-lying cape and ice-piled shore lie in a
chaos of desolation, where nought marks the hidden
line between earth and water, save when some ice-
crusted rock or tempest-beat boulder lifts its head
above the lonely waste.

Summer comes to this dreary region, but only as a
fleeting visitor. By midsummer the snow has van-
ished from the shore ; the ice has loosened in the
rivers, long channels of blue open sea lie between the
vast fields and floes of ice. On the undulating sm'face
of the ground mosses and short grass appear ; but
the iron grasp of winter is never wholly loosed from
the land, and even in the long day of July, which
knows no sunset, scarcely a foot beneath the surface
the earth remains bound in an eternity of frost. Yet
this short fleeting summer brings to this northern
land a host of strange visitors. From the far distant
pine forests of the Great Slave Lake, from the nearer,
but still remote woods of dwarf firs and spectral juni-
pers which fringe the shores of the Great Bear Lake,
and from the yet farther off region where the crystal
Athabasca lies amid its Laurentian wilds, there
come great herds of reindeer trooping thither on their
summer quest. Here along the northern sea, in this
short summer which is one long day, the great herds
bring forth their young. Here, too, birds in endless
numbers come to nest and to increase ; the wild swan,
the wavy, the goose, the great crane, meet in a com-

A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 31

raon feeling of peace and security, and, safe at last
from the universal enemy, man, make their nests
along the margins of low-set pools and peaty swamps,
filling the long silent air with voice and life and motion.

But this season is a fleeting one. Ere September
has reached its close wild storms of snow and sleet
sweep the Arctic twilight ; the waves freeze as they
lave the wintry shore, the grass rustles dry and dead,
the reindeer vanish from the scene, and in many a
long waving V-shaped line the wild birds sail south-
ward from a silent shore.

The only portion of this immense shore line which
can be known to man is that which lies near the
mouth of the Eiver Mackenzie. To the east and to
the west of this river there stretches away a line of
coast which has once or twice been looked upon by
human eyes only to relapse again into endless loneli-
ness. Franklin, Back, Kichardson, Simpson, and Rae
have seen those endless capes and low-sunk rocks flit
by them as the little boats which carried their fortunes
glided, for the first and last time, along these lonely
shores. These men, it is true, one by one at diflerent
times linked together the separate pieces of coast imtil
at length from east to west, from Baffin's Bay to
Behring's Strait, a single shore line was given to
North America; but with that knowledge the work
ended. The explorers went and came, all save one
hapless lot, and the curtain which their courage and
labour had for a moment raised sank again for ever
over the north coast line of North America.

32 FAR OUT.

There is but one highway, if it may be so called, by
which this remote and most desolate region can be
reached from the outside world. That highway is the
Mackenzie River, the largest save one, the vastest in
volume save none, in the continent of North America.

But that highway to the noi M coast is itself remote
and distant ; its farthest feeders, though they lie fully
two thousand five hundred miles far in the interior
continent, are difficult of access. To reach them re-
quires long and arduous labour ; and even at their
sources the traveller stands in a wilderness so remote
that a thousand miles of savagery lie between him
and the first echo of civilisation.

Down the great stream of the Mackenzie the desola-
tion deejiens on the land. The shores become more
destitute of human and animal life ; the scenery
expands into a vaster and a loftier loneliness ; between
huge silent shores a majestic volume of water rolls
steadily into the north, no boat upon its bosom, no
stir of life upon its banks, save when, at long, long
intervals, the birch canoe of some wandering Indian
glides under the shadow of the forest shores, or the
solitary boat bound for the fur fort on the lake breasts
up the lonely stream. And this is only in summer.
In winter, deep beneath high-piled ice and crusted
snow lies the mighty river, its shores wrapped in
drift, its leagues of forest standing dim and motion-
less, their tapering tops cutting jagged cones against
the early twilight ; no sound across its broad bosom
save the owl-hoot, or the crack and rent of ice ; no

A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 33'

vestige of man upon the snow ; no shadow of bird in
the low-set sunshine of the mid-winter mid-day.

Yet the great river is not altogether devoid of
human existence. Man has sought even this friend-
less region in pursuit of trade ; behind these river
shores stretch hundreds of leagues of muskeg, forest,
waste, lake, and wilderness, where the sable, the otter,
and the fox roam through the long winter. Here and
there, at scarce intervals, by shore of lake or bank of
river, stand grouped together a few wigwams of Indian
hunters, and, far down the great river, in the last
thousand miles of its course, two solitary groups of
wooden houses, the forts of the Fur Company, give
shelter to some half a dozen men, the sole white
denizens of this mighty waste.

Twenty years from this present time, in the most
remote post of this northern land, an old man lay sick
unto death. He was the bourgeois, or master of the
place, a Scotchman from the Isles. He had lived his
life in the north, and had played his part in the toil
and travel of the wilderness, and had faced the drift
of Arctic storm, and the gloom of the northern winter
for full thirty years. Death's stoutest captains. Cold
and Hunger, had often waged war against him, and
put him to sore strait in far-away scenes of winter
forest and ice-piled lake and pathless solitude; but
now Death himself had come and laid his iron grasp
upon him, even in his own comfortable log-fort,
against the fireside of which cold was powerless, and
mto whose provision-store hunger could not enter.

34 FAR OUT.

The time was the long winter. The birds had sailed
south from the Arctic shore; the ice had bridged
further across the wide river ; the earth had wrapped
itself in a deeper cloak of snow ; the drift of storm
l)lew daily fiercer across the long reach of pine-
bordered stream ; the wail of swaying pines smote
the ear in more monotonous cadence ; darkness was
on the outside world of wilderness — Death stood in
the inner circle of the fur fort.

It was a night of wild drift and storm. The wind
seemed to knock loudly for admission at every doorway
and window frame of the log-huts, and the wide hearths,
blazing with pine-logs, sent back a defiant roar at the
storm without, and burned fiercer as each gust shook
the framework houses and died away in the moaning
depths of the vast outside forest. Seated around
these blazing fires, the little garrison of the fort spent
that November night in long discussion; for Ba'iiste,
the French half-breed, and Paradis, the old Canadian
postmaster, and Samuel Henderson, the Swampy
Indian of questionable civilisation, had many things
to say and much platitude to utter ere, in the language
of the law com-ts. Death had passed his final sentence
on their old master.

Paradis in particular seemed imbued with the
necessities of the occasion. He talked and smoked
incessantly; he gave utterance to many profound
sentiments, all more or less tending to prove that
death was an event which must come sooner or later
in the life of every man, whether he was engaged in

A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 35

the fur trade or in other pursuits ; but at the same
time it was to be gathered, from the general drift of
the old postmaster's harangue, that he considered
Death had, with a wise discrimination, selected the
circle of his friends for earlier visitation, and had left
him, Paradis, for a remote and by no means cei-tain
future. Ba'tiste sat a ready listener to his superior's
logic, and the Swampy smoked with such placid
persistency that it was evident he regarded the oc-
casion as one not to be lost sight of for the display of
his ruling passion, tobacco, in the supreme moment
of his master's life.

While thus these three men passed the long night
in platitudes and pipe-filling, the scene in the sick
man's room had developed into its final phase. As
the night wore towards the dawn he had called to his
bedside his clerk, a young Scotchman from the Lewis,
a distant kinsman of his own, and had put this
question to him : "Do you know the graveyard on
the island at Fort Simpson ? "

" Yes ; I know it well," answered the clerk.

" Give me your word," went on the sick man,
" that you'll take my body to that graveyard, and lay
it by the side of the boy I buried there twenty years
ago." ^ ^^

"It's many a long day's journey from here,"
answered the clerk, " and the track is a rough one
over the ice in the early winter."

"Yes, it is," replied the old fur-hunter; "but you
are my own kith and kin, boy, and you'll do it for a

D 2

36 FAR OUT.

dying man? Promise me you'll do it, and I'll die
happy." The clerk gave the promise asked for, and
the sick man's fingers closed on his hands as he did
BO. It was nearing the daylight hour ; the storm had
sunk into the strange hush of da^vn ; over the tree-tops
to the east the blue cold light of winter was faintly
spreading into a broader band of light. The old
hunter's eyes had been closed for some minutes ;
suddenly he opened them widely; the glimmer of
the daylight through the small window-panes struck
upon his fading sight. "Daylight!" he said, in a
kind of hoarse whisper, " daylight already ! Get the
snow-shoes ready, boy."

"Ready for what?" asked the clerk, stooping
down to catch the dying words.

" lieady for the road — for me. 8*^6, it's daylight,
boy, and the road is long; it's time to start." He
said no more, and ere the sun had touched the pine-
tops to the east, the old fur-hunter had put out upon
that dim sea whose waves for ever sob against the
shores of the Unknown Land.

The promise was to be kept. Ere mid-day had
come the little fort was busy making preparations for
the long funeral of its dead master. Dogs, harness,
and snow-shoes were looked to and got ready; the
dead body, wrapped in canvas, was jilaced upon a
narrow sled, another sled was filled with blankets,
provisions, and other requisites for a three weeks'
journey. Eight dogs were selected for the work, and
by evening all was ready for the long lonely tramp.

A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 37

And in truth it would be difficult to imagine a more
desolate undertaking than the one which now lay be-
fore the young Scotch clerk and his French-Canadian
companion. For six hundred miles there lay this
lonely, silent, frozen river ; along reach after reach
the solemn-standing pines bordered the high o'er-
hanging banks ; so stark and stiff and devoid of life
was the great solitude around that it might well have
seemed to these two voyagcura as though they were
to be travellers through a world as dead as the lifeless
clay they carried with them.

It is needless now to dwell upon the days and
nights that followed their departure from the fort.
At times there came wild storms, before whose breath
the dry snow flew in blinding tempests ; at times the
sun shone brightly upon the dazzling surface of river,
and shore, and snow-laden pine-tree, and at night
there came the weird lights of the north to spread the
vast vault above with myriad shafts of many-coloured
light, and to fill the silent waste of earth and heaven
with the mute music of these wondrous streamers.

Wonderful are these winter nights in the north,
when the glory of the aurora is abroad in the
heavens, filling from horizon to zenith the dark dome
of night ; for it seems then as though stars and sky
sent down a dew of rainbow radiance to touch the lofty
shores and solemn standing pines, and to cast upon
the silent reaches of frozen river and the dim waste of
ice-piled lake that weird light whose essence still lies
hid from science in the unreached caverns of the north.

8 FAR OUT.

It was the Beventb evening of the journey. The
lonely funeral had completed at sunset about a third
of its long distance. The camping hour found it, as
usual, near the base of the high overhanging shore of
the Mackenzie liiver. By means of landslips or sum-
mer water channels seeking the main river this high
hank was generally easy of ascent when the camping
hour came; and as dogs going to camp will haul with
ease over hills and through thickets which would
appear utterly impracticable to them at other
moments, there had been no great difficulty on the
previous nights in reaching this upper level for
purposes of shelter, fuel, and camp-making.

On the evening we speak of, however, the bank
hung steeply over the river, and when the moment
came for giving the dogs the well-known word for
camping, all their most frantic efforts were useless to
drag to the summit the heavy sled which carried the
dead body of the fur-hunter. The Frenchman's sled
hearing j)rovisions, now lightened in weight by the
consumption of eight dogs and two men for so many
days, ran without any difficulty to the top of the
steep ascent ; but voice, and whip, and push of pole
from behind, and freely lavished imprecation upon,
or adjuration to, each particular dog, failed altogether
to carry the other sled even half-way to the summit.

Meanwhile precious moments of daylight were
ebbing fast ; camp-making in the dark on such a
night as this would be a long and difficult toil.
What was to be done? Better take the dogs from

A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 39

their traces, and leave the sled upon the ice of the
river until the daylight would again cause the march
to be resumed. This course was resolved up(m.
What evil could befall the dead ? In the vast soli-
tude that lay around, in the merciless rigour of the
cold towards living man, lay the safety of the dead
one ; so the dogs were unloosed from their burden,
and leaving the sled and its load upon the river, the
men and dogs climbed the steep bank and disap-
peared into the forest.

It was a night of extreme cold, and the shelter of
the snow-laden pines was grateful, for other shelter
there was none. The winter camps in the north
know neither hut nor tent. The fire in the open
forest, the blanket laid upon the chopped pine-brush
bed, are all the voyageur requires for his nightly
camp. The snow may fall, the tempest shake the
lofty pines, or from a still grey sky the cold may
come with its intensest rigour, until the trees snap
like pistol-shots, and the smoke clings to the ground,
unable to ascend into a colder atmosphere ; but all
the same the ground gives a bed, the sky a roof, to
the traveller in the north.

The upper bank of the river was level, but the rage
of many a tempest had laid low the outer trees, and
the men had to penetrate some distance before the
forest became open enough to allow of a good camp
being made. Then the old routine went on ; the
snow was cleared from the ground with the snow-
shoes, used like shovels ; dry trees were felled for

•10 FAR OUT.

fuel, a lirt' lighted, nhavinf^s were cut from a dry
Itranch to ([uicker kindle the larger wood ; tlie provi-
wion sled wan emptied of itb load of blankets, kettles,
jind food, and the harness arranged for use in the
dim li;^'ht of the morning.

All these preparations for the camp took some time
to completr, and darkness had fallen on the forest ere
the work of tree-cutting had been finished.
. The Canadian's stnmg strokes were still sounding
through the silent waste. The Scotch clerk had filled
the copper kettle with snow, and was in the act of
placing it upon the rising fire. All at once he stopped,
laid his ktfttle upon the ground, and rose to his feet
in the attitude of a man who hears some unexpected
voiae suddenly call to him.

" Gaudet," he said to his companion, " did you
Bpcak ? "

The Canadian was only a few paces distant. " I
said nothing," he answered. " What did you hear ? "

But ere the other could reply, there passed through
the forest, as distinctly as human voice could utter
the sound, the single word Marchc ! — a word often
used in the daily toil of dog-driving, but uttered now
in a tone of deep suppressed suffering, filled with a
kind of helpless agony, and yet terribly familiur in
accent and in meaning, though altogether inconsistent
with the time, the place, and the solitude.

" There are Indians on the river," said the Canadian,
hastily; " they are forcing their dogs up the bank to
our camp."

A DOfJ AND HIS DOLVGS. 41

The other man did not answer, for a thouj^dit had
poHSfHsion of his hrain that jjaralystd the power of
speech, and froze back into hiH lieart tlie very current
of his life. The voice that utti'red the well-known word
wa.s no strange one to him ; it was the voice of his old
master, of the man whose dead body he was bearing
to the f,'ravo.

Ere the Canadian could again speak there came, a
third time repeated, the slowly uttered word ; and
again it seemed like the wail of some lost creature
sinking 'neath a nocturnal sea, and vainly struggling
to free itself from some overpowering fate. The
Canadian moved quickly towards his companion, the
fire, as he entered the circle of hght, showing tho
terror that had suddenly come to him. He, too, had
caught the accent, and recognised in the sound the
voice of the dead fur-hunter. Nor were the men the
only evidences of the reality of this spoken sound ; the
dogs had half risen from their lairs in the snow, and
with cars erect, and heads pointed to the river, they
seemed to look for the approach of some one from the
outside solitude. ♦

Thus, in the full light of the fire, now rapidly
illumining the dusky twilight of the snow and of the
forest, the two travellers stood in the attitude of men
who, face to face with the evidence of their senses,
feel the creepings of that indefinable fear which lies
in the faintest breathing of that vast shadowy -world
beyond the narrow circle of our little lives.

But whatever be the enemy, or whatever be the fear

42 FAR OUT.

that oppresses the mind of man, it is easier to go and
meet it than to stand still. Instinctively the two men
moved towards the river, through the tangled wreck
of fallen forest, passing the bordering outwork of over-
thrown pines. They gained the edge of the high bank,
and looked out over the great river. Vague and vast
it lay beneath them. The shades of night had closed
over it, but the white light of the snow still showed
the broad expanse, and revealed in dim outline the
hummocks and ice-hills of the central channel. But
the men had little thought of ice or snow or river
channel ; with anxious eyes they peered into the dusky
light, and tried to scan tne sled that held the dead.

Below, on the ice, just as it had been left, it lay
dark against the white ground of the snow, and close
beside it crouched a black form that seemed to move
at times along it. In the intense silence of the
solitude a low noise could be distinctly heard. It
was the noise of the gnawing of teeth, a crunching
sound.

The two men on the upper bank were no novices in
the sights or sounds of the wilderness. Indistinct as
was the light, faint as was the sound, they recognised
at once the presence of a large wolverine, whose saw-
like teeth were busily engaged in cutting the lines
that bound to its narrow bier the dead body of their
old master.

Startled by the voices on the shore, the wolverine
vanished in a long slouching gallop into the ice of the
central river. So far the page was easy to read ; but

A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 43

the weird word that had called them to the bank in
time to save from the ravages of this wild animal the
dead body which the dying fur-hunter had so earnestly
prayed might rest beside his son, — there was no
sound in the life of the wilderness, no sight in all the
wide range of forest, lake, or river, to cast light or
clue upon its strange significance.

With the eight dogs formed into one team, and by
dint of sheer strength of men and dogs working to-
gether, the dead body was brought up the steep bank
from the river, and placed in its old position in the
camp. There was no trace of fear in the hearts and
minds of the travellers now. If the lonely word had
been a voice from the shadowy world of death, it had
spoken with a pm'port easily to be read by the living
human sense.

The journey was resumed on the morrow. On the
twelfth day the half-way post of Fort Norman was
reached. At this station the travellers expected to
find fresh dogs and supplies to carry them to their
destination ; but the dogs belonging to the fort were
absent on a long trading expedition, and supplies in
the store were so scarce that little more than half
rations could be spared for the long journey still
before the party. On again along the endless track ;
still the same silent, frozen wilderness; the shore
lined by the rigid standing pines ; the long river
reaches swept by bitter storm, or lying prone under
the quiet cold of a starlight morning. Now and again
a wolf or a wolverine crossed the track in front, or

44 1 VR OUT.

dogged tlie footsteps of the funeral party from a long
distance behind.

As the miles went on the dogs became daily more
reduced. Starvation never works with man or beast
so fiercely as when it has cold and toil to helj) it at
the task; and now, as the stock of white fish grew
smaller day by day, and the evening dog-ration was
reduced from a single fish to half a fish, and then to
less, the gaunt sides of the dogs sank deeper in, the
sharp bones rose higher out through the long coats of
hair that could not hide the skeletons beneath. Still
the teams toiled on.

No other animal loves more dearly than the dog
his daily food, and goes to greater lengths and resorts
to such strange devices to procure it; but no other
animal can starve so well either, can go on, day after
day, without letting the hunger in his stomach eat
into his heart and brain, and paralyse the power of
work. In the great northern waste it has occasion-
ally fallen out that dogs have gone seven days and
nights without food, and drawn a sled in some shape
or other all that weary time.

Now, as the days went by and the ration grew less
and less, the trains began to show that first prompting
of starvation-fierceness — they quarrelled with each
other at all times when it was possible to do so, and
at night, when the hour of their scanty meal came,
they fought savagely for the pittance of fish, and their
sharp teeth snapped, as with the spring of steel the
jaws struck together in their wolf-like bitings. . .

A DOG AND IIIS DOIXGS. 45

At last the journey drew near a close. The twen-
tieth nif^fht, the last but one, found them camped
some twenty miles short of Fort Simpson. By the
morrow's sunset the funeral would be over, the dead
man would have reached his resting-place. The camp
was made as usual in the wooded shore ; in view of
an early start long before daybreak, the men soon
lay doAMi to sleep. The last morsel of food had
been flung to the starving dogs; it had not been
a drop in the desert of their hunger ; they roamed
through the snow in restless pain; at last, all vas
quiet.

It was about the middle of the night when there
seemed suddenly to echo through the forest a shai'p
cry. Both the travellers sprang hastily from their
deer-skin coverings ; the fire had Imrned out, but the
moonlight on the snow made surrounding objects
plainly visible. They were alone in the camp, • ')o
dogs were not in their places, the dead body had also
disappeared. " It was the same voice again," said
the Scotchman. " I heard it in my sleep. The dogs
have carried awaj^ the body into the forest." As the
men listened, half uprisen from their robes, the sound
of snarling and snapping of teeth came from tlui
depths of the wood beyond where they lay. To
plunge into the snow, and follow the trail took them
but a short time, and soon a spot was reached where
in fancied safety the hungry pack were busily engaged
in rending to pieces the covering of the dead body ;
they had already torn it from the sled, and nothing

4G FAR OUT.

but the marble substance of the frozen flesh had saved
it from destruction.

Driving away the maddened beasts with difficulty,
the two men brought back the body to the camp.
The night yet wanted many hours of daj'light, but
the men were in no mood for sleep. Putting together
their few remaining things, they harnessed up the
lean and starving dogs, and set out on their last
stage. It was a long hard march, and many a time
the whips fell heavily upon the wretched teams ; but
at length the snow-roofed houses of the fort arose in
the great waste of solitude, and safe at last from
ravage of wild beast or starving dog lay the body
of the old hunter.

And now, what say we of this strange word, thus
spoken twice in the silence of the night ? Nothing.
The light that human reason would cast upon such
things is after all but a rushlight set in a vaster
wilderness than even this immeasurable waste of the
north. Told to me by the chief actor in that long
funeral tramp, I am content to leave the explanation
of the story to other hands.

The world is made up of men who are read}' to
believe anything, and men who are ready to deny
everything. Alas ! how little the breezes of denial or
of asseveration can ruffle the great ocean of death !
In the vast sea that lies outside this life, the echoes of
disbelief or of credence are lost ere they quit our
shores. Yet from that dim ocean stray sounds are
sometimes borne inland, and from the endless

A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 47

surges of Eternity, waifs, such as this warning word,
are cast ever and anon upon the sands of time.

But let no one doubt the faith of the man whose
word has been my evidence. For many a wintry
mile of travel he had been my sole companion. If
man has a right to place trust in the spoken word of
another man, I have a right to put faith and trust in
the story of this lonely dog-drive, as it was told to me
one night on Lac Vers, by the Scotch clerk of bygone
days, now himself a veteran fur-hunter of the north.

We must go back to Cerf Vola.

We left him pursuing an independent course, of his
own free-will and pleasure, westward towards the
Eoeky Mountains from the fort called St. John's.
This strange proceeding on his part occurred in this
wise.

About the fourth day of my sojourn at St. John's it
was decided to send forward to the mountain portage,
which lay fifty or sixty miles further west, some bags
of moose pemmican, destined for my use in the canoe
journey which it was my intention to pursue after
crossing the eastern or outer range of the Rocky
Mountains. From St. John's to this outer range I
was to use horses for transport. Being heartily tired
of the heavy labour of the snow-shoes, I was glad to
have again a prospect of saddle work; and although
the country was not yet quite free of snow, and the
brooks and streams were filled to overflowing by the
rapid thaw, still I felt that any difficulty was to be

48 FAR OUT.

preferred to that toil over the frozen river, alternately
Binking in the slush of wet snow, or cutting one's feet
over the knife-like edges of the midnight ice. It
l)ecame necessarj^ therefore, to send forward, while
the river was yet frozen, the heavy jjortion of the
supiilies for the trans-mountain portion of my onward
journey. An Iroquois Indian, well-known for his
great power of snow-shoe travel, was sent in charge
of these things ; for the ice had now become broken
and unsound in many places, and none but experi-
enced feet could venture safely upon it.

It was midnight when the Indian started from St.
John's with a single sled and four dogs ; when
morning came, Cerf Vola was not to be found,
Spanker hati also vanished. Either from a mistaken
idea that the Eocky Mountains were places sacred to
an indiscrimate distribution among dogs generally of
pemmican and other condiments, or from some ever-
to-be-unknown reason, set deep in the recesses of
their own minds, these two dogs had set out as
amateur travellers as wildly intent upon getting at
once into the snowy hills as though they had just
been elected members of an Alpine Club.

As the day that followed their departure wore on,
their absence began to assume a new and more
painful phase. The clerk in charge of the fort came
to me with forebodings of evil.

** There had been poison spread along the trail for
wolves near Hudson's Hope by Charette, the master
of that place," he said. ** Two of his dogs, following

A DOG AND HIS DOIXGS. 49

loose as those of mine had done, had fallen victims to
it only a couple of months earlier." Here was news !
For Spanker, I frankly admit, I did not care one pin.
It had been always impossible to open friendly rela-
tions with that suspicious hauler. It is true that
even had he been so minded, he could not liavo
wagged his tail to his best friend, for the simple
reason, as I have before stated, that he had no tail to
wag ; but, nevertheless, even had that appendage been
left intact by the guardian of his youth, his disposi-
tion was of such a nature as to have precluded tho
possil)ility of his ever holding out the tail of friendship
to any man. So much for Spanker the Suspicious,
■ But it would not be easy to estimate in the coinage
of words the value I placed upon Cerf Vola ; enough
to say, that not for all the costly furs ever gathered
into the forts of the Peace River would I have heard
the news that my old and faithful hauler had fallen a
victim to Charette's poison.

It was useless to indulge in any anticipatory threats
of vengeance against Charette ; useless, too, to devise
schemes of safety. If the harm was to be, nothing
could now help it. The inevitable \a at least the
single charm about it of not asking our interference
one way or another.

So the days passed by, and at last a fair soft
morning came to breathe upon the great steep hills
that rose around St. John's, and to call forth from
their bare bosoms the long-pent sweetness of the
spring. Still sullen in his bed lay the great river,

50 FAR OUT.

loth to rise and shake himself from the sleep of
winter. Looking west from the gate of the little fort,
the eye followed the river to its first curve, where
dipping behind a thicket-lined shore, the great
Y-shaped channel became hidden from view.

Eound this turn there suddenly appeared two dogs,
then a train of dogs running light, and then an Indian
following with rapid step. The signal was given, and
the inmates of the fort flocked out upon the river
bank. A glance along the river sufficed to assure me
of the Untiring's safety ; he led the way with upraised
tail, some distance in advance of the harnessed dogs,
apparently thinking that his presence in that position
was of as much importance to the general welfare of
the procession as though he had been some time-
honoured city official in the leading ranks of a lord
mayor's show.

I left St. John's as the month of April was drawing
to a close, and by the 1st of May was well within the
outer range of the Eocky Mountains.

Cerf Vola, released from all bondage, but still
imbued with a belief that he was somehow or other
furthering the progress of the party, performed pro-
digies of supererogatory toil in front of the horses.

Vriiere the grand stream of the Peace Eiver emerges
from the eastern face of the mountains there is a
steep and rugged hill, whose frontlet of sandstone rock
commands a vast view of snow-clad peak on one side,
and upon the other a range of interminable plain, so
extensive that even in the mistless atmosphere of this

A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 51

lofty land the eye is lost in distance. One clear
afternoon in the end of Ajn-il I stood upon this lofty
summit, to scan the land I had left hehind, and to try
and pierce the mountain range which I was about to
enter.

The ascent had been toilsome ; but to the Untiring,
who accompanied me, its effects were only visible in
increased rapidity of respiration. I am not in a
position to state what were his precise sentiments
with regard to the magnificent panorama of hill and
plain that lay on all sides around us, or whether his
prolonged gaze back towards the vast plain over
which we had travelled, and that suddenly suspended
respiration which a dog indulges in during moments
of deep thought, had any reference to several cacJu's
which he had formed at various times along the trail,
when by chance the supply of moose meat had been
unusually abundant, and the perplexing question had
arisen to him of how to dispose of his surplus ration.

Many a time had I seen him depart slyly from
camp with a large bone or lump of meat in his mouth
into the recesses of the neighbouring forest, and,
after an interval of some minutes, reappear again
from a different direction, with a pre-occupied air, as
though he had been engaged in deep researches into
the nature and various botanical virtues of pine and
birch trees.

He appeared perfectly oblivious, however, of the
fact that his outward track was always traceable on
the snow, and although the precise spot wherein lay
E 2

')2 FAR OUT.

his cfirhe was usually so tvamplod over by foot and
pusliod by nose as to hv dlUicult to dotcrmini' to tiio
eye of man, still I have little doui)t that all his craft
of (v/r7/('-inakinj,' was utterly useless to delude for a
moment any wolf or wolverine, even of the meanest
mental capacity, who dof,'p;ed or prowled our track.

Perhaps, as the Untirinp; now looked from this
lofty standpoint over the immense waste of pine and
prairie land, the vision of these never-to-be-revisited
cdchcs arose to his memory ; for, doubtless, they had
been made with a view to a return journey at some
future period, and it is not at all unlikely that, on the
summit of this outlying spur of the Kocky Mountains,
the fact first dawned upon this dog that never more
was he to see these northern wilds. Be that as it
may, having caught sight, far below, of the smoke of
our camp, he appeared all at once to determine that,
as the old camps were irrevocably lost to him, there
was nothing to be done but to make the moat of the
new ones ; and he began a precipitate descent of the
mountain in the direction of our halting-place for the
coming night.

When, a couple of hours later on, I reached this
camp, I found him watching the preparations for
supper with a resigned and cheerful countenance.

On the 1st of May I launched a large canoe,
hollowed from the trunk of a cotton-wood tree, on the
swift waters of the Peace River, at the western or
upper end of the canon which the river forms as it
breaks through the outer mountain barrier, and set

A DOG AND HIS DOIXGS. 5.'J

out to force up ajJiainst tlio mpid stroiim dcopor into
the Bnuw-clad hills. I had a crew of three men.
Cerf Vola lay in the l)ottom of the canoe.

For some days our upward passa^'o was attended
by constant dan^'er from the huj^e musses of ice, some
of them tons in wei<;ht, that came whirlin<^ down the
impetuous current ; at other times we had to stru<^'f^le
hard beneath the shadow of impending cliffs of shore
ice, whoso sides, yielding; to action of air and water,
formed so many miniature avalanches always ready
to slide down into the river. ♦

It was a completely new life to the dog. He lay in
the bottom of the canoe at my feet, unable to per-
suade hiiusi'lf by anj' process of dog thought that he
had a share in th-3 locomotion of the boat ; he saw
the shore drift slowly l)y, and whenever an oppor-
tunity offered he showed unmistakable symptoms of
preference for the land ; but on the whole he sat a
quiet spectator of these new scenes, and under the
combined influences of rest, genial atmosphere, and
good food became rapidly rotund and philosophic.

As the days wore on, and the quick coming spring
brought more signs of bird and beast upon the river-
shore, it appeared to strike him that somehow or
another he had a right to develop sporting character-
istics. Is it not a similar idea which occurs to the
retired man of business, who, when the season of his
toil has passed, becomes a hunter of many semi-wdld
things on moor, or river-side, or mountain ?

However that may be, the Untiring's success as a

04 KAK OUT.

Hportinp; do^' was not common suratc with IiIh ambition.
Tilt! partridj^'c scarcely ccaHod their "(h-umming" to
fcliule his pursuit, tlio wild duck looked at him as au
impostor of the hear oi heaver species, the geeso
walked in dignified indifference across tlic sand-bars
as he approached their feeding grounds, and the blue
grouse had the impertinence to fly into the nearest
tree and look doyni with inquisitive calmness at his
vociferated barkings. But one fine day there came a
great piece of sport to the dog. It occurred in this
way.

From our camp, on the north shore, I had set out
to climb the steep grassy hills that rose one above
the other until, gradually merging into higher moun-
tains, they became pa,rt of the snows and rocks that
dwelt for ever there. I had walked for some hours,
and crossed a wide extent of ground, when suddenly
there sounded in a neighbom'ing thicket of dry dead
trees, the wrecks of a former fire, a noise as of some
wild beast moving through the bushes. Looking in
the direction from whence the noise came, I saw
standing about ninety yards distant from me a large
moose, who seemed from the manner in which he
regarded me not to have fully made up his mind what
I was. Quick as thought I threw open the barrel of
my breechloader, withdrew from one barrel the cart-
ridge case of grouse shot, and replaced it by one
holding a round bullet, well backed by a heavy charge
of powder. Then, raising the gun, I gave the moose
the new charge. I heard the ball strike with that dull

A nO(} AM) HIS DOINGS. 55

tliud which ever tells the ear that the eye has truly
iiiailud its (liBtanco ; and then, out from the thicket
at tile further Hide, I Haw the huge ungainly ariinnvl
trot with a heavy limp, and disappear heyond a neigh-
bouring hill-crest. To dash through the thicket of
hn'tii' and gaze down the valley heyond took me only
a short time ; hut from the crest no moose was visible,
nor did the opposite ridge of hill up which he must go
show anything of his presence. Down the hillside,
however, the stones and grass bore many traces of
his in-esence, showing that the bullet had taken effect ;
and it was easy to follow the trail into the valley by
the blood-stained willows, against which the deer had
brushed his path.

While I still followed the trail the shades of even-
ing began to close over the great hills. The camp by
the river shore lay a long way off. True, it was all
downhill; but the gorges were steep and rough. It
was better to head for camp ere the darkness had
come fully down. Giving up the pursuit I struck
into a narrow winding glen, and descending with
rapid footstep, soon saw the glimmer of my camp fire
below me in the dusk.

Recounting my story to Kalder, I found that trusty
henchman only faintly sharing the sanguine view
which I took regarding our chance of finding on the
morrow the wounded moose. This doubt on his part
arose, however, from the general disbelief entertained
by all Indians and half-Indians in the pow'er of a
white man, unaided, to kill a moose — a disbelief

50 FAR OUT.

founded upon the practical proof of ages of experience.
Mine, however, had been a solitar}' chance. I had
come all at once up m a moose, without any of that
long toil of stalk and stealth, of trriil and track, of
which alone the wild man is master. .

Explaining all this to my henchman, I jwoposed
that we should in the .morning ascend the steep ridges
again, and striking the trail at the point where I had
left it off on the approa h of night, follow it deeper
into the hills. Accordingly, early next day I set out
Avith Kaldcr. The Untiring was brought, to fairly test
his claim to be considered a dog of sport, and after an
hour's steep climb the little party reached the ground.
Deep sunken into the soft clay of the vallo where I
had left it lay the trail of the moose ; and ere Kalder's
quick eye had followed it many yards, the blood-
stained willows had set at rest his lingering doubts.

We followed the track through many rough and
tangled places, and reached at last a spot where the
moose had lain down to rest. Here the Untiring, who
up to this period had contented himself with deep and
long-drawn inhalations from the ground, suddenly
broke from our restraining influences and precipitated
himself into a neighbouring thicket. There was n
loud rustling noise, a breaking of branches, followed
by the reappearance of the dog of sport, and the dis-
appearance of the moose at the other side of the
thicket. It is painful to have to place upon record
that so deep were the feelings of disgust with which
Kalder listened to this annihilation of his hopes of

A DOG AND IIIS DOINGS. 57

stealing unnoticed upon the moose, that neither his
mother tongue of Cree nor his mixed father tongues of
French and Scotch were at all voluminous or varied
enough in their imprecatory powers to express his
overljurdened sentiments.

"We now continued our rapid chase through tangled
brakes and thorny thicket. At last, on the summit of
a steep ridge, the quick eye of Kalder caught sight of
the quarry looking back a moment at his pursuers ;
up the hill we pressed, over it and down the valley
we tore, and at last by the edge of a small glen stood
the moose, his long course ended.

What a time it was for Cerf Vola! He made caches
in many places, he ate a great deal, then made a cache
and returned to eat again. Finally, when the moment
came to descend towards our camp, he had two large
marrow-bones tied across his back, and waddled down
the mountain a picture of perplexed satiety.

On again, up the great river into the heart of the
mountains, until they rose before us in huge m'lsses,
on whose rent sides spring had already begun to build
nests of bright green birch tops amid the dark masses
of unchanging pines, and on whose splintered pinna-
cles of snow the sun marked the dial of the day with
slow-revolving finger as he passed from east to west
across their glorious summits. Mornings, mid-days,
evenings — how filled with beauty they were ! How
saturated with the freshness of the spring seemed
every particle of this old earth ! From all things
there came welling forth the hidden sweetness of

58 FAR OUT.

flowers not yet burst to life, of leaves upon whose
early freshness summer had not yet set even a sem-
blance of maturity, nature's first symptom of decay.
Over the grey rocks, on the old pme-trees, up the great,
gaunt hills, spring was creeping, scattering youth
and perfume as it went. Even the shingly shallows
of the river were filled with lifej for tiny birds
fluttered from stone to stone, dipping their heads into
the cool water, and casting jets of silvery spray
over their glistening wings.

Rare beauty of earth, when thus in hidden valleys
thou claspest to thy bosom the season thou hast so
long dreamt of — this spring of blue sky, of odorous
winds, of golden sunshine ! Man, toiling for gold or
bread in distant cities, knows little of thy beauty or
of thy freshness ; but everything else living feels in its
heart's core thy wondrous power. Around thy union
flowers shed their fragrance, birds sing their sweetest,
cold frost changes to silvery dew, rain becomes a
bridal veil of gentlest shower, and as thou tm'nest
from the sleep of winter to kiss the lips of returning
spring, a thousand tongues of bird and brook pour
forth over hill and valley a ceaseless song of gL xiness.

The middle of May had come. We had passed
through the Rocky Mountains, quitted the main stream
of the Peace Eiver, and entered the impetuous torrent
of the Ominica, to find ourselves brought at last to
bay by the rapids and whirlpools of the Black Caiion.
For three days we had waged a struggle, that began
soon after daylight to end only at dusk, with the two

A DOG AND HIS DOIXGS. 51)

miles of foaming rapid which, caged in by the dark
prison walls of the canon, forbade our upward pro-
gress.

It seemed as though the steep walls of rock over-
hanging the torrent, and the mass of water pouring
through the dark defile, had, amidst their own wild
war, agreed to combine their rival forces against us,
the new-comers, and to threaten om* cotton-wood
canoe with frequent destruction. From our camp at
the upward end of the canon we had descended daily
to the toil of dragging the canoe over the rapids and
along the rocky walls of the fissure. These rapids
were like so many steps, one above the other, and at
the foot of each step there was usually a back eddy in
the current in which it had been possible to moor the
boat after each day's labour. Many mishaps had
befallen us, but each evening had witnessed some
advance made, until at last nothing but the upper-
most rapid, a fierce and angry-looking wave, lay
between us and the quiet waters that stretched east-
ward of the canon.

I know no work which tells more quickly against
the nerve and spirit of man than such toil as it was
now our lot to wage against rook and water in this
deep and narrow fissure ; for, when the dead things
which we call water and rock become suddenly quick-
ened into life, there is apparent to man a helplessness
such as he feels before no other enemy. His strongest
strength is weak in the grasp of the thousand horse-
power of this torrent ; his best gun, his truest rifle,

GO FAR OUT.

his craft of eye or arm, avail him nothing in conflict
with this enemy. Instinctively the mind realises all
this, and as the rapid dashes aromid him, and the
rocks tremble, and the dark caiion walls echo with
the reverberating roar of the sullen waters, the man
who strives against this enemy feels cowed by a
combat in which all the dead weight of enraged
nature seems bent to cru-^h him.

We had been working for some time along the
western shore of the canon, and had reached the last
step of the ascent, when an event occurred which
threatened to put a final period to my onward pro-
gress. It was nothing less than the brealdng away
of our boat as we were straining every nerve to drag
her up the fall of water, and her disappearance from
our gaze down the wild tor ont of the canon. When
the last vestige of the canoe had vanished from us, as
we stood crowding the point of rock which com-
manded a mile of the dark caiion, the full gravity
of the situation burst wholly upon us. Our camp and
all our sui^plies lay at the other side of the river, in
charge of the Untiring. A rough raft, however, would
carry us over in some shape or other, but at our camp
we were full seventy miles distant from the point
to which we were tending — the mining outpost of
Germansen, on the Ominica.

Seventy miles is not a long v/ay to walk on ordinary
level or on mountain land, but seventy miles through
the dense forest of north British Columbia is a
distance sufficient to appal the stoutest pedestrian.

A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 61

Fallen timber, deep water -courses, tangled i-..^xi.ets,
almost perpendicular valleys, and three mountain
streams swollen into rushing rivers by the thaw of
snow, lay before us ; and to carry on our backs through
such a country provisions for twelve days, together
Avith l)lankets, kettles, axes, and all the paraphernalia
of camp life in the wilderness, was an undertaking so
serious as to make even the hardj' Kalder and the
scarcely less daring Jacques doubtful of the result.
To one member of the party alone would the journey
have appeared easy of execution. The Untiring
would no doubt have joyfully reverted to the use of
his own stout legs in preference to all our work of pole,
paddle, or towing-line ; even his ten days' provisions
would have been a welcome load to him, for it would
have been pei'fectly feasible to stow them, not upon
his back, but in his stomach. But to us, who pos-
sessed neither his carrying capacity nor his easy
method of passing obstacles of tree or water, the task
of crossing these seventy miles would have been
widely different. It was therefore with feelings of
keen delight that I listened next morning to the
Frenchman's voice hailing us from across the river
that his search had been successful (he had gone
down the river bank in the hope of finding the canoe
stranded on some of the many islands in the stream),
and that our boat lay athwart a small island some
five miles below the mouth of the canon.

We set to work at once upon our side of the river
to build a raft at the lower end of the canon ; the raft

G2 FAR OUT.

finished, we embarked and pushed out into the
stream. Ccrf Vola, who had spent the last few days
in blissful repose in our camp, was now brought forth,
and crouening low between two logs, seemed to fully
realise the necessity of keeping quiet as the unwieldy
craft swayed and jerked from side to side in its rapid
descent of the river.

We reached the island, found our lost boat, made a
hearty dinner off the moose meat that lay uninjured
in the bottom, baled out the craft, dried in the warm
sun the things that had got wet, and set out again for
the stubborn canon. After so many reverses and so
much good fortune, surely we must conquer this last
obstacle. But the time lost had been precious ; the
hourly increasing heat of the mid-day sun was causing
the river to rise with rapidity, and the vast volume of
water now rushing through the pent chasm of the
canon was indeed formidable to look at. I have
told the story of our failure on the following day
to cross above the central rapid ; of how, carried
like a cork down that central rapid of the caiion, we
had escaped destruction by a hair-breadth ; of how,
holding discussion at the foot of the fall, we had
finally determined to abandon the canon altogether,
and seek by a southern branch of the Peace Kiver an
escape from this wilderness of rock and forest, into
the southern lands of British Colu^^bia; nnd how,
when this resolve had been taken, we had broken up
our camp and carried back to the canoe all the bag-
gage, to set out with heavy hearts upon what seemed

A DOG AND IIIS DOINGS. G3

a hopeless journey. Issuing from the mouth of the
canon, strange objects on the shore caught our sight.
Of all the strange sights in the wilderness there is
nothing so strange as man — strange not only to the
wild things, but to man himself. Nor is it difficult to
comprehend why it should be so. If a bear were to
escape from a menagerie and perambulate a crowded
street, he would doubtless be vastly astonished at the
cabs, and the men, and the omnibuses ; but it is by
no means improbable that he would be still more
vastly astonished if he were to meet another bear per-
ambulating there too. So is it when we reverse the
cases. When one has lived long in the solitude, a
moose or a buffalo gladdens the eye ; but if one wants
excitement it is fully experienced when the vision of
the human animal strikes the wanderer's sight. There
was no man now 'i the south thore of the Ominica,
but there were traces of man. There was a cimp, and
it was the camp of a white man — a glance told that ;
coloured blankets, a huge pair of miner's boots, some
bags of Hour (greatest luxury of the wilds), a couple
of fresh beaver-skins, the bodies of two young beavers.
We put in at once to shore, and each member of the
crew, following the bent of his particular genius, went
straight to the item that had most interest for
him. Kalder attached himself to the braver-skins,
the English miner to the flour, Jacques made for the
miner's boots, and the Untiring prostrated himself
before the beavers in an attitude of profound ex-
pectation.

64 FAR OUT.

Jacques was the first to speak.

" It's Pete Toy," ho said, after a pause, during
which he had been steadfastly regarding the hirge
nails in the soles. " There's nar}' another foot on
the Ominica that could fill a hoot like that," he
added, Hinging down the immense seven-leaguers in
intense admiration. " He's left his canoe above the
caiion," he went on, " and he s going to drop her
down empty when he's done portaging his load
here."

Jacques was right ; all this wealth of bacon, beans,
beaver, boot, and blanket, belonged to Pete Toy, the
best-known miner that ever drove shovel into sand-l)ar
on all the wide rivers of Columl)ia, from the Big Bend
of the Fraser to the uttermost tributary of the Liard
And soon came Pete himself upon the scene, carrying
another load of good things through the forest to his
camp below the canon from his canoe above it.
Jacques and he were old friends, and we were soon
all good ones.

But Pete Toy, once of Cornwall, now of Columbia,
was not a man to make friendship a business of
empty words and hungry questions. The social rule
that lays down the law of not speaking with one's
mouth full was changed in his mind to another rule
more fitted to the wilderness, namely, that a man
should not speak with his stomach empty ; and while
he plied his questions as to our strange presence in
this land, he plied too all his tact of cook and waiter
to laj' before us the delicacies of his provision bags —

A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. (!')

to give us, in fact, the first good meal we had had for
many months.

Then came the time for talk. I heard from Pete jr
many an item of interest regarding river and mountain
in the unknown country to the north, all gathered
during the long years he had lived and roamed among
the rivers of this mountain land ; for no Indian was
a hetter hand at craft of canoe or toil of snow-shoe
than this great Cornish miner, who had long shaken
the dust of civilisation from his feet, nor left behind
with it his kind and generous nature. I heard too of
his early life in far-away Cornwall, and of his hopes
in the future to see again the home he had quitted
twenty years before.

"Yes," he said, "many a night when I sit alone
before the lire in my hut down at the Forks of tht;
Peace and Parsnip rivers, I see the old place and the
old couple again."

"And you're going back to England?" he s.aid to
me, when the time of parting came ; " you're really
going to see the old land ! Maybe you'd go to Cornwall,
too ? Well, if you should meet an old couple of the
name of Toy down there, just say to them that you
saw their son Pete, him as left them twenty years
ago, out on the Ominica, and that they were as fresli
in his mind as the day he saw them last."

I had with me then but few things of any use to
any man ; nothing that could measure the respect
which I, who knew the dangers of the life he followed,
held him in.

Ci; FAi: Ol'T.

The man who thinks you can oftl'i- thin clasH of
{j;ol(I-nunc'i' j,M}hl knows little of such natures ; hut I
took from my stock a coat that had often kept me
warm in the hitter days and nights of the past winter,
and asked him to accept it.

"As payment for the darned thing I gave you?"
he asked, his face Hushing at the thought.

** No, as a token of your meeting a single stranger
in the wilderness, and of your being kind to him —
that's all."

Poor Pete Toy ! wc parted at the cafion mouth, he
to take our boat that could not go up, we to take his
that he feared to bring down, the rush of water. We
carried all our goods to the west end of the Black
Canon, loaded them in the new canoe, and went our
way.

Just one year later, in this same fresh month of
May, a solitary canoe was found floating bottom
upwards in the ever-seething eddies below the Black
Canon ; there was no trace of man or camp on forest,
shore, or river. Never again was Pete Toy seen.
His lonely hut at the Forks stands locked and
tenantless, and only when the gloomy canon tells
its secrets, and the treacherous whirlpools of the
Ominica give up their dead, will the last light fought
by this dauntless heart with untamed nature be ever
known.

He had literally laid his feast for us upon the site
of his ow^n death scene. The pines that stand at the
gateway of the Black Canon are old and stately trees.

A DOC AND HIS DOINGS. flT

For Imiulrcds of years they have watched the wil.l
rusli of water pour through that narrow passage, ami
it may he that their unseen eyes, looking so far hack
nito the past, have caught the weird power of the old
seers of pine-clad Scandinavia, and see in misty out-
line the coming time.

Beneath their shade that evening camped Pete Tov,
his mind still running upon the home thoughts our
presence had evoked. Perhaps, while later on lu
slept hy the scene of that long sleep so soon to
come, the old trees swaying in the night wind hent
down to gently whisper "Never" into the home-
dream of his memory.

F Li

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN
FROM CARIBOO TO CALIFORNIA.

1 T was summer in the forest and yet Quesnelle was
not amiable. Its mood was even gloomy. Like
many other communities in the world, that of Ques-
nelle existed solely upon gold ; but the fact of their
lives being dependent upon the precious metal was,
perhaps, more thoroughly brought home to the every-
day denizens of Quesnelle than it is to those of many
more important and world-famous cities.

Standing on the high bank which overhung the
broad, swift-rolling Frazer, and looking full into the
face of Quesnelle, even a stranger could quickly realise
the fact of the city's being out of sorts. Fully half of
its wooden houses showed unmistakable signs of un-
occupation ; the boards of verandahs were loobe and
broken ; grass grew vigorously before the doorways ;
broken windows, or windows which would have been
windows if old doors had not been nailed across them,

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 69

stared blankly at one along the front of the single
street which constituted the city. Even the two
or three saloons in respective possession of Mr.
William Davron, native of Ireland; Mr. Steve
Knightly, native of New Brunswick ; and Mr. Hank
Fake, native of one of the New England States, had
about them individually and collectively an air of
perfect repose and meditative loneliness quite out of
keeping with the festive character usually pervading
such establishments.

Yes; although it was summer in the forest, and
earth and air seemed filled with the freshness of leaf
and the perfume of flower ; although birds sang and
streams rippled, Quesnelle took small heed of such
things, looking buried in a " mid-winter of discon-
tent." So it is all the world over, in other cities,
big and little, besides Quesnelle. Golden sunshine,
scent of early summer, freshness of first leaf, and
perfume of June rose are dead things to the gold-
hunter in a Californian or Columbian mining city,
quite as much as they are to the pleasure-seeker in
the gayest of Europe's capitals. It is not only " on
the desert air" that nature wastes her sweetness; her
most lavish extravagance is that which is spent upon
man when gold and pleasure mark the goal towards
which he toils.

The morning had worn to mid-day. The sun hung
full over the broad channel of the Frazer, and yet
Quesnelle showed no symptoms of rousing itself from
the apathy of the earlier forenoon. Once or twice,

70 FAR OUT.

indeed, Mr. William Davron came forth from his
saloon towards the high river bank, and leisurely
scanned the farther shore of the majestic river, and
the red dusty track which led from it, curving up the
steep outer hill until it was lost in the great green
forest. But on these occasions Mr. Davron beheld
nothing to call forth from his usually loquacious lips
anything more expressive of his emotions than a
wreath of blue grey smoke from a very indifferent
cigar, and he had re-entered his saloon for the third
time ere there occurred aught on the farther shore to
justify his continued survey of that portion of the
landscape.

But at last, when there was no watcher on the high
bank, there did appear on the farther side of the river
some sign of life and movement. Down the hill
along the light streak of curving pathway, which
showed plainly here and there among the green
underbush of the forest clearing, which sprang up
when the older giants had been levelled, there arose a
cloud of dust which trailed away behind into a finer
vapour. At the head of the cloud appeared a small
group of horsemen, moving at a sharp canter along the
steep incline. The road wound in curves along the
hillside, sometimes dipping out of sight and reappear-
ing again, until it at last reached the level valley at
the base ; and it was difl&cult to tell the exact number
of the party until the nearer and more level land had
been attained, so frequently did the little group be-
come lost to view behind the clumps of brushwood.

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 71

But, as the horsemen came cantering up to the
farther shore of the river, their numbers and possible
condition in life became the subject of much comment
among the little group of citizens, who, called sud-
denly from their wooden houses by the news of
" Strangers a-coming," had assembled on the high
bank in front of Quesnelle.

" Blow me, if I can make out much of 'em ! " em-
phatically observed Mr. Davron, as he dropped from
his eye the hand which had held a much-u.^cd bino-
cular to that optic. " Thar's Eufus an' his Injun
among them ; an' thar's a boy from the camp — for
he's got camp fixins with him ; but thar's a long-
legged chap an' a big dog thar that beats me blind
altogether. The man is in leather, as though he came
from across the mountains, an' the dog is a coyote or
a wolf, with a tail just stretched over his back like a
darned chip-monk. Blow me, if I know what he is ! "

Now a man who has a binocular to his eye is more
or less a person of authority among other men who
do not possess that article; but Mr. Davron main-
tained always a certain degree of authority among
the inhabitants of Quesnelle, and was considered by
them to be, with or without a binocular, a very far-
seeing person indeed, whose opinion should not be
lightly gainsaid in any matter concerning man or
beast.

It is easy to imagine, then, that when Mr. Davron
declared in curt and forcible language his utter
inability to resolve the nebulous character of the

72 FAR OUT.

party on the oj^posite shore, his hearers should have
experienced considerable excitement. Strangers from
the north were, at this season of the year, rare ex-
ceptions.

Beyond Quesnelle, towards the north, there lay a
huge wilderness — pine-forest, lake, mountain, rushing
river — a vast exjiense of untamed nature, where the
wind and the torrent revelled in loneliness, and made
music night and day in pine-branch and rock-rapid.
In this great solitude stretching to the north Ques-
nelle was an advanced post of civilisation, an outlying
picket of that vast army of man which is ever engaged
upon the conquest of the wilderness.

It was here at Quesnelle that the ways of civilised
wheel-travel ended, and the rude work of pack-saddle
began. Here was the last hotel, the last group of
houses, the last post-office — all rude and rough and
simple in their ways, but still tangible proofs of the
reality of civilised man existing as a community.

Beyond the Frazer Eiver, on the other hand, the
wilderness reigned supreme. There the traveller
carried his blanket bed, ate his dinner upon the
ground, slept at night under his tent, swam his horse
across the brooks and rivers, and conformed to the
ways of the wilds in all things. So far it would seem
as though both armies had halted here at this broad
river and looked across the swift waters, the one
afraid to advance deeper into the wilds, the other loth
to retire from such a vantage point. And so it was.

During nearly fourteen years the city of Quesnelle

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 73

had stood on the east shore of the Frazer, without
gaining one inch of territory from its savage an-
tagonist ; nay, even there were symptoms apparent
to a close observer that seemed to reverse the usual
experience of such things, and to foreshadow a retreat
on the part of civilisation from the advanced post
which it had taken up. Of these symptoms we have
already spoken. Grass was in the street ; wooden
boards hung over the windows ; soon, perhaps, the
trees would spring again from that earth which ever
rejoices in a chance of relapsing into savagery, despite
all man's complacent ideas of the improvement of his
husbandry. Little by little the hold which Quesnelle
had placed upon the forest empire seemed to be
loosening ; bit by bit each spring seemed to win back
something of the lost dominion. The reason was
easy to find. Quesnelle lived i pon a fact which was
rapidly becoming a fiction. That fact was a gold
mine, lying in the midst of mountains some fifty
miles east of where the city stood.

The story of this mine had been a curious one.
Not that it differed from the stories of a hundred other
gold mines scattered over the vast continent of West
America, in aught save in the excessive richness and
abundance of the find, which made the name of
Cariboo a magic somid to every miner along the
Pacific slope. Here, at Cariboo, the original find
had been, as elsewhere, the result of stray attempts
at following up the sand-bar workings of the channel
of the Frazer along the smaller affluents of the main

74 FAR OUT.

river. But when once the ijrecious metal had been
struck along the rocky ledges of the creeks of Cariboo,
the news went fcilh to the south of such a wondrous
yield of gold that thousands and tens of thousands
hurried to the scene.

That scene lay a long way off from even a remote
civilisation. Four hundred miles farther south the
Frazer River entered the sea in a deep inlei but little
known to aught save a few adventurous fur-traders,
who, for more than half a century, had contrived to
keep to themselves the secrets of the wild and savage
but most picturesque land which to-day bears the
name of British Columbia. Many rugged mountain
chains crossed the country at either side of the deep
channel of the Frazer. At several points these moun-
tains seemed to have flung themselves boldly across
the impetuous river, which, in turn, had eaten its
way deep into the very hearts of the hills, until rock
and rapid, cliff and cataract, lay buried from human
vision far down in gloomy canons, from which the
w^ild din of ceaseless strife came floating up along
the tops of jagged pine-trees, whose heads, stretching
out from splintered ledge and rocky cleft, craned far
over the abyss. - '-t,": ..,- >v -- -'-;.;,/..;; .-:'. v.i-^-.>^:

But men who seek for gold are not to be kept back
by obstacles of this kind. They came with canoes
that could only ascend from the sea to the rapids;
they came with pack-mules and saddle-horses that
had to scramble over mountains and swim torrents ;
men trudged on foot, carrying on their bent backs

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 75

pick ami shovel, axe and tent. Weak men came, who,
if the gold had lain within a day's march of the sea,
had not physical strength to make a common living
by their toil ; but the real gold-miner was there in a
vast majority. That man, so different from all other
men — made from a hundred varying nationalities, but
still uniform in his type, whether his cradle had been
rocked in an Irish cabin, or his mother had swimg
him as an infant from the saddle peak of a Mexican
mustang— reckless, daring, generous, free of purse
and ready with life — the most desperate soldier ever
sent forth by civilisation to conquer savagery.

In this wooden " city " called Quesnelle, on the east
bank of the Frazer Kiver, these men first planted
their outpost settlement, for here the road to that rich
mine called Cariboo quitted the banks of the Frazer
River and struck inland into the hills.

On the wonders of Cariboo it is needless here to
enlarge. They lie outside the real pm-pose of our
story, and they would well merit a separate paper for
themselves ; for how could justice be done in the
scant measure of a chance paragraph to that hero
among miners who in one season dug from the ledges
of the little creek two mule loads of solid gold ? or
that other hero who, at the bar of the principal saloon
of this same city of Quesnelle, was so dissatisfied with
his personal, appearance as it was reflected in the
large mirror at the back of the " mint juleps " and
the " brandy smashes" and other innumerable slings,
fixins, and cocktails, that he indignantly sent a large

70 , FAR OUT.

handful of gold twenty-dollar eagles flying into the
offending reflector, and laconically requested the bar
manager to take the reckoning and retain the change ?
Or again, how could we tell the story of that hapiess
youth who upon arrival at the creek set his stockings,
like nets, in the stream, under the belief that in the
morning he would find them filled with gold nuggets ?

Besides, all these are things of a long dead past
compared with the time at which our story opens.
Cariboo still held rich store of precious metals, but it
lav deep down in the white qut :^f, reef, many hundred
feet below the surface, where m linery alone could
reach it, and where even the dauntless spirit of toil
of the individual miner was powerless to carry him.

The "placer" diggings had, in fact, been worked
out, and only capital working through companies
could now reach the gold of Cariboo.

But the individual miner was not the man to accept
quietly the fact that Cariboo had, in his own lan-
guage, become " played out," without some attempt
at seeking fresh fields and pastures new in the vast
solitudes of rock and forest lying to the north and
west of his favourite find. — \/\

One by one all the countless creeks and streams that
flow from the height of land between the headwaters
of the Frazer and the Peace Elvers were diligently
examined by small parties of adventurers, who some-
times spent a whole summer season in thus exploring
the wild and savage solitude that lay locked among
that labyrinth of hills, where the misty peaks of the

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 77

Bald Mountains touch ujion one side the coast or Cas-
cade Range, and on the other almost join hands with
the rugged masses of the Rocky Mountains. Time
after time these wandering " prospectors " returned to
the outskirts of civilisation from a fruitless search ; but
either the next season found them again ready to dare
some new enterprise, or fresh men were there to take
their places in the arduous and unprofitable toil. At
last a tangible success seemed to reward those per-
sistent efforts. A party of explorers discovered in the
bed of a small stream, which fell into the Ominica
River, on the north side of the Bald Mountains, gold
in considerable quantity. Quickly ran the news of
this new find along the Pacific shore of North America.
The restless stream of gold-seekers began to flow
towards the spot ; wild and rough as was the path
thither, hundreds of men succeeded in pushing
through. The summer season was a short one in
this northern latitude. Caught by the frost in their
return journey, some of the adventurers paid with
their lives the penalty of their rashness ; but another
summer found a still larger crowd hm-rying to the
Ominica. Then the tide began to ebb, the gold was
getting scarce in the gravel ledges. Ominica, like its
richer predecessor. Cariboo, was getting " played out " ;
the rush grew fainter and fainter, and the city of
Quesnelle, which had flared once more into a thriving
state upon the windfall of this second find, began to
sink again into despondency and discontent.
It was to this northern camp in the Ominica that

78 FAR OUT.

the trail of which wo have just spoken led ; and as
it was the early summer season when men sought
these northern wilds, the advent of strangers coming
to Quesnelle along the trail from the north was an
event suflicient to cause the inhabitants of ^he now
declining city considerable excitement, and many were
the specuhtions among the group on the river side
as to the strange man and strangor dog described by
Mr. Davron. Meanwhile the rapid rate at which the
party on the opposite shore travelled had brought
them to the bank of the river.

Dismounting from their horses, they had soon
taken their places in a small "dug-out" canoe, which
seemed but ill suited to carry so many men across
the broad river now rolling along in the full majesty
of its early summer level, bearing to the Pacific the
vast harvests which thousands of snowy hills had
gathered from the skies during thp long months of
the preceding winter. As the little boat gained the
centre of the river, the group of watchers on the shore
no longer looked to Mr. Davron's binocular for in-
formation ; each one strove for himself to unravel the
mysterious natures of the man in skins and the dog
with the bushy tail ; but it was difficult to make much
of them in the crowded state in which they lay huddled
together, the dog apparently stretched across the man
for the safer trimming of the tiny craft.

The canoe touched the shore, and the people it
carried began to disembark. First came the big dog.
He appeared in no way to realise the fact that he was

A JorKNEY OF A DOG AND A MAiV. 70

at last approachinp; a centre of civilisation. The
wooden houses in a row, the three saloons, the group
of citizens on the river-hank, all these varied adjuncts
of civilisation caused him no emotion, lie did not
appear even to notice the surprised looks with which
the inhahitants rer,'arded him, hut rapidly ascendiuR
the shingle hank he precipitated himself with great
violence towards a very small dog, who, perceiving
that ho was ahout to be attacked by an antagonist of
strange mien and powerful proportions, tied howling
in an opposite direction.

Then, seemingly satisfied with this? aasertion of
superiority, the largo animal returned to the river-
shore, and took up a position on the bank overlooking
the disembarkation, with the tip of his tail so elevated
that it would appear as though that appendage had
become thoroughly imbued with a lofty contempt of
civilisation and its ways.

Meanwhile the disembarkation of the men in the
l)oat went on, and soon the entire party stood
grouped upon the left bank of the river, some
in animated conversation with the citizens, others
standing aloof in the restraint of strangers only just
arrived.

But in such places as Quesnelle the forms of
introduction are not based upon the rigid rules of
older organised communities. Ere many minutes
had elapsed, dog and man had taken their places
among the broken miners, the miners who had yet
to be broken, among the store-keepers, bar-keepers,

80 . : * ' • FAR OUT. ,'

hotel-keepers, and the sundry other householders and
citizens. Ensconced in the hotel — a large wooden
building, that consisted of one immense room, and a
number of small adjoining dens ; a building which in
the early days of Quesnelle had attained to very
remarkable celebrity as a " hurdy-house," gambling
saloon, and general demoralisation domicile, but
which in the degenerate days of our story had
sunken to very respectable limits — the dog and his
master soon made acquaintance with many worthy
representatives of the saloon and mining interest in
the extreme north of the Pacific slope. Many were
the curious comments bestowed upon the strange dog,
and varied were the animals who were supposed to
have had an influence direct or remote upon the
contour of his head, the bushiness of his tail, or
the woolly nature of his coat. The Lear, the wolf,
the coyote, were all credited with a relationship more
or less remarkable, as the speaker's opinion led to
each or to all of these quadrupeds as sharers in the
ancestry of this honest old hauling dog, who now, his
long toil over, had settled down to the simple rule of
friend and travelling companion. But while, with
legs high poised upon the iron stove in the centre of
the big room, many miners thus discussed the merits
of the new animal, and conjectm'ed his probable
descent from a variety of wild and savage beasts,
the object of their solicitude began to display certain
tendencies which have always been associated with
the civilised dog in all countries and among all

/ A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 81

peoples. He showed a decided preference for the
kitchen over any other apartment in the hotel; he
developed a spirit of marked antagonism to, and an
uncalled for ferocity against, a large black cat; he
became so enamoured of a Chinaman, who fulfilled
the functions of cook in the establishment, that it
was matter of fear lest the American portion of the
community might entertain towards him, by reason
of that friendship, those feelings of acute detestation
which, from the high moral standpoint of republican
equality and brotherhood towards all men, they have
so frequently manifested against hard-working Chinese
of every class. He showed symptoms of recommenc-
ing a study of poultry, a predilection for which he
had years before exhibited in a now distant sphere.
It was no unusual pastime for him to spend hours
lying in front of a hen-coop, absorbed in the con-
templation of the habits and customs of fowls in
general, and of a large rooster in particular. Nor
was it only in his inward, or mental nature, that this
dog seemed to be impressed with the social distinctions
and civilised customs with which he now found him-
self brought into contact. His outward form also
underwent a change. He grew visibly larger. Under
the influence of the genial summer warmth he began
to dispense with quantities of the long hair and thick
wool in which, on the approach of the previous winter,
he had so completely muffled himself.

At night he sojourned underneath his owner's bed,
in one of the small wooden dens called rooms already

82 ,;,-■' FAR OUT.

mentioned, which was situated directly over the hotel
kitchen ; and from the extraordinary manner in which
he became aware of what was transpiring beneath in
all matters connected with meals, cooking, and culi-
nary prospects generally, there was reason to suppose
that he could see as far through a deal board as the
majority of mortals. The dog, in fact, was having
an easy, idle time of it, and he was making the most
of it. There was ample reason why he should do so.
Six months earlier he had started from the shores of
Lake Winnepeg, and his own stout legs had carried
him to this Frazer Kiver across two thousand miles
of snow-clad wilderness. All that long distance had
lain within the realm yet unconquered from the forest
and the prairie, and as here at Quesnelle the Frazer
marked the boundaries of the rival powers, so here at
Quesnelle the two rovers of the wilds, dog and man,
passed out of the solitude and entered once more the
regions of civilised life.

It will be our lot to follow their wanderings along
the Pacific shore of North America, through lands
which, if they do not contain anything that is abso-
lutely new, are still none of them old enough to have
become familiar, even in name, to the ear of the great
outside world. Lands of tall and stately pine forests,
of broad and swift-rushing rivers, of meadows backed
by lofty peaks, whose crests hold aloft into blue mid-
summer skies the snow cast upon them by many a
winter's storm.

Here at Quesnelle we are in the centre of British

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 83

Columbia. Our course will lie nearly due south,
along the water system of the Frazer to its mouth at
New Westminster, then over the boundary line into
the territory of Washington. Southward still, over
the Columbia river into Oregon ; then up the valley of
the beautiful Willamette until the Siskyou range rises
before us, and the Madrono begins to perfume the soft
air of the Calif ornian night. Over the Siskyou, and
down into the valley where sparkling Sacramento has
its cradle, and thence around the base of solitary
Shasta into the sunlight of California. It is the 8th
of June ; there lie one thousand miles before us ere
the Golden Gate of San Francisco is gained.

The man's baggage was not large — a small hand-
bag held it all. Here, at Quesnelle, he parted from
many old friends. An iron cup and saucer, sacred to
the memories of hot delicious tea-drinks in icy bivouacs ;
a copper kettle, black with the smoke of a thousand
camp fires, and dinted with blow of tree stump and sled
upset; blankets burnt and scorched by pine-wood
sparks on many a freezing night in fai-away Atha-
basca — all these tokens of the silent tract were given
away to other wanderers, whose steps were about to
lead back again into the northern solitude. " Come,
old dog," said the man, " it is time to start." The
man shouldered his pack, the dog shook out his
bushy tail to the wind, and the travellers began their
new journey.

o 2

II.

rpHE first sixty miles lay down the rapid rolling
Frazer, now at the full tide of its early summer
volume. Swiftly along the majestic river sped a
small steamer, the current doubling the rate of speed,
until the shores flitted past at raikoad pace in the
shadows of the June twilight.

Deep down in a gigantic fissure the river lay, twelve
hundred feet below the summit of the rolling plateau
on either side ; so steep the western cliff that darkness
began to gather over the water, while yet the upper
level caught the sunset's glow from across the wide
Chilcotin plains, and pine-trees on the edge stood
clearly out against the sky — solitary sentinels,
ireeping watch over the darkening channel.

It was almost night when the little boat drew
underneath the high overhanging eastern shore, and
made fast to a rude wooden staging. A few wooden
houses stood on a narrow ledge of low ground between
the cliff and the river — the stream named the houses
— and at Soda Creek that night dog and man found
lodging and entertainment.

The summer dawn was creeping down the great hill

A JOURl.EY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 85

to the east next morning as Mr. Jack Hamilton took
the reins of his six-horse coach, and pulled his team
together to begin the long ascent that led from the
wooden hotel up the east shore of the Frazer. An
hour's slow work, and the coach stood twelve hundred
feet above the river on the summit of the plateau.

A fresh, fair summer morning, with summer mists
rising from dewy hollows, and summer scents coming
out from pine woods, and summer flowers along the
smooth unfenced road that wound away over hill and
valley, by glade and ridge, through wood and open,
away over the mountain plateau of central British
Columbia, three thousand feet above the sea level.

On the box seat sat the man, and in the boot be-
neath the seat sat the dog. A free pass or ticket had
been presented to the dog by the coach agent at
Quesnelle, but the provarb which bears testimony to
the difference between taking a horse to the water
and making him drink therein was strikingly exempli-
fied in the matter of this dog and the boot of the box
seat. It was one thing to have a free pass for the
boot, and another thing to induce the dog to put a
foot into this boot. Many expedients were tried, but
they were all attended with difficulty. To poise the
bulky form of the Esquimaux upon the fore-wheel of
' the coach, preparatory to lifting him still higher, was
no easy matter, but it was simple work compared to
that of lifting him six feet further into his seat.

Fortunately Mr. Jack Hamilton proved a stage
driver of a most obliging disposition. Ever ready to

86 FAR OUT.

lend his neighbours a hand, he did so on this occasion
by hauling the dog chain from above. Thus propelled
from below by his owner, and hauled from above
by the driver, the dog was placed securely in his
seat by an intermediate process much resembling
hanging.

The American stage coach on the Pacific slope is a
long flat-roofed vehicle, carrying outside passengers
only on the box seat. At the back of the coach there
is a framework for holding baggage, which forms a
kind of intermediate step between the roof and the
ground. Sometimes it became possible to utilise this
baggage platform as a means of hauling the reluctant
animal into his place ; but whether the ascent was
made through Mr. Jack Hamilton kindly consenting
to play the part of Calcraft, or whether the end was
attained by other devices, the result was the same,
namely, a fixed dislike and persistent reluctance on
the part of the dog to the occupation of the boot.

Ever from between his owner's legs he looked rue-
fully down at the road, as though he would infinitely
have preferred toiling along on his own account. No
doubt his look accurately told his thoughts ; but six
horses, changing every twenty miles, would soon have
left him far behind; and although, given his own
time, the seventy miles of the coach's daily run
would have been covered by the dog on foot, still he
would have taken all the day and half the night
to do it.

The great waggon road which connects the mining

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 87

regions of Cariboo with the navigable portion of the
lower Frazer, is a wonderful result of enterprise
undertaken in the early days of Columbian prosperity.
Throughout its long course of three hundred miles it
crosses a wild and rugged land, pierces the great
range of the Cascade Mountains, is carried along the
edge of immense precipices overhanging the caflons
of the Frazer River, until, emerging at tne village of
Yale, it lands its travellers at the gateway of the
Pacific. • :•■' -.^.^.k ■ - .,.■'.

Along this great road we now held our way, from
the first streak of a still frosty dawn until the sun
was beginning to get low over the hilltops to the
west.

A vast region this British Columbia — hill, lake,
river, and mountain succeeding each other day after
day; pine forests full of odour, and sighing with
breezes that had already waved through nameless
regions of forest. At times the coach wound slowly
up some curving incline through varied woods of fir
and maple, until gaining a ridge summit bare of
trees, the eye of the traveller on the box seat could
roam over many a far away mile of forest-tops, and
farther still catch the jagged line of snowy peaks that
marked the mountain land where Frazer, and Colum-
bia, and Thompson had their close-linked sources.
And once there opened out close to the road a strange
freak of nature — a great cleft in the earth surface, a
huge chasm as abrupt as though a superhuman sword
had buried itself deep in the earth and cut asunder

88 . FAR OUT. . ; .

the crust of the world. The coach road had to make
a sharp detour to avoid this fissure. Pulling up at
the south side, where the road ran close to the edge
of the chasm, Mr. Jack Hamilton informed his pas-
sengers that they might alight from the coach for a
closer survey of this scene.

It was worthy of a halt. A few paces from the
roadway the earth dipped suddenly down to a great
depth ; trees clustered close to the chasm's edge, but
the sides were far too steep for growth of any kind ,
and the layers of red and dark rock alternated with
each other in horizontal streaks that made the farther
side look as though it had been painted with the
favourite lines of some rude Indian decoration.

As far as this great rent in the earth was visible,
looking towards the east, it seemed to widen and
deepen as it went ; but there was little time for exami-
nation, for Mr. Jack Hamilton and his six horses
were impatient to be moving, and the coach and its
freight were soon rolling swiftly south to the city of
Clinton.

Clinton stood in a broad valley, under a bright,
June sun. An affluent of the Bonaparte, here near
its source, flowed through the village city over beds of
glistening shingle; but a recent flood had washed
away its gravelly banks and strewn the single street
with wreck of wooden house and debris of stone and
sand, making it no easy matter for the coach to
work its way to the door of the hotel, over the great
piles of rubbish.

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 89

At last the heavy vehicle pulled up at the door,
which was literally packed with figures. Two large
mule trains had arrived at Clinton on their way up-
country from the sea, and mule drivers, packmen,
freighters, and miners thronged the little street. The
dark-faced Mexican with broad sombrero was there,
the yellow -skinned Chinaman with hair descending
from the poll, the sallow Yankee with hair tuft
sprouting from the chin ; extremes of old and new
world craft and cunning here met with the cordiality
of a common hatred. The miner, diffident and shy,
but with the diffidence of determination and the shy-
ness bred by long inteiTals of solitude, was here, too,
on his upward road to try his luck at some northern
digging. Eagerly this flood-tide met the ebb-stream
of our coach-load and asked for news of former friend
or comrade now delving at Germansen or Ominica, at
Cariboo or Cottonwood. Every one seemed to know
everybody. The distances might be vast, the country
might be rugged, the trails difficult to travel, but all
the sarae there was not a Pete or a Dave, a Steve or
a Bill, in farthest camp along the affluents of the
Peace River, whose name was not a household word
in the hotel at Clinton.

Despite its vast area and its rugged sm'face, British
Columbia, so far as settlement and civilisation were
concerned, was nothing tut a long waggon road with
a gold mine at one end and a seaport at the other.
One or two smaller offshoots, branching away to mines
more or less played out, had this great waggon road,

FAR OUT.

but they were at long intervals apart, and were suit-
able only for the saddle and the pack-horse.

Up and down this road travelled every year the
entire population ; or if there remained at Soda Creek
or at Quesnelle a few of the less fortunate gold-seekers,
whose finds did not permit their wintering so far
south as Victoria, the capital, nevertheless their more
fortunate friends seemed still to hold them in lively
remembrance, and to have known Pete at the Ominica
was to have a claim upon the acquaintance of Dave
at Clinton. " The boys ain't a bad lot," remarked
?*" '. Hamilton to his box fare, as, holding his horses
well in hand, he rattled briskly down the incline that
led to Clinton. " There's some of 'em as wouldn't wash
two cents the bucket, an' there's more that has the
metal thick enough on the bed-rock of their naturs."

Mr. Hamilton was right. These " boys " called
gold-miners are the cream of the working men. They
are the natural successors of that race of fur-hunters
and trappers who, fifty years ago, made Missouri their
base for the exploration of that vast region which then
lay in pathless solitude to the waves of the Pacific
Ocean. Reckless in their modes of hunting and trap-
ping, these men quickly destroyed or drove away the
wild animals that roved the plains ; but when the furs
were gone the gold came in, and where one had tried
the wild life of the trapper, a hundred flocked to work
the pick and shovel in the wild glens and valleys of
the Pacific slope.

In the bar-room of the hotel at Clinton, the box-

A JOURNEY OP A DOG AND A MAN. 01

fare travoiler and the dog sat and watched the coming
and going of all these units of Western life. The long
June evening was beginning to grow monotonous ;
the stove, the many spittoons, the bar-keeper, the
brightly coloured stimulants, had been studied indi-
vidually and collectively ; the art decorations had been
closely examined, and had ceased to afford gratifica-
tion to the eye. An engraving of the Federal General
Hooker, " Fighting Joe," as he was affectionately
termed, whose brief term of command was chiefly
made illustrious by an order of the day in which he
congratulated himself upon being called to the head
of *' the finest army on the planet," an order which
was almost immediately followed by a most igno-
minious defeat — " Fighting Joe " now looked fiercely
from above the bar, in close proximity to another
print in which a dog was represented stretched upon
his back, while beneath an inscription informed the
drinking public that " poor Trust" was not only dead,
but that bad pay had killed him.

Deeper in the glasses and the lemons and the
juleps, there was observable to a closer scrutiny a
photograph of a frightened-looking volunteer soldier,
who mournfully regarded a large sabre to which fate
had apparently hopelessly secured him. All these
things had been duly conned over and apathetically
dismissed, when an event occurred which gave im-
mediate relief to the ennui of the community. 'The
figure of a man appeared suddenly at the open door-
way. " Bismarck has got out ! " he exclaimed in

92 FAR OUT.

liaRty accents ; and then in more fnrciMo language
than it iw jmssihlo to repeat, ho continued, " Oone,
clane gone, I tell ye ! " Had it heen poHHible for any
of those lately arrived by the coach to have accepted
in quiescence this announcement of the great chan-
cellor's flight or freedom, such equanimity must have
Boon disappeared before the fierce excitement which
at once became manifest in the persons of the older
inhabitants. The bar-keeper instantly suspended his
operations in manipulating the coloured stimulants,
and acting either by virtue of his high ottice as bar-
keeper, or of some collateral right of special constable
and justice of the peace, he exclaimed, " Bismarck is
out, boys ! Twenty-five dollars to the man who
catches him ! "

This liberal oflfer, following closely on the heels of the
e&citing news just received, caused a wild rush of the
assembled citizens to the doorway, and the dog and
man following in the wake of the throng, soon found
themselves taking a keen interest in the pursuit of
the chancellor.

It may have been that the capture was regarded by
the citizens as a public duty, or it may have been
that, in the minds of many, a lingering hope yet dwelt
that twenty-five dollars would go some little way
towards reanimating the prostrate form of Trust, so
far as that faithful creature had reference to their
individual accounts for drink and stimulants supplied
in the bar-keeper's ledger. Such hypothesis would at
least be doubtful.

A JOrHNEV OF A DOO AND A MAN. 93

At any rate, volunteers for the office of " running
in " the chancellor were as numerous as though the
(Irinking-Hcore had heen in a Southern German or
Hanoverian inn, and the ahsconding native had heen
the chancellor himself ; for alas ! the fugitive was
the great conspirator only in name.

The Clinton Bismarck was in fact a Chilcotin
Indian, who, for some infraction of Columhian law,
had heen incarcerated in a neiglihouring log-hut.

It appeared that the conditions of prison discipline
had heen of a cheap and novel kind. Bismarck was
allowed to take exercise and air upon one stipulation,
that he would perform the duties of jailer and turn-
key upon himself, and that, moreover, he would
employ his hours of exercise in repairing the public
roads of Clinton. For some time he had regularly
responded to this arrangement hy letting himself out,
watching himself when he wa-^^ out, and ceasing to
superintend himself only when he had again locked
himself in. But unfortunately for the -permanent
success of this simple and inexpensive mode of
prison discipline, Bismarck, as we have seen,
failed to comply with the latter poi-tion of the pro-
gramme, and on the day of the arrival of the coach
he turned his face to his native hills and his back
upon Clinton.

The wide semicircle of hills surrounding Clinton to
the north and west looked very beautiful as the long
shadows of the June evening fell from the lofty
*' sugar " pines that dotted their swelling sides, and

94 ,. FAR OUT. ^

marked lengthening lines upon many a mile of silent
peaceful landscape.

" Poor Bismarck ! " said the box-seat passenger to
himself, as he looked from the motley group of citi-
zens to the lonely hills. " May the pine-brush be thy
bed to-night."

When the coach rolled away a little after daybreak
next morning, leaving Clinton lying in the mists of
the Bonaparte, the Chilcotin's cage was yet empty,
and the dog Trust lay still upon his back.

Rolling along a high ridge of land which overlooked
the valley of the Bonaparte River, the coach held its
southern way towards the great mountain mass
through whose centre the Frazer River cleaves its
course to the sea. No height of hilltop, no depth of
valley seemed able to set at rest in the brain of the
dog the idea that his proper function was to haul and
not to be hauled ; indeed, judging from the persistent
manner in which he continued to regard the road and
not the country through which it led, it might have
been apparent that he meditated a descent from the
boot whenever opportunity might offer; but unfor-
tunately, a word of prohibition was deemed sufficient
preventive in view of the distance that intervened
between the boot and the ground.

All at once, however, without any premonitory
symptoms, he thrust himself suddenly from the boot
and precipitated his great body outward into space.
So far as the mere fact of getting out of the boot was
ooucerned, the success of this attempt was complete.

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 95

In very much less time than the narrative of this ex-
ploit has taken, the dog had reached the ground, but
countermarching his body in the descent, his head,
when that descent was accomplished, was where his
tail should have been— next the wheels. The coach
was a heavy one, it carried its full complement of
passengers. To suppose that one of its wheels
could roll over any portion of the dog's body, and
leave that portion intact, would have been to suppose
an apparent impossibility. Mr. Hamilton, handling
his six horses with dexterity, stopped the coach ere it
had run its length, but not before the near fore-wheel
had jerked over the outstretched paw of the lately
landed dog. But the stout leg that had tramped
through the long journey of the past winter had in it
sinews and muscles able to bear without breaking the
ponderous load that had now rolled over its wrist, and
when the man had reached the ground and taken hold
of the damaged leg, which the dog held high in air,
the loud howl of agony sank quickly to a lower key.
So it is with all true-natured dogs when hurt has
come to them, if the maimed or broken limb be but
held by a human hand; the cry soon sinks to a
whimper under the touch which tells him that human
sympathy has joined hands with him in his suffering.
Reinstated in the boot, and made secure from a re-
petition of sensation headers, the dog passed through
the remainder of his Columbian coach journey with-
out incident of danger ; but the great canons of the
Thompson and Frazer rivers, which the waggon road

96 .^ FAR OUT.

pierces in the last seventy miles of its course, and
the stupendous masses of rock frowning over the
narrow ledge upon which the track is carried, ap-
parently failed to remove from his mind the sense of
injustice under which he deemed himself suffering
in not being allowed to add his dog might to the
locomotion of the coach ; and still with mournful eye
he looked steadily out from his seat upon the letter
bags, a wiser, a sadder, but an unconvinced animaL

In a deep and narrow valley, close to the junction
of the Thompson with the Frazer Eiver, stands the
little town of Lytton, once a famous point when the
big sand-bars of the Frazer held their thousands of
miners, now " brooding in the ruins of its life," a
dreary wooden village fast lapsing into decay; for
the sand-bars have long ceased to yield gold, and
Mariner's and Forster's and Fargo and Boston bars
no more hold their camps and shanties.

Melancholy enough looked Lytton as the coach
drew up by the hotel door, having run its eighty-three
miles in ten hours. The hotel had some peculiarities
of construction that made it different from any
hostelry which the box fare had ever sojourned at.
It was a long, low, wooden building, containing many
small dens built over a clear rushing stream of water.
The wooden floor was old and in places broken, and
through the shrivelled planks the water could be seen
as it rippled along, filling the den with pleasant mur-
mur ; but these peculiarities were only observable to
the box fare when, late in the evening, he had returned

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 97

from a ramble to find all his fellow-passengers retired
for the night, and the hotel-keeper waiting his arrival
with a light in one hand and a large black bottle in
the other. A steady flow of language more or less
irreverent, and an unsteady method of pursuing a
line as he walked in front of the box fare along the
occupied dens, clearly indicated that the hotel pro-
prietor had at least taken the cork out of his bottle ;
but it was only upon arrival in the den which was to
hold the dog and the man until morning that the
proprietor allowed his feelings their fullest flow, and
evinced a desire to carry a spirit of animated discus-
sion far into the night. Questions connected with the
division of political power in Lytton (about twelve
houses showed signs of permanent occupation), mat-
ters bearing upon finance, Indian statistics, and con-
solidation of the colony with the United States, were
touched upon in such a thoroughly exhaustive manner
that the dog was soon sound asleep, and the box fare
looked drowsily from his trestle-bed at the garrulous
proprietor, who, seated on a vacant bed, continued to
pour forth stimulants for himself and statistics for
his sleepy guest. At length the black bottle became
silent, the hotel-keeper shuffled off to his den, and
nothing broke the stillness of the night save the ripple
of running water under the thin pine boards of the
crazy building, and the long-drawn respirations of
the dog under the trestle-bed.

Soon again the daylight broke. In the matter of
getting up, dogs have decidedly the better of" their

98 FAR OUT.

masters. Look at a man at the moment of his
waking, and nine times out of ten you see a poor
creature gaping, puzzled, and perplexed — not quite
certain whether he is in the middle of last week or
the beginning of the next ; but a dog rises from sleep,
stretches himself on the points of his toes, wags his
tail, and is instantly at home with the new morning.
Out from underneath the trestle-bed, fresh and ready
for the road, stepped the dog as daybreak struggled in
through the tiny den window, while with many a
lingering wish for one hour more, the master prepared
himself for tht journey. This day was to be the last
of the coach travel, for at the village of Yale steam
would again take up the running and carry the coach
load to the sea.

So the coach rolled away from Lytton, and winding
up a curving ascent, entered the canons of the
Cascades.

Gloomy spots are these canons of the Cascades on
the coach road to the sea. A narrow ledge cut out of
the rock, smooth as a table edge, holds in mid-air the
heavy coach and its six-horse team; no fence, no
parapet breaks the sheer descent into the horrid
chasm; six hundred feet beneath the river roars in
unseen tumult, and above the rugged mountain
topples black against the sky.

No creeping pace is this at which these horses
round these dizzy ledges, no hugging of the rock, but
full and free the leaders gallop at the curves, facing
boldly to the very verge of the precipice ere they

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 99

sweep round these yawning " points." Eight miles in
the hour along the smooth rock cuttings Mr. Jack
Hamilton steers his team, with foot hard set on brake
as the big coach thunders down some slope, and the
pine-tops beneath seem to be flying along the canon
edge. The box fare feels inclined to lean away from
the edge, so close at hand, but he feels too that Mr.
Hamilton has an eye on him as well as on his team,
and he takes it as naturally as though a lifetime of
nightmares had made him thoroughly conversant with
the whole science of ledge galloping. Mr. Hamilton
even finds time to enlarge upon the past history of
the rop'l. and among his anecdotes there figures one
which tells how once a coach did go over the precipice.
" And there wasn't," he adds, " no, there wasn't," he
continues, " as much of horse, or driver, or passenger,
or coach, ever picked up as a coroner could get a
fee on."

But if it was nervous work driving when the coast
was clear, much worse did it seem when a waggon
with eight or ten pairs of mules had to be passed on
the narrow ledge.

At such times the law of the road gave Mr. Hamilton
the outside place, and from the tire of his outer wheels
to the edge of the cliff scarce eight inches would in-
tervene, yet was there no leading of leaders by men
on foot. Gently by the perilous edge the coach would
move until clear of the obstacle, and then away along
the ledge again.

The bad places had all been safely passed, Yale lay

n 2

100 FAR OUT.

but a few miles distant, Mr. Hamilton's foot was press-
ing firmly against the lever of the brake as the coach
rolled swiftly down a long incline, one of the last ere
the level river valley was finally reached. All at once
the iron bar broke from the driver's foot, the heavy
vehicle, released from control, drove forward upon the
wheelers, and Mr. Hamilton with difficulty retained
his seat in the shock of the unlooked-for catastrophe.
But he was equal to the emergency. He pulled himself
and his team together in an instant ; then he whipped
his leaders, and held on down the long incline ; the
pace grew faster and faster, the inside passengers,
knowing nothing of the accident, and deeming that
the usual *' trot for the avenue " had been changed into
a wild gallop to that destination, cheered lustily.

At the foot of the hill the coach was pulled up.
Mr. Hamilton handed the ribbons to the box fare, and,
descending, surveyed the brake. " Clean gone," he
said, remounting. " Guess we'd 'ave bin clean gone
too, if it 'ad happened back at Chinaman's Bluff or
Jackass Mountain." Then he drove into Yale.

III.

A LARGE dog lived at Yale. The fame of his
savagery was known far up the coach road
towards Clinton, and steamboat men were cognizant
of it seawards nearly unto New Westminster. The
dog belonged to a German Jew, who, having passed
through the several grades of dealing approximating
to pedlar, had finally blossomed into a general
merchant, owner of many stores in Columbian settle-
ments. The traditional unpopularity attaching to
members of the Jewish persuasion found no exception
in Yale ; indeed, it is worthy of note that in no part
of the civilised world is that unpopularity more
strikingly observable than in these mountain towns
and settlements of North America — a fact from
which it might possibly be imagined that Christian
feeling, in these remote places, had attained to that
pitch of fervour known in the old feudal times in
Germany, when a baron, whose family duties or
bodily afflictions rendered service in the Holy Land
impossible, condoned his inability to wage war against
the Saracen by grilling the first Jew he could catch in
the lower apartments of his residence. But as in

102 FAR OUT.

these old times the Jew ehing to the baron, notwith-
Btanding the grill-room above mentioned, so now
he clings to the miner, and close follows the
"prospector," despite the ill-concealed animosity of
these adventurers.

Now the Jew's dog at Yale was a sharer in the
unpopularity of his master. "Love me, love my dog"
here found its converse, and dark looks were often
turned upon the mastiff because of dark thoughts
given to the mastiff's master. Among the many
items of information which Mr. Hamilton had ready
to dispense among the crowd that greeted him on his
arrival at Yale, there figured prominently in the
catalogue the fact that he had on this occasion
brought in the boot an animal of surpassing
savagery — an animal in whose physical and mental
nature many wild and sanguinary beasts had united
their several individual traits of ferocity for, appa-
rently, the sole purpose of annihilating the Jew's dog.

"Yes, Bill, you bet — I've got a dawg here,"
exclaimed Mr. Hamilton, soon after the coach drew
up, "that ain't a-going to flirt when he fights another
dawg. He means business, he does. Got his eddi-
cation among the Eocky Mountain coyotes, he did,
and afterwards served his time among the Eooshian
American bars." Then in a stage (coach) whisper,
" If thar should be a dawg hereabouts, Bill, whose
life you was thinking of insuring, I'd just complete
the policy before this Eooshian American animal in
the boot gets out, that's all."

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 103

It will be only necessary to remark that before the
unconscious object of tliese sanguinary sentiments
found himself free to perambulate the single street
of Yale, the Jew's dog had been safely secured by his
anxious master.

A night's delay at Yale, and dog and man were
again on the move. Through a deep mountain gorge
the Frazer sweeps from its long-held southern course,
and, soirae few miles south of Yale, bends west to meet
the ocean. It is not easy to imagine a grander gate-
way than that through which the dark tide, so long
vexed against cliff and torn in caflon, prepares to seek
here, in profound peace, the vast grave of the sea. It
may have been that the conditions of light and shade
were singularly fortunate on the morning when the
little steamboat ploughed her way from Yale to New
Westminster, passing out at Hope between the
gigantic portals of the Cascades, into the smoother
waters of the tidal river.

The morning had been one soft summer rain ; the
lofty hills were draped in dense wreaths of white
curling vapour; the rain fell straight through a pulse-
less atmosphere ; but at Hope the rain ceased, great
shafts of light shot through the masses of cloud, and
the slow- curling eddies of billowy vapour began to
uncoil from crag and pinnacle of lofty mountains.
Then, as sunbeams streamed athwart the gorge, the
eye caught for a moment the jagged outline of a
mountain mass upreared against a rainbow ; a
spectral pine-tree stood far up the mountain, pin-

104 FAR OIT.

nnclod afjainst somo rift of lisht ; but so quick tlio
veil of vapour opened and closed that no glance could
mark where cloudland ended or mountain peak began.
Enormous masses of inky cloud still rolled overhead,
breaking into fantastic forms, through which the deep-
blue sky was seen in loopholes of light ; and above the
shifting scene of light and '^shadow, high over the wide
waters of the sullen river, < ivid rainbow threw its
arch across the gloomy gorge. From beneath this
magnificent scene of mountain, river, cloud, sun, and
sky, the steamboat sped, hissing and splashing as
though it felt bound to call special attention to the
marvels of civilisation and of man as personified in its
own little self. Yet the attempt was a failure ; it simply
looked like a small insect crawling from the mouth
of some mammoth cavern, the sides of which were
mountains, and whose roof no eye could reach.

The city of New Westminster stands some few miles
from the mouth of the Frazer Kivcr, and not far from
the American boundary line, the forty-ninth parallel of
north latitude. Mountain ranges are in sight all
round upon the land side, and looking seaward over
the low forest that fringes the Frazer delta the eye
catches the hilltops of Vancouver's Island rising
beyond the isle-studded Strait of Georgia. The
name of New Westminster was not more ambitious
than the outlooks and aspirations of the city in its
earlier days had been. Nor was it wholly unreason-
able, either, that its founders and early settlers should
have allowed themselves fullest scope for transmuting,

A JDIHXEV OF A DOG AND A MAN. 105

in the alchemy of fancy, their wooden houses into
merchant palaces, and picturing their rude wharves
filled with the products of many far-away lands in
times not distant, when New Westminster was to
become the great Northern Pacific port. For did not
that veritable El Dorado, Cariboo, lie back beyond
these circling hills, and might there not be fifty other
Coi'iboos lying still to be discov-.d in all that wild
region of rock, forest, and mountain, whose rills,
lakes, and fountains drained here by the wooden
piles of the infant city ? It was even so : the water-
shed of the Frazer might well promise to hold within
its immense area riches sufficient to dwarf the boldest
calculation of the most sanguine pioneer settler whose
store stood by the tide-way of the great river. But
the fellow of Cariboo was never found, and New
Westminster still stands a city of unfulfilled ex-
pectations, looking wistfully up the broad Frazer
for a repetition of the golden harvest it had once
enjoyed.

In a comfortable wooden hotel the dog and the man
spent three days of rest and plenty. If the gold is
slow to come down the river, the silvery salmon is
quick to ascend the stream. In myriads that never
cease he goes by to begin his toilsome journey up the
rapids and whirlpools to the far-away lakes that lie
in the wilderness north of Quesnelle. Pink as a June
rose, with snow-white " curd " laid between the leaves,
the king of fish is here in size, shape, and flavour
equal in every way to his Atlantic cousin. In one

lOG FAR OUT.

respect only docs ho differ; ho is a more sensible
fish. No gaudy fly, twist it as man may, no king
crow feather, no golden pheasant, no summer duck
or African bustard will ever tempt him to lift his
nose above tho surface. The spear and the net work
fell havoc in his crowded ranks through all the long
course of his journey from the sea to his rest-place in
Stuart's Lake or Tatla, Sushwap, or Nichaco ; but to
the allurements of the fly he is absolutely blind.

At New Westminster, then, tlie dog and the man
spent three days of sleep and salmon cutlets. For
the sum of two shillings a twenty-four pound fresh
salmon could be purchased. During his experience
of life from Hudson's Bay to the Pacific, the dog had
tasted many kinds of fish. He had sported when a
pup with the delicate white fish of Deer's Lake. He
had feasted upon the sturgeon of the Saskatchewan,
the jack-fish of the Missinnippi, and the delicious
butter-fish of the Bed Eiver, but he had never tasted
salmon until here at New Westminster he consumed
cutlet after cutlet.

The boards dividing the small sleeping-rooms of
the hotel were thin and knot-holed. Speech was
plainly audible from one room to another. The man
was sometimes in the habit of carrying on conversation
with the dog in the early summer morning. The
language used by the man was a mysterious tongue
known only to the dog ; the replies given by the dog
were of the nature of tail-wag, ear-lift, and eye-wink.

One morning, during cutlet time, an American

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 107

approached the man. " Stranger," he said, '* I
gucHS I heard you talking Esquimo this morning."
It would have been unfair to have undeceived him ;
80 the Esquimaux dialect was admitted. " Queer
langidge that Esquimo," ho went on. " Mighty
queer langidge." *' With a knowledge of the Es-
quimo tongue," continued the man, '• and somes
acquaintance with the Athabascan language, dog-
driving becomes quite easy." " I never druv dogs,"
replied the American, "but I've druv most other
druvablo things, and I found the langidge that had
most cussing in it the best for the purpose. Guess
now, Esquimo is pretty good in that line."

Three days passed and it was time to move. It
was a dark, still, summer day ; the isles of the Strait
of Georgia lay in a wavelcss water, bearing record in
their Spanish names of that great dominion which
once stretched throughout one hundred degrees of
coast-line along the Pacific shore — all gone now,
from southmost Patagonia to here, where the rival
Britisher and Yankee squabble over northmost San
Juan.

And now the steamboat's course, coming through
the Cordova Channel, was turned towards the west,
and rounding the south-east point of Vancouver Island,
a grand panorama burst suddenly into sight — the Bay
of Victoria, the Strait of Juan de Fuca backed by the
snow-clad range of the Olympian mountains. The
clouds had vanished, the sun was bright overhead ;
the blue sea sparkled along the bay-indented shore of

108 ^ FAR OUT.

Vancouver, and the oak forest above the line of rocks
rippled in the full sheen of midsummer glory.

There may be spots ou the earth to which summer
comes in brighter dress and greater freshness than it
does to this south coast of Vancouver ; but these spots
must be difficult to find. It is not the hot summer of
more southern lands ; it is a summer in which the oak
and the honeysuckle play their parts; where the
young shoots of the fir, and the chrysalis-like husks
of the budding birch scatter balmy odours on the air ;
where the mornings and the evenings have in them the
crystal freshness of spring water, and the mid-day
sun is tempered by a soft breeze from the Pacific
rippling the waves along the blue Strait of Juan de
Fuca.

But in one particular Victoria excelled any other
spot in which the dog and the man had yet sojourned.
It was in its humming-birds. Numerous as butterflies
they fluttered round the honeysuckle-hung porches of
the wooden cottages, and far in the forest depth they
held summer holiday under the deeper-toned hum of
the colossal pine-trees.

It was the 26th of June when the two travellers set
out from the pleasant city of Victoria on their south-
ern way towards California. Midnight had gone over
the Bay of Victoria when the steamboat quitted her
moorings. When morning dawned she was steaming
into Puget Sound, that deep landlocked bay which
stretches so far into the north shore of Washington
territory. So numerous are the capes and promon-

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 109

tories of this sound, so deep the indentations of water
lying between them, that two thousand miles of coast
lie within that narrow entrance — two thousand miles
of shore, densely forested with pine-trees of colossal
size ; so deep the water that vessels lie broadside
touching the shore, lashed to the trunks of the great
pines. Above the tree-tops immense mountain peaks
lift aloft six thousand feet of snow that never melts.
Grandest of all. Mount Eanier stands a mighty
mountain block, fourteen thousand feet above the
sound level.

All day the little boat sped on its way, dodging in
and out of the intricate inlets, touching here and
there to land merchandise or to take on board wood
fuel, and whistling loud and long among the forest
isles and shores. Sometimes the sound opened out
into wide expanses of clear, deep water ; at other
times the channels were narrow, filled with strong
currents, and winding amid isles and shore ; but all
through the long summer day the traveller had cause
to marvel at the natural wealth of this strange ocean
inlet, and to think with bitter feelings of how a stroke
of an official pen had sufficed to rob England of this
fair birthright, and to write off under the name of
Oregon all this wealth of forest, sea, and mountain
from the dominion roll of England. "A country
never destined to be of any practical value" — thus
they had written of this territory, thus they had de-
scribed this land. What must not the empire be that
can afford to lose such realms and yet remain an

110 ' FAR OUT. : .-.■.''■'■■-,. '.^.^._

empire ! Perhaps that is the least annoying way of
looking at it. 4

After all, it is possible to measure greatness as
well by loss as by gain. Ordinary captains have
been judged by their victories : it was only a Napoleon
of whom it could be asked, " What could he not dare
with the Beresina and Leipsic behind him?" To-day
there are single trees growing on the shore of Puget's
Sound worth in England eight hundred pounds.

While the steamboat stopped at her ports of call
the travellers strolled on shore or watched the coming
and going of dogs and men. At a place called Seattle
a crowd gathered around the dog ; and one small boy,
believing that the strange animal was the herald of a
travelling menagerie, inquired eagerly when the whole
show was to arrive. Various surmises were again
expressed as to parentage and descent ; but a large
seafaring man put an end to the discussion by re-
marking that the animal "was quite a Eooshian
dawg," and that he (the sailor) had fallen in with
similar " dawgs " in Alaska, all of Eussian extraction.

The tide in the sound rises high and ebbs low. At
some of the stopping-places it was curious to watch
the antics of certain crows, whose livelihood was
gained from the rocks left bare by the low water.
Around the base of the wooden piles upon which the
landing-stages were built mussels thickly clustered ;
detaching these with their bills, the crows would
ascend some thirty or forty yards into the air, then
dropping the shell-fish on to the rock, they would

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. Ill

swoop after it to catch the fish detached by the fall
from the shattered shell.

It was dark when the boat reached Olympia, the
last and most southern port on Puget's Sound. Here
at the Pacific Hotel the travellers found board and rest
until the first streak of dawn called them again to the
road. This time it was coach again — coach without
the box seat for the man or the boot for the dog;
without any seat at all, in fact. All the places had
been taken, and nothing remained but the roof of the
vehicle for the accommodation of the pair ; so roof it
had to be. Another passenger, also relegated to the
roof, kindly lent a hand at the work of getting the
reluctant animal into position. An iron rail running
round the roof afforded means of lashing the dog at
two sides, and also offered the means of "holding on"
to the men. Fortunately the distance to Tenino was
only fifteen miles, and at Teinino the railway would
carry the passengers southwards on their roads.
Ascending a steep road by the side of the Cowlitz
River, at a point where a pretty waterfall had enabled
a speculator to erect a saw-mill at the expense of the
scenery, the coach entered a forest of enormous trees.
So huge were the trunks of these giants that it did
not pay to cut them down, save in close proximity to
water-carriage. The trees that had been felled by the
roadside still showed stumps eight and ten feet above
the ground, at which height a platform had been
erected in order to afford the woodman a lesser
distance to cut through.

112 FAR OUT.

This magnificent forest was succeeded by an ojjen
space, a prairie composed of innumerable little hil-
locks all of the same size and sliape. These mimic
mounds were covered with grass; but the spaces
between them showed stones and gravel oi^ the surface.
This plain was some miles in extent, and far as the
eye could reach to the left the cone-shaped mounds
were visible. What could their origin have been ?
The passenger on the roof was of opinion that the
" Ingines " had had something to say to them; but
many indications negatived the supposition that they
had been the work of man.

The gentleman on the roof beguiled the tedium of
the way with efforts to enlighten the man traveller on
the social and political aspect of the Pacific States.
On the question of Chinamen and Chinese labour he
was particularly explicit. " You'll see," he said, after
a forcible exposition of the wrongs inflicted on white
labour, and civilisation generally, by celestial competi-
tion, " you'll see the biggest mutinize agen them
Chinamen that ever you seed in your life." The
man-traveller made bold to ask this youthful repub-
lican if he was a native of this Pacific slope, whose
rights against Asiatics he was prepared so forcibly
to protect. " No," he answered. " I was born in
Vermont ; but father and mother come from Wolver-
hampton in the old country. Father was a wheel-
wright there."

So the wanderer will discover, all the earth over, the
most intolerant tyrant will invariably be found abroad

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 113

among the men who at home were loudest in their
assertion of the equality of all men.

Winding again through the forest, the coach soon
approached the neighbourhood of Tenino. Here stood
a strange object — a railway locomotive and a train of
carriages. From here to Kalama, a distance of sixty-
four miles, the iron horse would bear the travellers on
their way. Never before had the dog beheld anything
so formidable ; indeed, the jolting on the roof of the
coach had but ill-prepared his nervous system for the
successive shocks he was now to experience at the
hands of civilisation, and it was only by a liberal
administration of cold water that his composure was
somewhat restored.

Five hours by rail brought the travellers to the
banks of a large river. The mile or more that lay
between its banks was not space enough to hold the
vast volume of water rolling towards the west, and
all the alluvial valley on either side lay deep in floods.
Here was the Oregon of the old Spaniards, the
Columbia of to-day. A little more than one hundred
years from the present time it was still a race between
England and Spain for the dominion of North America.
That Spanish ships had fully explored the coast of
the Pacific as far as the northern end of what is now
called Vancouver's Island, no reasonable man can
to-day doubt ; but at that time it was convenient to
deny or to ignore such discoveries, and to send out
expeditions of rediscovery, whose work was to claim
a coast line or a river estuary long before known to

114 FAR OUT.

the followers of Columbus. Thus the Oregon River of
the Spanish geographers was lost sight of towards the
close of the eighteenth century, and brought again to
life in 1792 as the Columbia. This time, however, it
was a skipper sailing from Boston Bay who played
the part of rediscovery, and claimed for the Reimblic,
still in its teens, ** the great river of the West." It
would be easy to show how hollow was the ground
upon which the claim of the United States was
founded. The men whose names still live in the
rivers and mountains of the North Pacific slope,
Findlay, Frazer, Thompson, built their fur forts far
down this great river in the closing years of the
century, and were in actual occupation of Oregon ere
the pioneers of American enterprise in the west had
crossed the Missouri.

But all this has long passed from the sphere of
discovery, and the story of Oregon has gone into
the limbo of lost empires, better there to be left
buried. ■■.>,.;" ■'".; ,'':::<-::■■■..:■•;.: ^-'r:-: ■'•::■■ "

On, up the broad river to the junction of the
"Willamette, and thence along the latter stream to
the good city of Portland, the capital of the State of
Oregon. Built upon a broad level stretching from
the left bank of the Willamette, the city of Portland
stands second only to San Francisco in size and
importance among the cities of the Pacific slope.
From high ground, as yet only partially built over,
lying about a mile from the great river, a grand view
is to be seen. Beyond the town and the river, and

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 11 5

at the back of the wide Willamette Valley, the snowy
mass of Mount St. Helens rises twelve thousand feet
above a bright green forest; yet another of those
wondrous volcanic peaks set as sentinels along the
Pacific coast, beginning far away to the north at St.
Elias, and ending two hundred miles south of Portland
at glowing Shasta ; some still smouldering, their fires
but lately burnt low; others cold and silent; all, clad in
everlasting whiteness ; all, lifting their immense cones
from out of a vast sea of tree-tops. Over the valley of
the Columbia and the Willamette Mounts St. Helens
and Hood keep watch ; at their base lies many a fair
mile of country — meadow, copse, forest, and open
glade. A winter not too cold, a summer fresh and
bracing ; peaks like Switzerland, pastures like Somer-
set ; pines such as only Oregon can equal. Already
Portland, set amid all this wealth of nature, rushes
towards prosperity ; and yet it is of this region that
the infallible leader of the fourth estate in England
pronounced only thirty years ago the following sapient
opinion : " The Oregon Territory is really valueless
to England and to America. The only use of it to
America would be to make it an addition to terri-
tories already far too large for good government or
even for civilisation. The emigrants to Oregon must
pass through thousands of miles of unoccupied land,
with a soil and climate far better than they will find
on the shores of the Pacific. And when they get
there, what will be the social state of a few thousand
families scattered through a territory more than six

I 2

llfi FAR OUT.

times as largo as England and three thousand railos
from the seat of government ? They will mix with
the Indians, and sink into a degraded race of half-
caste barbarians. If she could obtain sovereignty
over the whole of the lands west of the Rocky Moun-
tains to-morrow, every wise American statesman
must wish that the next day they should sink into
the sea."

It was sunset when the two travellers wended their
homeward way from the ridge from whose summit a
single glance can read a bitter refutation to the
opinion above stated ; but the scent of white clover
blossom, from the town lots which had yet to be built
upon, was too sweet to permit even stupidity to be
irritating. It was Sunday evening, and many people
were abroad, in the streets. Here and there groups
of Chinese sat at open doorsteps, or stood chatting at
street comers. Much of the neatness and regularity
of the town, still more of the advanced state of civili-
sation in Oregon, had been due to this peaceful inva-
sion of the yellow-skinned Asiatic race. The level
roads, the wharves, the railways, the neatly finished
woodwork of doorways and window-frames, all had
been the fruits of the Chinaman's love of toil ; yet
was he hated here as elsewhere along this coast —
victimised, ill-treated, and oppressed by the modern
disciple of freedom, whose aspirations for equality
have reference only to a set of beings above him in
the social scale.

On the day previous to this a Chinese youth, who

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 117

had stolen an apple from a street stall, had received
imprisonment for twenty days for the offence. It
was not the mob alone who could play the tyrant.
In this matter the utter absence of any prejudice of
nationality on the part of the dog-traveller was very
noticeable. He showed every indication indeed
of cultivating friendly relations with the hated
foreigner whenever he encountered him in the street.
Did this spring from some long-forgotten time when
some bushy-tailed ancestor had dwelt in the wild
Yakoutsk waste, and had the;e known the Tartar
races whose sons to-day hold empire in Mongolian
realms ? Or was it because of the more practical but
less Darwinistic reason that every cook encountered
by this dog since his advent to civilisation had been a
Chinaman ? Science alone can decide.

Crossing the Willamette Eiver next morning, and
taking their places in a railway car, the travellers
continued their southern journey.

The line lay up the valley of Willamette. As the
morning drew towards mid-day, the clouds gathered
away into the mountains, and the broad country
lying at either side of the road spread out its corn
and fruit, its trees and flowers beneath the summer
sun. By orchards which drooped with fruit, by forests
whose flowering shrubs filled the underbush, through
wide, far-reaching green meadows, over prairies where
great herds of cattle stood, and troops of horses gal-
loped in a vain race against the steam-horse, they
held on through a long summer's day. Now and

118 FAR OUT.

again the line crossed some sparkling snow-fed river,
and oftentimes, at the end of some long vista of plain
or cultivated ground, a snow-clad peak of the Cascades
rose towering aloft— the single Mount Jefferson, the
triple-peaked Sisters, or nameless ridges whose pine-
clad sides and icy summits guarded this "happy
valley " of the Willamette.

Evening found the travellers at Eoseburg, the end
of the railway. Here a coach was to continue the
journey for three hundred miles, until the railway
system of the Sacramento valley would be reached at
Bedding. Before the door of a wooden building a
coach stood ready for the road. The express agent,
the driver, the clerk of the way-bill, and the numerous
other loafing functionaries who form such an impor-
tant feature in road transport in the Western States,
were present either inside the building or at its door ;
an inner room contained supper for the passengers,
who were duly admonished to look alive over the
melancholy meal. Meantime the loafing community
held debate among themselves upon the amount
which should be charged upon the dog's passage to
more southern lands. Various propositions were put
forth and negatived for charging half fare, full fare,
and no fare. At length the clerk of the way-bill
spoke with the decision natural to his high and im-
portant office. " Charge him as extra baggage," said
this sagacious functionary. The small hand-bag car-
ried by the man was now placed in the scale, and the
dog was induced to take his seat beside it, but no

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 110

sooner did the side on which he sat begin to swing to
the adjuHtraent of the weights than he was out on the
ground again. Finally, the matter was arranged to
the satiHtaction of all parties : the bag weighed twenty
pounds, the dog eighty ; as the passengers were
permitted to carry sixty pounds, forty was charged to
the dog, and eight dollars duly registered against
him. These matters having been settled, dog and
man took their places on the box seat, and at eight
o'clock on the evening of the 80th of June, the coach
rolled slowly away from the village of Roseburg.

Darkness came down on the hills of Southern
Oregon, and all the long night through the coach
jolted along a road of intolerable roughness. Every
twenty miles or so a stop was made to change horses,
or take in some scanty mail-bag. Dreary and drowsy
work it was, as the small hours were told off by the
stars rising above or sinking beneath the dim circle
of the hills. Day broke early ; then, in the misty
light, the coach stopped for breakfast. It was a
mockery after such a night. "To be well shaken
before taken " might avail for the medicine bottle ;
but the recipe was utterly futile when applied to the
bad coffee, the greasy meat, and the damp bread of
the Oregon wayside inn. Fain would the traveller
have stayed his course and lain down to rest his
aching bones and head ; but the inn looked hopelessly
uninviting, and the journey was resumed in the
chance of going farther and faring better.

As mid-day drew near the hope of finding rest and

» ■

120 FAR OL'T.

comfort became stronger. A place called Kock Point
was frequently named by the driver as being remark-
able for cleanliness and good lining. The scenery,
too, began to cliange ; a peculiar red tinge became
visible in the soil ; great trees stood by themselves at
intervals along the road ; the sky grew to a more
intense blue. At last the road passed a gorge between
hills, and came in sight of a river running towards
the west. " The Roguo River," said the driver.
"And yon," he continued, pointing with his whip to
a neat white house that stood on the left of the road,
" is Rock Point Hotel."

Had the traveller even been less sick and sore than
he was, he would still have welcomed the pleasant
aspect of the place. Two lofty stone-pines stood by
the roadside close to the house ; a clear river ran in
many curves through a valley in which patches of
ripest wheat were set amid green groves of maple and
madrono. Dark-leaved evergreen oaks giew by the
road, hanging thick with large bunches of mistletoe.
Here and there bright red bits of hill stood out amid
the green trees and golden corn ; over all the sun
was bright, the sky intensely blue.

A T Rock Point the ninn and the doR called a Imlt
for the day, and the coach rolled away on its
Houthern road, leaving the valley of the Rogue River
in i)erfect peace. After the sixteen hoiu's' jolting
which the travellers had undergone since quitting
Roseburg, the complete rest and unbroken quiet of
this lovely spot were gi*ateful to both man and beast.

Never was afternoon siesta more needed, never
was it more enjoyed, than on that bright Ist of July
when the tired man and the dozing dog idled away
the warm hours of the summer's day in the roadside
inn at Rock Point.

The western sun was beginning to get low on the
red and green hills when a knock at the bedroom door
caused the still sleepy travellers to start from their
recumbent attitudes. The door opened, and the head
of the hotel proprietor appeared.

"I ain't a man that bears any animosity agin
dawgs," he said, "but that dawg won't agree with
that carpet, and I'm bound to go for the carpet and
not for the dawg."

The reasoning was sound.

122 FAR OUT.

*' The dog," replied the traveller, "is an old and
valued friend ; he has not yet been denied admission
into his owner's room by any hotel proprietors in
Oregon, Washington, or British Columbia ; neverthe-
less, if you think he injures your furniture I shall
remove him, but his removal must be conditional
upon a safe j)lace, under lock and key, being provided
for him in your farm buildings when the night has
come." So much being said, the two travellers set
forth upon an evening ramble ere the sun had gone
down beneath the quiet hills.

It was one of those evenings, so perfect in colour
and temperature, that fortunately for man they come
but seldom to him in life, else the leaving of such a
world would be all too terrible to think of. Strolling
along the road the travellers stopped beneath the
shadows of some tall stone-pines that grew by the
wayside, in order to cast a fly upon the quiet stream
of conversation which two denizens of the valley were
maintaining. The theme was of Indian war. The
remnant of a tribe, called Modocs, numbering about
forty souls, had entrenched themselves amid lava
beds some eighty miles farther east, and from thence
had bidden defiance to some forty odd millions of
white inhabitants of the United States. The forty
odd millions in the United States had responded by
moving up several battalions of troops, some batteries
of artillery, and much military store. The fight had
lasted three months ; but the Modocs no longer held
their lava burrows, and the valley of Rogue River had

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 123

to deplore the loss (upon brisk commissariat demand)
of its farm produce, and exciting topics of couversa-
tion for its evening hours. As the traveller now stood
listening to this wayside dialogue, he gathered many
items of intelligence that threw light upon obscure
points of Indian war. He found, for instance, that
oats had advanced in price from thirty cents the
bushel to one dollar in the valley, and that so long as
these prices could be maintained war was rather a
popular pastime to the peaceful inhabitants of the
place.

As, however, this southern road will, in a day or
two, carry the travellers nearer to the scene of conflict,
the story of Modoc "war" must remain untold until
Shasta is in sight.

Back through the long summer twilight to the inn,
to find the preparations for the secure lodgment of
tbd dog fully completed. Fear had evidently been
the ruling passion that had dictated the arrange-
ments in question- — fear either that the dog would
break loose in the night and devour quantities of farm
produce, or else that he would turn the tide of his
ferocity upon the human inmates of the hotel. The
hotel-keeper, armed with two large keys, led the way
towards a log-built barn. The dog was securely
fastened to a beam, the two doors were locked, and
the keys handed over to the man, who received them
with a solemnity eminently impressive.

"He looks dangerous, he do," said the native of
Oregon to the man, as, casting a last look through

124 FAR OUT.

the bars, the chained animal was dimly observable
within.

" He has never been separated from me like this,"
gloomily replied the man. " I cannot answer for
what he may do during the night. Which side of the
house do you sleep?" he inquired, as if a thought had
just struck him.

"Ou the near side," answered the innkeeper. "Me
and my old woman are on the ground floor, next
the kitchen."

" It doesn't much matter," went on the man, " we
are sure to hear him if he is getting out."

In this assertion he only spoke a portion of the
truth. The dog didn't get out ; he remained in all
night, but far and near he was heard all the same.
It was a bright moonlight night, the air was very
fresh, the odours of the trees very sweet, but all the
same, Kogue Eiver valley echoed with unceasing
howls. The man's bedroom was situated at the side
farthest from the barn, so that the lamentations of the
captive fell muffled upon his sleepy ear. "What was
the efifect upon the inmates on the nearer side
morning alone could reveal.

Descending to breakfast next morning, the man
inquired of the " old woman " how her husband had
fared.

"He was tuck very bad in the night," she answered.
" We sent off the waggon to Jacksonville for the
doctor, but he hasn't come yet."

Under all these circumstances a continuation of

A JOURXEY or A DOG AND A MAN. 125

the journey became advisable, and a little after mid-
day the travellers quitted Eock Point for the Siskyou
and California.

It was a glowing July afternoon as the coach, now
rolling along a good gravel road, held its way up the
Rogue River valley to the city of Jacksonville.
Although built of wood, Jacksonville was more
addicted to masonry than any town the travellers
had yet reached. The Fom'th of July, now close at
hand, promised to call forth some remarkable demon-
strations from the masonic body of the city, as set
forth in a printed programme posted in the hotel
bar-room. According to this document, a national
procession was to form at nine a.m. on the day in
question. The grand Captain of the Host, a person of
the name of Babcock, the Grand Principal Sojourner^
a citizen named Shirtfill, the Bearer of Beauseant,
represented by a gentleman rejoicing in the name of
Biles, and the Guardian of the Temple, whose name
has not been recorded, were severally and collectively
to promote the interests of this remarkable " function "
in a manner consistent with the high and mysterious
titles borne by them in masonic life. Gentlemen
l)earing the names of Nolan, Nicl, Kasper Kubli, and
Nol Sachs were also to take a prominent part in the
demonstration as orator, reader, and marshals of the
day ; while two orders of red men, together with
thirty-eight young women representing the States of
the Union, were to proceed on vehicles, on horse, and
foot, to the rendezvous at By lie's Grove, there to

126 ' FAR OUT.

\ celebrate, in becoming spirit, the Ninety-seventh
Anniversary of American Independence.

Two days later, as the travellers were descending
the Sacramento valley, many wobegone Guardians
cf Temples, Bearers of Beauseant, Principal Sojour-
ners, and (Thief Citizens were to be seen in different
degrees of dilapidated sickliness along the stations of
the Oregon and Californian railroad ; but that was the
day after the glorious " Fourth," and to-day, at Jack-
sonville, the Kasper Kublis, and the Nol Sachs, and
the rest of the heroer^ have their drams and their
headaches all before them.

Speeding along the upper valley of the Rogue Eiver,
the coach drew near the Siskyou range as the summer
day began to grow dim. A long ascent wound up the
hillside. The night fell, a brilliant moon rose over
the scene, myriad scented things flung out perfume
on the soft night air, the red stems of the madrono
laurel glistened in the yellow light, the sheen of dew
on blossom sparkled along the roadside. At length
the crest was gained. Below, far stretching to the
south, lost in a dreamy haze of moonlight, lay
California the beautiful. The moon had risen high
in the blue heaven, and under her lustrous light
Shasta's cold white cone rose like a gigantic iceberg
above the dim pine sea beneath.

On through the night. At a wayside stable about
midnight there was a change of drivers, and there
mounted the box D. M. Cawley, of Yreka, Cal. He
was friendly with the man-traveller at once, he had

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 127

a ctozen kind words for the dog, he had a hundred
anecdotes to tell of road and State, of Indians and
settlers. The moon set, and darkness was on all the
land; there was just light enough to see that wild,
bleak hills lay all around, and that the coach road
had, at turns, steep slopes that dropped down into the
darkness on one side and rose up into the h'U upon
the other. At length a black quick-flowing river lay
across the road — it was the Klamath Kiver. The
coach and its four horses were ferried across upon a
crazy raft, swinging to a cable from bank to bank.

It was after crossing this river that Mr. Cawley
began a narrative of the " Modoc war," as the fight
made by some few starving Indian men and women
fifty miles higher up this Klamath Kiver was known
to the American people. It would not be easy to put
into the original words the story of that war as the
traveller here heard it from the lips of the stage-coach
driver. Enough to say that no man had better
opportunities of arriving at the truth than had this
driver, whose knowledge of the district and its people
— settler and savage — went back to times ere Cali-
fornian roads began.

They were the scant remnant of a once powerful
tribe. For generations deep beyond the coming of the
white man, their fathers had dwelt around the base
of Shasta — Shasta, the monarch mountain of the
United States. Over a sea of pine-trees which offer
a ceaseless melody around his feet, Shasta lifts his
lonely head into unclouded skies ; he stands alone, a

128 FAR OUT. • . '■

mighty, solitary mountain — not a crest amid countless
peaks, but a single colossal cone, whose base springs
from a circumference of sixty miles, whose summit
lifts the light of its everlasting whiteness, fourteen
thousand four hundred feet above the sea-level.

Shasta, or " the Whiteness," they had named him ;
for wherever their tents were pitched, through the
immense pine-trees, the sheen of his white splendour
fell upon them as the glory of their home-land.

At the north side of Shasta there was a poor and
arid region. The lava torrent had scorched from it
verdure, and the sage bush alone grew upon the salt-
encrusted soil. This region was given to the Modoc
tribe as their reserved ground. They at first occupied
a reserved tract on the Klamath Eiver, under treaty
with the United States; but incoming settlers hun-
gered for ibis land, and the Modocs were moved by
force into the wretched region just spoken of. It was
a poor and aiid waste. The people starved. The
streams were without fish, the sage bush sheltered no
deer, the Modocs .'dlled and ate their horses for food,
and then they starved.

One night they j assed the line of posts set to mark
the new reserve, and moved back into their old region
along the stream, which they had named the Lost
Elver. There were those amongst them who as boys
had roved the entire country within sight of Shasta's
lofty head, and found no mortal to dispute their right
to it, for from the Pacific the land was theirs ; and
now, when they had killed their horse i and their dogs

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 129

for food, the hungry band moved back into tlieir old
lost home, as the hunted hare will turn to seek her
birthplace with the last effort of her strength, to die
there.

Then came the usual Government officials of the
United States, of many different degrees ; and then,
from Yreka, Portland, and San Francisco, soldiers
and militia moved up to the Lost River.

Let us do these Government officials and United
States soldiers justice. They do not want wars with
the Indians. Like the petty savage wars of England,
the fight is too unequal, its real causes too apparent to
enlist the sympathies of the soldier. But behind wars
of this class lie contracts, large demands for produce
of land, increased expenditure and better prospect of
robbing the State — all of which considerations go far
to make war a popular pastime with the civilian and
colonial mind. So it was determined that if the
Modocs did not return to their barren reservation
there would be war. The Modocs would not give up
their old home, and the war began.

It would take long to tell how these few Modoc men
and women held the wild lava beds by the Klamath
lakes, from early spring to midsummer, against many
hundred regular soldiers. " When we have killed
each three white men," said the Modoc chief, " then
we will die satisfied."

They began by killing the United States' com-
missioners at a parley ; for from the first the contest,
to the Indians, was a hopeless one, and to kill and

130 FAK OUT.

be killed was all they wouglit for. Meantime, very
famous diBi)atclies emanated from the generals com-
manding the United States' troops. Day after day
accounts came of places stormed and Indians killed.
Announcements in the newspapers appeared in which
the strange names of the Modoc chiefs were seen in
large capitals. Scar-faced Charley, Curly-headed
Doctor, Boston Charley, Hooker Jim, and Bogus
Charley — names bestowed on these poor wretches by
the mingkd ruffianism and civilisation of America —
became prominent headings all over the States. Of
course the slaugl^ter among the Modocs was repoi-ted
as very great. On one occasion a vigorous cannonade
had resulted in the rtestruction of the Curly-headed
Doctor ; again, Steamboat Frank was disposed of by
a cavalry charge ; and finally, after a bombardment
of the lava beds of several hours' dm'ation, Bogus
Charley's hat was picked up — a fact which pointed to
the natural conclusion that the body of Bogus had
been utterly blown into imperceptible fragments.

But the crowning triumph of this Modoc war was
the fact of a new strategical phrase having arisen
from it.

One fine morning two companies of United States'
soldiers had advanced to storm some outlying position
held by the Indians. The Modocs opei.cd fire.
" The companies, thrown into confusion," wrnte the
general, "received orders to retire; they obeyed,
but failing to halt, &c., the field was abandoned to
the enemy." Failing to halt! the good old man-

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 131

(euvre of " running away " never appeared in garb so
delicate. To all future commanders in these warlike
days the phrase should prove an invaluable addition
to the dictionary of defeat. The Modoc war was over.
Two mountain batteries, two regiments of infantry,
many battalions of volunteers, had at length suc-
ceeded in cutting the Modocs off from water, and had
thus compelled their surrender through thirst. But
this had not been effected until four Modoc Indians
had been induced, by large promises, to desert their
comrades and reveal the hidden spring to the enemy.

Out of the lava beds, which they had held for three
months, in spite of overwhelming forces, there
marched fifteen men and forty-five women. The
prisoners were sent down to Fort Klamath in waggons,
bound hand and foot. This is what followed.

A company of Oregon volunteers waylaid one of
the waggons on the road, cut the traces, ordered the
small escort to alight, and deliberately shot the four
handcuffed Indians as they sat in the waggon. The
caitiffs who dared not face these wretcLod Modocs
free, thus butchered them, bound and helpless.

The Anglo-Saxon race has never been remarkable
for magnanimity towards a fallen foe. " Strike well
these English," said Duke William, on the morning of
Hastings, to his Normans ; " show no weakness to-
wards these English, for they will have no pity for
you. Neither the coward for running well, nor the
bold man for fighting well, will be better liked by the
EugUsh; nor will any be more spared on either

132 FAR OUT.

account." It has mattered little throurjii liiHtory
whether the foe was civilised or sava{];o, or man or
woman. The character given by Puke William has
been verified throu<j[hout succeedinf; af^ies. For the
two bravest women that ever stood in the path of our
conquest we had nothing to offer but the stake and
the infamy of shameful words. An English general
spurns with his foot the dead body of the only African
king who, whatever were his faults, was a soldier
every inch of him ; and three years ago a captive
Zulu chief, brought prisoner through Natal, is spat
ujion, bound and helpless as the Modocs were, by the
Anglo-Saxon colonist of the period. To return to the
Modoc story.

They hanged the chief and his few remaining com-
rades : they met their end bravely. The day before
the execution, Jack, the chief, was asked if he had
anything to say. " I have nothing to say. To-
morrow I am to die ; but already my Indian heart is
dead and cold, and all I ask is that Lizzie, my wife,
may be allowed to sit beside me."

He might die contented. The last Modocs went
from the shadow of Shasta ; but they had sent three
times the number of enemies into the deeper shade of
death.

A dawn full of weird lights, of many-hued bars of
clouds stretched horizontally along the eastern sky,
of white vapours clinging to stream courses over a
vast plain, and above the vapours sharp serrated
cones rise to view, and still high above the cones one

A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. l.'l.'i

grand mountain mass rears up into the pale green
sky. A complete change had taken place in tiie
character of the scenery and the land. The road lay
across a level plain, covered with sago hush. Num-
bers of long-eared rabbits were to he seen hopping in
and out of the low cover. In many places great heaps
of gravel were visible — traces of gold-miner's labour
in the days when first California was a magic name
to the gold-seeker. But the one centre of sight was
Shasta. Cold, white, and grand he rose to the south-
east, holding aloft to many a long mile of the Pacific
coast the signal of the sunrise.

At one hundred and one miles from Rock Point, a
distance covered in eighteen and a half hours, the
coach stopped for breakfast. The village was called
Butteville. A stream of clear cold water, fed from
Shasta's snow, ran by the little inn, and along it
oleanders clustered thickly. The travellers, tired by
the long night's journey, world fain have called here
another halt, for independently of fatigue and sleepi-
ness, at Butteville abided their good friend, D. M.
Cawley, of Yreka, Cal. But ere that worthy driver
had relinquished the reins to a successor, he had con-
fided to the man a piece of advice as to lodgment.

"The next stage," he said, "is Sisson's. It's the
coolest and best place on the line ; right afore it is
Shasta ; all around it is forest. Sisson will treat
you both well. Do ye know," went on the traveller's
friend, "that dawg has come it kind on me. I'd like
to know how that dawg got on in 'Frisco, I would ; and

I.*i4 FAK OUT.

if yo'd havo a spare minuto, anrl jnat drop a lino to
D. M. Cawlcy, Yreka, California, I'd lie glad to f,'ot it."

Some few miles fioutli of Buttevillo the road began
to ascend ; soon it entered a deep and lofty pine forest,
a forest differing entirely from the pine woods of
Oregon, Washington, or British Columbia. Colossal
trees stood at distances apart from each other, their
lower trunks bare of branches to a height sufficient to
allow a man on horseback to ride beneath ; their tops
tapering from one hundred and fifty to two hundred
feet above the ground ; their middle distance filled with
dusky-leaved branches, through which the summer
Bun could not penetrate, and amid which a ceaseless
murmur of soft winds sounded far away music night
and day.

Beneath this glorious forest there was no gloom.
The sandy soil showed bright amidst many a creeping
plant ; the morning sun shot down his rays here and
there between the lofty trees, and fell on the massive
trunks of dull red Douglass and darker-stemmed
" sugar " pine. Through openings to the left Shasta
was constantly visible.

It was yet two hours of mid-day when, amid a small
glade in this great forest, Sisson's Hotel was seen by
the roadside, standing full in front of Shasta, whose
snow-white crown and colossal bulk rose from endless
waves of tree-top.

A place of rest was Sisson's. Ice-cool water trickled
along its little garden ; from the gigantic pines soft
murmurs and sweet odours came, and, as the long

' A JOUHNEY OF A DOC, AXD A MAN. 1:{.')

Bimimor day Htolo on into tho west, Hiwh lijj;hts ptlowod
on SliiiHta's HplintiTC'd KhoulderH that the nmn-travcl-
lur, roiisinf^ himself from rest, looked out of tho little
window of hiw room and could not go to Hleep again.
The heat had h(!en great, hut it was eminently a
hearahle heat. The ground whereon Sinson's stooil
was three thousand seven hundred feet ahove sea-
level ; tho snow upon tho last four thousand feet of
Shasta's mass made cool, at least to the eye, the
clear hright atmosphere. Beneath the pines dark
shadows slowly moved with the changing sun.

It was a rare good time for the dog ; ho squatted in
the clear cold water-rills. He was an ohject of
solicitude on the part of Sisson ; but this feeling of
friendship was traceable to the proximity of another
large dog dwelling in the house of Sisson's rival, an
innkeeper close by, and it was perceivable that Sisson
regarded the newly arrived animal in the light of a
possible annihilator of the beast across the road.

Evening came; the sun went down. Shasta seemed
close at hand, every rock on his brown sides, each
fissure far up amid his snow stood out distinct amid
an atmosphere that had no trace of cloud or mist to
mar its intense clearness. Twilight came ; the sheen
of Shasta's snow still glowed in the purple light ; a
low wind swept the lofty pine-tops ; the hand of the
night was stirring he old music of the earth, and the
grand Californian k est was murmuring its melody
at the feet of Shasta. '

The snow that lies upon the crest of Shasta is m

13 G FAR OUT.

old as earth itself ; nor yet more j'outliful is that
forest mantle spread around the giant's feet.

Here, since time began, the pine-tops have bent
their lofty heads, the west wind has simg the Vesper
Hymn at sunset, and back through all the ages, ere
even the red man came, the crest of Shasta, wondrous
church-tower of God, has flung its sunrise glory
around six hundred miles of horizon.

THE YOSEMITE VALLEY.

T"^HEY have written much about it ; they liave
painted and photographed it many times. They
have made roads and bridle-paths to it, built hotels
and drinking saloons in it, brought the cosmopolite
cockney to it, excursioned to it, picnicked in it,
scraped names upon its rocks, levied tolls by its
waterfalls, sung "Hail! Columbia" beneath the
shadows of its precipices, swallowed "smashes" and
" slings " under its pine-trees ; outraged, desecrated,
and profaned it, but still it stands an unmatched
monument hewn by ice and fire from the very earth
itself.

So far as man civilised is concerned, its story has
been a short one. When the gold had all been taken
from the " placer " diggings of Tuolumne and Mariposa,
the miner began to turn the surface of the earth for
other gold than that nugget wealth he had previously
sought on bed-rock and in water-ledge. The yellow
wheaten harvest, the golden ripeness of the Indian
corn, began to colour the level expanses that spread
at the foot hills of the Sierra Nevada ; and as the
mining camps lessened amid the hills, the farmstead

138 FAR OUT.

and the stock ranche grew more numerous on the
lower land.

But, close by the edge of the foot-hills in Tuolumne
and Mariijosa, there occurred ever and anon certain
drawbacks to farmers' prosperity. Indians descended
from the sierras, and swept cattle and horses from
the ranches into the hills. When daylight revealed
these depredations a hot pursuit usually began.
Eagerly the trail was followed into the hills. Then,
higher up, through winding glens and along the
banks of torrents, into the sierras it led ; sometimes
a tired horse or a dying ox was overtaken, then the
trail led still deeper into the tangled fastnesses of the
mountains, until, in wild labyrinths of rock, precipice,
and forest, it invariably ended — no man could tell
where. In two or three days' time the party of
pursuit would emerge from the sierras with pro-
visions all exhausted, and with bruised or torn
limbs.

Still the depredations went on. At last a party of
farmers met together for a pursuit, and swore among
themselves to stick to the trail, wherever it led, until
their cattle had been recovered. They followed the
old line through the foot-hills, up the rugged glens
into the mountains. Tangled brake, steep precipices,
places of indescribable ruggedness were passed; the
trail seemed to lead everywhere at once. The place
was a deep gloomy ravine, at the bottom of which
a mountain torrent roared along an unseen course.
Following up the valley, the path became lost amid

THE YOSEMITE VALLEY. 139

gigantic boulders. Climbing w'lV «\<Tficulty the rock
sides of this valley, the pursuers four) a themselves on
a broken plateau, thickly forested. Wandering on, in
the hope of again reco . oring the lost trail, they came
all at once upon the edge of a vast depression. The
oldest mountain climber among them had never seen
such a sight.

Straight down beneath, how many thousand feet
no man could guess, lay a fair and lovely land. It
was not a valley. Its sides were perfectly steep,
presenting to the eye, at the opposite side, a wall-like
face of sheer dark-grey rock. It was not a chasm,
because the floor appeared as a perfect level, carpeted
with bright green grass, upon the surface of which
stately pine-trees grew at intervals. Glen, valley,
canon, cirque, chasm — it was none of these things.
It was a picture of a new and wondrous world, deep
sunken beneath a rim of stupendous rock.

In many curves, bending from the farther wall, and
lost to view under the nearer one on which the party
stood, but emerging again into sight near the centre
of the space, was seen a clear and beautiful river.

As the men crowded along the edge of the preci-
pice that inclosed this wonderful fairy region, fresh
marvels broke upon their sight. They saw many
cataracts falling into the valley from great heights ;
some rolling over the opposing edges in vast volumes
of water that broke into innumerable jets of spray, as
they descended into the mid distance beneath ; others
making successive bounds from basin to basin as they

140 FAR OUT.

pitched headlong down; others again chafing into
tiniest threads of vapour ere their long descent was
done.

But to the rough farmers there was a sight even
more wonderful than precipices or cataract or crj^stal
river. Below, in the green meadow, they beheld their
lost cattle and their stolen horses, appearing as specs
of life in the immense distance beneath, but still
clearly discernible in an atmosphere of intense clear-
ness. Into this fairy land there must be means of
entrance, this great rock wall must possess a door.
They set to work eagerly to look for it ; they followed
the edge, and frequently essayed a descent, but every-
where they met the same sheer cliff.

Night came. They encamped on the summit, and
with morning began again the work of exploration.
They followed water-courses that flowed towards the
precipice ; but these ended in perpendicular falls of
water that made the men dizzy to look down. A nother
night passed. Next day brought better fortune ;
they had now followed the precipice many miles along
its edge. Fresh marvels had opened beneath them as
they went, but in the absence of a means of entering
the valley its wonders of scenery were little thought
of. At last they reached a spot where the abrupt
rock gave place to a descent shelving enough to give
root and sustenance to a groAvth of pine-trees. Down
this shelving bank they managed to travel for about
a thousand feet ; then the scarped rock was again
met with. Descending through a kind of causeway

THE YOSEMITE VxVLLEY. 141

opening, cut by a water-course in this wall, they
reached again a less abrupt escarpment, and finally,
after many hours of excessive toil, found themselves
on the floor of the valley.

Not far from where they entered, a cascade of
immense height plunged in three great leaps down
the wall of rock. Days afterwards, when these men
had got back to the settlements, and were retailing to
their friends the marvellous region they had visited,
this cascade formed a chief topic of the story. " It
falls," said one of the explorers, "one thousand feet."
The neighbours shook their heads. One thousand
feet ! Impossible. Gauged since by actual measure-
ment, this waterfall has been found to be two thousand
six hundred feet in height. Perhaps this fact is as
good a method of estimating the real nature of the
Yosemite Valley as any other that can be stated.
What is called the " vulgar estimate " of height
or distance does not usually err on the side of
depreciation. Waves in storm are said to be moun-
tains high when they are only twenty feet, but this
mountain wall was only reckoned at a third of its real
height by the men who first gazed from beneath at
its edge, clear cut, against the sky of Caliiwrnia.

There was a farmer listening to this story who
thought to himself deeply over the marvels of the
place. "A waterfall," said he, "one thousand feet
from top to bottom ! Niagara is but one hundred and
sixty feet, and yet tens of thousands of visitors flock
to see it. I will go to the foot of the fall that is one

142 FAR OUT.

thousand foct high, and if I find there is such a thing,
I will build there a hotel and make a fortune."

He was true to his word. Opposite the great fall
of the Yosemite this farmer set his stakes and pitched
his tent ; and to-day, out of all the rest-houses,
hotels, inns, restaurants, and places of entertainment
for beast and man in the wonderful valley, that of
Farmer Hutchings holds its own.

But to return to the party of explorers. They found
their stolen cattle and horses resting quietly under the
shade of the lofty pine-trees, and chewing the cud of
contentment by the crystal waters of the serpentine
river whose banks were deep in grass and flowers.
They found, too, some scattered bands of red men,
who offered but a feeble resistance to the incomers,
preferring to seek safety in the steep rocks of unnum-
bered " kloofs " and caverns that fringed the water-
falls, and lay piled beneath the precipices.

And thus, after long centuries of seclusion, this
most wonderful secret sj)ot of nature was revealed to
the eyes of the tame man. Ever since the earth
began, the sun and the eaglehad gazed into its great
depths. The roving red man had pitched his lodge in
its hidden meadows ; the grizzly had made it his
fa.vourite home ; but henceforth all was to be changed.
The loafer, the lying guide, the man of the mint
julep, the man with the camera obscura, the man
with the unwashed hands and the diamond breast-
pin, the English tourist in anxious uncertainty as to
the identity of some particular waterfall, the man

THE yosemitj: valley. 143

going to Japan, the man with the paper-collar, the
man who has hcen in the Holy Land, the male and
female tourist of every degree — all are to eat, sleep,
gallop, gossip, and guzzle in it.

The old Indian names of rock and waterfall are to
give place to " Caps of Liberty," " Bridal Veils," and
" lioyal Arches," and through the murmur of waters,
and within the roar of cataracts, petroleum, shoddy,
and Saratoga will ride, rampant and unabashed.
And yet they cannot spoil it. It defies even the united
(ifibrts of the British traveller and the Yankee tourist.
Man in the Yosemite is no bigger than an infant in
St. Peter's at Rome. He can crawl over the pavement,
but the walls and the dome are beyond his reach.

All day long we have bpen working on into the
range of the Sierra Nevada from the railway station at
Merced. The coach-load is a big one, and fairly repre-
sents Californian society — a Britisher who is on his
way round the world, evidently put out at not finding
that his Club has been sent on just one day ahead of
him ; another Englishman, who is on his way from
Japan, and is taking copious notes with a view to tlie
publication of a work entitled " From Nangasaki to
Niagara;" a Frenchman who is somewhat disheartened
at discovering that his much-prized English is per-
fectly useless to convey or receive tangible thought in
America; two Chinamen, silent, reserved, but good-
humoured ; an Irish-American, long resident in
Asia. ^; '. . ■: ■

144 FAR OUT.

With many twists and bends the road chmhs the
wooded foot-hills, and as the sunset hour draws near
the height attained can be measured by the vast
range of vision backwards over the San Joaquin Val-
ley, and in the cool breeze that comes rippling along
the glen-sides of the leafy foot-hills. It grows dusk
as we reach the last stage for the day, a long, low,
wooden building, with tiny bedrooms opening off a
verandah running the entire length of the house ;
clean, cool beds in the little rooms, and cold water to
wash away the hot, red dust of the San Joaquin, that
enemy that hung so persistently upon our fiying
traces all through the long summer day.

When the evening meal is over the passengers
group together in the verandah, and conversation be-
comes brisk. The Irish American has had wide
experience. He has been American consul at Zanzi-
bar, American ambassador at Pekin ; he has seen
sometliing of life in most of the States of the Union,
and the years have left him many a story to tell the
travellers to-night.

The Chinese question, that burning one along the
Pacific coast, is foremost on the list. " You treat the
Chinese shamefully," says a traveller. " When I was
in San Francisco a small boy belonging to the hotel
used to look after my clothes and wait upon me. All
one Sunday he was absent ; late at night he presented
himself before me. ' You have been away ? ' I said
to him. ' Yes,' he replied, ' I had a bully day to-day.
I first went to see the general buried ; then I went to

THE YOSEMITE VALLEY. 145

the Chinese town, and threw bricks at the Chinamen
all the afternoon.' ' Did not the police stop you ?'
I asked in my simplicity. ' The police stop me ! '
replied the juvenile, in a tone of half-contemptuous
pity for my ignorance. ' I guess they'd heave bricks
at the Yellow-skins as soon as I would.' And yet,"
continued the traveller, " your public men dare not
make a stand against this monstrous tyranny of the
mob. One evening I was at the house of a profes-
sional gentleman in San Francisco. I spoke of
Chinese emigration. His drawing-room door stood
open. Eising from his chair, he closed the door
carefully, and said to me, ' I tell you what it is, sir :
we better-class people could not live here at all if it
were not for these poor Chinamen they so bitterly
revile.' "

The Irish American follows. " Our people," he
says, '* dislike the Chinese for other reasons besides
their interference with the labour market. They take
our money, but they do not become Americans ; they
have nothing in common with us ; they refuse our
civilisation and reject our institutions."

"In other words," replies the first speaker, "you
hate them because they are the only race under the
sun who utterly triumph over you. The Spaniard
and the Swede, the Frank and the Teuton, the Celt
and the Saxon, all merge their national types into
your social and political systems ; even the Negro
becomes a Yankee ; the Red Indians disappear wholly
before you ; but this Asiatic, older than any, retains

146 FAR Ol'T.

unchanf;p<l the essence of his mitional life. Tie defies
your powca- of assimilation, he uses you for his own
ends ; ho builds roads, l)rid<?es, railways, wharves,
but you cannot induce liini to go this 'ticket* or
that ' tick(!t ' at your State elections. Greedy and
Grant are unknown quantities to him ; nevertheless
he knows the ditYeronoo Ixitween a p;reenl)ack and a
' shin-plaster,' and can beat you at a ^auie of euchro
or ' lives up.' Ho can live in comfort where you
would die in misery. He takes your gold and gives you
labour, but nothing more ; in his secret heart ho
despises you. His heart and soul long for his own
land again ; and if in life he is not to see it, in death
he is still to rest there. He is, in fine, the one
human unit who utterly defies you, and you hate him
because he is so."

Near before had such a view of the hated China-
man been put before the mental gaze of an American.
It was positively appalling in its novel audacity. The
Frenchmen were delighted.

When the American had retired for the night one
of the Frenchmen said — " Is it not curious — ho is the
first American whose English wo can fully under-
stand ? " " Ah, yes," replied the traveller, " he is an
Irishman, and he has lived in China for many years."
The explanation was accepted.

Next morning the coach carried its load deeper into
the mountains, and before mid-day reached another
resting point seven thousand feet above the sea-level.
Here the coach stopped, ponies were in waiting, and

THE YOSEMITE VALLEY. 147

those of the passengerfl who wiHhod to visit the " hifj;
trees " that tlay set out for a further six miles through
the forest.

Here, at an elevation varying hetween six and nine
thousand feet, this hoary monaieh of the great forest
has sat throned through thousands of years.

This Californian forest reaches here its most magni-
ficent proportions; not only are the " hig trees"
giants themselves, hut far and near other pines almost
as gigantic shadow the rolling sides of these beautiful
Sierras; high above, between the far-reaching tree-
tops, glimpses of bluest sky are seen. On the ground
the horses' knees brush away the blossoms of the
azaleas that cluster thickly along the pathway. There
is no dust here, neither is there gloom ; all is fresh-
ness, sense of health, sense of the ever-recurring life
of nature.

Under yon hoary giant that has stood since Rome
was founded grows some tender fern of last week's
shower — blooms some bright Uower whose life is but
a summer.

On, beneath the great trees, the ponies amble in
single file, and at last there is seen, a little way ahead,
a dark russet tree-trunk, of girth surpassing iinything
we have yet come to. Assuredly a big tree, but is it
one of the " big trees " ? So man}' giants have stood
along the pathway that we hesitate ere we call out
to those who follow, " Here they are." Yes, it is the
first of the big trees, and others follow at short
intervals. Still it is difiicult to take in all at once

L 2

148 v\n OUT.

the roal vastncss of those groat rod trec-trunkH. It is
only when we come to one fallen giant, and, dis-
mounting, go up his side hy a ladder, and walk the
broad pathway of his upper surface, along a space
wide enough for four men to walk abreast upon, that
wo realise the true nature of those gigantic pines.
The "Fallon Monarch," they have named him. Almost
every big tree has now its title — not always so apt as
in the case of this prostrate giant. The political
heroes of the Democratic or Ropublicpn parties in the
Pacific slope, as well as the wider-known celebrities
of the central government at Washington, have given
names to these grand old trees, names terribly dis-
cordant with the scone, liufus B. Crooks appears
upon a brass plate on one tree; a little farther on,
Colonel S. P. B. Scott is cut in a marble tablet hung
against another; then President Grant, Longfellow,
Stanton, and Mrs. Stanton meet the eye ; the name of
Cobb appears upon a seventh tree, and finally George
Washington crowns the lot. We pass them all, and
reach at last a wonderfully old tree — he bears the
name of " Grizzly Giant." The guide tells us that
he is two hundred and fifty feet in height ; but that is
only half what he must once have been, for his head
and shoulders are gone, and no trace of them remains
upon the surrounding ground. At a height of ninety
feet above the ground there is a single branch which
is eighteen feet in circumference ; the tree itself,
measured at two feet above the ground, is ninety feet
around it. There are lumps and knobs encrusted

TlIK YUSEMITE VALLKV. 141)

upon its bark as largo as Kood-sizod trees eacli of
tliem. How pleasant it would be if tlio nuiii who is
bound for Japan would proceed there, if the man
goinj^ round the world would continue his circuni-
exploration, if the guide and the rest of them would
simply go away and leave us here alone to camp under
this old giant, as we used to camp far away in the
frozen North ! Then w - might look at him all to
ourselves ; then, perhaps, as the starlight was stealing
over the Sierras, and huge trunks were growing dim
in the lessening light, he, this wonder, might whisper
forth his vast unutterable music ; but now the trail of
the tourist is over it all, the chicken-bone of yester-
day's picnic lies amid the cones that hold the seeds of
thirty centuries, and Time, in his thousands of years,
as an American writer has put it, " looking do^^•n
from the summit of this tree," is annihilated by the
glance which the aforesaid tourist casts back into the
tree-top.

From the foot of the Grizzly Giant we wander off
to other big trees set along our return pathway.
There is Pluto's Chimney, a vast ruined trunk, within
the hollows of which a rider can turn his horse with-
out touching the wood that is around him on every
side, save the archway through which he entered ;
and there are many other old veterans more or less
desecrated by that terrible civiliser, the Anglo-Saxon
Yankee ; for, be it ever remembered, that the highest
extreme of American snobbishness is but the Anglo-
Saxon vulgarity run to seed, precisely as the extreme

150 FAR OUT.

of British solidity and perseverance is found in
the matchless energy and restless sharpness of the
Yankee.

To cut here on this big tree the name of Rufus
B. Crooks, in marble, is but the highest development
of that cockney instinct which induces John Jones to
carve his name on a bench in Richmond Park. If
English travellers in America would but realise the
great fact that America is only a semi-tropic England,
minus the Norman Conquest, the germs of many
curious fcxpresnions and apparently singular customs
might be looked for nearer home.

Back to the comfortable wooden hotel for food and
rest, and away again on pony-back early next morning
for the Y >semite Valley. Three hours' easy riding
carries us to another wooden shanty, where food
awaits man and beast. All around is pine forest,
but no dense, gloomy labyrinthine wood. Forest of
stately trees growing at intervals, forest of brooks
and streams, where water fills deep pools amid rocks
and flashes over grey boulders of granite, and catches
sunbeams that come slanting amid pine-tops ; forest of
spicy odours, of sweet scent, of the freshness of Sum-
mer Sierra, eight thousand feet above the sea- level.

But, as we ride along in the early summer after-
noon through this undulating forest, there suddenly
bursts upon us a sight unlike anything we have ever
seen, unlike anything we are ever likely to see again
until fate turns our steps towards the Valley of the
Yosemite. ■"/'-■ :-^;r'-:- ' '•::'-:^'' ■.■ ^:;v

THE YOSEMITE VALLEY. 151

If the ground had opened suddenly before our
ponies' heads the change could not have been more
abrupt. All at once the trees in front vanish, the
earth dips down into an abyss, and we find ourselves
in a blaze of noonday light, group* \ upon a bare rock,
which, projecting out into space, has beneath it at
one sweep of the eye the whole Yosemite. The
Americans have named the rock Inspiration Point.
It is an unfortunate title ; the Rock of Silence would
be a fitter name for it. The inspiration that prompts
the reiterated utterance of "Oh, how beautiful!"
" Oh, ain't it elegant ! " " Did you ever ? " " Ain't
it romantic, now ? " is not exactly the form of inspira-
tion here needed ; but it is, nevertheless, the one the
wanderer wall most likely discover among his inspired
fellow-travellers, if he ventures to enter this valley in
the company of his fellow-beings.

It is not easy to get nowadays to any of the beauti-
ful spots of the civilised earth alone. In America,
wherever the steamboat plies on the river, or the
deep whistle of the iron-horse is heard, there the
traveller has to take his scenery as he does his dinner
— in company. Fortunately, once inside the magic
circle of the rock wall of the Yosemite, one is free to
wander alone through its countless aisles. This vast
cathedral has, in fact, innumerable side chapels and
cloisters, through which one can escape from the
particular group or body of tourists to which a cruel
fate, in the shape of a hotel captain or director of
tourists, has consigned him.

152 FAR OUT.

But to return +o Inspiration Point. Standing on
the rock, and looking towards the north-east, the
traveller, ordinary or inspired, sees as follows : A
deep chasm or rent-like hollow, running about eleven
miles amid nearly perpendicular mountains. Eight
in front, looking across this chasm, there stands a
mighty rock, a single front of solid granite, Buiooth
almost to polish. The top of this rock lies nearly level
with the top of the rock on which he stands, the base
rests amid green grass and dark pines far away below ;
from base to summit is three thousand one hundred
feet. This is the " Tutuckauuba," or " Chief of the
Valley" of the Indians, the " Capitan " of the white
man. But measurements and names are useless to
convey to the mind any fixed conception of this scene.
The countless rocks that rise around the green cool-
looking vale beneath have about them a strange
aspect of solidity which no other mountains that we
know of possess ; they are rentless, jointless, un-
splintered. Wherever ruin has come to them it has
been in earthquake shape, cleaving at one single
stroke some mighty cliff asunder, as a knife might
sever an apple in twain, but leaving the sundered por-
tions intact and unbroken. Looking up along the line
of the southern rim, the great Half Dome is seen. Six
thousand feet he towers above the valley, ten thousand
above the sea. Its bald crown is as smooth as a
skull, save for one solitary oak-tree, which has never
yet been reached by man : but some vast shock has
cut down the frontlet sheer into the valley, and,

THE YOSEMITE VALLEY. 153

steepest among all the steep sides of the Yosemite is
the smooth face of this seamless rock. The effect of
this entirety of rock, this smooth-polished surface of
mountain, is striking in the extreme. It gives to
these precipices a sense of greatness heyond even
their own vast proportions ; they are not, in fact,
mountains, they are single rocks. El Capitan is but
three thousand one hundred feet, but it is three
thousand one hundred feet of solid single rock.
The "Ma-tu" of the Indians, "Cap of Liberty" of
the Americans, is another of these wonderful rocks ;
four thousand six hundred feet he rises sheer from
the Nevada Fall, smooth, seamless, and glistening.

But it is time to begin our descent into the valley.
It is a continuous zigzag. The ponies know it well ;
it looks nasty in scores of places, but the sure-footed
beasts go steadily down. The descent is so steep
that it takes less time to accomplish it than we could
have supposed when looking at the valley from
above.

We are on the level ground again, and push out
from the base of the cliff into the more open meadow-
land.

The evening is coming on. We hurry along a level,
sandy track; around us are pine-trees, flo^.^rs, and
ever-recurring vistas of water, clear, green, sparkling ;
a noise of falling wsAer fills the air ; the sunlight is
streaming across the valley high above our head.
We are in the shadow a^, we ride ; but it is not sun
or shadow, stream or waterfall, pine-tree or azalea-

154 FAR OUT.

blossom that we care to look at : it is the rocks.
They rapt our gaze when we saw them from above,
They do so ten times more strongly now — Cathedral,
Sentinel, Three Brothers, El Capitan, Domes, Eam-
parts, call them what you will, they rise around us
clear cut against the blue Californian sky, filling with
the mystery of their grandeur the earth and heaven.

But it is not to its rocks that the Yosemite owes
its greatest beauty. When that first party of explora-
tion returned to tell the settlers in Mariposa of the
wonderftil valley which they had discovered, they spoke
of a waterfall having a height of one thousand feet.
It had in reality a height of two thousand six
hundred and thirty-four feet, and yet that fall was
only one among many. There are but few spots in
the entire valley from which the eye cannot discern
tho sheen of water falling perpendicularly great dis-
tances, none in which the ear does not catch the roar
or the murmur of cataract or rill. Go and look at
the Bridal Veil (Pohono of the Indians) : nine hundred
and forty feet it casts its waters from a smooth ledge
into a bouquet of pine-tops. " Spirit of the Evil
Wind " the red men called it ; for when its roar filled
the lower valley the hot wind of the plains was blow-
ing into the valley.

Go again to the Vernal, the Piwyack, or Wild
W^ater of the Indians : you forget the Pohono in the
newer loveliness of this broad sheet of snow, which in
most exquisite curve drops three hundred and fifty
feet. Then ride on higher up again : all at on?e you

THE YOSEMITE VALLEY. 155

are face to face with the Nevada Fall. It is seven
hundred feet. Close beside it, steei^ as the face of a
wall, there rises up a sin jolid rock which is three
thousand eif^ht hundred leet above the edge of the fall ;
the Caj) of Liberty it is called. (Jan we put before the
reader even a faint idea of this scene ? From a sheer,
clean, seamless rock, seven hundred feet above the spec-
tator's head, a great body of water leaps out into space.
Instantly it has taken the spring, innumerable bouquets
of white lilies, jets of snowlike water, cast themselves
forward from the mass, lengthening out into rockets of
snow as they quicken their descent. At the left edge
of the fall the rock is continued on more than three
thousand feet into the sky. Bear in mind that this
rock is not a mountain receding at even a steep angle
from its base. It looks as directly over the foot of the
fall as the cross of St. Paul's is over the pavement of
the churchyard.

If the spectator feels inclined to doubt the narrow-
ness of the base upon which this enormous rock
stands, he has only to look around him to see a tan-
gible proof of its closeness to him. Therj is a
wooden shanty or rest-house standing not far from
the foot of the fall. Some few years since a slight
tremor shook the towering rock, and massive splinters
fell crashing among the pine-toj)s. One went like a
thunderbolt clean through the wooden house : the
others are to be seen lying thickly about.

Bend back your head to the full limits of xhe neck
and look up at the Cap. It is very far above; a

156 TAR OUT.

cloud sails down from the blue sky, touches it, clings
a moment to it, and then trails away into space ;
there is not a trace of mist to hide one paiiicle of the
rock, the sunlight falls full upon it, and you mark
many whitish specks far away near the summit.
What are they ? They are the spots from whence the
earthquake cast its bolts. Thousands of tons of rock
have come down from these white specks. The Rock
Cap of Liberty has shown the earthquake lurking
beneath it, and the tourist of the time has been almost
as astonished as some idlers of the earth when, from
beneath the Phrygian cap, the human earthquake
called Revolution has thundered amid their ranks.

One item regarding the Nevada Fall deserves to be
recorded. Some years back there stood on the very
lip of the fall a single rock, which divided the water as
it rolled over the edge into two portions ; one con-
tained by far the greater volume of water, the other
was but a tiny stream which joined the main fall ere
half the long descent was done. The single dark rock
thus hanging, as it were, on the edge of the abyss,
added not a little to the great beauty of the scene.
But such was not the opinion of the State Commis-
sioners who preside over the destinies of this valley,
so long watched over by the eagles and by the sun. To
these worthy men this single rock offered a chance
not to be neglected of improving nature. Will it be
credited that masons were engaged, a scaflfolding was
stretched over the smaller channel to the rock, a shaft
was bored in it, dynamite did the rest ; and in the

THE YOSEMITE VALLEY. 157

special accounts of the State of California there
appeared in the charges for maintaining the Yosemite
the following item, " To repairing the Nevada Fall."

Thinking of all these things, as here we stand at
the foot of the "repaimd" fall; looking at the re-
pairer in the full tide of his holiday offensiveness, and
then glancing aloft at the giim giant Cap, set high
ahove our world, one feels inclined to say, " Some day
thy thunderbolts will avenge the outrage."

AFGHANISTAN AND THE AFGHANS.

TXTEST of tlie quivering plains of the middle Indus,
where the five rivers of the Punjaul) meet in
one common channel, there is seen a great mountain
range, whose peaks prolong a broken outline along tJie
horizon far into the north and into the south. When
the sun sinks behind this mountain, in the days pre-
ceding the beginning of the cool season, masses of
fantastic-shaped clouds are frequently seen piled above
and beyond the loftiest peaks of the range, as though
they reflected in the heavens a sea of billowy mountain
set beneath them upon the earth. Yet the most fan-
tastic images built by the evening vapours in the
high atmosphere beyond the Sulimani range are not
more rugged in outline, or more singularly interwoven
in mass and form, than are the stern features of the
land that lies beneath them. In fact, this range of
the Sulimani marks one of the most abrupt transitions
from level plain to rugged mountain that the suiface
of the globe presents to us — India, the land of plains,
upon one side ; Afghanistan, the realm of mountains,
on the other.

AFGHANISTAN. 159

Amid the confused mass of mountains extending
from the edge of the Indus valley to the deserts of
Khorassan and the valley of Oxus, it is no easy
task to follow out even the simple physical law which
makes the snow-fed rivulet seek the ocean. With the
exception of the small stream of the Kurum, the
great range of the Sulimani sends forth no river, large
or small, to find the ocean. Roughly speaking, what
Switzerland is to Europe, Afghanistan is to Asia; with
this difference, however, that more than half the
valleys of the latter country are of the same altitude
as the Engadine, that lakes are almost unknown, and
that the snow-fall is lighter. Time has wrought but
little change in the lines of commmiication through
this mass of mountains. As they existed in the days
of Alexander the Great, and Mahomed of Ghizni, so
are they to-day — rough, stony tracks, frequently fol-
lowing the beds of torrents, crossing mountain passes
at high altitudes, passing beneath the shadows of
stupendous precipices, or piercing desert wastes girt
round with gloomy hills. Yet the broad features of
their course and distance are easy to comprehend. If
we imagine a huge capital letter H, we shall have a
fair idea of the general plan of the two great high-
roads and the connecting cross-road that have existed
in Afghanistan since the earliest time. Place at the
top of the left-hand line of the letter the city of
Herat, at the base of the same line the city of Shika-
poor ; at the top of the right line the city of Balkh,
at the base the city of Peshawar ; put Kandahar, at

IGO FAR OUT.

the point where the central connectinf? line intersects
the left arm ; place the fortress of Ghizni in the centre
of this connecting line, and let Cabnl mark its point
of intersection with the right-hand lint of the letter,
and a rough idea of the main roads of Afghanistan,
and of the position of the chief towns on the frontier
and within the country, will bo formed. The distances,
liowever, between these points are great ; the left-hand
line is seven hundred miles, the right hand five
hundred and sixty, the centre three hundred and
twenty. Between these long lines all is mountain,
savage solitude, gloomy valley, and rock-bound fast-
ness. There are, it is true, other routes through the
coimtry besides those above mentioned, and there is a
line by the valley of the Kurum, through the Sulimani
range, but the practicability of all of these routes for
the passage of troops has yet to be proved feasible.

Essentially a wild, stern land, a land filled with the
shadows of dark mountains, echoing with the roar of
tempest through impending passes ; a land to which
the changing seasons carry all the vast variety
that lies between the snow-flake and the almond blos-
som ; a land loved by its people through every vicissi-
tude of its history, and clung to with a desperate
tenacity which now dates back through one thousand
years of recorded time. Of this people we shall say
something.

For ages, stretching back into most remote tradi-
tions, a wild race has made its home in this lofty land.
Greek conquest, Tartar horde, cloud of Khc issan

AFGIIANISTAX. 161

liorsomen have swept by turns tlirouRh those arid
hills. Ail the wild spirits of two thousand years of
Asiatic conquest have passed and repassed amid those
stony ^lens and f^loomy valleys, stamping each in
turn upon the iierce Highland clans some quality of
freedom, some faculty of lighting power. And ever
as the tides of war and conquest ebbed and flowed
around the lofty sliores of those giant mountains,
there was left, stranded in glen or fastness, some
waif or stray of all that wild Toorkman torrent, which
rolled its farthest limits to the walls of Vieima. Here,
in these hills, Islam early built for itself one of its
most redoubtable strongholds. About ninety years
before William of Normandy invaded England, a re-
nowned conqueror built himself a city and fortress
upon a gi'oup of steep scarped rocks, set eight thousand
feet above ocean-level. From here he spread his
empire until it touched the Caspian upon one side and
reached the Indian Ocean on the other. Amid the
swift-recurring revolutions of Central Asia the wide
dominion of Mahomed of Ghizni soon fell to pieces ;
Seljuk and Toorkman, Persian and Moghul swejjt by
to transient empii'e and to final ruin ; but, when the
torrent had passed, these Afghan races — wild shep-
herds, hardy husbandmen, and reckless warriors —
again sprang to independent life, and held their
mountain homes on the old tenure of clanship :
" content," as their proverb runs, "with discord, war,
and bloodshed, but never content with a master."
Fierce, fanatical, and revengeful, loving gold witli

1G2 FAR OUT.

passionate rapacity, hospitable to strangers and to
the poor, untamable to tyrants, the Afghans are to-
day as they have been for a thousand years, stained
by many crimes, but distinguished above all nations
and peoples by a love of freedom and of country as
fierce and lofty as the mountains that surround them.
And thus through time Afghan history has ever been
the same. Often overrun, but never conquered, the
race which Mahomed of Ghizni led forth to conquest
through the four great gateways of Afghanistan
has letainfid through every varying phase of nine
hundred years of strife the characteristics of its
origin. Nay, farther off still, beyond every fragment
of authentic history, hidden away in most remote
antiquity, a glimpse comes to us of the strange
nature of these mountaineers. It was among these
savage solitudes that the Greeks placed the Titan
whose indomitable will Jove himself could not sub-
due. Here on one of the icy crags of Bacida,
Prometheus lay bound for ages, and still, where the
great range of the Hindoo Koosh sinks down to meet
the valley of the Oxus, a vast mountain cavern is
called in Sanscrit lore the Cave of Prometheus,

So much for the rapt ; let us now look upon the
later and present aspect of this eyrie and its eagles.
About the year 1824, a young Afghan chief, named
Dost Mahomed Klian, held possession of Ghizni and
its surrounding fastness. The Dooranee kingdom
was a prey to civil strife ; the chiefs of Cabul
were in open revolt against UUah Khan ; a dozen

AFGHANISTAN. 163

different leaders strove for pre-eminence in Kanda-
har, Herat, and Cabul, and each, gathering around
him some portion of the roving spirits of the
land, carried devastating war from Herat to Jellalabad.
One day a caravan passing from Bokhara to India
encamped beneath the walls of Ghizni. The caravan
was reported to be rich in gold. That metal was
scarce in the coffers of Dost Mahomed, in the rock
fortress above. Wliy not replenish the exliausted
treasury from the treasure-bags of the passing mer-
chants ? The question was eagerly asked in the citadel
from whose battlements the fighting followers of the
young chief looked doAvn upon the travellers' camp.
It was not proposed to take the money by force of
arms ; to borrow was the expression used on the occa-
sion. So the word "to horse" was given, and the
Dost and his armed train sallied out from the citadel
to draw a bill at sight upon the travellers beneath.
Suddenly, as the armed band rode down the rocky
way, the leader reined in his charger, and turning to
his followers he said, " Brothers, what are we going to
do ? God knows whether these poor merchants will
ever receive payment of the gold we are about to take
from them as a loan. But what are we to do with the
money when we get it ? Shall we buy dominion with
the plur - T of the unfortunate? God forbid ! Victory
is of God, and He conferreth glory and power upon
those whom H*^ -^nll cherish. If so, it is better that
we pass by this temptation of the devil, and wait for
what heaven has to send us. Patience, though a

M 2

164 FAR OUT.

bitter plant, produces sweet fruit." Having spoken,
he turned his horse's head and passed back towards
the citadel. It was the afternoon hour of quiet. On
an eminence by the roadside he alighted. Beneath
for many a mile stretched a long valley, and at times
the eye could catch the dry sand windings of the
track to Cabul. As the Dost and his people looked
over the scene, they marked the figure of a solitary
horseman approaching Ghizni. He proved to be the
bearer of strange tidings. There had been a revolution
at the capital, and this solitary messenger carried an
offer to Dost Mahomed of the sovereignty of Cabul.
Dost Mahomed Khan bent his head in prayer. " God
is great," he cried. " Behold how dominion is His
gift. Blessed be the light of His name ! Mount and
away to Cabul ! "

Ten years passed away. They were years of peace
and quietude in Afghanistan such as the land had
long been a stranger to. The wild roving chieftain
developed traits of character little di-eamt of by the
turbulent factions whose voices had given him power.
This m<. untain land, which for thirty years had known
but little of the restraints of law, became the only
state in Central Asia where the strong arm of
authority kept free the roads, sheltered the traveller,
and protected the weak. So marked was the contrast
between Afghanistan and the neighbouring States that,
according to Captain Burnes, the reputation of Dost
Mahomed was made known to a traveller long before
he entered the country, and he apdds, " No one better

AFGHANISTAN. 165

merits the high character he has attained." " The
justice of this chief," he writes again, "affords a
constant theme of praise to all classes. The peasant
rejoices in the absence of tyranny, the citizen in the
safety of his home and the strict municipal regulations
regarding weights and measures, the Lierchant at the
equity of his decisions and the prote^ition of his pro-
perty, and the soldiers at the regiilar manner in
which their debts are discharged. A man in power
can have no higher praise." But an evil time was
drawing nigh. In 1834, while Dost Mahomed was
engaged at Kandahar in opposing Shah Shujah, who
had invaded Afghanistan by the Bolan Pass, a crafty
old tiger misnamed Eungeet, or the Lion, Prince of the
Punjaub, crossed the Indus and seized upon the
Afghan city of Peshawar. It was the old story of
Harold attacked by Tostig in the north, and William of
Normandy in the south. The Dost having crushed one
enemy at Kandahar, swept back to rescue Peshawar
from the other. Issuing from the Khyber Pass he
appeared before Peshawar with fifty thousand wild
and fanatical followers ; but the old ruler of Lahore
knew too well the power of gold among the chiefs
whose undisciplined warriors formed the army of Dost
Mahomed. An envoy was sent to the Afghan camp,
and so well was the work of bribery and intrigue carried
on that, ere the day of his arrival had closed in night,
ten thousand of the invading troops had deserted, and
when morning dawned the entire army of horse and
foot was in full retreat into the mountain fastness.

1()6 FAR OUT.

Peshawar remained to Rungeet, but its loss rankled
deeply in the mind of the Afghan ruler, and he eagerly
looked forward to its restoration. Here in this re-
tention of Peshawar by the Sikh chief lies the key-note
of the Afghan question of forty years ago. It will be
necessary to bear it in mind in order to justly estimate
the quarrel so soon to l)reak out. Two years after
this date, in 1836, an English traveller appeared at
Cabul upon an ostensible mission of commerce and
amity. Beneath the guise of commerce there lurked
conquest, beneath the friendship annexation. It is
impossible to read the history of this mission of
Captain Burnes, and of the events preceding the
outbreak of hostility between England and Afghan-
istan, without seeing in them a flagrant disregard of
justice, of good faith, and of honour. That Dost
Mahomed was a ruler with whom it was safe to
conclude a treaty of friendship, and that his views
were favourably disposed towards alliance with
us, there cannot be the shadow of doubt. The
published dispatches of Captain Burnes clearly
prove it. Nevertheless, in the face of many written
statements of his envoy. Lord Auckland states, in
his celebrated Simla manifesto, in 1838, "that the
Barukzye chiefs, from theh* disunion and unpopularity,
were ill-fitted under any ch'cumstances to be useful
allies to the British Government, and to aid us in
our just and necessary measures of defence." On
only one point in these negotiations was the Ameer
inflexible. It was Peshawar. Practically we might

AFGHANISTAN'. 1G7

do what we liked with him if we would only make
Eungeet Singh surrender the city which four years
before he had reft from Afghanistan in the hour of
her trouble. This demand for the restitution of
stolen property Lord Auckland terms "an unreason-
able pretension, and one inconsistent with justice."
In another poi-tion of this forgotten but once famous
document, the attempt of the Ameer to recover in
1834 his lost possession is called "an unprovoked
attack on the territory of our ancient ally, the
Maharajah Kungeet Singh." But enough of this
wretched double-dealing ; let us pass on to the active
operations that followed.

Of the two great roads leading from India into
Afghanistan only one lay open to us in 1838, when
the army of the Indus was set in motion for the
conquest of the kingdom of Cabul. Through the Bolan
Pass enormous columns of combatants and non-com-
batants poured on towards Kandahar. Endless trains
of camels toiled along the rocky tracks. There was no
opposition — nothing to dispute the passage save the
arid nature of the soil. Nearly forty thousand camels
perished on this dreary road. Kandahar opened its
gates in April, 1839, and Shah Shujah took up his
quarters in the old palace of the Dooranee kings.
The whole of Western Afghanistan had accepted the
new order of things with scarcely a semblance of
opposition. Never had presages of disaster been more
utterly falsified. Never had prophecies of success
been more thoroughly fulfilled. Two months' delay.

168 FAR OUT.

and the army moved out of Kandahar for a final
advance upon Ghizni and Cabul. It was now mid-
summer, but the mornings were deUciously cool, for
the long winding columns had cHmbed six thousand
feet above the sea-level, and the road was still
ascending as it led on to Ghizni. Within the old
rock fortress some two or three thousand Afghans still
clung to the crumbling fortunes of Dost Mahomed, but
even in this small garrison desertion was numerous ;
and when the army drew up before the citadel on the
22nd of July, every detail of the defence was known to
the British general. A single gateway, that leading
to Cabul, had been left unblocked by masonry. Under
cover of darkness the army moved round the fortress
and took up a position on the west or Cabul side. An
hour before daybreak on the 23rd of July, a small
party of sappers crept forward to the gate and laid bags
of powder beneath the archway. The train was soon
fired, the massive gate disappeared, the walls crashed
inwards, and amid smoke and flame the stormers
rushed into the fortress. Half an hour's fighting
decided the fate of Ghizni. There is a story still told
among the men of the 13th Regiment which deserves
record. Amid the confusion following the explosion
of the gunpowder, one of the engineers, passing back
by the spot where the assaulting columns stood
awaiting the word to advance, was accosted by the
officer commanding as to the result of the explosion.
" The passage was choked with fallen masonry ; the
forlorn hope could not force it." Turning to the

AFGHANISTAN. 1G9

bugler at his elbow the leader ordered the "retire"
to be sounded. The bugler, Luke White, was
one of those stray peasant waifs which destiny
riings to nations as though to point a satire upon
their theories of high-bred heroism. " The 13th,"
answered the boy, " don't know the ' retire.' " He
sounded the *' advance," and the regiment moved on
to the attack. With the capture of Ghizni the
campaign, so far as fighting was concerned, began
and ended.

The Ameer, indeed, advanced from Cabul to meet
the invaders of his kingdom as they pressed on towards
his capital, but his troops fell from him like leaves
from a dying tree. In the valley of Muedan he
resolved to make a last stand against his enemies.
With the Koran raised in his hand, he rode among his
faithless followers, calling upon them to make one final
effort against the invader and the infidel. "You have
eaten my salt," he said, " for thirteen years. Since it
is plain that you are resolved to seek a new master,
grant me but one favour in return for that long period
of kindness. Enable me to die with honour. Stand
by the brother of Futteh Khan while he executes one
charge against the cavalry of those Feringee dogs. In
that outset he will fall ; then go and make your terms
with the new chief." Strange are the ways of destiny.
Had his dastard followers but risen to the enthusiasm
of their leader's words, his fate was for ever sealed —
the cause of Dost Mahomed would have perished at
Muedan, but in the gi'eat book it was ruled that this

170 FAR OUT.

dark day of defeat and desertion should ])o the mid-
night of his disaster. Henceforth there would he
many hours of darkness, hut they would all he shorten-
ing towards the dawn.

Over the wild pass of Bamian, Dost Mahomed
passed, a fuf^itive, to the Uzhegs of Kunduz. A couple
of thousand devoted adherents still clung to his ruined
fortuni^s. To add to his overwhelming misfortunes, a
favouiite son was home along with ditticulty in the
rapid flight, fainting with fever. The '^^^serters to the
British camp had carried these particula. ^f the last
scenes of the Ameer's reign, and they found ready
comment in the diaries of the day. The boldest and
most turbulent of the Ameer's sons was sinking from
disease. Akbar Khan would never again trouble the
British cause in Afghanistan. So ran the prophecies.
Just two years later the name of Akbar Khan had
become a terror throughout the land, and all that
remained of British power in Cabul lay at the mercy
of this dying chief. Shah Shujah entered Cabul in
triumph. He wore on his garments and sword-girdle
many of the precious gems which his ancestor Ahmed
Shah carried away from the camp of Nadir Shah after
the murder of the Persian conqueror at Meshed. But
one great gem was conspicuous by its absence — the
famous " Mountain of Light," the Kohinoor, was not
there. The legacy of sorrow which it had carried to
its owners through three hundred years clung now in
this hour of apparent triumph to the old Shah Shujah,
but the stone itself had been lately surrendered by him

AFOTIANISTAN. 171

to RunRoet Bingh, tho Sikh ruler of Lahore. And
now the work waa over. The curtain had fallen upon
the last act, the lights were heing turned off, and the
crowd pressed out in all haste to get away. If it had
heen so easy to conquer Afghanistan, the retention of
the country must he a matter of still greater facility ;
so, at least, said the men who spoke with the serious-
ness of responsibility, and it must be allowed they
were as good in deed as in opinion. Ere winter had
come only two regiments of European infantry
remained in Afghanistan. Two years passed away.
Low ominous growls of rebellious thunder sounded at
times amid the stern hills. Now it was the Ghilzies
around Ghizni ; now the Khyberees between Jellalabad
and Peshawar; anon the Uzbegs threatened the
passes of the Hindoo Koosh. Soon deeds of sudden
assassination startled the cantonments of Cabul or
Kandahar. But though every month revealed some
new instance of that old Afghan nature whose un-
tamableness bad been a proverb over Asia for six
centuries, no warning could be seen by the doomed
men who in the daily routine of cantonment life
pursued the easy round of Indian military existence.
English ladies made their homes in Cabul, the band
played, the evening ride was taken without the city-
walls, the life of mess and parade went on as though
the Union Jack had waved above the Bala Hissa for
half a century.

All at once the storm broke. The envoy, the
political agent, the general commanding the troops,

172 FAIl OUT.

an*! many other lieads of depai-tmonts awoke one
morning to find Cabiil in revolt. To extreme confi-
dence Bucceeded complete jiaralyHis. From liamian
to Jellalabad, from Ghizni to Herat, the tribes had
risen, content to let their mutual animosities rest
awhile in the unwonted sensation of unity against the
common enemy. Then began one of the most miser-
able chnptert; of British history. The winter had
already placed his foot upon the hilltops, and was
daily drawing nearer to the doomed garrison of Cabul.
From glen and valley, in numbers that hourly became
stronger, bands of fierce men poured forth to the holy
war. There were men of gigantic form, and savage,
though majestic mien — men who carried the sword
and shield of the days of Timour, and others who
bore the matchlock and rifle of more modern war ; and
to give point and direction to all this mass of ferocity
there appeared on the scene that same son of Dost
Mahomed, Akbar Khan, whose crippled state two
years before had been a calculated factor among the
chances of his father's capture.

But more fatal than hostile foeman or rigour of
winter in this alpine lai^d was the in(iecision of
character and faltering purpose of the British leaders.
It is needless to dwell upon the miserable scenes that
marked the closing weeks of the year 1841 — the
capture of the commissariat stores, the assassination
of the envoy, MacNaughten, the final treaty of evacua-
tion. On one point, however, the assassination of the
envoy, we may say, that although it is clear that the

AFGHANISTAN. IT.'J

deed was coh.initted by Akbar Khan, it is also evident
that it wiiH not premeditated. To ohtiiin poHsesHion
of the envoy, and to use that poHsesHion aH a howtage
for the fullihnent of certain conditionw, was the real
object aimed at by the Afj^dian leaders. Had murder
been meant it in evident that no attempt at capture
was necessary; but the unfortunate envoy strenuously
resisted, and in the struf^gle that ensued between him
and Akbar Khan, met his death.

On the mornhiK of the (ith of January the retreat
from Cabul began. Four thousand five hundred
fighting men and three times that number of followers
turned their faces toward. India, beginning the most
disastrous movement ilj rded in English history.
This retreat lasted seven days, and measured in
distance about fifty-five miles. In those seven days
every horror that human misery counts in its cata-
logue was enacted. The enemy and the elements were
alike pitiless. Through driving snow and bitter blast
the long column wound its way between stupendous
cliffs, from any vantage point of which the juzails of
the Afghans poured destruction. The night closed
over the fearful scene, but the dark hours did their
work more silently, though not less surely, than the
daylight. Seven mornings dawned upon masses of
men frozen as they lay — grim bivouacs of death. At
length there were no more to die. Of all these thou-
sands one solitary man passed out from the terrible
defile of JugduUock — he was all that remained of the
army of Cabul.

174 FAR OUT.

The spring of the following year saw two armies
again marching into Al'ghanistan, along the two great
highways. Their work was to relieve beleaguered
garrisons in Kandahar and Cabul, to avenge and to
retu'e. The garrisons were relieved. For nine hun-
dred years Mahomed of Ghizni had lain at rest in the
mausoleum at Rioza. His tomb was rifled of its gates
— in what manner this act of vandalism revenged the
disasters of the Khurd Cabul is not apparent — and
then the armies marched away, leaving Afghanistan
to the Afghans. Twenty millions of money ! twenty
thousand human lives! three times that number of
camels and horses lost ! a name hated throughout the
length and breadth of the mountain land — such were
the results accruing to us from three yearr.' ^vandering
in search of a scientific frontier. '

THE ZULUS.

^THE vast disjointed dominion which upon the maps
of the world bears the colour and the cognomen of
Britisli colonial territory has ever had strange me-
thods of making its existence known to the mother
country. For many successive years various portions
of it will lie in a kind of moral and political torpor,
giving forth to the far-away home land only the
feeblest evidences of existence. Life, indeed, will at
such times be very far from being extinct in these
quiet dependencies. Ships will sail to and fro between
the great maritime centres of commerce and distant
ports in the southern hemisphere, all the work of life
— the buying and selling, the birthing and the bury-
ing — ^will be carried on there ; but beyond some
chance allusion in the column of a newspaper to a
change of ministry, to the appointment of a new
governor, or to the state of trade, that world, which
calls itself " the world," passes along its road utterly
ignoring the existence of entu'e colonies, and serenely
unconscious of political or territorial divisions whose
superficial area would measm-e ten times that of Great
Britain.

176 FAR OUT.

All at once, however, '* the world " rouses up to a
wonderful greed for knowledge upon some particular
spot which has been British territory for half a cen-
tury, but which Britons have never bothered their
heads about. Some colony has suddenly spoken. A
black king, whose name nobody ever heard of, has
suddenly crossed a river, whose name nobody could
ever remember, at the head of thirty thousand of his
soldiers, whom nobody knew anything about. The
excitement instantly becomes intense. Everybody
has something to say about this black king, his thirty
thousand soldiers, and the river which he has crossed.
The illustrated papers immediately produv,e the very
blackest pictures of this black king, the magazines
have articles minutely describing the interior economy
of his household, the number of his wives, and the
habits and customs of his court. His fathers and his
grandfathers, personages whom he himself may be
said to possess indefinite ideas about, are reproduced
in colours of lasting enmit}' to mankind in general
and to Britons in particular. What is called " the
popular mind " of the nation is educated into such a
becoming frenzy of hostility against black kings as a
principle, that the holders of spades and clubs at the
evening rubber are half inclined to forget to call
honours ere the trump has been tm*ned. It does not
matter much whether the black king has crossed the
river into our territory in attempted rectification of
some wrong which he has suffered at our hands, or
whether we have crossed the river into his territory

THE ZULUS. - 177

upon the clearest and most conclusive testimony that
his property and that of his subjects would be vastly
benefited by being transferred to our hands.

If any person 'ihould attempt to enter into the jus-
tice of the cause of quarrel before this " devout con-
summation " had been arrived at, cries of unpatriotic
conduct are quickly raised. ** Shoot first and try
afterwards " becomes the rule. While the black king's
dealings towards us are weighed and measured by the
strictest code of civilised law and usage existing be-
tween modern states, our relations towards him are
exempted from similar test rules, and the answer is
ever ready for those who would preach the doctrine of
a universal justice between man and man, of the im-
possibility of applying to savage communities the rules
and maxims of ordinary life.

Thus to-day in South Africa the stream of our em-
pire rolls on by the same methods and the same laWiJ
that propelled it two centmies ago in North America,
with this difference however: First, that in South
Africa we are working up into a vast continent peopled
by tens of millions of negroes, while our progress in
North America was across a sparsely peopled land.
Second, that while in America what we call the key-
note of settlement, i.e., the land grant to a settler, was
struck at the modest figure of two hundred acres, in
South Africa it has been fixed at twenty times that
figure, and four thousand acres made the minimum
amount of land upon which the pioneer of civilisation
will begin his work. In these two differences lie most

178 . FAR OUT.

of the difficulties that beset our work in South Africa.
While on the one hand our settlers spread themselves
farther and farther out in defenceless isolation from
each other, peopling a territory as large as France
with a population of a tenth-rate English town, the
natives di'iven back into more compact masses outside
om* frontiers, or rapidly increasing in their locations
within our own limits, are always disposed to try,
after certain lapses of time, the chances of war against
us. Nothing is more natural than that they should
do so. Whatever may be the abstract justice of our
laws, and the bie jsings of peace and security resulting
from their application, it is impossible to prevent the
intercourse between the white settlers and the abori-
ginal native from being one which is subject to
frequent instances of manifest injustice. The brutal
but heedless blow struck by the driver of a post-cart
at some wayside wondering black man ; the license of
some diamond digger who, frequently a runaway from
the restraints of law in his own home, would deny to
the black man every vestige of human right ; the
inevitable greed for the possession of huge areas of
land existing in the minds of all South Africans, and
the consequent temptations to indulge in annexation
— all these produce in the native mind a deep and
widespread feeling of antagonism and resentment
which every now and again finds expression in open
conflict.

It will occur to many readers to ask how it was that
the vast force which they have lately read of as obey-

THE ZULUS. 179

ing the orders of the Zulu king could have been able
to maintain themselves, in a land divided from our
territory by the breadth of a river fordable in hundreds
of places, without making their presence such a
menace to our farmers as must, years ago, have caused
conflict between them and us ? Men may fairly ask
how came it that this army of disciplined savages
should have remained all this time at perfect peace
with us, yet that the moment we declare war against
them they show themselves strong enough to inflict
upon our troops the greatest reverse sustained by us
during the present generation ? Let us see if we can
reply to that question.

Fifty years from the present time Chaka, the first
great king of the Zulus, died at the hands of his
subjects near the banks of the Lower Tugela river, in
the present colony of Natal. As he fell covered with
spears he uttered words which still live in the memory
of the Zulu nation : " You think you will rule this land
when I am gone ; but behind you I see the white man
coming, and he will be the king." Six years after
these words were spoken the white man came. He
came trooping in long lines of lumbering waggons
down the steep sides of the Dratiensberg Hills, and,
making his laagers along the broad valley of the
Upper Tugela, he called Natal his home. These men
were Dutchmen from the Cape Colony who, dissatisfied
with English law, had wandered forth to seek their
fortunes in the wilderness. Before a year had passed
they were at war with the Zulus. For years, with

N 2

180 FAR OUT.

varying fortune, this war went on — now it was the
Zulus who carried death and destruction among the
laagers, anon it was the Dutchman who fought his
way into the Zulu kraals, and laid in ashes the chief
stronghold of the Zulu power. While all this went on
another band of white men had established themselves
on the coast of Natal, close by the Zulu kingdom.
These people had come as friends of the Zulus, and
not the least important link in the chain of friendship
that bound together the successor of Chaka and the
sea-coast colony was the knowledge that the white
men who had crossed the Drakensberg and those who
had pitched their tents by the surf-beaten shore were
at enmity with each other. It would take long to tell
the varying phases of that enmity between English-
man and Dutchman which made the early history of
Natal one of conflict between these rival races.
Enough for us to show that to the Zulu mind there
was ever apparent but one real enemy — the Dutch
Boer. It was against this foe that for thirty years
the military instinct which Chaka had first fostered
was sustained by Panda and by Cetewayo. In a form,
that gi'ew as it was fed, the earth-hunger of the
Dutch settlers had gone on from year to year with
more insatiable desire. Boer dominion had spread
itself out farther into the northern wilderness, lapping
round the Zulu kingdom on the west, and threatening
its existence on the north towards Delagoa Bay. This
republic, which nimabered eight thousand families,
and possessed a territory larger than France, was,

THE ZULUS. 181

year by year, annexing, seizing, and confiscating some
new slice of territory, driving back into remoter wilds
Basuto or Batlapin, and pushing its frontier nearer
to the tropic line. There had been encroachments
made, too, on the side of Zululand ; but these had
never been enforced by arms. The beacon line, which
the Transvaal Dutch claimed as their boundary on the
Zulu frontier, remained a disputed territory, because
both Zulu and Boer understood that England would
not tolerate hostilities on her Natal frontiers. Eng-
land was, in fact, to the Zulu his great hope against
Dutch aggression. When the regiments mustered
around the king's kraal for the annual training, the
imaginary enemy against whom their evolutions were
directed was on the western and not upon the southern
frontier. If any rumour of Boer incursion reached
the king's kraal at Udine, messengers were dispatched
forthwith to acquaint " Somseu " (the Secretary of
Native Affairs in Natal), and to ask advice and
assistance from the English. The boundary line of
the Tugela was, as we have said, only a narrow river,
easily forded in the dry season in a hundred different
places ; yet for twenty years the sheep and cattle of
the Natal farmers were as safe from Zulu raid or
theft as though the farms had lain along the valley of
the Thames. Six years have not yet passed since
an English governor of Natal camped night after
night for twenty days in succession along the Buffalo
and Tugela boundaries of Zululand without a
single armed man as escort, and with most of the

182 FAR OUT.

work of camp and transport carried on by Zulu
hands.

Whence, then, came the change that has succeeded
in transforming this state of friendly feeling into one
of dire hostility and war ? The answer is not far to
seek. For thirty years the emigrating Dutch had
acted as a buflfer between us and the native races. By
the annexation of the Transvaal Republic we removed
that buffer, and placed oiu-selves face to face with the
black man along seven hundred miles of " frontier.
Nay, we did more than that. We stepped at once
into the possession of a legacy of contention, aggres-
sion, and injustice, from which it was almost impossible
to escape, save by the exercise of a calm control, a
clear and impartial judgment, and the employment of
just and able instruments in our dealings with the
frontier races. Not only did our annexation of the
Transvaal expose us to a vast variety of difficulties with
natives which heretofore we had been secure from,
but it placed us in that position of difficulty at a mo-
ment when circumstances outside our control had
carried the whole question of the relationship between
black and white to a state of tension filled with the
gravest outlooks.

Twelve years ago the discovery of precious stones
and minerals in large quantities in the upper plateau
of South Africa brought to the colonies of Natal and
the Cape a. new race of adventurers. The miner, the
digger, the prospector — all those wild waifs and strays
that the great game of gold brings together, flocked

THE ZULUS. 183

into this upland country, and began to work beneath
a sun, and under conditions of life, more than ever
prone to set alight the ever easily fanned flame of
passion and avarice. To the great pit where lay the
rich shniing stones flocked also many thousands of
black men. From far-away tropic regions beyond the
Limpopo, from nearer Basuto mountains, from Zulu-
land and Kaffirland, came bands of twenty tribes,
whose common brotherhood had been lost ages ago,
amid wars and wanderings of times before the white
man came. As, month by month, the great pit gi-ew
deeper at the delving of these countless negroes,
deeper, too, grew the hostile feelings of the rival races
— black and white. The great war of capital against
labour had here added to it the older strife of colour
against colour. In this vast school-room at Kimberley
the prizes given were rifles and ammunition; the
lesson taught was identity of interest against a com-
mon foe. Here, first of all, the black man learned
that all white men wore one against him, and that he,
through his many subdivisions, was one against the
white man. And he learned this lesson, too, at the
hands of men, many of whom were turbulent and
desperate, and some of whom he saw in armed hosti-
lity to English law and in open defiance of English
government.

This view is not new to us. Six years ago, after
visiting the diamond-pit at Kimberley, we recorded
the opinion that the result of the coming together of
the black races at the diamond-fields, and of the

184 FAR OUT.

difltriljution of arras and ammunition amonRst thcra
as wages for work, must produce war l)etween the
white and bhick races. It has been computed that
more than four hundred thousand stand of arms,
principally rities, with ammunition, passed into pos-
session of black men at the diamond fields. But
more dangerous even than these arms and munitions
of war has been the knowledge of which we have
spoken, and the lessons of lawless opinion and de-
fiance of authority imiubed at the same time.

Thus it will easily be understood how, at tlie mo-
ment of our annexation of the Transvaal, we were
brought face to face with the culminated results of
many circumstances, all of which tended to a war of
races. But the qut^stion may be asked, with regard
to the particular war in which we were lately engaged,
"How came it that the annexation of the Transvaal
caused a radical change in our policy towards the
Zulus, seeing that before that annexation our frontiers
were conterminous with those of the Zulus along one
hundred and fifty miles of territory?" To this it may
be answered that the annexation not only doubled our
frontier adjoining Zululand, but it put us in all the
inimical positions previously held by the Dutch, and
made an escape from the vicious policy of our prede-
cessors a matter requiring the utmost tact and
caution.

We will not here enter into the question whether
either of these attributes has been observable in the
conduct of our dealings with the native racds, or

THE ZULUS. 186

whether the annexation of the Dutch ropuhlic was not
a neceHHjiry consequence of the error which, in 1854,
permitted the formation of foreign Htaten beyond our
frontiers. While hohling for ourselves that the an-
nexation was premature, and was entered upon in
opposition to the opinions of the majority of the
respectable inhabitants of the State, we nevertheless
arc of opinion that, notwithstanding that annexation,
hostilities could have been avoided both in the Trans-
vaal and in Zululand, and that it was possible to
have inaugurated a line of poHcy towards the Zulus
and other tribes which would have fostered the gra-
dual disintegration of the dangerous elements of that
power, and produced the final disappearance of tribal
influence from the natives of South Africa.

Although the discipline and strength of the Zulu
army has lately been made terribly apparent to
Englishmen, its power is nothing new to the colonists
of Natal. No one that has ever seen a Zulu regiment
march, or heard the deep, terrible note of the Zulu
war-step, could fail to realise the fact that the power
which comes from numbers moving with one will and
from one impulse was here existing to an extent but
rarely seen even among civilised races. It has been
usual for modern writers to trace the history of organi-
sation among the Zulus to the time of Chaka; but
there are strong reasons for believing that the institu-
tions of Chaka were but the revivals of far earlier
customs, and that we have to seek in the first records
of African discovery south of the equator for the origin

180 FAR OUT.

of the wavlike babitH of tbe people wbom to-day we
call ZuliiH.

Four bundred years from tbe present time a great
wave of black men swept southward towards tbe Cape
of Good Hope from tbe vast interior bigblands of
equatorial Africa. At times tbe waves surged east till
tbey tou(died tbe early Portuguese kingdom of Quilli-
mane on tbe one band, and west mitil tbey reached
that of Angola and C(mgo upon tbe other. At each
side tbe story was tbe same. Tbe Gaigas, as this
torrent was called, carried death and destruction
wherever they went. They moved under rigid rules
of maiiial law, their captains and common soldiers
were trained under a terrible discipline, their bravery
was undoubted, their ferocity struck terror even into
the other cruel races with whom they came in contact.

Tbe narratives of tbe Portuguese missionaries of
tbe fifteenth century are filled with their ravages and
conquests. A countryman of ours, by name Battel, a
sailor, joined this conquering people, fought under
their king, and became a leader among them. From
his narrative most of our knowledge of them is
derived. We know that, after ravaging during many
years the frontiers of Angola and Benguela, they
passed south towards the Cape of Good Hope, and
then for nearly two hundred years they are lost sight
of. In the vast wildernesses of the Orange Kiver, in
the glens and fastnesses of the Amatola, Maluti, and
Drakensberg Mountains, the human wave that had
begun its course where the green Soudan merged into

THE ZULUS. 187

the grey Sahara, sunk at lawt to comparative quiet,
and nettled down to paHtonil life over all that ^reiit
wilderneHH of hcauty whieh in to-<lay South Africa.
That this hunum wave, which probably waH first wet
in motion by the Arab con([ueHtH in North Africa
during the Heventh, eighth, and ninth centuricH, drove
oiit the aboriginal racen of Kouthern Africa — the
I^uuhman and the Hottentotw — there cainiot be a
doubt ; and there in every reasi i to HUppoHo that the
wide human family known to us to-day under the
appellation Kaffir — a mime given by the Arab traders,
and adopted from them by the Portuguese settlers at
the Mozambique — that family, broken into its many
subdivisions of Gaika, Galega, Khosa, Zulu, &c.,
dates its descent and inherits its duiracteristics of
courage from the torrent which so long rolled its
troubled course along the great central highland of
the continent. The military orgiMiisation and the
iron discipline introduced by Chaka into the Zulu
nation were but revivals of the laws and institutions
of which Battel tells us.

Of this military organisation it has been fairly
said that it was impossible it could have gone on in
close proximity to our Natal frontier without pro-
ducing, sooner or later, an inevitable contiict with us.
This view would be undoubtedly correct if the organi-
sation of the nation into regiments had been founded
upon any principle more lasting than the king's will;
but the despotism of the Zulu monarch was of all
despotisms the most exposed to the danger of over-

188 PAR OUT.

throw from revolt within itself. Chaka, and his
successor, Dingaan, were both assassinated by their
rebellious subjects. Cetewayo and his brother Um-
bulazi long waged deadly war upon each other;
and only a few years from the present time the waters
of the Lower Tugela were black with thousands of
Zulus killed in a bloody battle between tlie two great
sections of the army. ; , ; ,

The elements of the destruction of Zulu power lay
in Zululand itself, and another policy might long since
have freed the people from the tyranny of the military
system and broken the power of the chiefs from the
Pongola to the Kei. It was not followed. Steadily
through past years we have continued to uphold the
principle of chieftainship. How much wiser would it
have been had we adopted the communal system of
the village, dividing the land in our native locations
by villages or kraals, instead of by tribes ! From this
the transition to individual proprietorship of land
would have been an easy one, the introduction of
civilised habits, to say nothing of religion and
morality, would have been possible, and the chance
might still have been open to us of solving that
inscrutable problem — the raising of this vast, fallen
African race to light and hope.

And now let us look back at a page of well-nigh
forgotten history. At the door of England lies the
memory of a great sin. Three hundred years from
the present time an English ship bore to the conti-
nent of America from that of Africa the first cargo of

THE ZULUS. 189

slaves ever taken from that dismal shore. During two
entire centuries that terrible trade was prosecuted by
English capital and English enterprise to a far greater
degree than by the efforts of any other nation.* Could
the long catalogue of horrors that filled the continent
of Africa with blood, and strewed the tropic ocean with
corpses, be unfolded to-day, the nation might well
stand aghast at the awful spectacle of human misery
wrought by the "enterprise" of bygone Bristol and
the " energy " of early Liverpool. Over the dreary
surf-beaten shore, between the feverish forest and the
yellow sand, there rise to-day along the pestilential
West Coast of Africa huge bastioned castles, lonely
and untenanted. Then* work has long since vanished ;
their guns lie overturned, the gates are rusty, their
vast vaults are empty; but still they stand the white
monuments of a mighty crime, bearing testimony to
the sea and to the land of a gigantic injustice. In
these vast tombs the living dead were buried until the
slave-ship was ready in the offing. There was the land-
gate and the sea-gate. As the rusty land-gate swung
in upon its hinges, home, kith, and kin closed with it ;
as the sea-gate opened towards the ship, toil, the lash,
and death coiled closer around the negro's heart.

All these long centuries of crime are still unpaid
for. The slaves set free by us fifty years ago were
not a thousandth part of those we had enslaved.
Yet the account is still open, and the wrong done by

* In the year 1788, 120,000 Africans were taken from the coast as
slaves by Europeans ; of which half were in British ships.

190 . FAR OUT.

US during all these years in West Africa can yet be
righted in the future of the southern continent. This,
then, is the question which Englishmen have a right
to ask : " What have you done with this people ?
Have you taught them nothing better through all
these years than to exchange their assegais for rifles ?
Do you dare to tell us that in this land, which is
larger than France, Spain, and Gei*many put together,
there is not room for three hundred thousand white
men and a million and a half of blacks ? and can all
your teaching, preaching, and civihsation evolve
nothing better for this African than a target for
your bullets?"

Notwithstanding the wide gulf which we fancy lies
between us and this black man, he is singularly like
us. He will cry if you stick a pin into him, he will
be thankful for a gift, he will resent an injury, he will
weep for the loss of a wife or child, he will fight for
his homeland — he can even die for what he beheves
to be the right. And mai'k you this vast difference
between him and the other aboriginal races with
whom your spirit of colonisation has brought you
into contact : he does not die out before us. He
asserts the fact of his existence amid our civilisation.
He increases upon every side. While the work of
colonisation has been going on for more than two
centuries, the black race to the white is still as six
to one. Here, in South Africa, lies our chance of
undoing the wrong done by Europe to the Libyan
race in the past; here lies our sole hope of ever

THE ZULUS. 191

shedding into this vast, dark continent the Hghts of
faith and justice. Let us not imagine that by trade
these precious gifts can be carried into the dim
interior. The first principle of trade with the savage,
whether it be trade in human heads or coCoa-nuts, is
to outwit him. During four hundred years we have
traded with the Gold Coast and with the Gambia,
yet within a rifle-shot of the shore the fetish is
rampant, the savage instinct is untamed. In South
Africa the European constitution flom-ishes beside the
negro. There it is possible to teach without death
closing the schoolmaster's book ere the lesson has
been learnt ; there precept and example can go hand
in hand together ; there the limit is large enough for
ten millions instead of two millions ; there the capabi-
lities of future extension are vast as the continent itself.
Ages ago, along the lofty plateau of the central
continent, the hordes of savages pressed southward
from the equator, darkening and devastating as they
went. That same road now hes open for the reflex
flood of light and truth. How is that tide to be set
in motion ? Not by wide-sweeping annexation, by
trade in rum and rifles, by " commando " warfare,
not even by zealous though missionary enterprise
alone. But it may be done by other and gentler
means. It may be done by lighting, even within
sight of Cape Town, or of Port Elizabeth, or of
Durban, a ray that has rever ypi been lighted in the
black man's mind — the :dea tuat he may be made an
independent unit in a ciA iliseu community ; the idea

193 "^ FAR OUT. *

that he will be protected against all injustice, whether
from black man or from white ; the idea that liberty
does not mean idleness, and that the schoolmaster
has a claim upon his little ones that cannot be over-
looked ; the idea that his toil, given for many centuries
to the world at large, must now at last be given to
himself ; the idea that service of arm to his chief, or
of muscle to hia master, must be changed to service
of mind and body for his one wife and for his children.

These rays, once lighted, can never be put out.
Northward, year by year, they will travel into regions
where never yet the white man's foot has rested.
" Good Hope " — thus they named this lofty sea-girt
promontory far down in the Southern Ocean. It rests
with England in the future to fulfil the aspiration of
those brave Portuguese sailors whose eyes first looked
upon that rugged frontlet. Surely it is a brave and
noble toil, and well worthy of our nation's manhood.

If from the wretched scenes lately enacted, and

from the selfishness and strife which culminated in

this most deplorable of our Kaffir wars, there arises

in the minds of Englishmen a fervent resolve to

attempt a new beginning, then may even our past

Sin itself be found
A cloudy porch that opens on the sun.

Note. — The writer of these pages is fnlly aware that the idea of
breaking the tribal system, and establishing individual ownership in
property, has been frequently advocated in the past, particularly by Sir
George Grey, but its adoption has never been even attempted. The
outlay necessary to start the machineiy which might effect the change
has edways been refused, and while thousands have been deemed too great
an expenditure in the cause of humanity and progress, millions have been
freely lavished on the old, hopeloM lines of punishment and repression.

SOUTH AFRICA.

TpAE up in he mountains of South Africa, where
the peaks of the Drakensberg and the ridges of
the Malutis attain their loftiest level, there lies a
region but little known even to the people who dwell
in its vicinity.

It is a land of jagged peaks and scarped precipices,
of torrents and rocks, of secluded valleys, and great
wind-swept hills. Snow rests for many months in
the year upon its rugged hilltops ; grass grows rank
and green in its many valleys. A thousand crystal
streams flash over rocky ledge, and ripple through
pebble-paved channels, and, all the year round there
is a sense of freshness in the air, for the breeze that
sweeps the land blows over peaks set ten thousand
feet above the sea-line.

This in Africa — that land of heat and sun, of
swamp and forest ? Yes, even in Africa lies the region
just pictured; this Switzerland of South Africa,
mountain Basutoland.

The clouds which the Indian Ocean sends to South

194 FAR OUT, '•

Africa linger over this region of mountain peak, and
shed their showers upon it through the months of
summer ; but in winter the skies are clear, the sun
shines over the land, and the clouds which occasion-
ally gather upon the peaks float away, leaving them
clothed in dazzling snow, and seamed with ice-crusted
cataracts.

Many rivers have their sources in this mountain
region, and east, west, north, and south streams flow
forth from it into a lower set land. Streams of small
size and of large, streams which soon swell into
mighty rivers, and become yellow and muddy as they
roll towards far- separated oceans, forgetting the pure
traditions of their birth among the snow-hills, in the
turmoil of maturer life.

Looked at from its many sides, Basutoland presents
always to the traveller a sight filled with a sense of
freshness and of pleasure. From whatever point he
regards it, he must ever look up to it ; east or west,
north or south, it first rises before him in the outline
of a stupendous mountain, whose summits yield to
the eye, long wearied of the leaden level of intermi-
nable plain, that cool draught which is fresh as water
to a thirsty wanderer in a desert land.

But if from all sides it is grateful to the eye, from
the east side it is something more ; spread beneath it
to the east lies a fair and fruitful land, a land whose
highest level is fully four thousand feet lower down,
and whose plains and hills lie outlaid at his feet, like
a vast sea beneath a lofty shore.

SOUTH AFRICA. 195

This land of lower level is Natal ; where Natal ends
on the west, Basutoland begins on the east, and
beg'is in a line so abrupt, so rugged, so scarped into
precipice, and turret rnd pinnacle, that it would
seem as though natuxc nad upraised a mighty wall of
rock to mark for ever her line of separation between
the mountain called Basutoland, and the meadow
called Natal.

There are not many sights in South Africa which
linger longer in the traveller's mind than that which
can be seen almost every morning from the eastern
ridge of Basutoland — the Drakensberg.

It is sunrise over Natal, up from the haze which
hangs over the Indian sea — the haze which has
turned to varying green, and gold, and crimson, as he
drew nearer to the surface — comes the great blood-
red sun, flashing on the rent pinnacles of the moun-
tain wall while yet the region far below is wrapped in
purple mist. No towns, no hamlets, no homesteads
stud the vast plain beneath ; but scores of rivera
wind through great grass-covered valleys, and from
their unseen beds, long rifts of snow-white vapour
float upward towards the growing light, and wreathe
themselves along the feet of hills, and cling to kloof,
and catch upon their upmost billows the light in
which they are so soon to die. And as the light
grows stronger, and the flying remnants of night,
prisoned at the base of the great cliffs, are killed by
the shafts which the day flings into "krance" and
cavern, there lies spread before the eye a vast succes-

196 , FAR OUT. *

sion of hill and valley, table-topped mountain, gleam-
ing liver— all green with grass — dew-freshened, and
silent. This is Natal.

Far away, beyond all, a vague blank upon the
horizon, the unseen sea is felt by the sight, where, at
the furthest verge of vision, the Indian Ocean sleeps
in space.

But there is another sight which the traveller sees
just before nightfall, when from the meadow of
Natal he looks up to the lofty ridge of Basutoland.
The day has done its work ; the sun has gone down
behind the great western barrier ; turret, dome, and
rent mountain pinnacle are clear cut in snow and
purple against the green and saffron curtain of the
sunset; the wall of rock is dark at its base, indis-
tinct in its centre, sharp and lustrous along its
serrated summit ; the night gathers at its feet ; the
day lingers around its head ; there is a shade of un-
told beauty in the sky, a green, such as one some-
times sees in Sevres, and which I have never seen in
sunset save in Natal. The night deepens, and the
light dies but long after nightfall, that glorious light
still lives in the western sky, and the unnumbered
peaks, and jagged spires, and pinnacled turrets of
the Drakensberg stand in lofty loneliness as though
guarding the slow retreat of day into some far-oif
world.

This gi'eat range of the Drakensberg, called by the
natives Kathalama, runs nearly north and south
along the west frontier of Natal; but near the twenty-

SOUTH ArRICA. 197

ninth parallel of south latitude, its direction changes
suddenly from north to west, and culminates in a
vast mountain mass, known as the Mont aux Sources,
from which many subsidiary ranges and innumerable
streams descend into the surrounding countries. If
one can imagine a large letter A laid with its apex to
the north, the right-hand arm would form the Dra-
kensberg, the apex flattened out would be the Mont
aux Sources, and the left arm would be the Maluti
range. Between the arms of the range are several
minor ranges and clusters of mountain, a great sea of
peaks ; and from the Mont aux Sources, flowing from
a labyrinth of cliff and cataract, springs the Orange
Eiver and its many tributaries.

Three other large rivers rise in this impenetrable
fastness, the Wilge, or south fork of the Vaal, the
Caledon, or north fork of the Orange, and the Tugela,
the principal river of Natal. These many rivers flow
from the Mont aux Sources, south, east, north, and west ;
the Orange, as we have said, springing from between
the arms of the letter A, the Drakensberg and the
Malutis; the Caledon having its source outside the
Maluti range, and between it and the lower range of
the Ehode Berg ; the Wilge River rising on the north
face of the Mont aux Sources, and flowing down into
the Orange Free State to join the diamond-famous
Vaal ; and the Tugela, which, also waking from the
same bed, leaps suddenly from its cradle on the sum-
mit of the Mont aux Sources down the perpendicular
verge of the Drakensberg, as though, overjoyed to

198 . FAR OUT.

turn its steps to the fair region of Natal, it cared little
for the three thousand feet of ledge that lay beneath
it and that green meadow land. All those rivers carry
to the Atlantic or Indian seas the tribute which the
mountain monarchs send to the ocean from which
they once rose.

So far for the rivers and the mounta/i^ of the land.
Now for the people who have made thuir uwellings in
this lofty region.

Many years ago, when the present century was in
its cradle, a young Zulu warrior came riding from the
south along the base of the Drakensberg. He held a
northern course. He was accompanied, or rather
carried, by an animal never before seen in the land ;
at times he appeared to the astonished eyes of the
beholders as a portion of this animal, at other times
he was separated from it.

The young Zulu was a long-banished exile return-
ing to his home on the Tugela from a far southern
land ; the strange animal he bestrode was a horse, the
first of its kind ever seen in these great wastes of
South Africa; but he brought with him from the
white man's home other and far greater secrets than
the strange animal that carried him — he brought the
idea of unity where there had been disunion, of disci-
pline and combination where all had been petty tribal
war and internecine confusion, of the strength which
lies in organised numbers against the weakness of the
individual. He had seen the regular soldiers of the
white man, had caught in a vague way the outline of

SOUTH AFRICA. 109

thoir organisation, and now, as ho sought, after a
lapse of years, his Umtetwa people, it was with the
hope of moulding the scattered power of his tribe after
the manner of the white soldiery in the infant colony
to the south, and he succeeded.

His people received him as their chief, named him
Dingiswayo, or " The Wanderer," and ''"tened to his
counsel and his plans.

Soon the youth of the Uratetwa were formed into
bodies, fighting under distinct chiefa, and subject to
the will of one man, Dingiswayo. This army of the
Umtetwa was not a mere plaything in the hands of its
chief, and ere a year had passed, the neighbouring
tribes had felt the power of the new organisation ;
small tribes bc^came incorporated with or subject to
the Umtetwa, and many restless spirits among the
young men of the country beyond the Tugela joined
the army of Dingiswayo, to push their fortunes in the
new field which he had opened to them.

Among the adventurous spii'its thus drawn to the
service of the Wanderer, there was one of no ordinary
genius. Chaka, the son of Senzangakona, chief of a
small tributary tribe called Zulus, entered as a com-
mon soldier into one of the regiments of Dingiswayo.
His bravery soon pointed him out for leadership ; he
learnt the lesson of organisation and discipline even
to greater effect than had his master ; and when bis
time of chieftainship had come, a new power had
dawned among the scattered tribes of South-Eastern
Africa.

200 ' FAR OUT.

i Some time about 1814, Chaka began hiB career of

> coiKiuest. Everything wont down before hira. Ho

changed the mode of fighting in the field — of move-

^., ment in the campaign. To throw the annagai was
*

forbidden : a shorter-handed weapon was instituted,

and it was to be struck into the enemy, not cast at

' ' him from a distance. " Wait until you see the whites

of the enemy's eyes, and then strike hard," was the

order of the Zulu chief. His spirit was caught by his

soldiers, and they closed with their enemies only to

conquer. " <

An immense territory soon owned the dominion of
the chief of the Zulus, but he conquered only to
desolate and to kill. From the far Limpopo to the
southern St. John, from the Indian Ocean to where
men now dig diamonds by the swift-running Vaal —
all that portion of Africa lay prostrate at Chaka' s feet.
The lower countries were a vast waste ; famine, pes-
tilence, and death had swept the land ; and only in
remote glen, or wooded kloof, or impenetrable fastness
could be found a remnant of the desolated tribes.

It was in the year 1828 that the conqueror's career
came to a close. He was assassinated by some of his
own people at his kraal south of the Lower Tugela.
Seeing his end inevitable, he cried out to his mur-
derers, " Ye think when I am gone that ye shall rule
this land ; but behind ye I see a white man coming
from the south, and he and his shall be your masters."

As he spoke they struck him with their assagais,
and the greatest conqueror of Zululand was no more.

SOUTH AFHICA. 201

Tho Hcattored tribes that had been unable to oppose
the Zuhi chief had withdrawn into remote countries.
One powerful band, attacked in tho open country, had
retreated along the Vaal, and by the faHtneHSCs of tho
Drakensberg, into what is now called Basutoland.
They were without coheHion. A dozen chiefs claimed
their obedience, and it was only the rugged land and
the natural defences of their new home which enabled
them to preserve even a shadow of their power.

About the time of Chaka's death there arose, in
this Basuto nation, a man dififering in every respect
from the Zulu conqueror. He was a shrewd observer,
apt in council, held peculiar views about the vhite
man's dominion, and had more faith in tho power of
the tongue than in that of the assagai ; yet he was a
brave and skilful soldier. The name of this man was
Moshesh. From a petty chief he soon became a
powerful leader, and ten }'ears after the death of
Chaka he was the acknowledged paramount of all
Basutoland, and had moulded together into one
nation all the tribes which dwelt around the Mont
aux Sources, and along the upper waters of the
Galedon.

At the period we speak of, this region of Basutoland,
the great level now called the Orange Free State, and
the meadow of Natal, were all unknown to the white
man. A few travellers or hunters had penetrated
north of the Orange River, but the great mountain
fastness had resisted all attempts to pierce its
mysteries ; and nothing of Natal, save its half-tropio

202 : FAR OUT.

shore-line, was known to the outside world. A vast
unmeasured solitude was this land heyond all the
Orange River. Frori the rising of the sun until its
going down, the traveller beheld an endless plain.
At times a flat-topped hill rose abruptly from the
level; loose rocks of sand or trap cumbered the
base; the sides were scarped, or steep and over-
hanging near the summit; and upon the top a
perfectly level table surface was cut clearly against
the sky line. Perchance the hillside held a straggling
growth of bush. For the rest — hill and level, plain
and precipice — were clothed in a short green grass in
summer, a dry brick-coloured clay in winter; but at all
times it was a land of life.

Across the endless plain, upon the table-topped
hill, in the dry dust-coloured valley, there moved
and grazed and galloped innumerable herds of wild
animals. Springbok and blessbok, wilderbeeste and
hartebeeste, eland and quagga, roamed in countless
numbers ; and the traveller saw when the sun shone
over the land the light reflected upon the glistening
sides or striped foreheads of tens of thousands of grace-
ful antelopes, careering in circles round the track, or
stopping in their prancing gallop to gaze in wonder
at the stranger's presence.

But at length the great wastes north of Orange
River began to know a change.

About forty years ago there came in long succession
from the south a vast troop of waggons; men rode
on horseback by the waggons; twenty coupled oxen

SOUTH AFRICA. 203

drew each ponderous load; there were fully nine
hundred waggons, and across the dusty plains crept
the monstrous cavalcade.

It passed slowly on. Some tarried here, some
there, others wandered on further into the wilds.

There is a tall mountain which stands out by itself
in this great plain. It is rugged and lofty, and can
be seen from a great distance; fifty miles away it
still seems near at hand. Is is called Tha-banchu,
or the Hill of Night. Near this dark hill many of the
new-comers halted. They were white men, who had
long dwelt in the regions to the south, and they now
sought this northern waste, not because their own
. lands were becoming over-peopled, or because fresh
arrivals pressed them from without, but from a
restless longing to escape from law and civilised
restraint, and to establish themselves in a kind of
patriarchal freedom in the remote interior. They
had but a faint idea of the geography of the earth,
and not a few among them looked upon this migration
as a counterpart to the exodus of the Israelites of old,
and had some dim expectation of finding a Promised
Land beyond the deserts of the treeless Karoo.

Some halted within sight of the Hill of Night, others
pressed on to the north and east. Moshesh held many
parleys with them as their slow lumbering waggons
jolted along the plains of what is to-day the Orange
Free State ; but he did nothing to oppose their progress,
and they passed along his rugged frontier to where
the ridge of the Drakensberg breaks down from the

204 ; FAR OUT.

Mont aux Sources, and a steep decline leads into the
pastures of Natal.

They reached the ridge, and looked down upon the
fair land below. It was a sight which woke even in
the dull nature of the Dutch onlooker a sense of
enthusiasm. Here was their promised land, here was
their possession. Slowly the long cavalcade wound
down the steep descent, and took possession of Natal.

Moshesh had built his kraal at the base, and upon
the summit of one of these innumerable flat-topped
hills called table mountains of Basutoland ; the hill
was named Thaba Bossiou, or the Dark Mountain. It
stood some six miles from the Caledon River. Twenty
miles to the east, the great range of the Malutis rose
in dark blue masses ; around them lay a perfect net-
work of table mountains, deep winding valleys, abrupt
sandstone precipices, and every variety of intermixed
hill and kloof, vale and ridge.

Moshesh' s name had widened out over a broad area
of fame; many tribes of Griquas, Amonquanis, and
Zulus had tried the strength of the Basuto nation, and
felt the power of the crafty chief who dwelt in Thaba
Bossiou. Once, a large horde of Griquas (Dutch half-
breeds), attacked the mountain kraal under a certain
Hendrick Hendricks, and of his doughty followers not
one escaped. Again, Palarita led the Amathlubi tribe
into Basutoland, and left his bones and theirs to
whiten the hills of the Caledon.

But Moshesh was crafty in his victories. He kept
to his mountain fastnesses ; repelled all attacks upon

SOUTH AFRICA. 205

his territory, and took counsel from a few foreign
missionaries who had sought his country. ,

Time went on. The Dutch were not to have quiet
possession of Natal. Chaka was long dead; but a
tyrant almost as cruel, though with but half his
cleverness, reigned in his stead.

At the base of the Drakensberg, amidst the kloofs
and glens of the Upper Tugela and its tributaries,
there dwelt a chief named Sikkunellya. This chief
had made a foray into Zululand, and carried off
cattle from the people of Dingaan, the murderer and
successor of Chaka. The Dutch restored the captured
cattle to the Zulu chief, and asked in return for a
cession of Natal. The request was acceded to. It is
easy to give away that which is not ours, and all
Natal was given by the tyrant's murderer to the new-
comers — all Natal from the Tugela to the Umzimkulu,
from the Drakensberg to the Indian Sea.

At the king's kraal by Umkinglove this cession was
made. Dingaan placed his sign-manual to the docu-
ment, and the Dutch leaders Maritz and Eetief affixed
their signatures in due form. It may be presumed
that this later operation was one of no little difficulty
to the Dutch commanders ; for to these modern
Israelites a pen was a stranger weapon than a gun ;
but somehow or other the names were affixed and the
Dutch commanders prepared to withdraw.

At evening there arose a great uproar in the camp ;
there was a cry of treason through the Dutch laager ;

206 FAR OUT.

thousands of naked Zulus crowded among the wag-
gons ; there were random shots and fierce shouts, and
much stabbing and glint of assagais, and when day-
light dawned again, Betief and his comrades all lay
weltering in their blood.

It would be long to tell of the scenes that followed ;
how the Zulus swept down into Natal upon the scat-
tered laagers of the Dutch by the swift-running
Tugela and the Bushman Bivers ; how these brave
savages rushed the laager by the Bushman Biver
drift, and carried such destruction through the camps,
that to-day an immense tract of country bears the
name of "Weenan," or the place of weeping; and
then, how the Dutchman rallied and bore back the
savage tribe, and in a great battle by the Blood Biver
destroyed the king's kraal, and broke the power of the
Zulu tribe.

But while all this wild work went on in the lower
country, along the base of the Drakensberg, up aloft
in Basutoland the crafty chief Moshesh held quiet
possession of his glens and table-topped ridges. Five
years earlier a small group of white men from a
distant country had come to Basutoland. They came
to teach, not to fight ; they were French missionaries.
Moshesh received them with favour. He gave them
land in many parts of the country. Hard by his own
stronghold of Thaba Bossiou they built a mission
station of great beauty : it was in a valley between
two steep rugged table-hills ; a stream ran below it ;
great cliffs of basaltic rock stood like sentinels around

SOUTH AFRICA. 207

it, and in spring the scent of almond blossoms filled
the air and the thatched eaves were white with jessa-
mine flowers.

But Moshesh, though he encouraged the mission-
aries, and counselled his people to attend their
teaching, did not himself adopt their faith. "He
was too old to change; the young people might
learn ; but for him it would not do." So has it been
in these times of ours all the world over. The days
have passed when savage kings and chiefs adopt the
cross at the teaching of the missionary, and \/ith
Xavier that power which penetrated the hearts of
peoples, and changed kings and nations, seems to
have vanished from the earth.

But though Moshesh took small heed of the teach-
ings of the Frenchmen in spiritual matters, in tem-
poral ones he gave full attention to them. Beware
of war ; resist when attacked ; make friends with the
white man : these were the chief tenets of the worldly
creed they taught him, and under such teaching
Moshesh grew in power, and Basutoland became rich
and prosperous.

But a great danger soon began to menace Basuto-
land. The wave of the white man's domination
was beginning to surge against the mountain fastness
of the Mont aux Sources. South Africa had not a
white population equal to a third-rate English town ;
nevertheless, an area as large as Germany was found
too small to hold these fifty thousand white men, and
the thin but restless stream was already beating

208 . FAR OUT^

against the remote regions of the Malutis, and flowing
away to the mighty wilderness where the Vaal washed
from its gravelly shores in summer floods the yet
unknown shining stones called diamonds.

The Dutch Boers who had crossed the Orange
River proceeded to establish themselves as an inde-
pendent community among the wildebeestes and the
blessboks ; there were no Englishmen in that part of
the world, and the establishment of a Dutch republic
met with no opposition at our hands. Those of the
Dutch, however, who crossed the Berg, and went down
into Natal, met with different treatment.

Far away by the Indian Sea, at the port of Natal, a
small English settlement had taken root. After
defeating the Zulu king and destroying his kraal in
the upper country, the Dutch adventurers had drawn
nearer to the sea — to Araby or Jerusalem or the
Jordan, as they fondly imagined. All at once they
found themselves face to face with the English settle-
ment. "Curse these Englishmen!" doubtless cried
the Boers ; "here they are safely settled in Jerusalem
before us." Still, there was peace between the rival
settlers for a time, and, in the face of the common
enemy, war would have been dangerous.

But after the victory over the Zulus things changed.
The Dutch attacked the English settlement, and for a
time had matters their own way. Beaten by superior
numbers the English commander shut himself up in a
hastily built fort, composed verses to the Southern

SOUTH AFRICA. 209

Cross, and bid defiance to the Boers. Months passed
away; help came to the British camp from Cape
Colony; the Dutch were beaten back; they moved
into the npper country again, and more than half their
number recrossed the Berg to seek for Araby in other
lands. Natal was English ; but by a fatal error the
line of British boundary stopped at the Drakens-
berg; no claim was made to the great plains north of
the Orange River — no claim, at least, for six years
after.

In 1847 a man was appointed to the governorship
of Cape Colony who, whatever might be his other
qualities, knew the true policy of England in the wilds.
There was to be no boundary to English possession
in South Africa, save such as ocean set. Boers might
migrate here or there ; but whenever the time should
come that English civilisation reached the confines of
the country in which they had settled, then, too, had
come the time for the establishment of British
dominion in that land whether Boer, or Basuto, or
Bosjisman reigned or roamed in it. South Africa was
British by every right of conquest and privilege of
possession. The Dutch, dissatisfied with our abolition
of slavery, might "trek" where they pleased, but they
must still remain British subjects, by the self- same
law which made the Mormons citizens of the United
States after they had placed sixteen hundred miles
of wilderness between them and the last outpost of
Yankeedom.

In 1847 there arrived at the Cape of Good Hope a

210 FAR OUT.

new governor; he jiad been a dashing leader of
dashing men. British power, as represented by a few
squadrons of British cavah-y, was, in his eyes, irresis-
tible. Dutch Boers setting up ii republic of their own
beyond the Orange River — the thing was absurd to the
last degree. "Forward the Cape Corps. March away
the Rifle Brigade. We'll soon see who is to be the
ruler in South Africa."

So across the wilds of the Karoo, and up to the
banks of the Orange River, went a small force of
regular troops. Some little distance north of the
river, a "commando" of Boers had taken its post
amidst rocks and stone-covered hills nigh a place
called Boomplatz.

The victor of Aliwal, brave to rashness, rides
forward in advance of the little army. Shots ring
out from the rocks, a few of the staff fall, an escort
of Cape mounted men run away; but the brave old
chief reins in his charger where he is, and cursing the
runaways, calls out to the Rifles to advance. They
come up at the double, spread out into the hills, and
move straight up against the rocks. Suddenly the
puflfs of smoke cease. "This is not a proper way to
fight," say the Boers; "we came prepared to lie here
quietly for a few hours among the rocks, and here
these fellows come running up to us as if they were
our friends."

So, in order to escape being shaken by the hand or
perhaps by the throat, the Dutchmen scramble into
their saddles in yonder hollow, midst the hillB, and

SOUTH AFRICA. 211

gallop away to noi-thern wilds, their brave leader, one
PrflBtorius by name, never drawing rein until sixty
miles lay between him and the Boomplatz.

The Orange Republic was no more. Moshesh
heard with joy, up in his mountain, the tidings of
Boomplatz, and he marched out from the hills, with
his array, to greet the English Governor, and to show
his respect for the Queen's authority.

They met at Winburg. It was a novel sight. The
Basuto army numbered about five thousand men,
mostly mounted on shaggy or wiry ponies. Sir Harry
Smith was in high si)irits. " Moshesh was his friend
and brother," he said. " The Basutos and the Eng-
lish would ever be friends."

The English general called out in his deep voice,
whether there was any trooper in the ranks who could
perform the sword-exercise in front of the line, for
the edification of the Basutos. A trooper rode out and
began to cut and thrust about his horse's ears. Sir
Harry waved him back with a gesture of disdain.
Another essayed the feat ; again the old general cried
out, " That is not the sword-exercise."

At last, an Irish soldier rode to the front ; he cut
and thrust, and whirled and slashed, and jerked
about in his saddle in such a frantic manner, thai the
Basutos roared with delight, and Sir Harry Smith
declared his satisfaction. Then came some cavalry
manoeuvres, and finally the review was over.

It was now Moshesh's turn. He attempted a
charge ; but a great part of his cavalry was suddenly

p 2

212 FAR OUT.

transformed into infantry by the simple process of
being sent flying over their horses' heads. The horse
was still a new-comer in Basutoland, and the monkey-
like seat which now cannot be shaken, had not then
been attained.

A war-dance wound up the day. The whole Basuto
army danced like demons, Moshesh capering at their
head. At one period the excitement became so in-
tense that it is said the old general caught the in-
fection, and, seizing Moshesh in his arms, danced
round and round with him.

Moshesh went back to his mountains. The English
governor pursued his way to the Drakensberg. On
the ridge overlooking Natal he met the Boers in
council. They were flying with their flocks and herds
from Natal, to escape from the British government
once more : Araby and the Promised Land were to be
sought somewhere else.

It would have been better for Natal if the English
governor had allowed the Boers to seek fresh fields
and pastures new.

To make the earth a waste and to call it a farm is
the first rule of Dutch agi'icultural practice in South
Africa. Six thousand acres are still known as "a
small farm " — no fence, no tree, no shrub, no sign of
agriculture breaks the terrible monotony of an up-
country Dutch holding : far as eye can reach there is
but a wilderness unmarked by man.

In the council on the top of the Drakensberg, Sir
Harry Smith offered to the flying Dutchmen the meat

SOUTH AFRICA. 213

liberal grants of land in Natal. In many cases these
grants were accepted, the Boers resumed their former
places ; the system of vast farms became perpetuated
in a country whose conditions of soil and climate were
in perfect keeping with a system of small agricultural
holdings, and the opportunity was for ever lost of
planting on the African continent the germs of the
only European settlement which can ever ripen into a
prosperous civilisation.

Time went on. A new governor was sent to the
Cape ; war, fierce war, had broken out among the
Kafiir tribes of the Kei river. Moshesh kept to his
mountains ; but ever and anon the Boers, who had
settled in the plains, cut off some slice of Basuto
territory, ran the survey lines of farms further towards
the Caledon, and set up beacons nearer to the blue
Malutis.

Then there came raids upon cattle, horses disap-
peared from the farms : the Basuto said it was but
fair retaliation ; the Boers called it unprovoked rob-
bery.

Following the affair of Boomplatz came the esta-
blishment of British government north of the Orange
Eiver. An English resident dwelt at Bloemfontein, a
small garrison occupied the fort. The resident took
the views of the farmers, got together some tribes of
Barralongs and Bechuans, and moved against Mo-
shesh. The Bechuans and Bar. alongs made a poor
fight: Moshesh was the victor, but he knew better
than to push his advantage against the British.

214 FAR OUT.

Towards the middle of 1852 the war on the Koi was
over, and the En^liwh governor, Hir Ooorge Cathcart,
hethought him of a new move. He ordered the as-
Bembly of a field force on the Orange River in the
month of November of that year, and, crossing the
river early in December, moved along the right bank
of the Caledon. He had with him the finest force
ever seen in Sonth Africa — a regiment of lancers, a
battery of artillery, and four regiments of light
infantry.

About mid-December the little army reached Platt-
berg, on the Caledon ; a few miles across the river
lay the mountain fastnesses of Thaba Bossiou, and
from the ridge of Phittberg could be seen the hills and
rocks of Basutoland stretching from the river side to
the Malutis.

On the 10th of December Moshesh came to the
English camp in considerable alarm. The interview-
between him and the British commander was a
curious one. Cathcart demanded ten thousand head
of cattle and a large number of horses as a fine for
the misdeeds of the Basutos. Moshesh expostulated,
declared the number was out of all reason, begged for
time, spoke parable after parable, dealt in metaphor
by the hour ; but all to little purpose. " Peace is
like the rain that makes the gi-ass grow," he said,
" war i the hot wind that burns it up."

At last, finding neither metaphor nor entreaty of
any avail to prevent the lessening of the fine imposed
upon him, he asked the General what would happen

SOUTH AFRICA. 215

if the whole number wore not forthcoming on the
third day. *' In that case I will go and take them,"
waH the reply. "War is bad," answered Moshesh ;
"but even a beaten dog will bite." Then he went
back to hiM mountain.

The 2()th of December oame. At daybreak the
army moved from its camp at Plattborg, crossed the
Hooded Caledon on pontoons, and held its way to-
wards Thaba Bossiou. It was a dull overcast morn-
ing : now and again the vapour broke into rifts, and
bcttween them could be seen the steep sides of cliffs
hanging abruptly over winding valleys, and at times,
perched on some craggy point, a Basuto scout was
visible, keenly watching from his shaggy pony the
moving column beneath ; all else was quiet. ■*

From the centre of the valley through which the
column marched a large hill rose abruptly before the
troops, and stood like a great island in a stream,
the valley separating at its base and throwing out
arms on either side. The hill that rose between these
branching valleys was high and table-topped ; its
sides, scarped into perpendicular " krances " near the
summit, sloped down at a steep angle near the base,
where lay piled together a debris of crag and boulder,
long since ruined and shattered from the rock frontlet
above.

The hill was called the Berea. At the spot where
the gorge or valley divided into branches, Cathcart
divided his little army too. The lancers followed
the valley to the left; the infantry took the hill of

216 . FAR OUT.

the Berea in front ; the artillery, the general and his
staff, and half a battalion of foot, kept along the valley
to the right.

It was a strange disposal of the little army. The
valleys along which the wings moved diverged further
and fmrther apart — mist, fog, crag, and precipice
intercepted the view ; nothing could be seen of the
table-topped hill save its scarped sides and rugged
" krances " ; troops in the valley could render no
assistance to troops on the hill ; nor was it possible
to communicate from one valley to another, except by
a long circle round the base of the Berea. It is diffi-
cult to climb these table mountains, but it is ten
times more difficult to come down them again ; for
the rugged path which zig-zags through the cliffs
can be traced from beneath, but is altogether lost
from above.

On the summit of the Berea Hill Moshesh had
collected together a vast number of cattle and horses ;
these the cavahy had orders to capture. Through a
rough and broken incline, which wound through rocks
and shingle, the lancers reached the top of the Berea.
On all sides there spread around them a level expanse
of sward, upon which Basutos galloped to and fro
endeavouring to urge to greater haste huge droves of
cattle. The lancers rode in among the cattle; the
Basutos fled into the fog. For a time all went well ;
but the work of cattle-driving was not a military
mancBuvre much in practice among the cavalry, and
the troopers riding to and fro soon became detached

SOUTH AFRICA. 217

into broken parties of a few men lost in a maze of
terrified animals.

All at once through the fog there came a dense
mass of Basutos riding down upon the scattered
troopers. The cattle broke in every direction — in vain
the lancers tried to rally; from rock and crevice,
from the sharp edge of the precipice where the flat-
topped hill dipped all at once out of sight, the shaggy
ponies and their naked riders came sweeping through
the wreaths of mist — the right, the left, the north,
and the south had all become to the English soldier a
hopeless puzzle ; some fought singly against many
foes ; others, endeavouring to reach the main body,
became only further separated from it ; others, pent
between their enemies and the wall-like precipice
edge, boldly charged into the Basutos. In a few mo-
ments a score of the finest cavalry in the world had
been killed, their horses taken, their gay trappings
torn off, and then was there seen the singular sight
of these monkey-like negroes, arrayed in scarlet coat
and leather over-all, flourishing bright-pennoned
lances aloft as they galloped hither and thither over
the table-land of the Berea Hill.

While this wretched scene was being enacted on the
left, the centre column of infantry pushed its way up
the precipice and gained a footing on the simimit. A
mounted staff-ofiicer was with them. Riding some
distance in advance of the front of the column, he
thought he discerned in the fog the helmets and
pennons of the lancers. Galloping up to them, he

218 FAR OUT.

suddenly found himself surrounded by Basutos dressed
in cavalry uniform. Faunce is said to have surren-
dered his sword, and asked for a few minutes' grace
before his death. Some hesitation appears to have
been felt by the Basutos at the final moment. There
were those among the savages who would have spared
the life of the prisoner ; but while some clamoured
for his life and others sought to preserve it, news
came that the white soldiers had killed Basuto women
at the base of the Berea Hill, and these tidings decided
the captive's fate. He was killed on the spot. ^ .

The day wore to a close. Cathcart spent many an
anxious moment. Dark clouds of Basuto horsemen
hovered around the English army. At length the
infantry descended from the hill ; the clouds of horse-
men seemed to increase. For a moment, it is said,
the English general deemed himself lost. " Let us
die like English soldiers," he exclaimed to some of
his staif.

" Die ! " exclaimed the fiery- spirited Eyre, who had
just arrived, maddened by the resujt of the day.
" Give me leave, sir, and I will soon answer for this
black rabble."

But night was already closing ; and as the daylight
darkened over Thaba Bossiou, the Basutos drew off
into the mountains.

Next morning Cathcart withdrew his forces to his
original camp on the Caledon. The troops were wild
to avenge the disasters of the Berea. Such an armj'
foiled by such a foe ! They must advance again and

SOUTH ArWCA. 219

storm Thaba Bossiou. But ere the morning wore
away, messengers came from Moshesh. That crafty
chief knew well what would be the result of his tran-
sient victory. His soldiers might deck themselves
with the lancer trophies, but the triumph would be
shoi-t-lived if he did not at once make peace ; so, with
many protestations of submission, the old chief offered
cattle and horses to the General he had beaten but
the previous day, and besought the clemency and
forbearance of the vanquished.

It was a sagacious move. Moshesh blazoned forth
his triumph far and near to Kaffir, Zulu, and
Bechuana ; for many a day the lancers' pennons
flew gaily above some Basuto kraal, tokens of Basuto
victory over the white man. But by his crafty submis-
sion Moshesh saved his kingdom from destruction;
and if to-day there is a native state called Basutoland
in South Africa, it is because the old chief knew how
to build a bridge for a baffled foe and to pay him
handsomely for crossing it.

This battle on the Berea Hill was fought in Decem-
ber, 1852. Ere a second December had passed the
old English general had fallen on a far-oif Crimean
field, and the hill named " Cathcart's," in memory of
him, was furrowed deep with the graves of England's
bravest sons who had died " like English soldiers."

II.

A N evil day was drawing nigh for British interests
in South Africa. The Orange Eiver sovereignty
was to be given up. British troops, flag, and govern-
ment were to withdraw from it, and a boundary was
to be set to a dominion in whose possible future
might even then have been read, in legible letters, a
realisation of that old name given two hundred years
before by the Portuguese discoverer, the "Good
Hope " of a great empire set in the lonely ocean
beneath the Southern Cross.

It is easy to be wise after the event, to say what
should have been, to picture what might have been,
to point where empire has been lost and chance
misused ; but in this case of Orange sovereignty
abandonment, such wisdom could have been gathered
then quite as easily as it can be gleaned now. Nay,
even nature taught the lesson better then than she
does to-day. At that time, far as the eye could reach,
the vast plain of the Free State was a shifting scene
of light-limbed antelopes, and millions of wild animals
drew rich sustenance from that grass so green in
summer, so brown and sere under the winter's sun.

SOUTH AFRICA. 221

"It is a desert," writes one English governor in
1852 or 1853. "It is richer than any part of
Australia," writes another, just four years later. Yes,
it was a desert in the sense that man was a st' anger
there, that no fence crossed the land, no homestead
was to he seen. It was a desert such as the rover
poet Pringle loved to sing of as he wandered at will
through its solitudes. Here is a picture of this
desert as he painted it : —

Afar in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent bush -boy alone by my side.
Away, away, from the dwellings of men.
By the wild dears' haunt, and the buffaloes' glen ;
By valleys remote, where the oribi plays,
Wliere the gnoo, the gazelle, and the hartebeeste graze.
And the gemsbok and eland unheeded recline,
, By the skirts of grey forest o'ergrown with wild vine,
And the elephant browses at peace in his wood,
And the river-horse gambols unscared by the flood.
And the mighty rliinoceros wallows at will
In the " vley" where the wild ass is drinking liis fill.

True, there was one real desert in it, a region where
water was scarce and grass was scant, a spot looking
over which the traveller might exclaim, " This is
worthless." Yet even there, in the centre of that
waste of red, hrick-duat plain, one day a herd-boy
caught the gleam of a pebble that sparkled like a
star, and now on that spot twelve thousand men
are digging deep into the earth in the richest diamond
mine the world has seen.

There is nothing worthless under the sun ; if the

222 FAR OUT.

wealth of nature lies not on the surface, it is only
because she has hidden it in her bosom.

In 1854 the abandonment of the Orange Eiver
sovereignty was consummated. The story of that
abandonment, as it is told to-day in the Orange Free
State, is pitiable enough. It is said that the majority
of the inhabitants were hostile to the change. Many
settlers had established themselves in the territory,
and British power had taken root. The more tm*bulent ,
Boer had fled into wilds more remote. . Settlements
were springing up.

All at once the scene was changed. A commission
arrived from England to surrender the sovereignty
to the Dutch. For a long time no one would accept
the surrender. Meetings opposing it were held; re-
solutions were adopted declaring the unalterable
attachment of the inhabitants to the English flag ;
petitions were presented, but they all mattered little ;
the act had been already decided on, and it was to be
done one way or another.

At last a party was got together willing to receive
over the territory. They were obscure individuals ;
but on paper their names, when finally inscribed,
looked formidable enough. It is widely asserted
to-day in the Free State that this risky feat of pen-
manship was only achieved by the Boers after a
liberal offer of English gold, "to defray the expenses
of the transfer," had been made to them by the
British authorities.

At length the deed was ratified. The bu-thright of

SOUTH AFRICA. 223

Britain in this southern world was signed away, and
a document was launched into life which, as time
goes on, becomes more vividly injurious to English
interests, and year by year grows into a more fatal
instrument against British power in South Africa,
following out but too truly the law which gives to
political error no final resting-place. Let us run
rapidly over the succeeding twenty years.

The Free State grew. Another large republic arose
still farther off to the north. Where the Free State
ended at the south shore of the Vaal River, the Trans-
vaal Dutch Republic began on the north shore, and
ended no man could tell where. One ambitious Pre-
sident fixed the northern boundary at the Crocodile
River, another said it must be at the Limpopo,
another would claim the Zambesi, the tropic of Capri-
corn, or the Equator. If the natives objected, a "com-
mando " soon settled matters. A commando was
merely a new name for an old thing. It was war
without any of the usages or restraints which civilisa-
tion has imposed on war. It meant night surprise,
destruction of crops and cattle, no prisoners, cave-
smoking, killing of women, &c.

Here is Lord Stanley's opinion of "commandoes":
"They are frequently undertaken," he writes, "as a
means of gratifying the cupidity or vengeance of the
Dutch or English farmers ; and further, they are
marked by the most atrocious disregard of human life."

But further off, towards the remote north, they

224 FAR OUT.

meant more than this. There was in the Transvaal
an institution called " apprenticeship." Young negi'O
children, without parents, could be apprenticed to
farmers for a term of years. Orphans are not more
numerous in the neighbourhood of the Limpopo than
they are in other parts of the world ; but when or-
phans are at a premium, it becomes possible to im-
prove upon nature, and to make them to order. It
rests upon authority not to be disputed that women
were butchered at their kraals in the north of the
Transvaal Republic but a few years ago, for the sole
purpose of enabling their murderers to carry away
orphans to Prsetoria, the capital of the republic.

All this is very horrible, and many men reading it
in South Africa will perhaps exclaim against the
writer for here placing it on record ; but it is better
that these dark things should be brought face to face
with the light of day — better for us in England, as
well as for our cousins in South Africa ; for, strong as
we imagine to be our sense of justice, of honour, or of
courage, it is well for us to know that it all rests upon
a frail foundation, and for those in savage lands to
realise that, no matter how remote may be the region
wherein these dark deeds are done, there will come a
time when, even to the short-seeing eye of man, they
will be laid bare.

But to return to the Orange Free State and our
mountain Basutoland.

Some years after the withdrawal of British power
from the north of the Orange River, war broke out

SOUTH AFRICA. 225

between the Boers and the Basutos. The conflict
ended favourably for the natives. The Dutch farmers
could with difficulty bo held together ; as yet the infant
republic lacked the spirit of nationality or of cohesion,
and Moshesh proved fully a match for his white
enemies.

Peace was made, leaving matters much as they had
been before the struggle.

In 186G war broke out afresh. A new President
had assumed the direction of the Free State Govern-
ment. He was a man trained under the influence of
British institutions, although a thorough representa-
tive of Dutch traditions. His energy and determina-
tion soon made themselves apparent. The Basuto
war was carried on with vigour. Hitherto the table-
topped fastnesses south of the Caledon had been
deemed impregnable. In 1867 Makwai's mountain
was attacked and taken, and soon after Tandtgiesberg
was carried and the chief Pushili killed.

The following year saw the Boers in possession
of Qumi, the mountain stronghold of Letsia, Mo-
shesh's favourite son ; and the same year beheld the
celebrated Thaba Bossiou, Moshesh's mountain, in-
vested by his enemy. The fight around this rugged
hill was long and varied. Several times the Dutch
attempted to storm the steep stronghold, and as often
were they forced to relinquish the assault. English-
men mustered strong in the Dutch army, and English
breechloading rifles, and Armstrong and Whitworth
guns, were plentiful too.

226 FAR OUT.

The Free State complained bitterly that we aided
the BnHutos with arms and ammunition, and sym-
pathy ; l)nt every rifle fired at Thaba BoHsioii, and
every shell flung on the rocky ledge where old Mo-
shesh battled bravely against his foes, came from an
English arsenal or an English factory ; and when,
once, a Boer column did make a temporary landing
on the scarped ledge by the summit of the beleaguered
rock, it was an English officer who led them on,
fighting for hours alone upon the ledge from which
his followers had retreated. If our sympathy went
with the Basutos, something more practical than
sympathy was given to the Dutch.

Thaba Bossiou was never taken. Reduced to direst
famine, shelled and shot at, the rocky ledge still held
out ; and before famine could complete its work,
British intervention saved the mountain State. Ba-
sutoland was declared British territory, Moshesh was
taken under the protection of the English flag, and
the Free State was told to stay its hands. It was full
time for our intervention. More than two thousand
Basutos had fallen; all the cattle, horses, waggons,
ploughs, even clothes belonging to the natives, had
been destroyed ; the kraals had been utterly de-
molished ; the wi'etched women and children and old
men had crowded into dark and loathsome caverns in
the rocky hills, where, bereft of food and covering,
they perished miserably from fever, cold, and famine.

Of course there were loud denunciations from the
Butch for this saving from utter annihilation of the

SOUTH AFRICA. 227

remnant of their foes. They had already annexed the
greater portion of the fertile valleys north of the
Caledon ; they hungered still for the rugged hills and
steep glens which lay between the Caledon and the
blue Maluti Mountains ; and to-day, through the
Free State, one often hears, heading the catalogue of
crimes recounted against England in South Africa,
her merciful preservation of old Moshesh and his
mountaineers from the rapacious destruction of the
Dutch Boers.

In the foregoing pages we have sketched the history
of this native mountain State, not because of any
importance to-day attaching to its existence, or of any
influence which it exercises upon the communities
surrounding it, but because it is, geographically
speaking, the keystone of the South African structure,
the fountain-head of its water ;^ystem, the summit of
its surface; and as from the Alps one looks down
upon France, Italy, and Germany, and by a single
turn of the head takes mental grasp of half Europe,
so this rugged land of peaks has beneath and around
it a sweep of horizon which embodies almost at a
glance the entire topograi)hy of South Africa.

To catch from mere description the outline of a
continent, to see mountains and rivers, plains and
valleys, as they lie in the vast inanity of nature — to
behold that wonderful view over the outspread earth
which the eagle sees when he is a speck in heaven,
that " bird's-eye view " which we so often speak of

228 FAR OUT.

but HO seldom rcaliso — tluH, pcrliapH, is tlio most
(liiVicult tank tlus ruiuli'r has to It'iini from tlio writiT ;
for it irt a Iohhou hard ommgli for the man who has
himself looked upon the land whicii he would fain por-
tray; and it is also a lesson without knowledge of
which all other knowledge of the iM'oplo or policy of
distant lands is unlinislu^d and incomplete.

In the preceding pages we have looked, as it were,
from a lofty height, upon that part of South Africa
which contains to a greater extent than any other
portion what may be called the future of the continent.

Coal, iron, gold, diamonds — these are gi'eat trea-
sures ; and these lie locked bciueath the lands we
hav(! just surveyed, to an extent the knowledge of
which is still in its crude commencement.

There is an angle of the meadow which we call
Natal, where four States all meet together at one
point. Through a vast rolling i)lain many streams
and rivers run eastward from the Drakensberg ; a few
ostriches still stretch their long necks above the
hill horizon to watch the passing traveller on his way ;
the oribi bounds from the yellow gi'ass before the
horse's gallop; a herd of hartebeeste watch warily
from afar at waggon or rider. The place is called
the Newcastle Flat. It is well named, for frequently
one sees, when the yellow clay has been washed and
cut into deep channels by summer floods, huge dark
seams of rock-like coal thrust up between layers of
trap and sandstone lying but a few feet from the sur-
face. It is a curious sight. Here, unworked, un-

SOUTH AFRirA. 220

lu'cdcd, unltorn, lios a mighty future ; this is tho
great c()al-I)c'(l of South Africa. As tho rider now
(hiiWH hridlo l)y one of these breaks in the yellow
clay, he sees only the great stretch of plain, the wild
deer on the hilltop, the sun going down hlood-red
through the smoke of distant grass-fires ; he hears
nothing hut th(( rustle of wind through waving grass,
and the drip of water down the sandstcmc; channel ;
and, as he looks upon the quiet wilderness, there
crosses his mind a vision of great factories; of tall
chimneys pouring forth dark streams of smoke,
blurring the sunlight and blotting the sky ; of men
and women, and children, from whose faces tho light
of heaven has also been blotted out and blurred ; of
the Hare of gas on pallid cheek, and the roll of steam
along iron road, when, in tho fulness of time, thia
dark deep seam shall be followed into tho bowels of
the earth, and flung forth to feed the fm-naces of tho
world's toil.

We have already spoken of tho diamonds of the
Vaal River. We will now endeavour to place before
the reader an image of the gigantic pit in whoso
depths ten thousand men are delving deeper year by
year.

Wo have said before that tho Vaal and Orange
Eivers, both springing from the range of the Drakens-
berg, approach each other some three hundred miles
from their sources, and joining their waters in the
midst of a vast plain of brick-coloured clay, on which
the tliorny mimosa grows, gnarled and stunted, in

230 FAR OUT.

scattered clumps, pours westward a constantly
decreasing volume through the sands of Damara and
the arid plains of the Kalaharri Desert.

In the angle formed by the two rivers, at about
eighty miles from their point of junction, a strange
scene rises suddenly before the traveller's eye.

In the middle of a great plain — a plain so vast that
its hills and undulations, its trap eruptions, "kopjes,"
and salt-pans are all merged by distance into a
uniform sense of level — there is seen an immense
assemblage of huts and houses, tents and flag-staflfs.
High above roof or fiag-pole a huge, irregular mound
of earth rises from the centre of this city on the
plain, and as the traveller approaches the city he sees
that it is built around the base of this great mound,
which shelves down at that steep angle which is
formed by the labour of the navvy-mound builder
working from a higher level.

Without design or order, the huts and tents rise
confusedly on every side ; corrugated iron and canvas
are the materials from which dwelling-house, church,
drinking- saloon, store, and shed have been built. The
city of Kimberley, or Colesberg, or New Eush, as it is
variously named, is a city of tin and tent. But if
the materials with which man has built this town in
the desert be simple, the builder-man has been com-
pound enough. Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and
Australasia have all sent their representatives to
Kimberley. The African delves in the mine ; the re-
presentatives from the rest of the world buy, sell, and

SOUTH AFRICA. 231

drink in the town. When the water deepens in the
great pit the two first avocations are considerably
curtailed, and in their places are substituted politics.
Two great factions then appear in the city of dia-
monds ; they are " loyal men " and •* rebels."

On the latter side one finds the usual curious com-
bination; there is the German malcontent, there is
the English malcontent, there is the Irish malcontent,
and, in addition to these units of European disaffection,
there is also found here the malcontent of Natal.

First take the Teutonic upholder of liberty. He
has two prefixes to his name — Captain and Von. It
is needless to say that he possesses only that claim to
either title that arises from almost unlimited capa-
bility of consuming beer and tobacco. He has a popu-
lar reputation, however, for having seen service, and
there are certain hints throAvn out by his immediate
friends of his being closely connected with Von
Moltke, whose portrait (taken from an illustrated
paper) is hung conspicuously in his tin house.

Captain Von Drinckhishfils commands a following
of about forty men ; they are all Germans, and have,
like their leader, acquired, rightly or wrongly, a reputa-
tion for arms ; some are Bavarians, some are Saxons,
some are pure Prussians ; all are imbued with a high
spirit of independence, discordant wind instruments,
strong waters, and tobacco. They do not wash much,
and whether in the mine or in the glass, hold water in
low estimation.

Von Drinckhishfils and his company are reported

232 FAR OUT.

to have shown considerable military knowledge at a
recent rescue of a "rebel" storekeeper from the hands
of four constables who were conveying him to jail,
on which occasion they took up a strategic position
in an extinct diamond pit, a position which was as
menacing to the four representatives of tyrannical
oppression as it was secure from any stray bullet
which might happen to be abroad.

The English malcontent is quite another kind of
being ; his antagonism to the government at the
fields is based chiefly on opposition to the principle
of universal equality of black and white men. He is
of that type peculiar to the middle and lower class
Anglo-Saxon, whose ideas of universal equality have
reference only to a set of beings above them in the
social scale, and who would substitute repressive
superiority whenever the sentiment affects a lower or
a differently coloured race of men.

He takes his stand, he will tell you, upon the in-
alienable right of every born Briton to make, frame,
and adjust his own law, and as he individually has
not made, framed, or adjusted the law by which
native Africans are graciously permitted to dig on
African soil for African diamonds on their own
account, he is determined to resist to the utmost such
a manifest injustice.
1 And now, having glanced at some of the human
V^wellers at the base of the great mound of Colesberg,
let us ascend the steep bank itself, and gaze at the
curious scene which opens before us.

A big pit! at top twelve acres of superficial size.

SOUTH AFRICA. «.r?3

two hundred feet deep at its deepest, its floor cut into
innumerable squares, its sides falling steep from a
clear cut edge. Around that edge rise, tier over tier,
three rows of wooden platforms, from which wheels
and pulleys, and iron ropes run downwards into the
yawning abyss below. Thick as black men can swarm,
on these wooden platforms stand nearly naked negroes,
working wheel and pulley, bucket and rope. Looking
down into the pit one sees thousands of wire ropes
crossing and recrossing each other, stretched " taut "
from " the claim " beneath to the platform above.
There are six hundred whole claims in this mighty
pit; but claims have been split into halves, quarters,
eighths, and even sixteenths.

Down below black figures, dwarfed by distance, are
digging, picking, and filling into leather buckets a
dark bluish clay, half stone, half marl ; when the
bucket fills, a signal to the men on the platform
above is given from beneath, the wheels fly round,
and along the wire rope runs the load of " diamond-
iferous " clay to the pit edge aloft.

Beyond all attempt at number are these ropes and
lines of wire ; buckets come and go along them with
puzzling rapidity. A mighty whirr of wheels fills the
immense arena ; a vast human hum floats up from
ten thousand throats. Such a sight must the great
tower by the Babylonian stream have presented ; but
assuredly nowhere else could the eye have taken at a
single glance such an accumulation of labour, all
tending to one toil and one effort.

Let the man be who he may; let him have seen all

234 FAR OUT.

the world holds best worth seeing in the work of
man, old or new ; let him have grown tired of wonders
by land and sea ; still we will venture to assert that, as
he climbs the side of this clay mound, and looks from
the edge of the bordering rock into the Colesberg
"kopje," he will stand for a moment riveted to the
^ spot, in the first impulse of a new astonishment.

Sut there are many questions which the reader
will require answered, ere he can see even faintly the
pit and its mode of work. How is the dividing line
kept between claim and claim? Where is the clay
put that is taken out of the pit? How are the
diamonds extracted from the clay? Is the clay all of
this bluish marl-like description? How are the sides
of the pit kept from falling in? These, and many
more questions, will arise to the reader's mind as he
scins what we have written.

The pit sides are cut steeply down. Nature has
faced them for the most part with a lining of rock.
This lining, called *' the reef," forms the boundary of
the diamond mine: one foot outside that boundary
reef there are no diamonds. At times the reef hangs
dangerously over the pit, and then it has to be taken
down, and the edge sloped off at a greater angle.

For a great depth now the work has been carried
through nothing but this blue marl-like clay, but it
was not always so. At first the soil was a reddish
gravel; it was rich in diamonds. All at once the red
gravel gave place to yellow clay. Men said, "There
will be no more precious stones, the red gravel is all

SOUTH AFRICA. 235

gone;" but men, as they often are, were wrong, and
the diamonds went on as before. At last the bluish
soft rock was reached; again the wise people said,
" Now there is an end to diamond digging." But
diamond digging went on in the bluish marl rock, as
it had gone on in the other clays and gravels.

When this clay, or rock, or gravel is brought to the
surface, it can no longer be piled, as of yore, around
the edge of the great pit ; there is no room now, and
already the heap is high and vast enough. So
hundreds of horses are employed in carting away the
diamondiferous soil, and placing it in various parts of
the great surrounding plain. Here the action of sun,
and an*, and cold night soon causes the half- solid
mass to disintegrate, and then, when it has softened,
begins the work of washing.

To pick out the precious stones was for years no
easy matter ; the apparatus was rude and incomplete,
and many a valuable gem slipped through and was
lost in the debris clay. Now all that is changed, a
closer scrutiny is possible ; and so perfect has become
the means of sifting, that the old debris of former
years is being worked over again, and many a rich
gem taken from its vast accumulation.

People will naturally ask, "Must there not be great
robberies practised in this immense pit ? " The an-
swer is unquestionably "Yes " ; but let us not run away
with the matter all at once. These frequent pilferings
of stones are the chief causes of the white man's anti-
pathy to his black labourer at the fields ; but when-

236 FAR OUT.

ever we have heard the negro denounced for his
diamond-stealing, it has ahvaj's occurred to us to ask
our righteous white friend, " How do you think you
would fare if you emjaloyed twenty white men instead
of these twenty Zulus or Bechuanas ? Do you think
the pilfering would cease ? Not a hit of it ; it would
be ten times greater." We unhesitatingly state our
opinion that if the present system of diamond-digging
were attempted with the ordinary white labour of the
world, be that labour British, German, or American,
it would be simply impossible to continue it, so whole-
sale would be the stealing. It is only with the black
man that there is left sufficient honesty to permit the
continuance of profitable digging.

The term *' digger," as it is frequently used at
Kimberley, is a delusive one. In the papers, over the
doors of shops, in political placards, one sees the
"digger" prominently put forward. There are " dig-
ger associations," ** digger saloons," " digger meet-
ings," even "digger drinks," but the real digger is
the negro. The proprietor of the claim is no more
a digger, in the American or Australian sense of
the term, than an English railroad contractor is a
navvy.

Some years ago, when the diamond excitement was
at its highest point, an English illustrated journal
published a view of the fields. In the background of
this picture many negroes were at work, picking and
grubbing in the earth ; in the foreground there stood
the figure of a white man with an umbrella over his

SOUTH AFRICA. 237

head; he was busily engaged in kicking a large
negro ; both parties seem dissatisfied with the occu-
pation. Matters have changed since then. The
competition for negro work is now very great, and
masters have to be more careful how they kick.

" Give a dog a bad name and hang him," says the
proverb. Give a master a bad name and his work
hangs, is a patent truth in South Africa.

It is curious to note what a strange variety of opi-
nions one hears throughout the country relative to
black labour. " He [the negro] is the laziest brute
on earth," one mm will tell you. " I can get as
much labour as I want," will confide to you the next
comer.

To-day, in the Free State, it is almost impossible to
obtain labour on a Dutch farm. Go a few miles off,
to an English holding, and you will find labour suffi-
cient and to spare.

We do not mean to assert that the negro works for
the sake of work. Who does, the wide world over ?
But we do say that in Natal, in the Orange Free
State, and at the diamond fields, labour can be ob-
tained by those who go about it in the right spirit.

In South Africa no white man works. There are
white artisans and skilled workmen, it is true, but
they are at enormous wage. They make more in a
week than many London office men make in a month.
At the diamond fields they obtain £2 per diem, and
in Natal ^61 or more ; but the white labourer, pure
and simple — the man with the shovel, the stone-

238 FAR OUT.

breaker, Hodge in a smock and with a hedge-clipper
— does not exist. There is no hiding the fact that
labour is at a discount ; some will tell you it is be-
cause of the climate, but in America we have seen
white labour carried on unceasingly, under conditions
of heat and exposure more trying than those of South
Africa. The real cause is to be found in the fact that
black labour is possible to obtain.

Wliat the black man does in this matter his whi+e
cousin must not do. ** The nobility of labour " ceases
to bear patent when the African has to be raised to
the peerage through it, and the "long pedigi-ee of
toil " becomes considerably shortened when its tree
has its root in the " midi'iff " of the negro.

III.

rpo revert to the queBtion of diamond- stealing at
the fields.
Let us think for a moment how facile is the theft.
Peter, good Christian Kaffir, Neheraiah, excellent
Basuto, Manyougootoosoo, pure original Kaffir, or
Whatdooyoocoolum, admirable Corrana, are at work,
individually and collectively, in claim No. 555, belong-
ing to the firm of White, Mann, & Co. All at once
a small bright stone sparkles in the clay, close to the
great outspread foot of Whatdooyoocoolum or Nehe-
miah. The respected members of the fu-m of White,
Mann, & Co. are absent. White is lunching at the
Craven Club, Mann has gone to look for Namaqua
partridges towards the Vaal River, the Co. is at his
usual post in black letters in the mining register.
Well, then, what happens ? Only this. Whatdoo-
yoocoolum places for a moment his great toe upon the
little gem, and a moment later quietly transfers the
brilliant pebble into his mouth, or under his wool,
where it rests safe and sound until the evening has
come, and up from the vast pit stream countless
negroes to scatter for the night over the dusky plain.

240 FAR OUT.

And now for the market where tliis stolen diamoncl
finds sale — that is white. The hlack man does the
stealing, hut it is the white man who generally gets
the stolen gera. Sometimes the stolen stones are
not disposed of at the fields, hut are taken hack into
the interior hy the returning negro. The chief
Lo-Benguela dw(^lla far away hy the water of the
Limpopo. Wlien he gave permission to fifty of hia
young men to visit the diamond fields as lahourers,
he stipulated that, in addition to every man hringing
hack a rifle and twelve pounds of ammunition, they
were also to give him one diamond each man.

Six or eight months later forty-eight men trudge
homeward along the weary road which leads to the
Limpopo ; a hueket falling from the reef edge of the
pit settled for this world the account of No. 49 ;
50 had his thick head split in a row with the
Amakosae Kaflirs, so forty-eight go hack to their
northern ki-aals, carrying forty-eight muskets, a
goodly store of ammunition, some red rugs, and foi^ty-
eight hright little stones carefully hidden away.

When they arrive at their destination they hand
over the forty-eight diamonds to the chief Lo-Benguela,
who drops them into a little earthern vessel in which
many others already lie snugly ; and every now arid
again he takes the earthen cup between his hands,
and shakes it until the stones rattle and glisten, and
then he says, " See ! this is easy to carry. In a day
I can walk a long way with this. Not so with lands
or rivers. I cannot carry them away, and when the

SOUTH AFKICA. 241

white man comes to tukc my liind, as como he will,
ho will get my land ; hut then I take up this little
earthen howl, which will hy that time he full of
shining stones, and I will walk away with more in my
hands than land, or river, or cattle." And the chief
grins as he thus develops his little programme, and
rattles his treasm'e-bowl again and again. All this
showing clearly enough that Lo-Benguela is wise in
his generation with the wisdom of the white man.

Diamond-stealing is on the increase. The negroes
are yeai'ly becoming more dishonest. It is a sad fact,
hut a true one. What produces this result ? Unques-
tionably it is contact with civilisation. It is one
thing to tell this black man that it is wrong to steal ;
it is another thing to let him see, lay after day, white
men buying stolen stones ; Jews and Christians, and
men who are neither Jews nor Christians, prowling
round the pit, offering money at random for the
morning's find. But the negro learns other secrets
than diamon'^ stealing at the gi-eat pit of Colesberg.
Kaffir from the Kei, Amaponda from the St. John's,
Zulu from the Umfolosi, Swasi from the Maputa,
Matabilli from the Limpopo, Basuto, Bechuana, Cor-
rana, or Bushman, all learn here the great fact that
they are brothers in labour, confederates in servitude :
the old jealousies of race begin to disajipear before
this bond of a common sympathy, and at last before
the black races of South Africa stands out the patent
truth that they are opposite in interest, object, desire,
in every line of life and thought, to the white man

242 FAH Ol T.

who hfiH corno aniorif? tluin, and that the old dnain
of a tum> (hawing near, in which the hhick and white
races wouhl Hliarc titf^ithiT their rival inheritances of
poHsoHHion and knowled<j;e, is only di'stined to develop
a reality in which knowledj^c; and poHHCHsion rewt with
one race.

And in this wo touch the real obstacle to what is
called the civilisation of wild or savafjfe races. AVe
often marvel why the conversion of the heathen
becomes more diiHcult as time goes on, and yet a
moment's reflection will suflice to show us that the
reascm of the thing is patent enough.

When the wild man or the n(;gro gives up his Great
Spirit, his fetish, or his idol, and adopts the teaching
of Christianity, he also adopts the social customs and
the social standards of what we call civilisation.
Where does he find himself in that new scale ? At
the very lowest point, somewhere between the beggar
and the pauper.

In nine cases out of ten we have taken, or bought,
or tricked his land from him ; we have killed or
chased away the wild animals that roamed over it ;
we have shouldered him out into the remote moun-
tains or regions unfitted for our present wants. He
learns our knowledge after a time ; but that is only
as a light held out to show him how miserable is the
position he has accepted — the position of a Christian
pariah. ' ^ ■

He has been told a hundred times that this new
religion meant brotherly love ; that before God colour

SOUTH AFRICA. 213

vauiHliod and race was not known ; and if he has
bt'licvHl the teaching, how hitter nuiHt he the Henst! of
(UHai)[»ointnu'nt with wliich he leaniH the real natm*j
of the role he has accepted in tht^ new creed and
social Htat(! ; liow startHji^^ the diwcovery that this
beautiful theory of the wiiite man's love and brother-
hood and charity to all men nuuins, in the hard logic
of fact, the refusal of a night's shelter under the same
roof to him ; means the actual existence of a barrier
between him and the white race more fatally oi)poHed
to fusion, more hostile to reciprocity of thought,
mutual friendship, or commonest tie of fellowship,
than that which lies between civilised man and the
dumb dog that follows him.

Long years ago the red man of North America
realised this fact, that civilisation meant to him servi-
tude or death. He chose the latter. America, said
to contain at the period of its discovery fourteen
million Indians, to-day does not hold four hundred
thousand.

But with the African it is different ; he does not die
out before us. Nay, if we give him the common con-
dition of room he multiplies amazingly ; he multiplies,
but he does not come to the surface. He is always
beneath, deeper, thicker, denser, it may be, but always
below. It is a curious problem this of the African,
and tlie more we study it the more difficult it grows.
He will not die, he wijl^not disappear. We will not
have him as an equal ; we cannot have him as a slave.
What then is to be the outcome ? Time will answer,

__. R 2 —

244 FAR OUT.

as he alwnys answers ; and, meanwhile, this big pit at
Kimbcrley promises to hasten the answer.

We said before that the black toilers in the pit
carried away with them when they retm-ned to their
homes arms and ammmiition, in addition to a certain
amount of dangerous knowledge. "VVe will now give a
significant fact. More than three hundred thousand
stand of arms, chiefly rifles, have passed from the
hands of white traders, at the diamond fields, into
jjossession of South African negroes during the last
I seven years. " A man has worked for me," a trader
has said to us, " until he has had money enough to
get a rifle, and the regulated amount of ammunition,
six pounds or thereabouts ; he has then gone away to
take home his rifle and powder, and after a lapse of a
couple of months he has come back again to work for
more ammunition." It is not too much to suppose
that more than three hundred thousand natives have
been armed and equipped for war at the diamond
fields.

What is it all for ? Ah ! that is the question.
Some w^ill tell you that it is for the chase ; others for
war between tribe and tribe ; others, again, see in it
what it is, in all human probability, a preparation
for war against the common enemy, the white man.
The struggle will be as hopeless as it ever has been.
Snider and Martini-Henry and Vvhitworth have quad-
rupled the weight with which tha white man " crushes "
these efforts of the savage to keep him out ; but all
the same, there will be much bloodshed and misery

SOUTH AFRICA. 245

yet experienced ere the whiH line of conquest is
pushed home to the Limpopo.

Now let us say one word about the diamond itself,
ere we quit the "field" on which it is found. We
cannot believe for a moment that this pit at Kimberley,
or the two or three other spots at Du Toit's Pan and
De Beer's, are the only diamond mines in this great
plateau of South Africa ; many others must exist.

Nothing marked these rich places of the earth ; the
mimosas grew their thorny stems there as elsewhere ;
sheep grazed on the stunted " karoo " bush ; spring-
bok filed in long ijeaceful lines across the plain. All at
once the glistening stones are found, and in seven
years ten millions' worth of diamonds are unearthed, jq j^-q ^

It is not yet twenty years since the first diamonds ^ .
were found on the banks of the Vaal Eiver. They were
water-washed stones of a lustre far surpassing those
now discovered in the big pits at Kimberley ; but they
were few and far between, and the river banks where
they were found were soon worked out. It was evident
that they had been washed in bygone times from
some spot higher up the river, and deposited on the
outer slopes of gravel banks formed by eddies in some
vast volume of running water. This brings us
naturally to the question of what was originally the
aspect of this plateau. It was, without doubt, a
mighty lake. At some age in the earth's history all
this red plain, this grass-covered rolling table-land,
now so dry and at times so arid, lay deep beneath an
inland sea.

246 FAR OUT.

If a traveller lands on any portion of the coast of
South Africa, from the tropic to the Cape of Good
Hope, and journeys inland from the sea, he soon
comes to a range of mountains. These mountains
run nearly parallel to the coast, and are at varying
distances from it ; sometimes thirty, sometimes one
hundred and thirty miles from it.

Ascending this mountain range, and gaining the
top, one stands on the rim of the extinct lake ; the
ground falls again, hut only falls to a third of the ori-
ginal extent. This inner plateau is, in fact, the lake-
bed of South Africa. What has become of the enor-
mous volume of water that must once have filled
this vast basin ? The lower lands, between the rim
and the sea, tell that plainly enough ; the dry bed of
the lake tells it too. The waters rolled away in
mighty floods. The lake bottom was raised from
beneath, or the rim was worn down ; but at any rate
the great flood poured forth and swept before it, not
the mere rock and debris of earth, but the surface of
the earth itself — the hills and plains that lay before it.

South Africa is a land of table-topped hills. These
curious flat wall-like mountains, with hard sandstone
sides, are the wrecks left by this mighty flood ; they
are the island fortresses that resisted the rush of
water; around them the softer rock and looser earth
was carried away; their iron sides stood the fierce rush
of the Avaves, and at last, when the era of erosion had
passed, they remained to still carry on their smooth
summits, sometimes set tluree thousand feet above

SOUTH AFRICA. 247

what is to-day the surface of the country, the level of
the land in bygone ages. But before the waters were
pushed over the rim of the vast lake mighty changes
had taken place beneath its waves. The fires of the
earth had broken forth, and through the soft silts of
cycles, and through the layers of sand, and mud, and
submarine vegetation, the molten trap had forced
its way in many fiery fissures.

In all human probability it was during these
struggles between water above and fire beneath that
the diamonds were formed in the funnel-shaped bed, ■
where they are found to-day, at Kimberley. That they •
came floating from beneath is evident enough. Here
and there, scattered through the pit, are found de-
tached masses of rock. These boulders are called in
the language of the mine " floating reefs " ; on the \
tops of such rocks diamonds are scarcely ever found ;
at the sides, sometimes ; beneath, they often lie. As
bul)bles seek the surfaoe, so in bygone ages might
these carbonic bubbles have floated from the fur-
nace raging beneath through the funnel opening .
under tiie lake, where, kejDt down by the weight
above, they crystallised under conditions we cannot
define.

This explanation of that curious question, " How
are diamonds formed?" was first put forth by one
who has long watched with observant eye in South
Africa the story told by the rocks to man.*

That these three or four earth-openings, under the

;^": ■..::, i^ ♦ Sir T. Sbepstone, K.O.M.G. ;, ^

248 FAR OUT.

bed of the extinct lake, were not the only ones is
evident enough, and it is impossible to believe that
there are not many other such mines scattered over
the plateau, which, as time goes on, will be found as
rich, perhaps richer in these bright carbon crystals
than even the big pit of New Kush. Karoo and
mimosa cover them to-day.

A word now as to the quality of stones found in
South Africa.

The diamonds first found along the Vaal Eiver were
of exceeding brilliancy, fully equal in lustre to the
finest Rtones of Golconda or Brazil ; but in the pits
of Kimberley, De Beer's, and Du Toit's Pan they are
nea -ly all " off-coloured," or yellow. In the one case
they have been washed by the river, and exposed to
the action of an- at some period of the world. In the
other, they lie deep in the bowels of the earth, and
first see light when the digger's pick disturbs their
rest. Many of them crack and flaw when the light
first comes to them.

And now as to the value of the diamond, and its
probable future.

It is scarcely possible that the gem can retain the
place which it has so long held, if these South African
diggings are to continue. Large brilliants must be-
come common. Fifty, eighty, one hundred, even two
and three hundred carat stones have been unearthed
in these dry diggings. We have already stated our
opinion that many other pits will be found in the
vast di'y bed of this extinct lake : and then fashion,

SOUTH AFRICA. 249

easily frightened at profusion, will take alarm, and
the emerald of Central Asia or the ruby of Upper
Burmah will perhaps supplant the long-throned
supremacy of the easier found diamond.

Turning from the diamond field itself to the effects
of such discoveries upon the social and political aspect
of South Africa, we find much food fur reflection.

Every branch of trade, commerce, and agriculture
has derived fresh life and new impulse from these
fields. The land deemed a deseii; twenty years ago
has become of great value. A farm in the Orange
Free State means a great tract of land of not less
than six thousand acres in extent. It is not too
much to say that land in this Dutch Kepublic is
worth to-day as many pounds per acre as it was
worth pence five and twenty years ago. Six thousand
acres form a single farm; but some men are in
possession of five and six such farms in the State,
and once it was our lot to ride over a Free State farm
of two hundred and sixty thousand acres. What a
possession ! It lies on the top of the lower range of
the Drakensberg, over the plains of Newcastle, some
six or seven thousand feet above the sea-level.

Grand beyond description is such a possession.
Hill, vale, plain, and river, all lie within its limits ;
and from the rising of the sun to his setting the
traveller canters his tireless Cape horse between the
beacons of this single ownership.

If we in England would wish to realise the effect of
this increase in the value of estate in the Orange Free

250 FAR OUT.

State, let us suppose a country as large as England
changing in the actual value of its soil from one
penny per acre to ten shillings in the short space of
twenty years ; and yet the value of the land gives but
a faint idea of the value of its products. These are,
in many instances, at famine prices ; all vegetables,
dairy produce, &c., are worth three and four times
what they cost in London. It is a subject of jest
to-day in South Africa because the historian of the
Tudors drew a moral in Bloem." ntein — the Orange
Free State capital — from the price of cauliflowers
sold in the markets ; yet that one straw was a better
index of the difference between demand and supply in
^outh Africa than ten thousand theories.

It is only a little while since that we witnessed the
sale of a large waggon-load of cauliflowers in the
Kimberley market at two shillings and sixpence each
vegetable. The load contained about two thousand
cauliflowers.

There is no fitter soil or finer climate in the world
for the production of these things than that of this
Free State and Griqualand. Give it water and it will
grow anything ; and the water is there in abundance
if man will only "turn it on." Before the discovery
of diamonds and gold all these things were drugs in
the markets; suddenly a vast demand arose for them.
Em'ope sent its steamships to supply what it could,
tinned things of all sorts ; but the Africanders did
little — the more adventurous ones flocked to the fields,
the lazy ones sat idle at home. ; '■

r- 5*'.*

SOUTH AFKICA. 251

Diamonds were to be gathered in garden or dairy far
away from those wonderful fields where men so often
lost their little all ; I lit few thought of so gathering
them. People said the demand had suddenly come for
all these things and would as suddenly die out, and
meantime they did nothing ; and famine prices became
the rule in a land ever ready to yield to man "the full
fruits of his labour."

It has been said of South Africa that it is a land of
samples and of nothing more ; that its cotton, coffee,
sugar, and wheat, everything save its wool, is excel-
lent, but limited ; that it can produce the first,
specimens for an exhibition, but th»?'x.»,si lor a con-
tinuous export trade. All this is true ; but all this
only jDroves what we said before, that the people will
not worii.

If the land produced from itself wheat or sugar as
the sheep produce wool, wheat and sugar would find
their way to Europe ; but at present wheat is brought
from Australia, potatoes, butter, and vegetables are
carried from England.

Take the bill of lading of any steamer sailing away
from South Africa. The cargo consists of wool, a few
bales of antelope and ox hides, a few packages of
ostricj feathers and parcels of diamonds and gold. It
is scarcely too much to say that, with the exception of
wine, the manufactures of South Africa are confined to
two articles — Cape carts and Cape waggons, both
excellent in their way, but not enough to make even
the semblance of an industry. r

252 TAR OUT.

Wo do not mean to assort that idleness is universal
in South Africa. All professional and commercial
life goes on there as elsewhere ; hut out in the country
people do not till the land as they till it in America
or in Australia, and it is hut too evident that the
occupations of hushandry are not congenial to the
hahits of the Dutch farmer in any shape or form.

Hitherto, in these sketches of South Africa, we
have said hut little upon a suhject usually associated
in men's minds with the upper plateau of which we
have been treating — the wild animals which have
become so familiar to us in past descriptions of
hunters and travellers. Well, the last few years have
made sad havoc in these once-crowded ranks. The
larger game has "treked" into the remote north.
The lion, the eland, the koodoo, the rhinoceros, the
quagga, and the buffalo, are all gone from the Orange
Free State; the more remote Transvaal holds them
Btill. In the dry wastes of the Kalaharri Desert, in
the feverish swamps of Zululand, and the valleys of
the Limbombo Mountains, these grand specimens of
wild nature roam and range. The elephant is further
off still — all save one great herd preserved in the
dense forests of George, nigh the southern extreme
of the continent. Natal, once the favourite home of
every animal, from the lordliest lion to the tiniest
antelope, is to-day nearly denuded of game.
i- But if the larger animals have retreated into the
wilds, the untelopes are numerous enough still in the
Free State and in the more settled portions of the

SOI Til AFIMCA. 253

Transvaal. In the gi-eat grassy plains of the middle
"Veldt" hundreds of blesshok and sjiringbok gallop
and gambol under the bright sun of winter, but
they, too, are fast disappearing. Six years ago they
existed in numbers impossible to reckon ; they de-
voured such quantities of grass that the Boers killed
them as people kill vermin.

It is sfiid that a few years since a member of the
" Volksraad " wished to preserve the game from the
ruthless destruction of the farmers in the north and
east of the State ; but he was told that if he did carry
a measure to that effect, another In.w would be pro-
posed by the eastern farmers to protect the locusts of
the west from destruction. Myriads of quaggas were
ruthlessly hunted down ; springbok and blesshok, and
wildebeestes, were shot and stabbed and galloped
over precipices, where they lay smashed and heaped
over one another, until at length the laud was cleared
of them.

A few wild ostriches are still to be found in Natal
and in the Free State. As usual, the law has
stepped in to save when there is hardly anything left
for saving ; but the domestic ostrich has now become
a regular institution in South Africa, and thousands
of pounds have been invested in "ostrich farming."
It is probable that there are far more ostriciies in
sight of Cape Town to-day than when the Dutch first
raised, on the shores of Table Bay, the old castle, and
the lions roared so loudly round it at night that the
quaint chronicler of the time tells us, "We thought

254 FAR OIT.

that tlioy (the lions) would have taken the post hy
storm last night."

It may appear strange how it came to pass that
this great quantity of wild animals should have heen
able to exist upon the plateau of South Africa in the
midst of the natives who dwelt there fifty years ago ;
but the answer is easily given. Around each native
tribe there lay a wide cordon of uninhabited country.
To pass from the country of the Matabili to the
country of the Zulus or the Bushmen, one had to
traverse vast unoccupied tracts where game multi-
plied with incredible rapidity.

The conditions of savage life are the same all the
world over, and Lave been in all times and in all
places. We read tliat in ancient Gaul the septs or
tribes dwelt far apart from each other. Contact
meant war, and it was only by putting space between
them that the periods of peace, necessary for the
rude work of agriculture, which they carried on, could
be maintained.

Thus, too, has it been with the numerous warring
races of North America ; and we find that in the far
west and north-west of that great continent, as well
as upon the vast plains and plateaux of South Africa,
these neutral grounds became the homes of countless
wild animals, which roamed the wastes in a glorious
freedom from the common enemy nowhere else found
on earth. "*

IV.

TT was into such a waste that the great "trek " of the
Boers led in the years from 1834 to 1840. Tlien
began a change among the wild animals as great as
among the wild men. For years, however, few English
hunters penetrated into the wilds. Captain Harris,
an English officer, was the first. His graphic account
of sport and his sketches of the wild animals mot
with form, perhaps, still the best work among the
many now existing on African mid life, as among
the animals the one which he discovered and named
"Harrisbok" is the most beautiful.

Then at long intervals followed Oswald, Gumming,
Andersen, Shelley, and a host of others ; of all these
men Oswald's name lives longest in the native mind.
" He would put three bullets in the pocket of his
waistcoat," they say, " and riding close to an elephant
shoot him in three shots. He did not stand firing at
him from afar."

Yet long before hunter had entered the wilds,
missionaries had gone into Damara and the desert.
The veteran Moffat, Edwards, and Campbell formed
stations far into the interior before a Boer had
" treked " over the Gareip. ^1, -----

.256 FAR OUT.

In 1812 Campbell visited the city of Latakoo, and
the chief Maraka, or Moroko, of the Morolongs. Mo-
roko has only lately died. He was probably the oldest
man in South Africa.

This tribe of Barrolongs, as they are called to-day,
deserves some notice at our hands. More than forty
years ago Campbell induced the chief and his people
to move from the Vaal River to the hill we have
already spoken of, which, standing in the midst of a
vast plain, is called the Hill of Night.

Around this lofty hill, in the many valleys which
lie at its base, the Barrolongs made their homes.
Beyond them, to the east, lay the Basuto country, and
from Thabanchu to the rock ki'aal of Moshesh, at
Thaba Bossiou, was not more than fifty miles.

Moroko paid an annual tribute to Moshesh, and
aclmowledged the Basuto as his paramount ; but when
difl&culties arose between the white men and the
Basutos, Moroko sided with the white men.

His territory, consisting of nine hundred square
miles of fertile land, was given- by him (we presume)
in trust to the Wesleyan Society, of which body Mr.
Campbell was a missionary.

At the end of the struggle between the Dutch and
the Basutos, this Barrolong possession was an isolated
native reserve, surrounded on all sides by the Orange
Free State. What is to-day called in the Fret Hate
" the conquered territory " lay around it upon three
sides. Moroko, however, remained on his location ;
around on every side Dutch farms sprang up; and

SOUTH AFRICA. 257

with the usual forgetfuhiess of the fact that the
Barrolonga were in possession of their ground at
Thabanchu long before a Boer had planted a beacon
nigh the Caledon, many a hungry eye is now turned
to this country of Moroko's. This land hunger seems
a disease, which grows the more it feeds. Men in
South Africa are not content with the already vast
tracts in their possession; one hears constantly
in the Free State of a man having two, four, or
six farms each of six thousand acres, some of which
he has never even looked upon, and yet the cry is
more, more, more ; and year after year pretexts are
found for bringing to sale the scant remnants of
native possessions in the remote "Hoeks" of the
Vetteberg or the Ehodeberg, where yet lingers some
scattered race of Zulu or Basuto.

And now, having dwelt a long time in these moun-
tain and upland countries of South Africa, let us
descend, ere leaving altogether the land, and dwell, if
only for a little while, in the region heretofore hardly
looked upon — the meadow we have called Natal.

The people of Natal call the great range of the
Drakensberg their garden wall. Hitherto we have
looked upon the garden from the top of this wall, and
if now we descend from that summit and gather fruits
and flowers, with a few weeds too, in the garden beneath,
it will be as fitting a " last look" at South Africa as
we can give that glorious region in these pages.

Men, white men, first found Natal on a Christmas

258 FAR OUT.

Day. The Cape of Storms had been passed — ^the ter-
rible sea whose waves rage in what seems an eternity
of tempest around that lone promontory where Afric's
southmost shore rises, lion-shaped, defiantly to con-
front the widest and the wildest waste in the globe —
had been left behind, and now the long-tossed caravels
were sailing north into sunnier seas.

It was the summer season in this southern hemi-
sphere. The sea-breeze, laden at times with moisture,
carried coolness and refreshing showers o'er the land,
and the land-wind came at eventime seawards, bearing
on its wings the scents and soft perfumes of myriad
flowering things which had quickened into life beneath
the mingled sun and shower of a half-tropic clime.

One bold point covered deep in flowers and foliage
marked the otherwise even line of the coast ; inside
this point a deep curving bay stretched between hills
tree-covered to the water's edge. Along the outer
shore a wild surf broke in ceaseless thunder, but in the
sheltered bay within the sea rose and fell in waveless
ripple; and the many-hued foliage, thick with flowers,
fringed at flood-tide the bright blue water, or bordered,
when the tide had ebbed, a strand of velvet softness.

Well might these weather-beaten mariners have
hailf i with delight a vision which must have recalled
to them their own sunny shores by far-away Lusitania,
and pointed them forward, too, to the richer goal of
their great enterprise — the hitherto fabled Indian land.

But long years had to pass ere this fair region of

' SOUTH AFRICA. 259

Natal saw aught of white men save some stray sail
far out to sea. -

The great captainr sent by Portugal to found her
empire in the east held for the most part aloof from
this south-eastern shore of Africa ; for its strange
currents, and harbourless coast, and swage peoples,
had proved fatal to many a caravel and crew ; and
Diaz had perished off the Cape which he had disco-
vered, and Alvarez had lost his fleet, and Lopez hia
life, among the wild seas and wilder savages of *^.is
scarce-known land.

But men came at last. It was about the time when
the ruthless career of Chaka had reached its close.
Around the vast circle of the Zulu dominions there
lay an immense tenantless waste. More than fom*
hundred thousand human beings had been swept
away, and silence reigned, save when broken by the
wild beast's cry, from the Bay of Natal to the Mont
aux Sources.

The white man came. Chaka, dying, had taunted
his murderers with a prophecy of the advent, and the
tyrant's expiring vision was soon fulfilled.

We have already sketched the earlier scenes of
this foundation of civilised dominion in Natal, it lies
only a few years back. Men still live in Natal who
witnessed the fierce struggle of Dutch and Zulus
in "Weenan," when first the emigrating Boera
moved down to take possession of their Promised
Land.

Whatever we may think of Dutch civil' ^ation, of

2bO FAR OUT.

Dutch native policy, of the power of Dutch colonists
to develop the resources of a country, upon one point
we must accord them our unqualified admiration.
Where they settled they made a home.

The " fountain " was turned down the street ; the
oak-tree was planted along the dusty thoroughfare ;
the orange grew hefore the doorway : and if, perhaps,
there was not altogether that improvement in farm
or that comfort in dwelling-house which nineteenth-
centm-y civilisation has taught us to regard as indis-
j)ensably necessary to existence, we must remember
that it is seventeenth-century ideas which we have to
deal with, that it is the Holland of Alva and the
France of the Huguenots which is here preserved in
these wastes — jDreserved cut oflf from intercourse
with their fatherlands, and exposed to contact with
savage peoples ; bereft of nearly all that can soften,
sm-rounded by nearly all that can harden, and won-
derful in still possessing certain characteristics of
solid determination and love of independence which
seem to have fossilised amid the wild and stern soli-
tudes of South Africa. :?

One day the writer of these pages found himself on
the crest of one of the innumerable hills which lie in
strange confusion at the base of the great Drakens-
berg range. He was alone ; the camp had not yet been
struck, and he had wandered out in the chance of
finding an antelope in the dry grass of the valley, and
the cei-tainty of seeing from the hilltop the proud
Drakensberg unfold itself from north to south in snow

SOUTH AFRICA. 261

and purple, as flinging from it stray streaks of vapour
it bared its broad breast to the uprisen sun.

Below the hill from whence this view was visible
there stood a solitary house ; dark-green trees grew
around it, and a limpid stream of water, taken at a
higher level from the river whicb ran through the
valley, flowed close to the garden. Riding along this
brook the traveller drew near the house ; an old man
came forth.

" Would the stranger off saddle ? "

"No — it was too early in the morning; but he
would alight, tie his horse at the door, ai J sit awhile
in the parlour."

It was not difficult to turn this old man's thoughts
into channels worn deep by time into his memory.
Forty years before he had formed one of the great
"trek" into Natal, and this was the story of that
time as he now told it.

" At the laager on the top of the Berg we were nine
hundred waggons. We had journeyed for two years
from the old colony. We were tired of the dry
plains and short grass, and we looked down upon
Natal from the mountain and said to one another,
* We will go down and make our homes there.' We
went down; it was slow, slow work: no road, no
path, nothing save the mountain wall ; but we could
take a waggon over any ground an ox could scramble
on. We got down at last, and made laager here and
there over the country.

" Not far from where I now talk to you there dwelt

262 FAR OUT.

a chief: he had stolen cattle from Dmgaan the Zulu
kmg. We sent messages to Dingaan. He treated
them well, and sent them back to say that if we
recovered the lost cattle, all the land south of the
Tugela should be ours.

" Well, we followed the * spoor' of the cattle, and
brought them back to Dingaan. I did not go ; but
many of our best men did, and we never saw them
again.

" The Zulus fell upon them in camp when every-
thing looked fair, and not a man escaped. I was in a
laager near the Bushman's Eiver when news came of
this slaughter; many did not believe it, but soon we
knew that it was too true. From the north a great
force of Zulus came to destroy us. Our laagers were
scattered, and some of the outlying ones were
stormed and our people were killed.

" One morning I left the laager to go and look after
the oxen out-spanned. It was yet early when I re-
turned, and never shall I forget the sight which 1
beheld from the top of the hill over the Bushman
Eiver, near which the laager was pitched. For an
instant I thought the whole valley was full of cattle ;
white and black, red and dun oxen seemed thick a^
they could stand, but I only thought this for an
instant ; it was the simlight on thousands of ox-hide
BUields carried by the Kafi&rs, and soon I saw the
flash of the assagais through the shields, and heard
the shouts of the Zulus as they swarmed about one of
our laagers which they had cut off from the others.

SOUTH AFRICA. 2G3

" I was mounted on a good horse, a young animal
which I had brought from the old colony. I had
trained him myself, and he knew every touch of my
heel and every turn of my wrist, for I had hunted
game with him for two years on the upper plains. I
called him ' Zwart,' and he knew his name as well as
a dog. I had my long gun with me, a bag of bullets,
and a flask of powder.

" Well, I did not stop long ou the hilltop to think ;
my laager was yet clear of Kaffirs, and in five minutes
I was inside it.

"But, meantime, it was going hard with our people
in the farthest laager ; the shots from the waggons
were getting fewer, the shouts of the stormers getting
louder. Old Jacob Van der Sell was in command of
om* laager ; the old man was watching the fight and
talking to himself as he watched. ' Oosthousen,' he
said suddenly to me, * You have got a good horse
under you. Boy, there's a bag of bullets and a keg
of powder in this waggon; they want lead and powder
in the laager yonder ; strap the bag and the keg
behind j'om* saddle and carry them to the laager.
You'll save the lives of all of them there if you can
get in.'

" I did as he told me, got the keg and the bag well
fastened to the saddle, said ' Good-bye ' to a few of the
people standing near, and rode out from the waggons.

" There were only a few scattered bands of Kaffirs
near om* laager, for om* tmn had yet to come, and
nearly the whole army was at work at the laager to

264 FAR OUT.

which I was going. I took Zwart at an easy canter
across the valley, and it was a minute or so before
the Kaffirs noticed me ; but they thought little of one
horseman, and kept charging up towards the waggons
and falling back again from the shots.

" I rode up to within one hundred yards of the
hindmost rank of them, and fired into the crowd.
Many of them yelled and turned at me ; but I could
just play with them as I liked, and I kept Zwart in a
hand-canter back and forwards, up and down, firing
and fa ' ''» back to load again.

" I fire^ thus twenty or more shots into them, and
rode right round the outside edge of them, before they
seemed to know what I was doing. Sometimes they
would charge me in detached parties, and I had to
keep my eyes well round me to watch that they did
not get too close from behind while I was engaged
with others in front, for at fifty yards the long-
handled assagai goes swift and sure from a Zulu's
hand. But they never touched me ; round and round,
in and out, I went, firing and reloading, while the
Zulus yelled like demons, stopping every now and
again when my long * roeer ' gun sent its bullets
among them, and some brave rolled over, shot through
his ox-hide shield.

" Zwart seemed to relish the work as much as I
did, and more perhaps r for all the time it seemed
only sport to him, while I was thinking of the work
that lay before me of getting through the dense mass
of Zulus into the hard-pressed laager.

SOUTH AFRICA. 265

" The Zulus themselves seemed to know what I
wanted; and when they found that they could not
catch me in the open, it occurred to them that if they
opoied out a lane for me through their ranks, they
might succeed better in entangling me amongst them;
so they fell back for a space on both sides, leaving a
passage free towards the laager.

"When I saw this open lane leading in to the
waggons, I knew it was the sole chance I had of
getting into my comrades ; but I kept wheeling Zwart
about, as if not too much in earnest of trying it. At
last I put a big, big charge into the * roeer,' turned
the horse's head full for the opening and drove both
spurs into his flanks. He had been well within his
pace all the time, and now he had lots of it left for
the last moment. He flew like an arrow up the lane
of savages ; never after wildebeeste or quagga or
ostrich did he go like that day. Once we were in the
thick of the Zulus, they were afraid to fling, so close
were the opposite ranks. As I neared the laager, a
crowd of savages rushed out yelling, with shields and
stabbing assagais. I levelled the * roeer* full on
them, and drove the horse after the pellets, through
shields and smoke and savages ; and then, with a
couple of assagais in Zwart's flank, and one through
my leg, I was inside the laager — keg and bag of
bullets safe. . ^

** We fought them for an hour afterwards, and beat
them off in the end ; but they stormed two of the
laagers, and killed aV our people in them. Ah ! that

266 FAR OUT.

was a night, if you like — such a night ! Women had
lost their children, husbands their wives, men their
brothers ; every one was in sorrow. The Zulus
spared nothing. All through the night the wail of
women was to be heard, and when morning carue wo
gathered the remnants together into one laager, buried
our slaughtered people, and sat down to plan revenge.

** Six hundred of our kith and kin fell that day.
Well may all that region bear the name of ' Weenan,'
the * place of weeping.' She was a child (pointing to
his wife) in that laager."

Thus the old man told his story, while his wife (who
had r.ppeared at an early stage of the narrative with
a pltfcteful of golden oranges) sat listening to the one
great event of her life, now told, I dare say, for the
one thousandth time in her hearing.

When I rose to depart, the old couple came out,

stuffing the oranges into pocket and holster; and as I

said "Good-bye" to the simple old Dutch farmer, I

thought how many men carry "the cross ofvalom*"

for half that gallant inorning's woik by the laager on

the Bushman's Eiver. Wliat Goldsmith wrote of

' The made Carinthian boor,

Wlio 'gaiast the homeless stranger shuts bis door, ,

cannot be applied to the South African Dutchman. If
rude he has ever been hospitable, and the stranger
had always a welcome at his gate ; but latterly he has
become changed in this respect, and with good reason.
The rich treasures of gold and diamonds found in
the far sheep-pastures of Boerdom have caused many

SOUTH AFRICA. 2()7

a European scoundrel to migrate thither, and in the
simple and unlettered Africander the educated villain-
dom ol Europe and America has found a rich field for
exploit.

As one travels now through upland South Africa
a hundred stories can ho gleaned of how some unfor-
tunate Boer fell victim to cunning and duplicity ; how
men came and purchased his sheep from him and
then paid him in ten- shilling Cape notes. He, simple
soul, seeing only a large figure "10" on the face of the
paper, never dreaming that the number referred to
shillings, took hut a shilling in the pound for his
herds, and only discovered his mistake months later
when he journcj ed to the nearest market to^vn, sixty
miles distant, to cash his imagined treasure.

Of the outside world the Dutch Boer knew nothing.
Suddenly the outside world came to him to cheat and
to lie, and it is natm'al that he should shrink fi-om it
in alarm.

Not long ago there came a Boer from up-country to
Pietermaritzhurg, the chief town of Natal. He had
three thousand pounds in notes and gold in his
waggon. People told him there was a bank in the
town in which care would be taken of his money. He
took his long-hoarded wealth to the bank and stated
his case. The official counted the money and said,
"There is three thousand pounds here; we will take
it and give you every year fom* pounds for each
one hundred pounds. For the whole you will get
one hundred and twenty pounds a-year."

268 FAR OUT.

" What is that you say?" answered the Boer.
"Give me one hundred and twenty pounds for looking
after my money and taking care of it ! Oh, no — ^you
must be a great robber to say such a thing. Give me
back my money; you are a great rascal ! Had you
asked me to pay you for taking care of my money, I
would have trusted you; but now give me it back
again." And he took his gold to the waggon.

We were once a passenger in an up-country post-
car. A Boer had stopped the car a few days before,
and asked the driver to bring him, on the next trip, a
small bottle of English porter. The driver did as he
was asked, and now the bottle was forthcoming.
"Wliat is the use of one small bottle?" asked the
driver. "Oh, it is for my wife," answered the Boer.
"The doctor has ordered my wife porter, and I am
going to give it to her in teaspoonfuls."

When diamonds were first discovered at Kimberley,
the farm on which they were found was in the posses-
sion of a certain De Beer. As m.ay be presumed from
his name, "Old De Beer," as he was called, was a Boer
among Boers. He sold his farm for six thousand
pounds and moved away to the north. It chanced
that in time men looking for diamonds came to " pros-
pect" his new farm. He went angrily to them. "Now
look, my friends," he said, " I don't want any of this
diamond-finding on my farm; I have had that sort
of thing before. K you find diamonds about here
I'll only have to move away again. I don't like
people coming around, and I don't like them diamonds

SOUTH AFRICA. 269

that make people come around ; so you just stop your
digging and go along somewhere else."

The Boer is a fearless and practised rider and an
unerring shot. Life in the "Veldt" is familiar to him
in all its aspects. He can rough it "with any man,
tame or wild, the world over; nevertheless he is not a
soldier; he will fight Zulu or Bechuana or Basuto,
but then he will have the long flint "roeer" against
the arrow or the assagai, or the Westley-Kichards
breechloading rifle against a rusty musket. He is
ever ready to take the field : his rifle and gun are in
the room-comer, his ammunition-pouch is ever full ;
his horse (knee-haltered or in the stable) he can turn
out at short notice. Nevertheless he is not a soldier
and he never will be one.

In one of the many boundary disputes arising out
of the diamond discovery a party of Boers and
Englishmen met in opposition near a place called
Hebron, on the Vaal River. As is frequently the
custom in such cases the anxiety for battle dimi-
nished with the distance between the opposing forces,
and a parley was proposed by the respective leaders
•when the hosts came within shootir^y proximity.

There happened to be in the ranks of the English
party a native of Ireland, who naturally did not at all
relish the pacific turn affairs seemed to be assuming.
While the leaders debated the settlement of the dis-
pute Pat left the ranks of his party, and approaching
the place of consultation, demanded of his chief (now
busily engaged with the Boer commandant in smoking

270 FAR OUT*

and debate) if he and his friends on the hill might be
permitted to open fire upon their opponents before
any further discussion on the cause of quarrel was
proceeded with ?

The Boer, alarmed at this sudden proposition to
defer diplomacy to war, asked the meaning of such a
bloodthirsty request.

" The boys want the word to fire," replied Pat,
"because they are so mortal hungry." ; ' ' ;; ;:

Not altogether perceiving the for 3e of the reasoning,
but deeming it wise to remove such an evident casus
belli, the Boer commander at once sent forward a
sheep and an ox to appease both the food hunger and
thirst for blood of the opposite side ; and as the map
of South Africa presents Hebron on the Vaal Eiver
without those two crossed swords indicative of a field
of fight, it may be presumed that matters ended with
no greater sacrifice of life than that of the animals
which Pat led back in triumph to his hungry
comrades.

Many are the stories told against the Boer to-day
in South Africa; they are all, or nearly all, of the
same kind. Modern civilisation in its first contact
has burned the Boer, and we need not be surprised if
he now sometimes dreads the fire.

Fifty years ago such stories were current in New
York and the quaint villages along the Hudson j the
tide of immigration has long since swept away these
old memories, and the bellow of the steamboat and
the whistle of the railway engine have broken " the

SOUTH AFRICA. 271

long sleep of twenty years," and scared from the
Catskill the ghosts of the old Dutch Mynheers ; but
they have not all passed wholly away.

While yet they lingered around the old familiar
haunts a master-hand caught the outlines, and to-
day we have in England a picture so full of poetry,
so perfect in its union between simple joy and sorrow,
pathos and humour, that " Sleepy Hollow " and its
dead Dutch denizens will live in the world's recollec-
tion when many a huge mushroom city of the western
continent will be forgotten.

Meanwhile we have wandered far from Natal, and
space warns us we must make ready to take leave ere
long of scene and subject. «

We have said before, in speaking of Natal, that its
history is a recent one. In an old book of travels,
published more than a century ago, there occurs a
passing notice of the " Terra Natalis." " Ships went,"
says this old chroiiicle, "from India to Natal for ivory.
More than two years were occupied in the voyage ;
the country abounded in wild animals of every kind " ;
and there was in this land of Natal, in the year 1718,
"a Penitent Pirate" — delicious alliteration! — "who
sequestered himself from his Abominable Community,
and retired out of Harm's way." This is the first
notice which we possess of white colonisation'in south-
cast Africa.

The Penitent Pirate had probably as good a time of
it in old Natal as any retired buccaneer ever enjoyed.
Plenty of game, a delicious climate, at that time

272 FAR OUT.

peaceable people, and no police ! What a premium
euch a superannuation would have proved to piracy,
had it been generally known ! The ".vorld has grown
too small for these things now, and soon there will
not exist in the wide circle of the globe a spot where
one can, in the language of the old chronicle, bid
farewell to pleasm-e, piracy, or politics, and gracefully
" retire out of harm's way."

" What is the climate like in Natal ? What can
you grow there ? " will ask the reader who has fol-
lowed us through these pages, intent perhaps on the
practical aspect of the subject, and caring little for
early history or future outlooks.

Well, first PS to climate. When the sun in Decem-
ber is with us low down in the southern horizon at
mid-day, he is nearly in zenith power over the great
plains of South Africa. Man's shadow falls short on
the hot ground, and oftentimes a dry and fevered
wind sweeps along the red and sultry earth. But in
Natal the rain all falls during this season of summer,
and the reason is simple enough. The burning plains
of Griqualand and the Ealaharri Desert, and of the
wild region lying west of the Transvaal Eepublic,
cause the heated air to ascend. To supply the
vacuum there is a rush of air from the Indian Ocean
heavily charged with moisture ; this air, driven
rapidly up the steep surface incline of Natal, is soon
four thousand feet above the level of the sea ; precipi-
tation quickly follows ; fierce thunderstorms shake
the hills, and at times torrents of rain descend upon

SOUTH AFRICA. 273

the land. But all this changes as the sun begins to
travel into the northern hemisphere ; the thunder
ceases, the clouds clear away, the sky is blue and
bright, the nights grow colder and colder, a delicious
freshness fills the morning, at night the stars gleam
in many-coloured brilliancy, and the sun at morn and
even looks his first and last upon the earth in colours
which would make the long-dying Judson actually
expire in an agony of unimitative rage.

South Africa knows two different seasons at the
same time. During the dry cold season in Natal, it
is the wet cold season at the Cape and along the
southern coast ; but Natal possesses one feature in its
climate peculiar to itself. It is everything in a few
miles. It is sub-tropic at the coast ; snow crowns the
Drakcnsberg during seven months of the year ; per-
petual vegetation reigns along the Indian Sea ; fifty
miles inland hoar frost has yellowed the grass ere the
last month of summer has come. In the limits of a
single day's ride one passes from the coffee and the
sugar cane to the oak and the pine tree. If one
wants a lazy sensuous climate, the ridge of the Berea
Hill over the Bay of Durban yields it to perfection.
The atmosphere is heavy with the scent of tropic jes-
samine ; the breeze is soft with the c lour of the
Indian Ocean ; eye and ear are rested by lulling
sound and contrast of shore and sea.

Over the tree-tops, where cluster the many-hued
trailers rich with flowers, the white line of the surf
fiends ceaseless music to the forest hill ; far out the

274 FAR OUT. ,

sea and sky, which so long have been conducting
themselves with "perfect propriety," mutual mirrors
at a distance, approach each other when nearly out of
sight of land, and join hands together in a soft and
dreamy haze, like two lovers who think themselves
unseen; but suddenly the early sunrise steals upon
their union, and along the forehead of the sky and
over the bosom of the deep there flushes a great crim-
son blush to find their love-making revealed to the
prying shore.

But how shall we describe the freshness of- the
atmosphere, the keen exhilaration of every sense, in
the great plateau country, one himdred and fifty miles
from the sea ? — ah, that is difficult ! It is easy
enough to sketch the soft and sunny clime, the air
laden with almond flowers or jessamine, the glitter of
southern moonlight, the murmur of warm tide against
tropic strand ; but the great prairie or plateau o'er
which the wind comes, the sole world's wanderer
freshened by every league he has travelled bearing to
you the vast freshness of space, fanning you with the
breath of the mountain peak, breathmg upon you a
spu'it distilled from dew and starlight, and all the
endless freshness which dwells six thousand feet above
om* lower world — how can all this be put into word
shape ? Yet ere we wander into such a subject there
still remain a few practical matters to be spoken of,
and these we will first turn to.

We have already said that the climate of Natal pre-
sented strange varieties — a corresponding antithesis

SOUTH AFRICA. 275

of soil exists throughout the country ; rich and poor,
good and bad, fruitful and arid, are to be found twenty
times repeated in the compass of a day's journey.
The soil is what Western Americans call " spotted " ;
along some sloping hill, or narrow valley, the " tam-
bookie " grass will grow level with a horseman's head ;
close by the pastm'e will be short and crisp, and
rocks will stud the surface.

In the Western States of America, a farmer says :
* Settle only where the Indian corn ripens, for there
nearly every other plant will be found." If the saying
be a good one, then Natal is a land eminently suited
for settlement ; for the " mealie " ripens as well
there as in any part of the globe. It forms, in fact,
the staple food of the large Kaffir population, num-
bering more than three hundred thousand souls.
' If one wishes to see grouped in a small space every,
tree, shrub, and bush, flower, fruit, and vegetable,
which nature usually scatters far apart over the
world, there is a spot m the neighbourhood of Pieter-
maritzburg where thtii wish can be realised. It is a
nook set round with hills. Eight years ago it was aa
wild a waste as all the ridge and valley land around it.
To-day it would tire one to enumerate the varieties of
tree and shrub, and fruit and flower, covering these
sixty acres.

The Wellingtonia, and the Douglass, the Deodora,
the Insignus, and the Norfolk Island pine already lift
their graceful heads thirty or forty feet above the
ground. Tea, coffee, orange, lemon, guava, grow

T 2

276 • FAR OUT.

thick and rank; pine-apples, mangoes, grenadilloes,
flourish side by side. Strawberries are ripe all the
year round ; the northern fruits are there in profusion,
and the rose the whole year through in a perpetuity
of bloom.

This oasis in the wilderness is the result of only
eight years' labour. An English judge, well known on
the South African bench, has taught South African
farmers what their land can do. In other countries
men see only in their old age the tree planted in
their youth attain to size and growth ; but here, in
Natal, in less than a decade of years, the pines of
America and the gums of Australia are forest trees in
bulk and height. The natural indigenous trees of
South Africa take centuries to mature. High up in
the " kloof," bordering the sides of mountain streams,
and covering some steep hill-face, the '* yellow wood"
the box, the Protea, and the countless other ever-
greens grow almost imperceptibly year by year. The
timber is very valuable, for it is hard almost as the
giant boulders which cumber the ground whereon
these forest patches grow, and old as the hills to
ivhich they cling.

In the foregoing pages we have tried to put before
the reader a general idea of South Africa, past and
present. The space at our disposal has been limited,
the subject has been extensive, and it has often been
no £aBy matter to condense into the form of connected
narrative the widely scattered elements we have had
to deal with. But to the reader who has followed us,

SOUTH AFRICA. 277

three epochs or groups of events will be apparent, and
these we will now briefly recapitulate.

The first epoch has been marked by a spirit of
organisation and aggression manifesting itself on the
part of the natives of Zululand, a spirit which in turn
acted upon all the tribes of Southern Africa, forcing
the different races of Zulus, Basutos, and Kafl&rs into
contact with each other, and afterwards into contact
and conflict with the white man.

The second epoch saw the great "trek" of the
Dutch Boers from the Units of the old colony into
the northern wilderness, and the consequent develop-
ment of the interior region of South Africa. Indeed,
this event has been pregnant with greater results
than any other event in the whole history of the
country. It is still bearing fruits. Even to-day
there are veteran Boers steadily holding their
northern way eleven hundred miles from the Cape
of Storms deeper into the wilds. The old dream of
Araby has not been abandoned, and a New Jerusalem
has arisen on the shores of Lake N'Gami, founded by
the quaint and dauntless Eruger. ,.

Before this steady stream of white men the fighting
Kaffir has fallen back. Fifty years ago the dreaded
Matabili dwelt upon the Vaal. Twenty-five years
rgo their outposts were on the Crocodile ; now their
kraals are built on the southern tributaries of the
great Zambesi.

Thus the tides of race flow back upon the heart of
Africa. Will the Fever Zone stay the progress of the

278 • FAR OUT.

white man ? We think not. The Fever Zone did not
stop the white man in America, neither will it in
South Africa; for, independently of the natural
impulse to extend, there is in the case of South
Africa an inducement to the white race to spread
itself to the north which is the most potent of
modem times, we mean the inducement of great
mineral wealth ; and this brings us to our last event
or epoch, the discovery of precious metals and stones
in the countries north of the Orange Eiver.

This last event, or rather series of events, has
recast the political destiny of the Southern continent,
and has given to the English race the future pos-
session of that vast region.

"Wherever gold has been found in this nineteenth
century of ours there the English tongue has taken
root, there the English idea has triumphed; but
though English, not necessarily England. Eepub-
licanism grows apace in soils turned by the gold
miner, and it is possible that Dutch South Africa,
in accepting the inevitable language of the miner in
gold or diamonds, will still keep intact the form of its
political life.

It is a curious paradox, but still a true one, that
modem aristocratic England is too democratic for
many of her colonies. The equality of all men in
the eyes of the law finds poor favour in the sight of
an English colonist in countries where black and
white men are thrown together.

To too many of our race the sentiment of equality

SOUTH AFRICA. 279

has reference only to a set of beings above them in
the social scale; apply it equally to all, let it affect
a dark race or another people, and the sentiment
instantly changes to one of repressive superiority.

Thus to-day, though the English tongue becomes
yearly more and more the language of the Dutch
states of South Africa, the bond of connection with
England does not grow stronger.

To a student of history it sometimes appears
strange that thirteen distinct colonies of Dutch and
English America banded so readily against the mother
country just a hundred years ago ; but to any one
who watches the germs of political thought in the
various South African states at the present time, the
question ceases to perplex.

As to the future of South Africa that is assured.
This southern hemisphere is yet only a new world. It
is not anywhere four hundred years old. Much of it
has not been known to the world more than seventy
years. In dry land it is not a sixth of the northern
hemisj)here. In wealth of precious metals it yields
to-day four-fifths of the world's gold. Its coal, iron,
and copper, of which there are vast deposits, are
almost untouched — men pass such things lightly by
while gold, diamonds, and silver are to be found ; yet
the time for these things will come too.

Set midway between the great continents of South
America and Australia, South Africa, even had it been
destitute of mineral wealth, must eventually become
important from its geographical position. The em-

280 FAK OUT.

pires called into existence fifty years ago in South
America have hitherto signally failed to fulfil tlu^
destiny Canning foretold for them at their birth ; but
their future is certain of success. These immense
valleys of the Amazon and the La Plata, these fertile
plains of South Cordova and the Eio Negro, must yet
yield to overcrowded Europe the same outlet for surplus
population which the Mississippi and St. Lawrence,
and the prairie land of Illinois, have already given.
Then the wealth now deep-bedded in these unknown
mountains, where the Apurimac and the Upper
Madeira have their origin, will be poured forth to the
world, and from that wondrous system of inland
water will spring a commerce which shall call to its
aid the coal products now lying uncared for in the
central continent of the southern hemisphere —
Africa.

This continent of South Africa labours under many
drawbacks. Its rivers are utterly useless to com-
merce; its railroad system is in its crude com-
mencement; its harbom's are, with few exceptions,
dangerous and shallow ; its distances are great ; its
population scattered; its highways and roads are bad.
But it has soil fruitful to labour, splendid climate,
varied productions, scenery, a hardy healthy j.ace,
great mineral wealth, precious metals, and unlimited
space. This last item is not often fully understood.
The condition of space is even more essential to a
new country than to an old one.

South Africa is capable of almost indefinite expau-

SOUTH AFRICA. 281

sion. Like [the term North or South America, it
means in reaUtj' a continent. Too long we have
sought to restrict the meaning of that term to the
Cape Colony, Kaffraria, Natal, and the Orange Free
State. Large as the aggregate of these states is, it is
only small compared with the possible future of the
South African empire.

Twenty-five years ago English statesmen sought to
stay the dominion of England in South Africa at the
Orange Biver. Ever*s 'lave been too strong for then-
eflforts, and already the tide has flowed far away over
the Orange Eiver into lands which a score of years
hence will be looked upon as lying far within the
limits of civilisation. The natm'al pathway to the
dim interior lies not through the feverish swamp of
Zanzibar, not through Congo or Angola, but along the
lofty plateau which spreads far north from the regions
we have been describing until it merges into the half-
fabled Mountains of the Moon. This range of the
Drakensberg is prolonged throughout the enth e length
of Eastern Africa. Its summits guard Tanganika and
divide the Nyanzas ; and from some other Mont aux
Sources, far to the north of this culminating ridge of
the Drakensberg in Basutoland, springs, in all human
probability, the parent rill of the long-sought Nile.

Already news has come which should cause men
in England who have at heart the old honour of
the land to feel prouder of their race and time.

A white man has crossed the v^ast dim continent
from shore to shore. It is a noble story, and one

282 ' FAR OUT.

which will ring clearer down the pathway of the
future, for time prolongs the echoes of such deeds in
louder tones than those in which contemporary history
first utters them.

The veteran explorer had sunk at last, a worn-out
skeleton, in the midst of a vast unending marsh ; hut
as he sank, the banner which he so long had borne
was seized by the young sailor, and through the great
wilderness, by lake and swamp, across the dim interior
continent unknown to white men, be bore it, until at
last, three thousand miles from the start-point, he
heard the hollow roar of the Atlantic billows beating
on the sands of Benguela. » ^ ^

"When the story of South Africa is fully told, when
the white wave rolls no longer to the north, it may be
found that these wl'ds, which first heard the faint
echoes of civilisation in ** the tread of the Cameron
clan," lie wholly within the limits of a dominion
whose southern extreme is marked by the Cape of
Storms. To-day all is dim in that vast interior. Far
back the immense continent sleeps in sullen savagery;
but as this lofty Drakensberg first catches the ray of
morning on its summits, when over the Indian Ocean
the sun rises from his soa-bed, so, in the far future,
along these lofty highlands the dawn of life will touch
hilltop after hilltop until it lights at last those central
summits which overlook the mystery of the Nile.

A PLEA FOR THE PEASANT.

TF men desired to lay before their fellow-beings a
treatise upon the mode of arriving at perfection in
the production of grain, or if their objects were to dis-
cover the most certain methods of attaining excellence
in the cultivation of forest trees, they would seek first
of all to lay the foundation of their theories in the
earlier stages of seed-time and of selection. They
would not rest content with propounding methods of
milling, or of examining strength and durability; they
would endeavour rather to trace the successful result
of the autumn harvest to the primary principles of
the spring seed-time, or to prove the toughness and
size of the timber to result from the conditions of air,
space, and soil in which the young tree had first taken
its root. And yet, though this ordinary com'se would
force itself upon the attentior of all whose object was
the dissemination of knowledge on these subjects, it
is singular how readily people forget to apply such *^
first principles to the great qiiestions of our national
defence ; how prone they are to develop theories re-
garding the strengthening of our military system, or
the perfection of our national defence, based upon the
acceptance of the private soldier as an unalterable

284 FAR OUT.

quantity thrown to our service by the hazard of his
social condition, that social condition being poverty
or disgrace; instead of diligently seeking out the lines
of life of the classes from which our soldiers have
been drawn in the past, and are now being drawn,
and seeking also to discover the conditions, not only
of the market in which these soldiers are bought, but,
far more important, what is the seed from whence
these soldiers are produced.

We have recently had,* both in the pages of
magazine and newspaper literatm-e, many articles and
letters upon the strength, military and monetary, of
England. We have been given a formidable array of
figures to show that om* material prosperity is greater
than it ever has been. Equally formidable statistics
have been produced to demonstrate that the offensive
and defensive force of the nation is to-day in a far
higher state of preparation than at any previous
period in our history. In these pages we propose to
show the intimate union existing between the land,
the peasant, and the soldier in all modern countries ;
to endeavour to look upon the question of the military
strength of Great Britain and Ireland, not as a sepa-
rate piece of mechanism totally unconnected with
anything outside the questions of organisation, drill,
and discipline, but as an integral portion of that great
fact in the lives of all peoples — ^the land on which
they dwell.

So long as the military armaments of Europe were

• 1878.

A PLEA FOR THE PEASANT. 285

confined within the limits reached during the eight-
eenth century, the difficulty of filling up the losses
caused by war was not practically brought home to
any nation on the Continent ; still less was it made
apparent to England, who, from her connection with
Hanover had always available the mercenaries of the
small German States. Nor did the early wars of the
French Eevolution call forth a necessity for seeking
in the ranks of the nation itself that strength which
had been looked for in all nations among the idle or
the ill-fed classes of the community. The wild burst
of enthusiasm among the people of France at the
close of the century filled the ranks of the republican
army with voluntary soldiers. Half-trained, ill-armed,
and undisciplined though they were, there burned
within these volunteers that fierce fire of enthusiasm
which through all time has so often made the recruit
and the old soldier enemies worthy of each other.

But the blue-coated youths whose hymn of the
" Marseillaise " filled the fog of the November morn-
ing at Jemappes, were in reality the first offering of
peasant France to the cause which had given them
liberty. The astounding victories of the Napoleonic
wars, the successive occupation of every Em-opean
capital, have eclipsed in the eyes of history these
early campaigns of Bepublican France. To the mili-
tary genius of Napoleon has been attributed all that
long catalogue of victories, and men have been too
prone to forget that all Europe had been signally
defeated dunnt: four years' campaigning, Belgium

286 FAR OUT.

and Holland had been overrun, French dominion
extended beyond the Ehine, ere Napoleon had ap-
peared upon the scene to really take in hand the
conduct of this new resistless power — ^the peasant
soldiery of France.

It was long before there dawned upon Confederated
Europe a real insight into the causes which underlay
the failures of their own armies, and gave such for-
midable power to the new system. Four successive
coalitions had been defeated ; every Em'opean capital,
save Moscow and Constantinople, had been occupied
by the French troops ere it occm'red to the mind
a foreign minister that there was something in all
this marvellous career of conquest besides fate and
generalship.

"A battle lost is sometimes progress gained," has
said a famous French writer. Jena fulfils the appa-
rent anomaly, for it is in the complete overthrow of
the Prussian kingdom in 1806 that we must look not
only for the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815, but also
for the preponderance of North Germany to-day
among the nations of Em'^/pe.

It has been the habit of many writers to speak of
Scharnhorst as the author of the reforms in the
Prussian army which began after the Peace of Tilsit.
Scharnhorst was the amplifier, not the author. It
was the genius of Stein that first realised the great
fact that it was necessary to imitate the work of the
French Revolution before that Eevolution could itself
be vanquished. The Prussian peasant planted on the

A PLEA FOR THE PEASANT. 287

Prussian soil might yet defeat the French peasant
whom the Eevolution had called to life. The work
of Stein deserves more than a passing notice. Called
to that hard task, the reconstruction of a fabric ruined
by the incapacity of others, Stein began in 1807 the
work of giving his country a fresh existence. Two
facts were of transcendent help to him. First, the
defeat suffered by his country had been sufficiently
overwhelming, the disaster had been vast enough to
still into almost complete silence the voice of privilege,
and to stifle even the utterance of faction. Second,
his early training had given him a keen insight into
the working of the land, the mineral resources, the
revenue, and the whole social system of his country.
He had passed the prime of life, but his years had
run, not in the groove of a profession, not under the
influence of the traditions of a department or the
teachings of a social caste, but along the broader
lines of thought aLd amidst conditions of life from
which alone those pi-incii^les touching all classes, and
centering in the tiue welfare of the State, can be
evolved.

Four days after his hand had grasped the helm of
the shattered vessel his ordinances were proclaimed.
Serfdom in every shape ceased, peasants and bur-
ghers were given the right to become owners of land,
the rights of municipalities were secured to them, and
large portions of the vast estates of the nobles were
divided amongst the peasants. ~

Stein, soon after driven into exile, left to other

.-w-^

288 \ ' FAR OUT. - ^-

hands the completion of this great work. It was
completed. The foundations of the present military
system in Germany were laid deep by Scharnhorst
in the land policy of Stein, and, quickly cf cching root,
there arose from that fruitful soil a tree destined to
overshadow the whole continent of Europe. No na-
tion felt so bitterly as Prussia the power of Napoleon ;
in no country was defeat brought so thoroughly home
to prince, peer, and serf; and in no country did the
policy following upon defeat result so completely in
brilliant triumph.

Truly was Jena lost, Prussian progress gained. But
many years had to pass ere another nation learned the
great secret that the cradle of an army is the cottage
of the peasant. Again the lesson was learned in the
dark hours of defeat. With Sebastopol fell the serf-
dom of Eussia, and to-day,* ere half a generation has
passed, Em'ope beholds in mingled admiration and
terror the free peasants of the North moving with a
power which no obstacle of man or mountain could
oppose upon the long-coveted prize of Constantinople.

'* We have thirty thousand army-soldiers," said an
American to an English traveller in the United
States, about twenty years ago, "and we have two
million five hundred thousand fighting men." The
Englishman laughed, thinking the answer only a
Yankee boast, but it was literally the soberest truth.
Ere ten years bad passed the two million five hundred
thousand men were arrayed in war against each

• 1878.

A PLEA FOR THE PEASANT. 289

other ; but not until the farmers of the North-
Western States, the men of Wisconsiu, Iowa, lUinois,
and Minnesota, had poured irom their one hundred
and sixty acre freehold farms was the great civil war
brought to a termination.

France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and America, all
have long since recognised the fact that the only
army which can be relied on in the hour of peril is
that army which springs from the people, the people
planted upon the soil.

In England the same fact would long since have
been acknowledged if war had ever been brought
home to the British nation as it has been brought
home to the countries we have named. Thanks to
the " silver streak " we have been enabled during two
centuries to play with war almost as we liked ; the
real bitterness of defeat, the terrible indignities of in-
vasion, have died out from the very imaginations of
the people. All our perceptions of war are summed
up in an expedition sent somewhere, increased taxa-
tion, so many pence on the income tax, and " some-
thing in the papers." Of the real principles on which
modern Europe is organised for war, of the great fact
permeating all continental countries — namely, the
intimate union between conscription and land tenure
— we know nothing. We speak about conscription
being antagonistic to the spirit of freedom in every
British heart, of the impossibility of making English-
men see it in any other light save as a violation of
the liberty of the subject. Certainly it is this so long

290 FAR OUT.

as it is levied only upon the dregs of the population ;
but conscription, as it is practised in Europe, is
nothing more than a tax laid equally upon all classes,
falling chiefly, by reason of their numbers, upon the
peasant proprietors of the soil, who in paying it feel
that they are the persons most interested in its
continuance.

In fact it may be laid down as a rule that con-
scription can only become a permanent success in a
country where the chief part of the population is
settled permanently upon the soil. The artisan, the
labourer, the men of the trade or of the loom, will all
quickly realise the fact that their labour or trade can
easily be removed to a place of security out of reach
of the conscription. The weaver, the carpenter, the
miner, can carry their respective avocations to New
York, to Montreal, or to Melbourne, and pursue them
to better advantage even than they did in England ;
but the man once settled upon the soil — the peasant,
the owner, or even the tenant-owner of ten, twenty, or
fifty acres — is a fixture. The state has given to him
something more tangible than a name, and the host-
age for his service in return lies in the land he calls
his own. This brings us to the part of our question
which would endeavour to look upon the military
strength of the British Empire as a thing intimately
connected with the condition of land tenure, and to
show the impossibility of Great Britain engaging in a
war of any duration or magnitude under the system
of voluntary enlistment now cidting.

A PLEA FOR THE PEASANT. 291

It has been the habit of those who recently turned
their attention to the military strength of the empire
to take two or more periods in our history, and to
prove by comparison of figures the growth of our
resources and the extension of our power. It is not
our intention to call in question either the accuracy
of the statistics so quoted or the relevancy of the
deductions which have generally been drawn from
them. But when two periods such as the Peninsular
war and the Crimean war are cited as examples of the
working of our military system, it will be well for us
to go back to those periods and to examine into the
voluntary enlistment at that time. In doing so we
propose to show that the drain upon our population
by what is called the French war was vastly less than
is usually supposed to have been the case ; that, insig-
nificant as it was, that drain was enough to put the
severest strain upon our resources of men, and to
necessitate the adoption of a most extravagant rate of
bounty and levy money; and finally, notwithstanding
high bounties and rewards for recruits, that it was
only through the assistance of om' Celtic peasants,
Irish and Scotch, that our armies were able to achieve
victory.

It was a glorious epoch, that of the Peninsular war !
Nine-tenths of the names embroidered in golden
letters on our regimental colom-s were won in the five
yeai's intervening between 1809 and 1814. The story
of that time has still power to recall to us memo-
ries full of the glory of battles won from Napoleon's

u 2

292 FAR OUT.

greatest captains, of sieges in which the valour of
our soldiers was pre-eminent, of marches and feats
of endurance never paralleled in our modern history,
before or since. But though the battles of the Penin-
sular war, and still more the crowning victory of
Waterloo, are household names among us, we have
wholly lost sight of a fact that at the time did much
to •; "nence the national joy over our victories; that
fact was our long-continued failure in any portion of
Europe to oppose the legions of the Republic or of the
Empire. On the coast of France, in the Low Coun-
tries, in Flanders, in Sicily, in Corsica, in Naples, at
Genoa, we had utterly failed to maintain om* expedi-
tions. In Egypt alone had our land forces been
successful, and in Egypt every element of success
was on our side. From 1793 to 1809 we had not a
single result to show on the Continent of Europe for
the three hundred millions sterling v/hich we had added
to the national debt in that period. Our expeditions to
France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Italy, Corsica, had
all ended in complete failure. It was on this account
that the victories of the following years appeared so
glorious. The nation's faith in its army had reached
its lowest ebb, and the reaction of victory was pro-
'■ portionately great.

But the greatness of the success in Spain and at
Waterloo did much towards hiding from view then
and since the actual losses we sustained. When we
here state that our entire loss in killed in Spain, Por-
tugal, and Flanders, including all the battles, engage-

A PLEA FOR THE PEASANT. 293

ments, skirmishes, sieges, and sorties, did not amount
to the loss in killed suffered by the Germans in the
two battles of Gravelotte and Sedan, we state a fact
which will doubtless astonish many readers. Yet it
is nevertheless true. A statement of our actual losses
during the years from 1808 to 1815 inclusive, will be
read wi*': Interest in these days of breechloaders : —

1808, including Bolica and Vrmiera .... 192
18C9, „ Talavera 777

1810, „ Bunaco, &o 159

1811, „ Barossa, Albuera, &o 1,401

1812, ., Ciudad Bodrigo, Badajoz, Sala-

manca, Burgos, &c 1,990

1818, „ Vittoria, Pyrenees, San Sebas-
tian, Nivelle, and Nive . . . 2,284

1814, „ Orthez, Toulouse 672

1816, „ Quatxe Bras and Waterloo . . 1,829

9,254

But from this total must be taken 1,378, the number
of foreign soldiers killed in our service, leaving 7,876
as the entire loss in killed during the whole war in
Spain and Portugal, together with that of Quatre
Bras and Waterloo. Six thousand men killed in the
entire Peninsular war ! Not half the Eussian loss at
Eylau, less than the Bussian loss before Plevna, less
than half the French dead at Waterloo. Here is a
fact lost sight of, and worth repetition many times.

Bearing in mind these numbers, we will now in-
quire into the strain put upon our system of volun-
tary enlistment during the period of the Peninsular
war.

294 FAR OUT.

In the years 1809-10 there were recruited in the
ordinary method 20,816 men, and by volunteers from
the militia 23,885, making a total in these two years
of 44,700; in 1811, 22,925; in 1812, 24,359; in
1813, 30,530; and in 1814, 11,239, giving an average
of 22,876 recruits each year for the six years.

The average annual losses during the same period,
1809-14, were — deaths from all causes, 12,856; dis-
charges, 3,618; desertions, 4,579; total, 20,553.
During the six years the average eflfective strength
of the aimy stood at 173,000 men ; the bounty in
the same time ranged as high as £39, including the
rewards to recruiting parties. The difficulty of ob-
taining recruits was so great that commanding officers
were allowed to enlist boys under sixteen years of age
at the rate of 100 per regiment of 1,000 men, and,
quoting the words of Dupin, an eminent authority,
" the hulks were drained and the prisons emptied
more than once to supply the want of soldiers."

We will now compare these figures with the increase
and decrease during the years from 1871 to 1876.
The eflfective strength averaged 179,496. The annual
increase by recruits joined was 21,176. The average
yearly decrease stood as follows : Deaths, 2,163 ;
discharges, 13,152 ; desertions, 5,158 (of these latter,
however, 1,866 rejoined the ranks annually) ; from
causes not classified, and from men given up as
deserters from other corps, the loss was 1,076 ; and,
finally, to the Army Reserve there went 908. Thus
the total yearly decrease amounted to 22,457 men.

A PLEA FOR THE PEASANT. 295

From these figures it will be seen that we have
required yearly about 22,000 recruits to maintain our
army at a strength of 180,000 rank and file. But
that number will not sufiice in the future, because of
the increasing action of the short-service system. If
we put the annual drain of men at 30,000, we shall be
within the actual number. Inis, be it remembered,
represents the waste of our army only in peace. In war
the waste through deaths would of necessity greatly
increase ; instead of standing at 9 or 10 per 1,000 it
would probably touch 100 per 1,000, which would give
an annual decrement by deaths alone on our present
eflfective strength of 18,000 men.

We will now consider what would be the require-
ments of our army raised to a war footing, and how
far we might expect voluntary enlistment to meet
these wants. Let us assume as a fact that the pre-
sent strength is necessary for the security of our
Home, Colonial, and Indian necessities, we should, in
the event of a European war, require an addition of
100,000 men. The readiest way of obtaining that
number would be the embodiment of the militia and
the calling up of the first-class army and militia
reserves. This would set free nearly the required
number, 100,000 men— 100,000 men in the field
would need about 35,000 men annually to replace
losses ; so that we may estimate our yearly require-
ment of recruits in time of war at about 57,000 for
the regular forces alone. That this number could be
maintained for one year we do not doubt ; but that it

296 ' ^ FAR OUT. '

could be depended upon for a longer period we hesi-
tate to believe.

The reasons for holding this opinion can be briefly
stated. First, voluntary recruiting has always failed
to supply our wants in time of war. During the war
with France in 1743, despite a high bounty, " press-
ing " upon a most imjust system had to be resorted
to ; the jails of London and Westminster alone held
1,000 men thus pressed ; and we are told among the
instances of its cruel injustice that a certain gentle-
man, the vicar of Burstal, also a justice of the peace,
took the opportunity of pressing as a soldier one
Nelson, a Methodist preacher. The following con-
versation beween the unfortunate preacher and the
magistrates is worthy of record. Brought before the
justices at Halifax, their worships refused to hear his
plea, " because we have already heard enough of you
from the vicar," who, it may be mentioned, occupied
a seat upon the bench in his dual capacity. " Gen-
tlemen," said Nelson, " I see there is neither law nor
justice for a man that is called a Methodist." Thtn,
addressing the vicar, he continued, "What evil do
you know of me ! Whom have I defrauded ? or where
have I contracted a debt I cannot pay ? " To which
the vicar replied: "You have no visible means of
getting your living." So the preacher was marched
off; but whether his efforts contributed to the victory
at Dettingen, or the defeat at Fontenoy, history does
not tell.

At the breaking out of the Seven Years' War, the

■; . <«r

A PLEA FOR THE PEASANT. 297

same stringent measures had to be resorted to, but
without ejffect. In England men could not be induced
to enlist. Up to this period in our history Scotland
had been represented in our army only by the 42nd
Begiment, and that as a police more than as a mili-
tary force. It is needless to say that Ireland was at
a still greater discount. It was the genius of Chatham
which first discovered the mine of courage and devo-
tion to duty that lay unworked amid the Highland
glens. His own glowing words best tell the story.
" I sought for merit," said he, " where it was to be
found. It is my boast that I was the first minister
who looked for it and found it in the mountains of the
North. I called it forth, and drew into your service a
hardy and intrepid race of men, who, when left by
your jealousy, became a prey to the artifices of your
enemies, and in the war before the last had gone nigh
to overturn the State. These men in the last war I
brought to combat at your side. They served with
fidelity, as they fought with valour, and conquered for
you in every part of the world."

It has been computed that in the first four years of
this war (the Seven Years') 33,000 Scotchmen were
raised for the service. Twelve years after the cessa-
tion of the Seven Years' War, the American War of
Independence broke out. The effective strength of
the army stood very low ; but again it was found im-
possible to keep it up. The Minister of War declared
in the Commons that all his exertions had failed in
recruiting the army to its requisite strength. He

298 FAR OUT.

asserted that no means had been left untried, that
the bounty had been raised, and the standard lowered,
and "that attempts had been made even to enlist
Eoman Catholics into British regiments." Scotland
again came to the rescue. Out of eleven corps pro-
posed to be raised in Great Britain in 1777-8, for
service in the colonies, nine came from beyond the
Tweed. During 1779-80 the system of pressing men
for the army was fully resorted to. "All the thieves,"
says Grose, " pickpockets, and vagabonds in the envi-
rons of London, too lame to run away or too poor to
bribe the parish officer, were apprehended and deli-'
vered over as soldiers to the regiments quartered in
the towns and villages where these banditti lived."
Still the army could not be kept up. Foreigners of
every description had to be engaged, and traditions of
Hessian brutality still live in the villages of the
United States, just as fifteen years later their deeds
left imperishable memories in the minds of Irish
peasants.

We now approach the Great French War. We have
already seen at what a trifling cost of men, about
22,000 annually in the six years of its greatest
tension, it was maintained; yet to fill the vacancies
caused by casualties in the field, which only amounted
to a yearly average of about 1,000 killed, the bounty
for recruits reached the enormous figure of i£39 16s.
per head, or ^616 16s. to the recruit and ^23
to the various persons connected with bringing
him. Even boys under sixteen years of age, and less

A PLEA FOR THE PEASANT. 299

than five feet two inches high, received ^12 Is. 6d.
bounty, and their bringers £16 14s., making the cost
of each boy amount to ^£28 15s. 6d.

It was yet early in the war against Napoleon that
the pressure for recruits began to be severely felt.
In 1800 Irishmen had been for the first time admitted
into the army without forfeiture of their creed or
nationality. It was not much of a boon to yield to
these poor peasants, yet eagerly they flocked to accept
it. Not only did they wholly fill the regiments which
bore titles associated with their native land, but the
English and Scotch regiments held them in great
numbers. Between 1807 and 1811 more than 400
Irish were in the ranks of the 71st Highlanders.
In 1810, 443 men of the 74th Highlanders, out of a
total of 956, were Irish. The 94th Highlanders held,
in 1809, 666 Irish out of a total of 1,300 strong. In
a record of 1,087 names in the Eoyal Scots, during
the Peninsular War, 464 are registered as Irish.

It is customary in writing statistics of this kind to
say these facts speak for themselves. In this case,
however, they do not tell their own story altogether.
Beneath the bare record of these numbers lies one of
the saddest comments upon our government of Ireland
to be found even in that long catalogue of woe. Let
us ask ourselves who were these soldiers who so freely
came to fill the ranks of our army in the hour of peril ?
Were they men on whom the nation had lavished the
benefits of civil law, the blessings of good government,
the privilege of a free faith ? Alas ! the answer must

300 FAR OUT.

be, No. They were only Irish peasants; ten years
earlier they had been rebels; but five years before
they had been wild animals, hunted from hilltop to
hilltop, and now, from a stage scarcely less servile,
they passed out from their hovel homes to win for
England her loftiest pinnacle of military glory. '

Steadily through the anxious years the numbers rise
as we proceed. Talavera, Albuera, Badajoz, Sala-
manca, Vittoria — this poor Celt found voice and
strength and space, at last, upon these Spanish
battle-fields. Boom for the hunted peasant! The
room left for him was in the front line of fight, and
eagerly he stepped up into the vacant space. Here
at last he was at home !

Through years of bitter want, through centuries of
suffering, through generations of misfortune, the
soldier instinct still lived in his bruised and broken
heart ; and from the terrible breach of Badajoz, and
along the hillside of Fuentes d'Onoro, his wild cheer
rang out above the roar of cannon in joyous token of
his Celtic birthright found even in death.

That birthright of place in battle had in truth
become doubly his from the moment when Wellington
began at the Tagus that advance which was destined
to end only at Toulouse. That other Celtic race, that
soldier breed, whose home was in the rugged moun-
tains north of the Spey, was expiring beneath the
remorseless tyranny of a monstrous law— the High-
lands of Scotland were being cleared of men. If any
stranger, unacquainted with our civilisation, had

A PLEA FOR THE PEASANT. 301

witnessed the cruel scenes enacted in all the High-
land glens in the latter half of the last century and
the first years of the present one, he would doubtless
have asked in his simplicity, "What have these
people done against the State ? What law have they
outraged ? What class have they wronged, that they
should thus suffer a penalty so dreadful?" And the
answer could only have been, "They have done no
wrong. Yearly they have sent forth their thousands
from these glens to follow the battle-flag of Britain
wherever it flew."

It was a Highland t^ar-lom hope that covered the
broken wreck of Cumberland's army after the dis-
astrous day of Fontenoy, when more British soldiers
lay dead upon the field than fell at Waterloo itself.
It was another Highland regiment that scaled the
rock face over tiie St. Lawrence, and first formed a
line in the September dawn on the level sward of
Abraham. It was a Highland line that broke the
power of the Maharatta hordes, and gave Wellington
his maiden victory at Assaye. Thirty-four battalions
marched from these glens to fight in America, Ger-
many, and India, ere the eighteenth centmy had run
its course. And yet while abroad over the earth
Highlanders were thus first in assault and kst in
retreat, their lowly homes in far-away glens were
being dragged down ; and the wail of women and the
cry of children went out upon the same breeze that
bore too upon its wings the scent of heather, the
freshness of gorse blossom, and the myriad sweets

302 FAR OUT.

that made the lowly life of Scotland's peasantry blest
with health and happiness.

There are crimes done in the dark hours of strife,
and amid the blaze of man's passions, that sometimes
make the blood run cold as we read of them; but
they are not so terrible in their red-handed vengeance
as the cold malignity of a civilised law which permits
a brave and noble race to disappear by the operation
of its legalised injustice.

To convert the Highland glens into vast wastes
untenanted by human beings ; to drive forth to dis-
tant and inhospitable shores men whose forefathers
had held their own among these hills despite Boman
legion, Saxon archer, or Norman chivalry — mon whose
sons died freely for England's honour through those
wide dominions theu' bravery had won for her — such
was the work of laws framed in a cruel mockery of
name by the Commons of England.

It might have been imagined that, at a time when
every recruit was worth to the State a sum of foiiy
pounds, some means might have been found to stay
the hand of the cottage clearers, to protect from
motives of state policy, if not of patriotism, the men
who were literally the life-blood of the nation. But
it was not so. Had these men been slaves or serfs
they would, as chattel property, have been the objects
of solicitude both on the part of their owners and of
their government ; but they were free men, and there-
fore could be more freely destroyed. Nay, the very
war in which so many of their sons were bearing part

A PLEA FOR THE PEASANT. 303

was indirectly the cause of the expulsion of the High-
landers from their homes. Sheep and oxen >n came
of unprecedented value, through the increased demand
for food supplies ; and the cottage neath whose roof-
tree half a dozen soldier's sons had sprung to life,
had to give place to a waste wherein a Highland ox
could browse in freedom. Those who imagine that
such destruction of men could not be repeated in our
own day are but little acquainted with the real working
of the law of landlord and tenant. It has been repeated
in our own time in all save the disappearance of a
soldier race; but that final disappearance was noft
prevented by any law framed to avert such a catas-
trophe, but rather because an outraged and infuriated
peasantry had, in many instances, summarily avenged
the wrong which the law had permitted.

Thus it was that, about the year lo09, the stream
of Highland soldiery, which had been gradually ebb-
ing, gave symptoms of running completely dry. Ee-
cruits for the Highland regiments could not be
obtained, for the simple reason that the Highlands
had been depopulated. Six regiments, which from
the date of their foundation had worn the kilt and
bonnet, were ordered to lay aside their distinctive uni-
form, and henceforth became merged into the ordinary
line corps. From the mainland the work of destruc-
tion passed rapidly to the isles. These remote resting-
places of the Celt were quickly cleared. During the
first ten years of the Great War, Skye had given 4,000
of its sons to the army. It has been computed that

304 - FAR OUT. ^

1,600 Skye men stood in the ranks at Waterloo.
To-day, in Skye, far as the eye can reach, nothing
but a bare brown waste is to be seen, where still the
mounds and ruined gables rise over the melancholy
landscape, sole vestiges of a soldier race for ever
passed away. • * r

We have already stated that the absolute prohi-
bitions against the enlistment of Eoman Catholic
soldiers were only removed in 1800. As may be
supposed, however, the removal of that prohibition
was npt accompanied by any favour to that religion,
save its barest toleration ; and yet we find that, in the
fourteen years of the war following, not less than
100,000 Irish recruits oifered for the army. These
100,000 Irish peasants redeemed the honour of the
English army, and saved the Empire. As thej' and
their services have been long since ignored or for-
gotten, it may be well if we call evidence in their
behalf. The witness will be the Duke of Wellington.
Speaking in the House of Lords fourteen years after
Waterloo, he said : " It is already well known to your
Lordships that of the troops which our gracious Sove-
reign did me the honour to entrust to my command
at various periods during the war — a war undertaken
for the express purpose of securing the happy insti-
tutions and independence of the country — that at
least one half were Eoman Catholics. My Lords,
when I call your recollection to this fact, I am sure all
further eulogy is unnecessary. Your Lordships are
well aware for what length of period and under what

A PLEA FOR THE PEASANT. . 305

difficult circumstances they maintained the Empire
buoyant upon the flood which overwhelmed the
thrones and wrecked the institutions of every other
people — how they kept alive the only spark of freedom
which was left unextinguished in Europe. . . . My
Lords, it is mainly to the Irish Catholics that we all
owe our proud predominance in our military career,
and that I personally am indebted for the laurels with
which you have been pleased to decorate my brow.
. . . We must confess, my Lords, that without
Catholic blood and Catholic valour no victory could
ever have been obtained, and the first military talents
might have been exerted in vain."

Nearly forty years of peace followed Waterloo. It
was a grand time for the people who held that the
country was the place for machinery and cattle, the
town for machinery and men. The broad acres were
made broader by levelling coitages and fences ; the
narrow garrets were made narrower by the con-
version of farmers into factory hands, and the
substitution of sheep for shielings ; the picturesque
people, too, said the country Idoked better under the
new order of things; vast areas, where men and
women had lived, were turned into deer forests and
grouse moors, with a tenth of the outcry, and far
more injustice towards man, than accompanied the
Conqueror's famous New Forest appropriations. A
dreadful famine came to aid the cause of the peasant
clearers in Ireland. It became easier to throw down
a cottage while its inmates were weakened by hunger ;

306 . FAR OUT.

the Irish peasant could be starved into the capitulation
of the hovel which, fully potato fed, he would have re-
sisted to the death. Yet that long period of peace
had its military glories, and Celtic blood had freely
flowed to extend the boundaries of our Indian Empire
to the foot-hills of the great snowy range.

In 1840 the line infantry of Great Britain held in
the total of its 90,000 rank and file, 36,000 Irishmen
and 12,000 Scotch. In 1853, on the eve of the
Kussian war, the numbers stood — effective strength
of line infantry, 103,000; Irish, 32,840; Scotch,
12,512. .

Within a year from that date the finest army, so far
as men were concerned, that had ever left our shores,
quitted England for the East. It is needless now to
follow the sad story of the destruction of that gallant
host. Victorious in every fight, the army perished
miserably from want. With all our boasted wealth,
with all our command of sea and steam-power, our
men died of the common needs of food and shelter
within five miles of the shore, and within fifteen days
of London. • ^ v ■ •

Then came frantic efforts to replace that stout rank
and file that lay beneath the mounds on Cathcart's
Hill and at Scutari ; but it could not be done. Men
were indeed got together, but they were as unlike the
stuff that had gone as the sapling is imlike the forest
tree.

Has the nation ever realised the full meaning of
the failure to carry the Redan on the 8th of Sep-

A PLEA FOR THE PEASANT. 307

tember ? *' The old soldiers behaved admirably, and
stood by their officers to the last ; but the young,"
writes an onlooker, " were deficient in discipline and
in confidence in their officers."

He might have added more. They were the sweep-
ings of the large crowded towns ; they were, in fact,
the British infantry only in name, and yet less than
a year of war had sufficed to cause this terrible change.
Here are the words in which these men have been
described to us. " As one example of the sort of
recruits we have received here recently, I may mention
that there was a considerable number in draughts,
which came out last week, who had never fired a rifle
in their lives." Such were the soldiers Great Britain
had to launch against the Russian stronghold at the
supreme moment of the assault. Nor did this apply
solely to the infantry recruit. Here is a bit de-
scriptive of the cavalry, dated September 1, 1855 :
" No wonder the cavalry are ill, for the recruits sent
out to us are miserable ; when in full dress they are
all helmet and boots."

It is said that as the first rush was made upon the
salient at the Redan, three old soldiers of the 41st
Regiment entered with Colonel Windham. The three
men were named Hartnady, Kennedy, and Pat Ma-
hony; the last, a gigantic grenadier, was shot dead
as he entered, crying, " Come on, boys, come on."
There was more in the dying words of this Celtic
gr'nadier than the mere outburst of his heroic heart.
The garret-bred " boys " would not go on.

X 2

308 ' ; FAR OUT.

' It is in moments such as this that the cabin on the
hillside, the shieling in the highland glen, become
towers of strength to the nation that possesses them.
It is in moments such as this that, between the
peasant-born soldier and the man who first saw the
light in a crowded " court," between the coster and
the cottier, there comes that gulf which measures the
distance between victory and defeat — Alma and In-
kerman on one side, the Redan on the 18th of June
and 8th of September on the other.

We have seen that of the rank and file of the
infantry of England in 1840, nearly sixty per cent,
were Scotch and Irish, although the populations of
these two countries to that of England were ten
millions to fifteen. We will now compare the pro-
portions existing since that time and to-day.

In 1853 the percentage was about forty-four. In
1868 it stood at forty, and 1877 at thirty. Thus it
has decreased in less than forty years about thirty
per cent. This change will appear to many as one by
no means to be deplored, but on the contrary to be
accepted as a marked improvement. If we look upon
it, on the contrary, as an evil, it will not be because
we believe the people of one portion of the empire to
be superior to the other in fighting qualities, but be-
cause the decrease of the Irish and Scotch elements
marks also the disappearance of the peasant soldier
in the ranks of an army in which he has always been
too scarce. The words of a great soldier are worth
remembering upon this subject. " Your troops/' said

A PLEA FOR THE PEASANT. 309

Cromwell to Hampden, " are, most of them, old,
decayed serving-men and tapsters, and such kind of
fellows. You must get men who have the fear of
God before them, and some conscience of what they
do; else you will be beaten by the king's troops as
hitherto you have been in every encounter." " He
(Cromwell) began," says Marshall, " by enlisting the
sons of farmers and freeholders. He soon augmented
his troop to a regiment ; " and thus was formed what
another writer calls "that unconquered and uncon-
querable soldiery ; for discipline and self-government
as yet unrivalled upon earth. To whom, though free
from the vices that usually disgrace successful sol-
diers, the dust of the most desperate battle was as the
breath of life, and before whom the fiercest and
proudest enemies were scattered like chaff before the
wind."

Another good soldier writing, shortly after the
Peninsular War, upon the depopulation of the High-
lands has left us this truth : "It is not easy for
those who live in a country like England, where bo
many of the lower orders have nothing but what they
acquire by the labour of the passing day, and possess
no permanent property or share in the agricultural
produce of the land, to appreciate the nature of the
spirit of independence which is generated in countries
where the free cultivators of the soil form the major
part of the population." Had he written a few years
later he would have had to deplore a yet more exten-
sive clearing of cottages (consolidation of farms is the

310 FAR OUT. : ,'

more correct term), a still greater crowding of the
population into the cities. He would have witnessed
the extraordinary spectacle of a great nation bent on
redressing the wrongs, real or imaginary, of dogs and
cats, of small birds and wild fowl, of horses and
cattle ; but obstinately blind to the annihilation or
dispersion of millions of men and women bound to it
by the ties of race and country. Nay, he would have
heard even congratulations upon the removal by want
and hunger of some two ncillio. a of Celts from the
muster-roll of the Empire. Two millions of the same
people of whom our greatest soldier has said, " Give
me forty thousand of them, and I will conquer Asia."
Not for the conquest of further dominion in Asia, but
for the defence of what we hold, we may soon want
the Lhousands, and have to look for them in vain.
Fortunate will it be if in that hour, when first the
nation finds that there is a strength of nations greater
than the loom and the steam-engine — a wealth of
nations richer even than revenue — fortunate will it be
for us if then there should arise another Stein to
plant once more the people upon the soil they have
been so long divorced from, and to sow in Scottish
glen, on English wold, and in Irish valley, the seed
from which even a greater Britain might yet arise.

Oi'

A TRIP TO CYPRUS.

/~\N board H.M.S. Chimborazo, in Portsmouth
^^ harbour, there is much apparent confusion
and disorder. Men in all stages of imiform are
busily engaged in operations which have for their
ultimate object the preparation of the ship for sea.
Boxes of cartridges, bundles of carrots, personal
luggage of every description, four horses in boxes,
eight dogs in collars and chains, a large cat in a
basket, a rocking-horse and a child's wheelbarrow, a
semi-grand piano, a tax-cart, many gun cases, various
kinds of deck chairs, square boxes bearing in large
letters the names of well-known London tea-sellers,
provisions in tins, in bags, in boxes ; live stock and
poultry, and many other articles and things impossible
to mention, are put on board by slings and gangways.
Some are passed from hand to hand, others carried in
on heads and shoulders, and others again hoisted on
board by steam-winches and donkey engines, whose
fizz and whistle and whirl, amid all the other sounds
of toil and turmoil, are loud and ceaseless. _^

312 FAR OUT.

But, amid all this apparent confusion, there is much
method and system. One peculiarity is especially
observable : the various units of toil are all going
straight to their peculiar labour without paying much
heed to their neighbours. The human ants are carry-
ing their burdens into separate cells in this great
floating ant-nest ; they are passing and repassing to
different destinations, sorting out as they go all this
vast collection of complicated human requirements
from the seemingly hopeless confusion in which it
lies piled upon the wharf.

At ]ength, everything being on board, the Chim-
horazo surges out from the wharf and steams slowly
on her way. It is a mid- winter morning. A watery
sun glints from amid clouds that give but faint hope
of fair weather outside, and as the good ship bends
her course by Sandown Bay, and plies along the villa-
encrusted shore of Ventnor, there loom out to Channel
dull patches of drifting fog, between whose rifts the
chop of a short tumbling sea is visible, and above
which grey leaden clouds are vaguely piled.

We go below and, descending to the saloon, stoop
to look at the barometer ; it stands below 29°. That
terrible weather-man in America, who is certainly a
prophet in England, in whatever estimation he may
be held in his own country, has foretold a succession
of storms along the British coasts. For three days
we have fondly hoped that the fellow would be wrong ;
but barometer, fog, sea, and sky all proclaim him
right.

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 313

And now the Chimhorazo, holding steadily through
mist and fog, steams on down Channel, and in due
time rounds out into the Bay of Biscay. At any
period of the year a nasty bit of water is this Bay of
Biscay. Turbulent even in midsummer, sometimes
given to strange moods of placidity, but ever waking
up and working back into its almost chronic state of
tempest-howl and billow-roll, intent on having a game
of pitch and toss with every ship that sails its bosom.
But if the Bay can show its rough ways when the sun
hangs high in the summer heavens, what can it not
also do in mid-winter's darkest hour!

Let us see if we can put even a faint glimpse of it
before the reader. ■_ ' ^

It is the last day of the old year. Wild and rough
the south-west wind has swept for three days and
nights against us, knocking us down into hollows
between waves, hitting us again and again as we
come staggering up the slopes of high-running seas,
and spitting rain and spray at us as we reel over the
trembling waters.

It has been three days and nights of such misery of
brain and body, sense and soul, as only the sea-sick
can ever know; and now the last night of the old
year has come, and foodless and unrested, sleepless
and weary, we stagger up on deck out of sheer weari-
ness of cabin misery. How unutterably wretched it
all is ! The Chimhorazo is a mighty machine to look
at as she lies alongside a wharf or in a quiet harbour ;
tut here she is the veriest shuttlecock of wind and

314 ' FAR OUT.

sea. How easily these great waves roll her about!
How she trembles as they hit her ! How small her
size in this black waste of waters ! How feeble all her
strength of crank and piston, shaft and boiler, to face
the fury of this great wind king! Hold on by the
rigging and look out on the Bay. Huge shaggy seas
go roaring past into the void of the night ; great gulfs
tumble along in their wake ; and between sea and sky
there is nothing but grey, cold gloom. Ever and anon
a huge sea breaks over the bows and splashes far
down along the slippery decks. We have put one
more misery to the catalogue already told. We had
thought the cup had been full ; but to all the previous
pangs of sickness there are added wet and cold. And
yet to-morrow or the day after it will be smooth sea
and blue sky, and all the long list of wretchedness
will be most mercifully forgotten.

, • ., MANSHIP THE MARINE.

He was called a Marine, and had doubtless been
duly classed and registered as such, and " borne on
the strength," as it is called, of the Marine force ; but
for all that he was no more a Marine than you are.
If you ask me, then, what he was, I should say he
was almost everything else in the board-ship line
except a Marine.

He cleaned your boots, got your bath, made your
bed, brushed you, dressed you, waited upon you at
dinner, brought you physic from the " sick bay," told
you what the wind and the sea were doing outside,

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 315

S3rmpathised with you in the misery they were in-
flicting upon you inside, and generally played the
part of servant, valet, nurse, guide, philosopher, and
friend to a very large number of more or less helpless
human units.

When Mansxiip first volunteered his services as
attendant during the voyage there were circumstances
connected with his mode of utterance and general
appearance that had induced me to respond guardedly
to his overtures. Sorry indeed would I be to aver
that Manship was drunk on that occasion. Drunken-
ness is evinced by staggering or unsteady gait, whereas
Manship walked with undeviating precision. On the
other hand, his articulation was peculiar. He was
not a man of many words, as I afterwards learned —
action was much more in his line ; but as he pre-
sented himself in my cabin, on the night before we
put to sea, he appeared to labour under such
difficulty, I might indeed say such a total inability
to make his meaning evident to me, that I deemed
it better for all parties concerned to postpone any
further communication or arrangement until the
following morning. But as I proposed this course
to Manship, I became struck by a singular coin-
cidence in our respective cases. While my words
were couched in the simplest examples of pure
Saxon English that could convey to a man my wish
to put off our conversation to the next morning, I
was nevertheless aware that not one particle of my
meaning had been taken up by Manship' s mental

316 FAR OUT.

consciousness; and that so far from betraying the
smallest evidence of understanding my proposal, he
continued to regard me with an expression of eye
such as a Bongo or a NyH.m-Nyam might have
regarded the enterprising author of the " Heart of
Africa," had that traveller thought fit to address
these interesting peoples upon the subject of German
metaphysics in the Greek language. Nay, no sooner
had I finished my attempt at suggesting a postpone-
ment to the morning than he again began to pla'»-e
his services at ray disposal with the same inarticulate
manner of speech that had before alarmed me. v •

Bringing a light now to bear upon his countenance,
I detected a vacuity of stare, added to a general
tenacity of expression about the forehead, that made
postponement more than ever desirable. I therefore
put a summary end to the interview by ordering his
immediate and unconditional withdrawal.

The following morning found Manship duly installed
as my attendant during the voyage, inquiries as to
his capabilities having resulted in satisfactory
testimonials from many quarters. He at once
entered upon his duties with a silent alacrity that
showed a thorough knowledge of his profession.
Boots became his specialty. In the grey light of
the earliest dawn, my unrested eye, gazing vacuously
out of the uneasy berth, would catch sight of a figure
groping amid the wreck and ruin of the troubled
night on the cabin-floor. It was Manship seeking
out the boots. When the four first t'^nible days

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 317

had passed, and I had leisure to wat^ih more closely
the method of life pursued by Manship, I perceived
daily some new trait in his character. It became
possible to watch him at odd moments as he stood
by pantry-doors or at the foot of cabin- staus, or in
those little nooks and comers where for a moment
eddy together the momentarily unemployed working
waifs of board-ship life.

In outward appearance Manship possessed few of
the attributes supposed to be characteristic of the
Marine. His face was never du'ty, yet it would have
been impossible to say when it had been washed.
His hair showed no sign of brush or comb, yet to
say that it was unbrushed or uncombed was to state
more than appearance actually justified. He did not
vary one whit in his general appearance as the day
wore on. He did not become more soiled-looking as
he cleaned the different articles that came in his way ;
nor did he giow more clean-looking when the hour
of rest had come n.nd he did his httle bit of loafing
around the pantry oi- bar-room doors. I believe that
had he been folloAved into the recesses of his sleeping
place he would have been found in costume, cap, and
semblance always and at all houi3 the same.

As I watched him day by day I fomid that he
was the servant of many masters. Tlio navigating
lieatenant, the chaplain, the doctor, and two or three
others — all were ministered to by him in the m.^tter
of boots, baths, and brushing ; yet I could not detect
that any delay or inconveuienoe had been experienced

318 FAR OUT.

by any of his masters. His name, Manship, was a
curious one, and I indulged in many speculations
as to its origin, but, of course, none of them were
more than conjectural. When he told me his name
on the occasion of our first memorable interview, I
thought to myself, " Ah, I will easily recollect that
name. It is so intimately connected with nautical
life generally, that it will be impossible to forget
it." In this, however, I was mistaken ; for only the
next morning I found myself addressing him as
Mainsail, Mainmast, Maintop, Maindeck, and many
other terms more or less connected with the central
portion of a ship.

It was a remarkable fact that you never could look
long at any part of the deck, saloon, or cabin,
without seeing Manship. He came out of doors and
up hatchways quite unexpectedly, and he always
carried a supply of boots, buckets, or brushes
prominently displayed; indeed, there is now a
widely accepted anecdote in the ship which had
reference to a visit of inspection made to the
Mediterranean by the Lords of the Admiralty,
the War Minister, and several other important
functionaries. The Chimhorazo had been specially
selected for their lordships. It was said that on
more than one occasion the solemnity of a very
important "function" had been completely marred
by the sudden appearance of Manship, pail in hand,
in the midst of a press of ministers, secretaries, and
heads of departments. It was also averred that on

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 319

these high and mighty occasions Manship, although
bundled aside in a mc st summary manner, when once
out of the ministerial zone displayed a thoroughly
unconcerned demeanour. Those, however, who were
best acquainted with him were wont to declare that
the evenings of such state receptions were singularly
coincident with the inarticulate phase of his speech
which we have already alluded to — a circumstance
which might lead to the supposition that Manship
had been somewhat overcome by finding himself all at
once face to face with the collective dignity of the two
Services.

But some days had to elapse ere I became cognizant
of a curious "roster," or succession list which Manship
kept. One evening I was standing in a group in the
indistinct light of the quarter-deck, when I felt my
sleeve pulled to attract attention. I turned to find
Manship standing near. Stepping aside to ask what
he wanted, I was met by a piece of blue paper and a
short bit of lead pencil which he handed to me. I
approached a lamp, and holding the paper near it I
saw that it was the ordinary form upon which all
orders for wine, spirits, or malt liquors had to be
written. Opposite the printed word "Porter" I saw
that some one had written, in a hand of surpassing
illegibility, " One bottle," while higher up on the
paper appeared, in the same writing, the words
" Plese give barer " — no signature was appended.

I looked at Manship. Complete vacuity of counte-
nance, coupled with evident inability to shut his mouth.

320 FAR OUT.

told me that questions were useless. I have said that
the paper was unsigned ; to remedy that want had
been the object of Manship's visit. I wrote my
signature in the proper plaie and, handing back
the paper and pencil to him, watched his further
movements. He disappeared down the stairs, but
through an open skylight I was still able to trace his
course. I saw him present his order and receive his
bottle, and then I saw two tumblers filled, and while
Manship took one of them, another man, who had
not previously appeared in the transaction, held the
second. I noticed that there were not many words
passing between them at the time. Both seemed
to be deeply impressed with some mysterious
solemnity connected with the occasion. Perhaps
it was commemorating some great victory gained
by the Marines, or drinking to the memory of a
bygone naval hero. I could not tell, but I noticed
that when Manship had finished the tumbler, which
he did without any doubt or hesitation, he drew a
long deep sigh and, laying down his glass, disappeared
into remote recesses of the ship.

This incident had been well-nigh forgotten, when,
one evening about five days later, the same circum-
stances of paper, pencil, and petition were again
exactly repeated. I then found that my position
was fifih on the "roster," or liet for porter, and
that every five days I might expect to be called upon
to sign my name.

But my second turn did not arrive until some time

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 321

had elapsed, and to the wild grey seas of Biscay and
the Atlantic had succeeded the moonlit ripple of the
blue Mediterranean.

And now, all the storm, and sea roar, and whistle
of wind through rigging have died away, and over the
mountains of Morocco a glorious sunrise is flashing
light upon the waveless waters that wash the rugged
shores of the gate of the Mediterranean. Another
hour and the Rock looms up before us ; then the
white houses of San Eoque are seen above the blue
Bay of Gibraltar ; and then, with Algesiras, the wide
sweep of coast and the hills of Andalusia and the
felucca-covered sea all come m sight, until, beneath
the black muzzles of Gibraltar's thousand guns, the
Chimhorazo drops her anchor and is at rest.

And then there came two days on shore, with
rambles in the long, cool, rock-hewn galleries, and
drives to Spanish Lines, nnd along bastions and
batteries, and glimpses, caught from port-hole and
embrasure, of blue sea and far-away Spanish hilltop,
and piles of shot and shell, and long sixty-eights and
thii*ty-twos, and short carronades, and huge mortars
and " Woolwich infants," all spread from sea-edge to
rock-summit ; so thick, that a single combined dis-
charge of all this mighty ordnance might well blow
the whole of Spain forward into the Bay of Biscay, or
send the Bock itself backward into the Mediterranean.

Relics of the great siege, too, are plenty. These
old giants, how close they came to each other in those
days, spluttering away at one another with smooth

322 FAR OUT.

bores and blumlerbusses ! You could have told tho
colour of the man's board who was blazing at you if
you had been inquisitive on the 'point. No wonder
their accounts have been graphic ones. They could
see as much of the enemy's side as of their own. No
Avonder that that grim old fire-eater, Drinkwater
(singularly inappropriate name), should have told us
all about it so clearly and so vividly.

Half-way up the steep rock wall of the North Fort
there opens from the dark gallery a dizzy ledge, from
whose sunlit platform the eye marks, at one sweep,
the neutral ground, the two seas, and the far-oif sheen
of snow upon the Sierra Nevadas. Eight below, in
the midst of tho level •' lines," is the cemetery ;
around it stretches a circle marked by posts and rails.
It is the race-course. Grim satire! the "finish "is
along the graveyard wall. The distance-post of the
race of life and the winning-post of the "Eock Stakes"
stand cheek by jowl ; and as the members of the
Gibraltar Eing lay the odds and book their wagors,^
over the fence, half a stone's throw distant. Death on
his pale horse has been busy for a century laying
evenly the odds and ends of many a life-race.

But meantime the Chimhorazo has taken in all her
coal, and is ready again to put to sea. This time,
however, it is all sunshine and calm waters, and at
daybreak on the fourth morning after quitting
Gibraltar we are in sight of Malta.

The English traveller, or tourist of to-day, as he
climbs the feet-worn stairs of Valetta, is face to face

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 323

with one of history's strangest perversions, yet how
little does he think about it !

Bicasoli, St. Elmo, St. Antonio, Florian — all these
vast forts and bastions, all these lines, lunettes,
ditches and ramparts, were drawn, traced, hewn,
built, and fashioned with one solo aim and object — to
resist the Turk. For this end Europe sent its most
skilful engineers, spent its money, shed its blood.

Here, when Constantinople was gone, when Cyprus,
Candia, and Rhodes had fallen, civilisation planted
the mailed foot of its choicest knighthood, and cried
to the advancing tide of Tartar savagery, " No
farther ! "

How well that last challenge was understood by
the Turk the epitaph over the grave of a great sultan
best testifies : " He meant to take Malta and conquer
Italy."

The armies of the Sultan had touched Moscow on
the one hand and reached Tunis on the other. From
Athens to Astrachan, from Pesth to the Persian Gulf,
the Crescent knew no rival. Into a Christendom rent
by the Reformation, shattered by schism, the Asian
hordes moved from victory to victory. This rock,
these stones, and the knights who sleep beneath
yonder dome, then saved all Europe.

Let us go up the long, hot street-stairs and look
around.

How grand is all this work of the old knights !
How nobly the Latin cross — a sword and a cross
together — has grayed its mark w.pon church and

324 FAR OUT. ■■

palace, auberge and council hall — ^Provence, Castile,
Aragon, France, Italy, Bavaria, and Germany. Alas !
no England here; for the Eighth Harry was too in-
tent upon playing the part of Sultan Blue Beard in
Greenwich to think cf resisting his brothers Selim
or Solyman in the Mediterranean.

Of all that long list of knights — French, Spanish,
Italian, and German — ^who redeemed with their lives
the vows they had sworn, falling in the great siege of
Malta, there is not a single English name. Not that
English chivalry was then extinct. English knights
and English lords were dying fast enough in the
cause of duty on English soil. Thomas More and
John Fisher, mitred abbot and sandalled friar, and
many a noble Englishman wero freely yielding life on
Tower Hill and at Smithfield, in resistance to a
Sultan not so brave and quite as savage as Selim or
Solyman.

Pass by the grand palace of Castile, whose arched
ceilings once rung to the mailed footsteps of the
chivalry of old Spain ; go out on the terrace of the
Barraca, and look down upon that wondrous scene —
forts, guns, ships, munitions of war, strength and
power ; listen to the hum that floats up from these
huge ironclads lying so motionless beneath ; mark the
innumerable muzzles that lie looking grimly out of
dark recesses to the harbour mouth ; and then carry
your minds a thousand miles away to wliere, along
the shores of the Golden Horn, the great queen city
of the East sits crownlcss and defiled. How long is

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 325

her shame to continue ? So long as these ships, forts,
arsenals, and guns are here as the advanced post of
Mohammedanism in Europe. Here is the Turk's real
rampart, here his strongest bulwark against the
Cross. Above the Union Jack an unseen Crescent
floats over St. Elmo; and all this mighty array,
which confederated Christianity planted here as its
rampart against the Moslem, is to-day a loaded gun
primed and pointed at the throat of him who would
tear the crescent from St. Sophia's long desecrated
shrine.

Of course this is sentiment. Perhaps it must be
called that name to-day, and nowhere more than in
Malta. Still, somehow, the truth that is in a thing
be it sentiment or not, does in the long run manage
to prevail ; and although to-day tlie auberge of Cas-
tile is a barrack, and that of Provence echoes with
the brandy-and-soda and sherry-and-bitters criticism
of certain worthy graduates of Sandhurst and the
Britannia training-ship, nevertheless, even the history
which is made at their hands will ultimately bear
right.

Five miles from Valetta, and a short distance to
the right of the road which leads to Citta Vecchia, a
large dome of yellowish white colour attracts the eye.
It is the dome of Mousta church. We will go to it.
As we approach we become conscious that it is very
large. A friend who is acquainted with statistics
informs us that it is either the second largest or the
thhd largest dome in the world, he is not sure which.

326 FAR OUT.

"But it is unknown to the outer world," we reply.
"Mousta, Mousta! who ever heard of Mousta?" Very
few, probably; but that does not matter, it is a big
dome all the same.

It is Sunday afternoon, and many people are
thronging the piazza in front of the church. Three
great doors lead from a portico of columns into the
interior. We go in. The first step across the thresh-
old is enough to tell us that this dome is indeed a
large one. It is something more ; it is magnificent !
The church is, in fact, one vast circle, four hundred
and forty feet in circumference, above whose marble
pavement a colossal dome is sole and solid roof, all
built by peasant labour, freely given " for the love
of God." Architect, mason, stonecutters, common
labourers reared this glorious temple, painted, carved,
and gilded it, and charged no man anything for the
value of one hour's work.

These be freemasons indeed !

Ah! you poor, aproned, gauntletted, pinchbeck-
jewelled humbugs, who go about destroying your
digestive organs and spending a pound in tomfoolery
for every shilling you spend in charity, here is some-
thing for you to copy. Go to Mousta and look at this
church, " built for the love of God." Look up at its
vast height. Mark these massive walls slowly closing
in ever so far above. No wood here, all solid stone.
Walk round it, measure it, and then come into the
centre and go down on your knees, if you are able,
and pray that you may be permitted to give up your

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 327

folly, to become a " freemason" such as these builders,
and to do something in the world " for the love of
God."

When this grand temple was slowly lifting up its
head over the roofs of Mousta, an eminent English
engineer came to see it. He had built a gieat railway
bridge over a river, or an arm of the sea, at a cost of
only a couple of millions sterling. "Poor people ! " he
said, looking with pity at the toiling peasants, "they
never can put the roof on that span ; it is too large.
It is impossible." The eminent man had done many
tilings in his life, but there was one thing he had not
clone, and that was attempting the apparently im-
possible for the love of God. For the love of man
and for the love of fame he had doubtless achieved
great things and reached the margin of the possible ;
but so far as the idea of giving his time or his genius
"for the love of God" was beneath, above him, or
incomprehensible to him, just so far was the possi-
bility of the imj)ossible beyond him too.

And now the Chimhorazo, having embarked a regi-
ment of infantry for a far-ofif Chinese station, has
hoisted her blue peter at the fore, and it is time to go
on board her crowded decks and settle down again
into the dreary routine of sea-life for a few days
longer. So once more we sail away, men in forts
cheering, bands playing on deck, and all the j)Oor
Hong-Kong lads doing their best to look jolly.

Two days pass, and then at the sunset hour Crete
is in sight. No lower shore-line visible, but, white

328 FAR OUT.

and lofty, Olympus thrusts aside the envious clouds,
and "takes the salute" of the sunset ere the day is
done.

Next morning the Cliimhorazo is steaming through
a lonely sea, and when a second sunrise has come we
are again in sight of land — white chalky hills that
glare at one even from beneath the canopy of clouds
that to-day hangs over their summits. A wide curve
of shore-line lies in front. Glasses and telescopes
are levelled upon the land. It looks dry, desolate,
and barren. A few tall, dark trees are seen at long
intervals. Wherever the glass rests on a bit of ground
we see that the colour of the soil is that of sun-baked
brick.

We are looking at Cyprus.

11.

CIX months had scarcely gone smce Cypms had
^ been a word of mterest to every EngUsh ear.
Daily journals, weekly reviews, monthly magazines,
all made it a topic of animated discussion. Forgotten
history was searched to find episodes of early English
dominion in the island. Political parties made its
acquisition matter of grave parliamentary debate, and
even popular preachers drew pulpit parallels between
the record in Holy Writ of Saul and Barnabas sailing
for Salamis, and British civilisation in the shape of a.
brigade of regular infantry and a division of Sepoys
landing at Larnaca.

Nor was it to be greatly wondered at that the mind
of the British nation should have eagerly fastened
upon the new possession with a considerable amount
of popular enthusiasm. It had come, after long
months of doubt and manifold anxieties, the sole
solid bit of " boot " in the exchange which gave us
** peace with honom* " for armed expectancy and dis-
trust. It possessed associations connected with the
earlier ages of our recorded history which rendered it
a familiar name to every schoolboy. It was to be

330 FAR OUT.

another link in the chain of ocean fortresses which
hound us to our vast eastern possessions. Its occu-
pation by us was accompanied by many incidents
that cast around it more the eclat of warlike conquest
than the less demonstrative acquisition of peace or
purchase. The popular mind once excited, becomes
capable of strange enthusiasms. Cyprus grew in
imagination into an earthly paradise; "Paphos of
the hundred streams," the snow-fed rivulets that
flowed from Olympus, all the pictures woven of
sensuous fancy of the Greek and Koman poets were
reproduced, with the morning muffin, to swell the
chorus of delight that greeted our acquisition of this
once-famed isle.

Maps soon appeared showing zones of cultivation,
the very titles of which were sufficient to cause
English readers intense anticipations of pleasure;
the zone of the olive, of the orange, of the fig, of the
grape, and of the pine, were like so many terraces of
delight, gradually ascending from a lower world of
cotton and tobacco, where the Zapteah, the Mudir,
and the Kaimakhan (we are wont sometimes to con-
fuse eastern titles) fulfilled the natural destiny of the
black or coloured races by unremitting toil — to one ;
where under the pines of Olympus the Anglo-Saxon
proprietor sipped his cup, cooled by the snows of
Troados, or lay lazily lulled by the murmur of the
wind through the pines of triple-peaked Adelphi.

And there were other persons of less aesthetic tastes
who regarded the new island with more practical out-

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 331

look. It was to produce an excellent outlet for the
talents and the energies of the younger son. We
required such an opening, and Cyprus gave it to us.
The professions had all become immensely over-
crowded. Competitive examinations had sadly inter-
fered with the efficiency of the Services civil and
military. The colonies had develoj)ed, under repre-
sentative institutions, a tendency to bestow their
little gifts of place and emolument upon their own
younger sons instead of upon ours; but here, in
Cyprus, no such unjust prejudices were likely to pre-
vail, and any little difficulties of education resulting
from too close an attention on the part of om* younger
sons to "Buff's Guide" and the "Eacing Calendar"
would be of small moment in a country where the offi-
cial language was Turkish, and where the people were
either black or olive-coloured. Thus wagged the little
tongue?, of that great Babel called public opinion ; and
ere a week had passed from the date of the announce-
ment of our Cypriote acquisition, a pictm-e had arisen
of our new possession as utterly false to the reality as
though some German, deeply read in the Bom an
History of Britflin, had become the purchaser of a
property in Sussex, and expected to find existing in
full sway upon his estate the manners and customs
of Boadicea.

The Cypriote canticle had in fact been pitched in
too high a key, and a collapse was inevitable ere that
song had reached its second part.

The men who sailed for Cyprus, and who had been

:]32 FAR OUT.

likened by the popular preacher to Saul and Barnabas
landing at Salamis, were for the most part persons
not disposed to be hypercritical in matters of heat,
glare, and baiTenness. They came from Malta in July,
and in July Malta fulfils as many conditions of heat,
glare, and sterility as can be found on this side of
the Sahara. But to the eyes and the senses of these
men Cyprus was a place of almost intolerable heat and
blinding glare ; compared to it Malta was a land of ver-
dm-e, of running streams, of spring-like coolness ; and
the worst day of sun and siroc that had ever blistered
or stewed the denizens of Valetta was as nothing
compared to the fierce heat and blinding dust-storm
that burned and swept the camp at Chefflick Pasha.

When a question of fact becomes a matter of
political discussion it loses a great deal of the force
it usually possesses, and is not at all the stubborn
thing it is credited with being. One might have sup-
posed that the salubrity or unhealthiness of the island,
the question of whether Englishmen were well or ill
there, was easy of solution; but nothing proved more
difficult.

Fever or no fever became not a common everyday
matter of fact, but assumed the much graver and
more important bearing of a great parliamentary and
political question. The pap<^rs took sides upon it,
honourable members made motions upon it, people
^vrote to the leading journals upon it, and even a
vote of censure was openly hinted at by some of the
most extreme leaders of opinion.

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 333

But, on the other hand, the Government stoutly
averred that the whole thing was a delusion from
beginning to end. They were in receipt, it was said,
of most conclusive testimony to the excellent sanitary
state of the troops in Cyprus. The few cases of fever
that had prevailed after the arrival of the troops had
been of the febricular type, which, it was explained,
was fatal only in the event of its being complicated
with symptoms of a hepatic character. This was re-
assuring, so far as it went; but an honourable
member pointed out that in the actual operations of
war a man sick was almost as bad as a man dead.
This point was not made a question of discussion,
and to use the phrase of the morning papers, the
subject dropped.

But while thus theories took the place of facts
the army of occupation began to sicken rapidly, and
stray waifs of fever were wafted to the English shore.
Clubland soon became enlightened upon the real
nature of a summer in Cyprus. " I would not for the
world say it to every one," said the veteran Puffin in
the morning-room of the Inseparable Doodles ; " I
am too good a Conservative to let it be known ; but I
will tell you in confidence that there is not such
another cursed hole on earth." As this confidential
communication was made to at least seventy members
of the Inseparable Club seven times, and as these
seventy had retailed it without loss of time to at least
an equal number of their friends and acquaintances —
of course always in the very strictest confidence —

334 FAR OUT.

the opinion gained a widespread notoriety in a few
hours. The tide of public opinion began quickly to
turn, serious doubts were thrown in more than one
quarter upon the projected cultivation of the olive
and the grape, by the ordinary English agriculturist,
in a temperature of 165° Fahrenheit in the sun.

The theory of zones also underwent amplification
which was not at all satisfactory. A medical journal
published a map of Cyprus showing, in colours, the
zones of disease. There was the malarious fever zone
occupying the low coast lands ; there was the enteric
fever zone mostly confined to the towns ; there was a
zone of aguish fever where the limestone formation
touched upon the disintegrated granite ; and finally,
there was a dysenteric zone, the limits of which had
not yet been traced with any degree of certainty by
medical investigations beyond four thousand feet
above sea level. But amid all this revulsion of feeling
and collapse of brilliant expectation, one theory re-
mained intact. It was the younger^ son theory. It
might almost have been said to have gained strength
from the fact that fever was found to be a calculated
factor in the programme of his emigration. This
was, however, in the cu'cle of his family ; for himself
he showed a singular amount of obstinacy in the
matter, and although, during a brief sojourn in a
Cypriote seaport, he had succeeded in establishing
a race meeting, and had inculcated the Greek popula-
tion into the mysteries of " handicapping," ** laying
off," and " hedging," and also proved to them that it

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 335

■was by no means necessary that the best horse should
wm, he nevertheless, on his return to the bosom of his
inconsolable family, with the proceeds of a " Consola-
tion Stakes" nnd the seeds of a malarious fever,
steadily refused to again tempt the Goddess of For-
tune in the island of the Goddess of Love. Indeed, at
the sherry-and-bitter table of the "Waif and Stray"
Club, he set his opinion upon record. " The place
isn't fit for a gentleman," he said. " It will take a
dozen years before they're civilised enough to lay you
more than two to one on anything, and no fellow ^^ho
hasn't something to leave in a will should attempt to

go there."

* « » • «

A lonely sea washes the shores of Cyprus. Com-
merce seems almost to have completely lied the nest
in which it first had life. The wanderer who now
from the thistle-covered site of Salamis looks east-
ward to the sunrise, or he who casts his glance from
the shapeless mounds of Paplios, beholds waves
almost as destitute of sail-life as though his stand-
point had been taken upon some unmapped island in
the South Pacific.

To the north and south this characteristic of loneli-
ness is but little changed. Across the bluest blue
waters of the Karamanian Gulf the icy summits of
many mountains rise above a shipless horizon, and
the beauty of the long indented north shore of Cyprus,
from Kyrenia to far-away Cape Andreas, is saddened
by the absence of that sense of human existence and

33G FAR OUT.

of movement which the "white speck of canvas bears
upon its gUstening wing. To the south commerce is
not wholly dead. Between the wide arms of Capes do
Gat and Chitti sliijis and coasting craft are seen at
intervals, and the sky-line is sometimes streaked by
the long trail of steamer-smoke from some vessel
standing in or out of the open roadstead of Larnaca;
but even here, although the great highway of the
world's commerce is but a day and a half sail away to
the south, man's life upon the waters is scant and
transient. But the traveller who stands upon the
shores of Cyprus will soon cease to marvel at the
absence of life upon the waters outspread before him ;
the aspect of the land around him, the stones that lie
in shapeless heaps at his feet, the bare brown ground
upon whose withered bosom sere and rustling thistles
alone recall the memory of vegetation — nil tell plainly
enough the endless story of decay; and, as he turns
inwards from a sea which at least has hidden all
vestiges of wreck beneath its changeless surface, he
sees around him a mouldering tomb, which but half
conceals the skeleton of two thousand years of time.

Steppmg out upon the crazy wooden stage that does
duty for a jetty at Lamaca, the traveller from the
West becomes suddenly conscious of a new sensation ;
he has reached the abode of ruin. And yet it is not the
scant and dreary look of all things which heretofore,
to his mind, had carried in their outward forms the
impression of progress. It is not the actual ruin, the
absence of settlement, or the mean appearance of

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 337

everything he looks at, that forces siuldonly upon him
the consciousness of having reached here in Cyprus a
place lying completely outside the pale of Em'opean
civilisation; it is more the utter degradation of all
things — the unwritten story here told of three hundred
years of crime ; told by filthy house, by rutted pave-
ment and squalid street ; spoken by the sea as it sobs
through the sewaged shingle, and echoed back from
the smi-baked hills and dull, brown, leafless land-
scape that holds watch over Larnaca.

And yet they tell us that it is all improved — that
the streets have been swept, the houses cleaned, the
Marina no longer allowed to be a target for rubbish.
The men who tell us this are truthful, honourable
men, and we are bound to believe them; but the
statement is only more hopelessly convincing of un-
alttrable desolation than had Larnaca stood before us
in the full midnight of its misery.

As the day draws on towards evening we are taken
out to visit the scene of the encampment of troops at
Chefflick Pasha, when the isLind was first occupied.
AVe are in the hands of one of the chief regenerators
of the island — Civil Commissioner is the official title —
and we are mounted on the back of an animal which
enjoys the distinction of having made himself almost
as uncomfortable to the First Lord of the Admiralty
during a recent official visit to the island, as though
that Cabinet Minister had been on the deck of the
Admiralty yacht in a gale off the Land's End.

But if the spirit of ruin had been visible in Larnaca,

^ ^ z

338 FAR OUT.

the ride to Chefflick Pasha revealed the full depth of
the desolation that brooded over the land — the bare
brown land with its patchwork shreds of faded thistles,
over which grey owls flitted as the twilight deepened
into darkness. As we rode along through this scene,
my friend, the assistant regenerator, appeared to
regard the whole thing as superlatively hopeful — the
earth was to bloom again. What a soil it was for
cotton, for tobacco, for vines, for oranges, citrons,
olives ! Energy was to do it all — energy and Turkish
law. He had been studying Turkish law, he said, for
seven weeks, and he was convinced that there was no
better law on earth. We thought that the East
generally had been studying the same law, or codes
similar to it, for seven hundred years, and haxl come
to a different conclusion regarding its excellence.
*' What Cyprus had been in the past it would be again
in the future. It only wanted British administration
of Turkish law over the island to set everything right.
Man had done the harm; man could undo the harm."
And so on, as we rode back through the lessening
light into Larnaca.

Was it really as our friend had said ? Could man
thus easily undo what man had done? All evidence
answered "No."

For every year of ruin wrought by the Turk another
year will not suffice to efface.

The absence of good government may mar a people's
progress. The presence of good government can only
make a nation when, beneath, the foundation rests

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 33 &

upon the solid freedom of the heart of the people.
T'ie heart of Cyprus is dead and buried. It was dying
ere ever a Turkish galley crossed the Karamanian
Oulf, and now it lies entombed beneath three hundred
years of crime, no more to be called to life by the
spasmodic efforts of half-a-dozen English officials
than the glories of the Knights of Malta could be
again enacted by the harmless people who to-day dub
themselves Knights of St. John, and date the record
of their chapters from a lodging-house in the Strand.
The mail-cart running between Larnaca and Nicosia
usually left the former place at five a.m., but as the
English mail-steamer had ii rived from Alexandria at
midnight, the hour of the post-cart's departm-e had
been changed to half-past three a.m. A few minutes
before that time we had presented ourselves at the
point of departure, only to find office, stable, and
stable-yard sunk in that prolonnd slumber which
usually characterise the world at that early hour. A
glow of ruddy light falling across the street from a
large open door suggested some one astir, and we bent
our steps in its direction. The red light came from a
blacksmith's forge. At the anvil beat and blew a
swarthy smith, and yet a courteous son of Vulcan too,
for he stopped his beating and his blowing as we
came up, and put a candle-end in a bottle, and put
the bottle on a bench, and placed a rough seat beside
it for our service. He hails from Toulon, he says.
Simple services all of them, but of great value when
it is borne in mind that ten minutes previously we had

,^ z 2

340 FAR OUT.

called at the post-office, and received from the wearied
official in charge a packet of English letters and
papers just sorted from the mail. So, as the black-
smith beat we read, waiting in the small hom*s for
the mail-cart to Nicosia.

Suddenly there was a clatter of horses and a rush
of wheels along the street. The mail-cart had staried.
We rushed wildly into the still dark street. It was
too true, the cart was off ! With a roar that ought to
have roused Larnaca, we gave chase. The roar failed
to arouse the sleeping city, but, doing still better, it
halted the flying mail-cart. Ten seconds more and
we were beside v,he vehicle, and beside ourselves with
breathless rage. A Greek held the reins, another
Greek sat on the back seat. When the driver found
that the roar had only proceeded from a passenger
who had been left behind, he was about to resume his
onward way; but it could not be allowed. A shoi*t
altercation ensued. The Greek driver, reinforced by
the proprietor of the cai-t, a Frenchman, gesticulated,
swore, and threatened the combined penalties of
Turkish and English law. We calmly replied that,
acting under the direction of the French proprietor,
we had presented om'selves at the mail office at half-
past three a.m., that for two mortal hours wo had
waited for the caii, and that now the cart must wait
until our bag, still at the forge, could be brought up
and placed beside us. The Frenchman declared, "It
was impossible ; the d-^lay of a minute would be his
ruin. The mules must m-oceed."

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 341

" No; not until the bag was brought up."

"Forward!" roared the proj)rietor. The driver
shook his re'us and shouted to the mules. There was
nothing for it but to seize the reins and stop further
progress. The mules, fom* in number, instantly
declared themselves on our side of the controversy;
they stopped dead short, and the imprecations
of their ownei' and driver being alike iDowerless
to move them, the bag was brought up, the impre-
cations ceased, and we jolted out of Larnaca. Day
was breaking.

Softly came the dawn over the face of the weary
land. Over hilltops, over swamps, and shore and sea,
touching miserable mmaret and wretched mosque and
squalid buildirg with all the wondrous beauty that
light has shed upon this old earth of ours since two
million mornings ago it first kissed its twin children,
sea and sky, on the horizon of the creation.

And now, as the sun came flashing up over the
eastern hills, Cyprus lay around us, bare, brown, and
arid. Watercourses without one drop of water; the
surface of the earth the colour of a brown-paper bag ;
the telegraph poles topped by a small grey owl; a
hawk hovering over the thistle -strewn gi'ound; a
village, Turkish or Greek, just distinguishable from
the plain or the hill by the lighter hue of its mud walls
and flat mud roofs — east, west, or north, on each side
and in front, such was the prospect.

The owls on the telegraph posts seemed typical of
Turkish dominion. The Ottomata throned on the

342 FAR OUT.

Bospliorus was about as great an anomaly as the
blinking niglit-bird capping the electric wire.

Twenty-five miles from Larnaca the road ascends a
slight rise. As the crest is gained the eye rests upon
a cluster of minarets — houses thrown together in
masses within the angles and behind the lines of
a fortification, and one grand dark mass of Gothic
architecture towering over house and rampart. Around
lies a vast colourless plain. To the north a broken
range of nigged mountains lift their highest peaks
three thousand feet above the plain. Away to the
south-west higher mountains rise, blue and distant.

The houses, ramparts, and minarets are Nicosia ;
and the Gothic pile, still lofty amid the lowly, still
grand amid the little, stands a lonely rock of Crusa-
ders' Faith, rising above the waves of ruin.

If the Turk had marked upon Larnaca the measure
of his misrule, upon Nicosia he had stamped his pre-
sence in even shai-per lines of misery and of filth.
People are often in the habit of saying that no words
could fitly express the aj)pearance of some scene cf
wretchedness. It is simply an easy formula for
begging the question.

The state of wretchedness in which Nicosia lies is
easy enough to express in words — in these matters
the Turk is thorough. There is nothing subtle in his
power to degrade ; there is no refinement in his ruin.
The most casual tourist that ever relied on Murray
for history, and Cook for food and transport, could
mark and digest the havoc of the Ottoman.

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 343

In England there exists a school (we use the term
more in the porpoise sense than in the political one)
which of late years has insisted upon regarding the
Turk in a certain " old fellow " point of view. Some-
w^hat free and easy in matters of morality and habits
of life, perhaps ; but these are things which " young
England " has long learned to regard with a lenient
eye, "iid to look upon as being quite compatible with
a very advanced tone of civilisation and even of
heroic patriotism.

To persons of this school the Turk has lately been
a calumniated citizen, much vexed by certain corrupt
rulers called Pashas. A man, in fact, who only
required the benefits of English parish organisation
to blossom out at once into the complete perfection of
the Engi-iih rustic, with even the additional attribute
in his moral character of a respect for the game laws
thrown in.

" Good old Turk ! " " Poor old Tui'k ! " Alas, it
won't do! One week in Cyprus, nay, one hour in
Nicosia, will suffice to dispel for ever the pleasant
theory of " Bono Johnny" and this modem Piccadilly
view of Turkish peccadilloes. The cathedral church
of Nicosia is the saddest sight that can well be seen
to-day in Asia. Beneath its lofty roof the traveller
feels still the nressure of the Tartar's hoof. Amid its
violated shriues he sees, overthrown and rifled, the
purest ideal of that grand faith which covered Western
Europe v/ith temples so beautiful that all the wealth
and effort of the modem v;orld has failed utterly to

344 FAR OUT.

equal them. On this pavement chivahy lies prostrate,
history is blotted out, knighthood is disgraced, the
soul of Christianity is defiled.

Take the Abbey of Westminster, make curb-etones
and gutter-troughs of the tombs of Plantagenet and
Tudor, fill in the rose windows with mud and plaster,
break off and brick up each flying buttress, deface the
sculpture, raise from each Gothic tower a hideous
rough brown minaret, overthrow the tombs, hang out
from the minaret a rough swinging board (an invoca-
tion to Allah for rain), shatter everywhere, plaster all
things, and submerge the cloisters beneath three cen-
turies of ordure, and only then will you arrive at the
bold, bare truth of what the Turk ha 3 done for St.
Nicholas, at Nicosia. No, there never came on this
earth a " wrecker " like this Turk ; all his prede-
cessors in barbarism, nis prototypes in ruin, were but
children to him at their work.

The Goth might ravage Italy, but the Goth came
forth purified from the flames which he himself had
kindled. The Saxon swept Britain, but the music of
the Celtic heart softened his rough nature, and wooed
him into less churlish habit. Visigoth and Frank,
Heruli and Vandal, blotted out their ferocity in the
very light of the civilisation they had striven to
extinguish. Even the Hun, wildest Tartr • from the
Scythian waste, was touched and softened in his
wicker encampment amid Pannonian plains ; but the
Turk — ^wherever his scimitar reached — degraded, de-
filed, and defamed ; blasting into eternal decay Greek,

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 345

Boman, and Latin civilisation, until, when all had
gone, he sat down, satiated with savagery, to doze for
two hundred years into hopeless decrepitude.

The streets of Nicosia, narrow and tortuous, are
just wide enough to allow a man to ride along each
side of the gutter which occupies the centre. No
view can anywhere be obtained beyond the immediate
space in front, and so many blank walls, by-lanes,
low doorways, and ruined buildings lie around, without
any reference to design or any connection with traffic,
that the mind of the stranger soon becomes hopelessly
confused in the attempt at exploration, until wander-
ing at random he finds himself suddenly brought up
against the rampart that surrounds the city.

It is then that ascending this rampart, and pur-
suing his way along it, he beholds something of the
inner life of Nicosia. The houses abut upon the
fortifications, and the wanderer looks down into
court-yards or garden plots where mud walls and
broken, unpainted lattices are fringed by many an
orange-tree thick-clustered with golden fruit.

In the ditch on the outer side lie, broken and
destroyed, some grand old Venetian cannon, flung
there by the Turk previous to his final depai*ture.
His genius for destruction, still " strong in death," he
would not give them to us, or sell them, so he defaced
and flung them down.

We wander on along the northern face. Looking
in upon the city all is the same, mud and wattle in
ruin, oranges, narrow streets, brown stone walls.

346

FAR OUT.

minarets, filth, and the towering mass of the dese-
crated cathedral.

But as the sunset horn* draws nigh, and the wan-
derer turns his gaze outwards over the plain, he
l)eholds a glorious prospect. It is the sunset-glow
iij)on the northern range.

Beyond the waste that suiTounds the ramparts^-
beyond the wretched cemeteries and the brown mounds,
and the weary plain, the rugged range rises in purple
and gold. What colours they are !

Pinnacled upon the topmost crags, the gigantic
ruins of the Venetian castles of Buffavento and St.
Hilarion salute the sunset last of all, and then the
cold hand of night blots out plain, mountain, mound,
and ruin; the bull-frogs begin to croak from the
cemeteries, and night covers in its vast pall the wreck
of Time and of Turk.

III.

rPEN miks north of Nicosia a road or track crosses
this north range of hills through a depression
ahout one thousand two hundred feet above the sea-
level. A mile or two beyond the foot of the range on
the further side from Nicosia, Cyprus, unlike her
great goddess, sinks into what she rose from —
the sea. Here in this narrow strip between hill
and water it would seem as though nature strove to
show to man a remnant of what the island once
had been. The green of young corn overspreads the
ground ; the shade of the karoub-tree is seen ; myrtle
clothes the hillsides, and the dark grey olive-tree is
everywhere visible over the landscai)e.

Looking down from the summit of the pass one
sees Kyrenia clustered by the shore, whose gentle in-
dentations can be traced many a long mile away to-
wards KarpoB to the east, washed by a blue waveless
sea.

But our goal is Kyrenia.

Our companion has been over the ground many
times already, and we are late upon our road. As we
descend the ridge the noi-th face of the range opens

348 FAR OUT.

out to tho right and left behind us. It is green with
foliage. We have left aridity behind us beyond the
mountains. A couple of miles away to the right a
huge mass of masonry can be seen rising from groves
of olives. Towers, turrets, and battlements lift them-
selves high above [the loftiest cypress-tree; but no
minaret can be seen. It is the Venetian monastery
of Bellapays. We will have a nearer view of it later
on.

Kyrenia was the head-quai"ters of another assistant
regenerator, a practical man, who seemed to have
already realised the fact that the collection of taxes
was by far the most important part of the administra-
tion of Turkish laws.

A couple of hours before sunset found us climbing
the steep paths that led to Bellapays. Eveiyvvhere
around spread olive-trees of immense age. Their
gnarled trunks, clasped round with great anus and
full of boles and cavities, still held aloft a growth as
fresh as when Venice ruled the land. The fig-tree
and the orange grew amid gardens that had long run
wild. Here and there a colossal cypress-tree lifted its
dark tapr "'ing head high above all other foliage. The
path, winding amid dells of myi'tle, led right beneath
the massive walls of the monastery, where a spring
gushing out from a fern-leaved cave formed a dripping
fountain of pure cold water. . .

From the rock above the spring towered the great
front of the building ; in mass and architecture not
unlike the Papal palace at Avignon. Within the walls

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 349

min had scarcely touchetl. The cloisters had suifered,
but the great hall of the building was intact ; one hun-
dred feet in length, with high vaulted roof and Gothic
windows that looked out over green groves and long
lines of shore and longer stretch of sea, from whoso
blue waters rose the snow-clad jieaks of Karamania.

Beautiful Bellapays ! while thy great walls rise over
the fruit-clad land the loveliness of Cyjirus will not be
wholly a name. How perfect must thou have been in
the olden time, when the winged lions flew over
yonder fortress of Kyrenia ! Well have they named
thee beautiful, whose beauty has outlived the rain of
three hundred years, and defied the Turk in his fury
and in his dotage !

Behind the monastery, and nearer to the mountain,
a Greek village stood deep in orange gardens. In
this village dwelt one of the representative Greeks of
the island.

We found Hadgi at the door of his court-yard ready
to welcome us to his house. A steep wooden stair led
to the upper story. In a large conidor open at both
ends, and with apartments at either side, we were
made comfortable with many cushions spread upon
a large wooden bench. Here a repast was soon
served. First, coffee in tiny cups was handed round ;
then a rich preserve of fruits with cold spring water ;
then oranges of immense size, peeled and sliced into
quarters, were produced, together with Commanderia
wine, in which the oranges were steeped. A small glass
of mastic closed the feast. Many children, servants.

350 FAR OUT.

and women stood around, and the host did the honours
with that natural ijoliteness and ease which charac-
terise the peasant of every land save the "free-horn"
Briton. Hadgi's experience went far back in
Cyprus. His love for the Turk was not strong, nor
was it to be wondered at. He could remember one
year when thu-ty thousand of his countrymen fell
beneath the bullet, the rope, or the yatagan. And
yet he was not an old man. Hadgi saw us into our
saddles, and we rode back towards Kyrenia as the
sunset shades were gathering over sea and land. We
followed a more direct path than the one by which we
had come. On both sides the ground in many places
was thickly covered with square stones, showing that
buildings had once been there. Probably from Kyre-
nia to Bellapays one long street had once existed.
Next to the Turk ranks the goat as a destroyer in
Cyprus.

As we drew near Kyrenia a large herd was being
driven in for the evening. They were making the
most of a lessening opportunity. Here and ti:ere a
goat could be seen in the gnarled fork of some old
olive-tree, stretching forth his head to grasp a leaf.
The lower branches of the trees had all been cropped off
long ago ; but goats were standing on their hind legs
vainly trying to reach some pendant branch. One
,'!; particular, a little longer than his comrades, did
succeed in catching between his teeth the lowermost
twigs '' a bough. Long experience had doubtless
taught him that if he attempted to pull down his

A TRIP TO CYPRUS, 351

prize all would be lost ; his eiforts were, therefore,
directed to maintaining a balance upon two legs and
holding on by the bough until assistance came to him.
This it quickly did. In an instant twenty goats were
ready to lend a helping foot ; out of these some half-
dozen succeeded in getting their teeth into a twig,
then all lent their weight together to the pull, and
down came the olive-bough to the ground, to be
instantly devoured by the rush of animals which
settled upon it.

The advantages of pillage upon co-operative princi-
ples were here plainly apparent. Had the goat learned
them from the Turk, or was the goat the tutor to the
Tm-k?

Leaving Kyrenia on the morning of January 20,
we held om- way between the mountains and the coast
towards the east.

About six miles from Kyrenia we passed out of
cultivated land, and began gradually to ascend the
north range.

The country became wild and broken. Great glens,
covered with dark green myrtle, led from the range to
the sea. The path wound along the edges of these
valleys, passing many nasty places where the sure-
footed ponies had all their work to do to keep their
footing, and where the stones and gravel loosened by
the hoof rolkd many a yard ere the bottom was
gained. There had been a heavy fall of rain during -
the previous night, making the clayey places even
more treacherous than the gravel, and causing the

352 FAR OUT.

ponies to slide in their thin Turkish shoes as though
they must go over. But somehow they never did go
over, and when a couple of hours' riding had carried
us to the mountains, the track, though rough, oecame
safe. Passing the summit of the depression in the
range, where Pentahaclyon lifts his five fingers
du'ectly over the path to the left, we oegan to descend
the stony and now arid south side. Below us the
great plain of Morphu, and that which lies between
Nicosia and Famagusta, spread out under clouds that
come drifting up from the Olympian range.

Suddenly a turn in the path brought us in sight of
the strangest natm'al sight to be seen to-day in
Cypnis. It was the spring of Kytherea. Out of the
sun-baked moimtam gushes a stream of pure, cold
water.

"No stinted draught, no scanty tide," but a rush
that seems to come froiii an inexhaustible subter-
ranean source, that no neighbouring indication can
possibly account for. Above and around nothing can
be seen save bare browu hills utterly destitute of water;
below the spring a long line of foliage and cultivation
runs down the mountain side and spreads out into the
plain bfaiieath. Thickly cluster the houses along this
life-giving stream. To right and left rills of water are
led off along the descending slopes, and the baked and
barren hill-sides are made to bloom in many shades
of green ; for com and vme, olive and fig, orange and
citron, are all springing in luxuriant life around these
packed houses, and children's faces peep out of leaf-

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. o')l\

covered court-yards ; and the blacksmith's anvil, the
carpenter's bench, and the weaver's shuttle, are
busy, all called into life and sustained by that single
spring of clear, cold water, whose source in these arid
hills no man can tell.

Perhaps in the old days Cyprus possessed a score
of such springs. If they or others can again be
made to flow, then may the island see her golden
age revived, and count her million souls, and her
" hundrod-streamed cities."

At the lower end of Kytherea, where the lessened
stream runs faint, we stopped to rest and lunch in a
large Greek house, occupied by two officers of the
Eoyal Engineers, who were employed in the trigono-
metrical survey of the island.

Then away across the level plain towards Nicosia.
A Zaptieh guide, who had accompanied us from
Kyrenia, appeared to think that the moment had now
arrived when he could exercise to the fullest advantage
a cavalry charge after the manner of a Bashi-bazouk.
During the earlier pai*t of the journey, while we were
yet at the north side of the mountains, he had
developed this instinct in a strong degree. Without
any visible cause whatever, he would suddenly start
off at full gallop straight ahead along the pathway.
His headlong impulse to scatter mud on all sides was
apparently only jntrolled by the duration of his
turban in shape around his head. T\1iile his turban
lasted he was a Bashi-bazouk, when it fell off he
became an ordinary Ottoman. One of these headlong

2 a

354 FAR OUT.

flights, however, termmated more disastrously. He
was going along at a tremendous pace, stirrups
clattering, a bag of coppers jingling at his belt, when
his pony, pitching heavily forward, rolled its rider to
the earth. The turban flew one way, the bag of brass
caimes rolled another; never was the spirit of Bashi-
bazouk taken more completely out of a hero. During
the remainder of the ride to Kytherea he kept a crest-
fallen position in the rear; but now, on this Nicosian
plain the spirit again revived, and he began to gallop
furiously at intervals along the track.

As there were no women, or children, or fugitives,
he did not pursue his wild career beyond certain limits,
and as there was no enemy whatever, he did not retire
when his charge had spent itself at the same pace as
he had gone.

Darkness had fallen when we reached the walls of
Nicosia. Skii-ting the city by its eastern ramparts, we
ascended the ridge of old tombs upon which stands
the new Government House, the lights from whose
wooden halls formed the only visible objects in the
wide circle of surrounding gloom.

At a place called Mathiati, some fifteen miles south
of Nicosia, a regiment of infantry was in camp. After
many sites had been tried, all more or less unhealthy,
this place, Mathiati, had been selected ; and huts, sent
out from England, had been erected on a level space
surrounded by hills. A few olive-trees, a small Greek
mud village, and, farther off, the blue ridges of Mount
Adolphi, made a prospect not wanting in beauty, but

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 355

utterly destitute of any other feature that could give
an interest to the existence of an English regiment;
sport, society, the coming and going of human beings
— all were wanting, and except to the tomb-hunter or
to the student, Mathiati could vie, in absence of life,
with any station in the wide circle of British garrisons
round the earth.

The regiment now in camp at Mathiati had only
lately arrived from Nova Scotia ; and the contrast
between the cradle of a new-born civilisation which
they had quitted, and the grave of the old world's
decay in which they found themselves, was vividly put
before them. As may be supposed, their views of the
latter were not hopeful. They spoke of Cyprus as a
place of exile, dashed with a kind of humour learned,
perhaps, in the New World.

" The medical fellows never knew the use of the
spleen until we got to Cyprus," said one of the garri-
son, " but they've found it now."

"What is it?"

" Two months' sick leave out of this infernal hole,"
replied the first speaker. " The spleen has been what
they call a dormant organ of the human body until
we took possession of the island ; now its use is clearly
understood."

So ran the budinage of the mess-hut at Mathiati,
and perhaps there was as much corn of sense lying
baneath the " chaff" as could have been found among
many of the graver reasons elsewhere advanced in
favour of the new possession.

:'■ . .•.:■-.„ 2 A 2 :--^-^"

35G FAR OUT.

As day broke over Nicosia plain, on the 23rd of
January, a small party of horsemen crossed the dry
bed of the river channel that lies at the base of the
rocky ledge on which stands the Government House,
holding their way westward towards Peristeromo.
They were bound for Mount Olympus, in search of a
site for a summer encampment. The experience of
the past summer had been sufficient to show that men
could not live in health in the Cyprian plains, or
along the shore, dm-ing the summer months.

Before the sun had again entered the Northern
tropic a camp in the mountains must be found.

At the same hour and at the same instant of time
(for the line of sunlight through Cyprus and through
Zululand are one) that this small party of horsemen
rode out to the west from the hill c»f tombs near
Nicosia, a few horsemen, the last of a weary and spent
British column, were moving off fi-om a ridge, leaving
one thousand dead comrades lyiig tombless to the
vultures that watched on the rock ledges of Isandlana
Hill.

High up above the ledges one great frontlet of rock
frowned over the ghastly scene — the " Lion's Head "
some early traveller had named it. If sermons are
spoken by stones and lion ever speaks to lion, surely
this stone lion could have spoken that day a curious
homily to his brother on the mound at Waterloo.
What that homily would be we may not write now,
nor would the dawn at Isandlana and the dawn at
Nicosia on the 23rd of January meet in these pages if

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 357

that clay's work at the first-named place had not been
destined to turn in the future the footsteps of the four
men here bound for Mount Olympus towards Zulu-
land.

We reached Peristeromo, fourteen miles, in two
hours. Here mules were waiting to carry us farther
into the hills. The Greek priest had come out to the
river (at last it was a river and not a dry channel) to
welcome us into the village. Arrived at his house
there was the usual hand-shaking and coffee-sipping,
and then the saddles were changed from the ponies to
the mules, and all made ready for the onward
journey.

Three of the four mules were animals in fair condi-
tion ; the fourth was, it would be wrong to say skin
and bones, for so much of his skin had vanished
under the abrasions of pack-saddles and uncouth
harness gear that the bones in many places were
alone represented. Poor beast ! he was a dreadful
sight ! When the saddles were placed on the mules
outside, somehow or other the skinless mule fell to
the lot of the writer of these pages. That it was most
unconscionable cruelty to ride the beast there can be no
doubt ; but what was to be done ? The halting-place
for the evening lay twenty miles distant, high amid
the hills. The only alternative was to abandon the
expedition. There was nothing for it but to accept
the inevitable and momit the lacerated back. Then
came fifteen miles of gradually ascending pathway,
amid hills scantily covered with small pine-trees. As

358 FAR OUT.

the track wound along the ridges the air became crisp
and fresh, the sound of rushing water arose from deep
valleys, and the bright blue vault above rested on the
clear-cut edges of the hilltops. How pleacant would
it have been to jog along those narrow paths upon an
anirual of sound skin ; but now there was an ever-
present sense of pain inflicted to mar the whole scene,
and to cause each step of the ascent to be mentally as
painful to the rider as it was bodily so to the poor mule.
For many miles of the track a stray raven kept
hovering aloft in the blue heaven — was he scenting
his prey ? At last we reached the mountain-village
of Litheronda, which was to be our halting-place for
the night. It stood on the southern slope of the hills,
at an elevation of about four thousand feet above the
sea. The air was keen and frosty, for the sun had
gone down behind Olympus, whose white ridge could
be seen to the west. The village houses were all of
the lowest kind ; they projected from the hillside, out
of which they had been partly dug, so that the slope of
the hill and the roof of the houses formed one continuous
line. Thus a peioou could walk down the hill on to
the roof, until reaching the edge of the front wall he
looked down six or seven feet upon the door-step. A
few of the rudest and most antiquated implements of
husbandry lay on the paved space around the door-
way — a lean pig or a leaner dog grunted or barked
at the intruder. The mule had long ago given out ;
but it was infinitely more pleasant to follow the track
on foot, driving the wretched animal in front. The

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 359

rest of the party had gone on long out of sight, and
by the time the mule and his driver drew near Lithe-
ronda, camp had already been made on the further
side of the village. As we descended the path a Greek,
riding a fine young horse, suddenly appeared, coming
towards us from the village. With many vehement
signs he signified that he had been sent to meet us ;
the horse was for our especial use, the mule might be
tinisted to find its own way to the camp. So, mount-
ing the Turkish saddle, and accommodating feet to
the slipper stirrups and legs to the short leathers as
best one could, we trotted on towards the camp. It
stood under some large Avalnut-trees, now leaflless, and
by the side of a small stream. A huge fire of dry
logs blazed before the tents ; at another fire farther off
dinner was being prepared. A few villagers stood
gaping at the Englishmen — the first without doubt
who had penetrated to their remote nook. How they
must have speculated upon the reason of one's visit.
Did it mean fresh taxation, new law of grape gather-
ing, relief from some of their many loads ? The village
head man, an old Greek, stood the nearest figure
towards the fire, at the farther side — the blaze of the
pine-logs fell full upon his strongly marked face. He
wore the usual thin dress of blue cotton, the long
boots to the knees, the loose jacket and the swathed
waist. He was poor, dirty, and picturesque; his
appearance afforded cause for biblical parallels in the
mind of one of the English bystanders. " Now, that
old fellow at the other side of the fire," said one of

.■?()0 FAR OUT.

tlioni, *' is neither better nor worse in looks than one
of tlie apostles. Peter and Paul were probably quite
as dirty-looking."

" Yes, quite as dirty-looking," said another ; " but
after all, in that case dirt did more than ever cleanli-
ness will be able to do. Just think that a dozen old
men like that one yonder have done more on the
earth than all the soldiers who have ever lived. Til
give you Caesar, Alexander, Bonaparte, Tamerlane,
and Charlemagne, and all the great generals the
world has ever seen, on one side, and Pll take that
dozen seedy, dirty old men on the other, and with all
the sword and soap you like into the bargain, yet
you'll be nowhere in the race."

Is there not too marked an inclination in this
modern world of ours to shun controversy of this
kind? to avoid meeting the every-day thrusts of a
commonplace criticism with the weapons lying close
to our hands?

No need to search through Scripture verse or theo-
logian's canon for the counter to the cut, or the
parry to the thrust, of nine-tenths of the criticism
that is to-day aired on Christ and Christianity. Take
up the gauntlet as it is thrown down. Meet the
attack on the ground on which it is made; meet it
with common sense if it be made with common sense,
and common nonsense if it be made in idle jest, and
you will be a poor layman if you cannot double up
your assailant with any of his own weapons or upon
any ground he may choose for his attack.

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 3G1

One poor carpenter and a dozen men — fishermen,
tanners, publicans — able, even in the material aspect
of their work, to beat all the conquerors, pyramid-
builders, statesmen, law-makers, philosophers, kings,
swashbucklers, and big- wigs that this planet of ours
has ever known.

Great doctors of the body have, in modern times,
given up much of the old jargon of medicine, and
come back to the common mles of food and air and
water for the cure and care of human bodies. Might
not our soul-doctors, too, sometimes take a leaf from
this old tree of Christian common sense, if necessary
cut a cudgel from it, and do more in ten minutes to
demolish the shallow scepticism of the modem anti-
Christian critic than could be done by a month of
quotation from the theologians of five hundred years ?

Of the features of English character brought to
light by the spread of British dominion in Asia, there
is nothing more observable than the contrast between
the religious bias of Eastern thought and the innate
absence of religion in the Anglo-Saxon mind. Turk,
and Greek, Buddhist and Armenian, Copt and Parsee,
all manifest in a Imndred ways of daily life the great
fact of their belief in a God. In their vices as well as
in their virtues the recognition of Deity is dominant.

With the Western, on the contrary, the outward
form of practising belief in a God is a thing to be
half-ashamed of, something to hide, A procession of
priests in the Strada Keale would probably cause an
average Briton to regard it with less tolerant eye than

362 FAR OUT. A

he would cast upon a Juggernaut festival in Orissa ;
but to each alike would he display the same icono-
clasm of creed, the same idea, not the less fixed
because it is seldom expressed in words, " You pray ;
therefore I do not think much of you." But there is
a deeper difference between East and West lying be-
neath this incompatibility of temper on the part of
modem Englishmen to accept the religious habit of
thought in the East. All Eastern peoples possess
this habit of thought. It is the one tie which links
together their widely dijBfering races. Let us give an
illustration of our meaning. On an Austrian Lloyd's
steamboat in the Levant a traveller from Beyrout will
frequently see strange groups of men crowded together
on the quarter-deck. In the morning the missal books
of the Greek Church will be laid along the bulwarks
of the ship, and a couple of Eussian priests, coming
from Jerusalem, will be busy muttering mass. A
yard to right or left a Turkish pilgrim, returning from
Mecca, sits a respectful observer of the scene. It is
prayer, and therefore it is holy in his sight. So, too,
when the evening hour has come, and the Turk spreads
out his strip of carpet for the sunset prayers and
obeiKance towards Mecca, the Greek looks on in
silence, without trace of scorn in his face, for it is
again the worship of the Creator by the created. They
are both fulfilling the first law of the East — prayer to
God ; and whether the shrine be Jerusalem, Mecca,
or Lhassa, the sanctity of worship surrounds the
votary and ^jrotects the pilgrim.

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 363

Into this life comes the Enghshman, frequently
destitute of one touch of sympathy with the prayers
of any people, or the faith of any creed ; hence our
rule in the East has ever rested, and will ever rest,
upon the bayonet. We have never yet got beyond the
stage of conquest, never assimilated a people to our
ways, never even civilised a single tribe around the
wide dominion of our empire. It is curious how fre-
quently a well-meaning Briton will speak of a foreign
church or temple as though it had presented itself to
his mind in the same light in which the City of
London appeared to Blucher — as something to loot.
The other idea, that a priest was a person to hang, is
one which is also often observable in the British brain.
On one occasion, when we were endeavouring to en-
lighten our minds upon the Greek question, as it had
presented itself to a naval officer whose vessel had
been stationed in Greek and Adriatic waters during
our occupation of Corfu and the other Ionian Isles,
we could only elucidate from our informant the fact
that one morning before breakfast he had hanged
seventeen priests. From the tone and manner in
which he thus summed up the Greek question, there
appeared to be little doubt that he was fully prepared
to repeat his performance upon any number of priests
at any hour, or before any meal — indeed, from the
manner in which he marked the event as having pre-
ceded his breakfast, it might almost have been sur-
mised that his digestive organs had experienced the
want of similar stimulants since that occasion.

364 FAR OUT.

Meantime, however, while thus we stand before the
camp fire at Litheronda, the snow begins to fall
through the leafless walnut-trees, and the night wind
blows cold over the white shoulder of Mount Olympus.
At daybreak next day it blows colder still ; the ridge,
across which our onward track lies, is white with
snow, which holds its own even as the sun climbs
higher into the eastern sky, and the guides, who
are to lead us across the shoulder of Olympus
to Pasha Leva, assert that the route will be impracti-
cable for some days to come ; so, striking camp, we
held our way for nine miles along a rocky glen that
led to the village of Manikito, and then turning west-
ward, and crossing some very rough and broken
ground, we reached at three o'clock in the afternoon
the hill village of Platris, on the south slope of
Olympus.

Behind Platris, to the north, the mountain rose
steep and pine-clad ; below Platris, to the south, many
valleys led the eye downwards to the sea ; where the
coast beyond Limasol, and the ruins that mark the
site of the monastery of the Knights of St. John,
built when Acre had fallen to the Saracen, lay twenty
miles distant in reality, but seemingly close at hand,
seen through the blue and golden light that filled the
whole vast vault far out beyond the land into the
shipless sea. To-morrow our line would lead us down
to that shore, but now — to-day — ere the sun, already
far into the west, should reach the sky-line beyond
Paphos, we had a chance of scaling the lofty ridge

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 365

that rose behind the village, and of planting a foot-
print in the snow of Olympus.

Away on fresh mules up the mountain. There is
no time to lose, and anxiously we watch the aneroid
to note our upward progress, and the sun to mark the
time that yet remains to us. At a point about five
thousand five hundred feet above the sea-level the
snow becomes too deep for the mules, so we dismount
and tie them to pine-trees; then, while two of the
party turn off to the right to select a site for the
summer encampment, we strike up the hill alone to
make a race for Olympus with the sunset. The ridge
is very steep, but the snow holds a firm crust, and the
air is keen and bracing. The aneroid soon shows
another five hundred feet gained, and a hill, which
seems to be the summit, appears close at hand. It ir
won, but at its farther side the ground sinks abruptly
only to rise again out of a deep valley into the real
Mount Olympus. Better had we kept more to the
right and avoided this deep glen that now lies across
our line to the summit. There is nothing for it but
to retrace our steps to the right, and then take the
crest of the curving ridge which runs round almost at
our present level to the foot of Troados. But every
second h precious. Away we go at topmost speed
along the crest, which, though level when looked at
from a distance, is broken into many hills and valleys
when nearer seen. All is silent around save the
quick crunching of the snow beneath rapid footsteps.
Lofty pine-trees rise on every side. We are now

366 FAR OUT.

under the shadow of Olympus, whose white head, bare
of pine-trees, has hidden the low-sunk sun. Through
the pines to the north the eye catches glimpses of the
low country, the north range, and the far-away sheen
of snow on the mountains of Asia Minor; but there is
no time to note anything save the lessening light and
the bare summit that rises above the dark pines. We
pass out from the shadows of the trees, and stop a
moment to take breath for the last ascent. Looking
across the valley, around three sides of which we have
just circled, the sunlight is seen still bright upon the
crest we started from, but the rays fall level; and
already around us, in the shadow of Olympus, the
blue light of evening has fallen upon the snow.
Nothing but the croak of a solitary raven from a
withered pine-branch close at hand breaks the intense
silence of the scene. Another four minutes' hard pull
and we stand upon the bald crest of Troados. The
sun has not yet set. Far out, resting on a ring of
immeasurable sky-line, he seems to pause a moment
ere he sinks into the sea. There is a faint crescent
moon in the western sky. A vast circle spreads
around, and within this huge horizon all Cyprus lies
islanded beneath the light of sunset.

There is sea beyoni the north range, and beyond
the sea there is sun on a long line of snow set far
above the gathered shades of evening. There is sea
in the wide curve of Salamis, and beyond the ruined
ramparts of Famagusta; sea where Paphos sinks into
a golden haze of sunset in the west; sea where Karpos

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 367

stretches his long arm into the arch which the earth's
shadow has cast upon the Eastern sky, for all Cyprus
below this lonely Troados lies in twilight, and the
great circle of the sea is sunless, save where, on the
western rim, the blood-red disc sinks slowly from a
sky whose lustre pales in lessening hues from horizon
to half-zenith. And now the last speck of sun has
gone beneath the waves. Olympus is cold and blue,
like many a lesser ridge around him; the crescent
moon grows clearer cut against the heaven ; grey and
cold, the sky rim narrows, and the wide bays and
long-stretching promontories of the island lie in misty
outline upon the darkening sea ; far away to the north
Karamania still holds aloft one last gleam of simlight
upon his frozen forehead.

We will stay until this "light of Asia" is blotted
out. Another moment and the Earamanian range is
cold ; and then, fading into the night, Cyprus lies in
the gloaming — a vague but mighty shadow, from whose
forgotten tombs and shattered temples the night wind
comes to moan its myriad memories amid the pines of
Olympus. ^ /• A

IV.

"pvOWN the snowy side of Troadoa we ran at top-
most speed, ploughing deep into drift, and
crushing through crusty doing more in a minute of
time than had been done in ten minutes of toil upon
the upward road. There was not a moment to luse.
Never did night gather her shadows more quickly
around her than now as we went plunging down into
her depths. Scant is the measure darkness gives in
the Mediterranean when once the sun has gone below
the horizon ; but now we lessened that short interval
by each rapid stride, for we were literally descending

into darkness. -v;;^r-i -;;-.---:: ^rJ^^;■^^r■■:;/•":\,C':iv^•>^;,I:■^;-.;:••^ ■

Some fifteen hundred feet lower down the mule had
been left picketed beneath a pine-tree. To that tree
there was no track, save the footprints of our upward
course in the snow. These were, in many places,
only to be observed in the closest scrutiny ; in others,
where the breeze was drifting the light frozen particles,
they had become invisible. It was therefore a matter
of moment that we should make the most of the after-
glow to get out, at least, from the denser pine-trees
and deeper snow of the upper mountain, and set
our faces straight in the direction of the mule.

A TKIP TO CYPRUS. 369

As before it had been a race with the sun up moun-
tain, in which we had v/on, now ii was a race with
night, in which we were the loser. Still, enough of
light remained to enable us to follow our footprints
clear of the broken ground below the summit ridge,
and, before darkness had quite fallen, to see that our
course was set straight down-hill towards the south.

At the edge of the snow there suddenly appeared
right in front two large ears, projected forward in
relief against a faint afterglow, that lay along the
lower sky from north to south. It was the mule,
looking wistfully towards the new comer. His com-
panions had long since been taken away, and the
prospect of spending a hungry night on the cold
shoulder of Olympus had doubtless convinced the
mule that there were worse things in life than
his old enemy — a rider. Still, when he realised that
he was not to spend the night in cold and hunger,
he began at once to manifest his old repugnance to
the saddle. ,

At last the girths were tight, and we began to
descend the steep hillside It was now quit-'^ dark.
We had got into a maze of rocks, pine-trees, and brush-
wood. A general goat-track seemed to pervade the
entire mountain, upon which the mule appeared to be
now quite content to spend the remainder of the night.
At last, amid a labyrinth of rocks, he came to a stand-
still. Dismounting, we endeavoured to lead him ; but
he would not be led. Passing the halter behind we
now tried to drive him before us ; he would thus find

2 B

370 FAR OUT.

the right road, and would lead the way into camp. In
the new order of things it will be sufficient to say that
he at once entered into that part of the programme
which had reference to finding the right road ; but
there appeared to be a vast difference in his mind
between finding the road for himself and showing it to
his driver, for no sooner had he set his head straight
downhill than he determined to set his heels in
the opposite du'ection, with the view of dissolving
partnership with his master. Out of the darkness in
front there suddenly came two vicious and violent
kicks; the Turkish shoes just reached us, but not
close enough to do serious damage ; a couple of inches
nearer would have soon ended the matter of partner-
ship, and left us alone on the shoulder of Olympus.
To jump aside amid the rocks and haul vigorously
at the halter was only the work of a second. Soon
we succeeded in slewing round the animal's head,
and the saddle was again occupied, not to be quitted
under any pretence until mule and man were safely
landed in the camp at Platris. ■ - ^

An hour later lights shone below, and we reached
the camp, to find a relief party about to start up the
mountain to look for us. /:

Six hours' ride, next day, carried the party to
Limasol, from which port the writer of these pages
set out to cross the mountains to the monastery of
Kiku and the west shore of the island. An inter-
preter, a muleteer, and three mules; a Zaptieh riding
in front; an order, in Greek and Turkish, to the

A TRJP TO CYPRUS. o71

mudirs of the towns en route to board and lodge us;
small kit of apparel and slender store of commissariat
hastily got together, and we leave with little regret the
hot streets of Limasol and the low coast lands of
Kolossi. Euins of temples along the narrow track ; at
intervals a village, with cultivation and a few orange
trees around it; then upwards in a long ascent hy
arid hills, from which at every turn the eye looks back
at bluest sea and buildings cleaned and freshened by
sun and distance.

As on we ride an old negro suddenly issues from a
cave by the wayside, and invites us to stop a moment
and refresh with coffee. His cave is twenty feet deep
in the rock, fairly lighted from its large entrance, and
with a lean-to hut on one side, forming a porch. He
is very black and very garrulous. His name is Billali.
Many years before a Turk named Seyd brought him
from Upper Egypt to Cyprus. He became free, and
took to this cave, where now he cultivates the land
around. He had sent his wife away. He was born
in Kordofan, in the midst of the desert, and there his
name had been Tameroo ; that was a long while ago
— before the time of Mehemet Ali Pasha. He is very
happy up on this hill, for he can look down on the sea
and on the houses, and till his land as he likes. His
wife used to bother him a good deal ; but he sent her
away, and now he is quite happy. So spake Billali,
once Tameroo of Kordofan, as he blew the embers
about his little Turkish coffee-pot, and prepared the
tiny cup of real coffee for us. Then we parted from

372 FAR OUT.

this poor old black Tameroo, and held our courBo by
8hivellaB and Everssa towards Mallia.

We reached the latter place in a downpour of rain
at sunset. The mudir had a room ready, the Zaptieh
having gone on in front to announce us. Dinner soon
followed, and then coffee, cigarettes, and much conver-
sation. Mallia .was a purely Turkish village, and all
the talk was of the Turk. There were one or two
Ijresent who had been to Mecca. There were many
questions asked about the future of the island, about
the discovery of gold — " a mountain of gold," they say,
in Midian — and about politics, foreign and domestic.
There seemed to be an impression amongst them that
if this mountain of gold could only be discovered in
Cyprus all would be right. I replied through the
interpreter that there was plenty of gold lying around,
but that it was in the wine, the oil, the wheat, that
came yearly from the ground ; that the Egyptian, the
Boman, the Venetian, and the Greek had left but little
of other treasure remaining, but that each returning
summer called again to life the riches of which I
spoke. v'v>-x-- ■ "

Meantime there is much bringing of coffee and
rolling of cigarettes among the cross-legged circle
grouped before the large kitchen fire, and finally it is
time to lie down for the night.

The wme at Mallia was good, and with generous
hands my Turkish hosts filled my glass, declining to
join me themselves ; but rumour said that they were
not always so shy, and that Mallia knew the flavour of

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 371)

a flagf n of Commanderia and the smack of mastic as
well as any wine-bibbing village of Greek or Maronite
persuasions.

Early next day we are again on the track. Rough
and stony, it leads to Arsos, and through the mass of
ruins called Hy Nicolo into the beautiful valley of the
Carissos River. As the mules in single file wind
down into the valley two eagles come soaring close
above our heads. A large stone-pine slants from the
hillside, and beneath his wide-spread branches white
Troados is seen ending the upper valley. Then we
zigzag down to the river meadows and halt by the
oleander-lined banks for the mid-day rest.

On again across the single-arched bridge of Jellalu,
up the farther side of the valley. A very old Greek
church stands in ruins on the slope, and near it one
solitary pine-tree eleven feet in girth. Then the
ascent becomes steep, the zigzags are short and severe,
and we see above us the pine-clad crest beyond, which
is the monastery of Kiku, our destination.

At last we gain the summit. The track now leads
along the crest or sides of narrow ridges. Troados
lies to the right, rising in long profile out of a very
deep glen ; innumerable other deep glens sink around
on every side. The sides of the hills descend so
steeply into these valleys that the stones go rolling
from the feet of the mules as we jog along ; but the
sense of the steepness of the declivity is lessened by
the pines and arbutus-trees that grow around^ — the
arbutus only on the north faces of the bills, ,/

|]74 FAR OUT. '

■ The atmosphere is interiHely clenr ; we are about
four thouHand feet above sea-level, and as the sun
draws to the west the valley between us and Troados
seems shot with varying hues of light, yet all 30
clear that every pine-treo on the mountain is visible,
and the snowy crest looks but a short mile distant. A
turn in the path brings the monastery of Kiku in
sight, the road dips a moment along the east side of
the crest, which the sun cannot reach, and the ground
is hard-bound in frost. As we draw near the monas-
tery a monk conies up the hillside and joins us. He
carries a gun and a bag, but no game. Then we dis-
momit at the great doorway, — lead the mules into
the court-yard, and presently a portly prior, followed by
many Greek monks, come to bid us rest and welcome.
A cell is soon got ready, and the portly prior shows
us to it. Three little windows in a veiy deep wall ;
lo.v-arched ceiling, from the centre of which swings a
brass lamp ; a brick floor, with carpet slips laid upon
it ; a brazier of hot charcoal on one side ; a sofa, a
few chairs, and a wooden table, and our cell is as
comfortable a little den to get into at sunset amid
these cold Cypriote hills as traveller could wish to
find.

A quaint old place this Kiku, set four thousand feet
up in the hills. Long arched corridors and passages
run round quiet court-yards. Off the corridors open
cells, dormitories, and refectories. A great bell hangs
at one corner of the quadrangle ; it has come all the
way from Moscow — for the fame of Kiku's sanctity

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 375

goes far over the Greek world. How this bell was
ever carried up the mountain must remain a mystery.
It is of enoraious size and weight, and the path is
but a narrow mule-track; but there it hangs, all
the same, to ring out its deep note in the grey dawn
to the misty mountain solitudes, and to wake the
mouflon on the hills ere the sun has kissed the frozen
forehead of Troados. But the glory of Kiku is the
church, and the glory of the church is the silver image
of the Virgin and Child, given by Alexis in the tenth
century, and hidden, so say the monks, from human
vision ever sin.. . "As I am not to see it again," said
the Greek emperor, when he sent it to Cyprus, " then
let no other human eye ever rest upon it." So the
head and upper portion of the figures have been
veiled from view. All this and more was poured forth
by half a dozen old monks, in whose care we made
the circuit of the monastery. Before we began our
inspection sweetmeats and coffee were produced ;
when the inspection was over our dinner was ready.
It was an excellent repast, and, after a long day spent
in the keen mountain atmosphere, appetites were not
wanting to do it justice. Lest they should be, one
priest specially attended to see that the guests lacked
nothing. The Commanderia wine was the best we
had yet tasted, and the mastic was old, luscious, and
plentiful. As the frost grew harder outside the little
cell-windows, and boy attendants brought freshly
fanned charcoal to the brazier, the cell looked indeed
a cheerful billet for a mountain traveller. ; .

376 FAR OUT.

The portly prior camo and sat with us after dinner,
and, among other matters, produced a paper that had
caused the worthy brotherhood intense astonishment.
It was an official document in English, having refer-
ence to a retimi for taxation. The monks could not
make much of it, so they had invoked the aid of a
passing traveller, versed in Greek and English. Un-
fortunately he had rendered the English word "pitch,"
the resin of the pine-forests, into the Greek word
"bitch," and the brethren were amazed at finding
themselves taxed for ten thousand okes of bitches.
We appeased the afflicted and perplexed mind of the
prior, and, redolent of garli/, he thanked us, bade us
good-night, and retired.

Early morning at Kiku. How very beautiful it is !
The sun peops over Mount Olympus ; the tops of the
hills are all alight, and the deep valleys are in shadow;
far away there are pale glimpses of distant sea; a
vast stillness dwells on all things — stillness deepened
by distant murmur of mountain stream and the softest
whisper of old pine-trees. Of that wonderful old
forest — now nearly gone — ^that glorious growth which
has given decks to Turkish galleys for three hvmdred
years, that forest for whose destruction Greek and
Turk have for once joined hands upon the handle of
the felling axe. Burned, hacked, slashed at, barked,
and wounded, some grand old survivors still stretch
forth their gaunt arms, as though they asked for
mercy from the destroyer ; and still, when the night
hides the wreck that man has made, the wind-swept

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 377

song of their sorrow is wafted in unutterable sadness
over the ruined land. > a ^V ^ r r f '

• Amid the farewells of the assembled brethren we
moved off next morning from Kiku, descending north-
wards towards Eampo and the Bay of Morphu. It was
another day of exquisite views, as, winding down the
narrow mule-track, we saw below the curve of the
Bay of Morphu the broken north range and the white
summits of Karamania far away to the north, over
the lonely blue sea.

At the village of Kampo we stopped a few minutes.
An old Greek woman brought us raisins, and supple-
mented her offering with an harangue. Its burden
was that she expected many things from the English,
and she trusted she would not be disappointed. " Tell
her," we replied through the interpreter, " that the
English expect much from her. When we left
England they were all full of expectation about this
island ; all the papers were writing about her and her
people." She appeared to be astonished at the infor-
mation, and we continued downhill towards Levka«

Six hours' ride brought us to Levka. The mudir,
engaged at the moment of our arrival in a full court
of tax collection, immediately dise^ived his court, and
became our host, adviser, and irector. He soon
produced a meal of walnuts steeped in honey, of
which it will be sufficient to record that for a condi-
ment of singular indigestibility it would be difficult to
parallel it in any conglomeration of sugar and fruit
known to. Western palates. Perhaps we are taking

378 .',.,;■ v',-"'. >■■' FAR OUT. \- ■'^^^- ;:•-•.-'■■ ■.;

away the character of this condiment, and that,
viewed in the capacity of a conserve, it might be ap-
proached with comparative safety ; but as a piece de
resistance to set before a hungry man, after a six
hours' ride, walnuts steeped in honey, plentifully ad-
ministered, would probably solve for ever the "Eastern
question " of any Western traveller's farther progress
through the land. No wonder the Turk has been the
" sick man " of Europe upon such a regimen.

We were afterwards informed that the mudir of
Levka had but recently in his own person exemplified
the transitory nature of earthJy distinction. He had,
in fact, undergone incarceration in prison for two
months for misappropriation of taxes. He was still,
however, administering the laws in Levka, and, so
far as we could judge, his misfortune had in no way
tended to withdraw from him the confidence of the
inhabitants, while it had apparently left unimpaired
his reputation as a high-class government official. He
was a Turk.

We spent that night at the monastery farm of
Xerapotamiss, by the shore of the Bay of Morphu.

After night fell we wandered down to the sea. In a
long wave, that rose its crest only to fall upon the
shore, the Mediterranean sobbed against the wide
curving bay. The moon was over the sea. We
wandered along the shore, keeping on a strip of
glistening sand clc^e by where the surf broke.

All lonely now thxs shore, but thick with memories.
On this very spc t ti .e Tiu*k landed for the conquest of

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 379

the island. Hither, two thousand four hundred years
ago, came the great lawgiver of the Greeks to end
his life. In the farmyard of the monastery hard by,
but an hour since, our muleteer tied his mules to
the icanthus-leaf of a prostrate Corinthian capital.
Yonder, in the moonlight, Pendaia's ruins are still
dimly visible. Well may the sea sob upon the withered
breast of Cyprus, and the pines sigh over her lonely
hilltops.

Two days' ride carried us across the island to the
eastern shore, and it was again moonlight when our
cavalcade passed the long bridge that crosses the rock-
hewn ditch and entered the gate of once famed, now
fevered and ftimished Famagusta. ->

Within the massive gateway a dead city lay beneath
the moonlight. A city so dead and so ruined that
even the moonbeams could not hide the wreck or give
semblance of life to street or court-yard — and yet,
withal, it was modem ruin that lay around. The
streets were cleared of stones and rubbish, the mas-
sive ramparts were untouched, the roofless houses
were not overgrown with creepers. Many of the
churches still held portions of roof or window reared
aloft against the sky; through lancet window or
pointed archway the palm-tree hung motionless
against the moonlight. Many owls flitted amid the
ruins, and the sole sound was the ring of our hoofs
and the roll of the distant surf outside the eastern
rampart.

Soon after sunrise next morning we went out to

380 PAR OUT.

see by clearer light this modem capital of all ruined
cities — this skeleton in armour, whose huge ramparts,
and deep ditch, and towering cavaliers hid only
crumbling streets, squares, churches, and man-
sions.

We pass out by the grand sea-gate, not a stone of
which has been defaced. Above the marble keystone
of the arch the winged Lion still holds the open
gospel to the deserted wharfs and silent 8hiny;le.

The name of the Venetian ruler is still bright in
letters that were carved and gilt at the time Columbus
was ste' -ig his ship to the New World, and when De
Gama was about to strike the first blow at Venetian
sway by his passage of the Cape of Storms.

A reef of rocks marks the old harbour limits and
the area which it is proposed to dredge into a refuge
for ironclads. " They may dredge out the mud from
the sea," says our informant, "but they won't dredge
away the fever from the shore."

He tells us the fever is incessant, that every one
gets it, that it is worse than West African fevers, so
far as its sensations are concerned; and that it
doesn't matter what one eats or drinks, or where one
sleeps, that the fever is bound to come all the same.
" There axe four of us here," he goes on, " and we
were all down together with fever only three weeks
ago." Then we go in again into the mournful city,
and ramble on through more grass-grown streets and
ruins. A plover rises from the waste and calls shrilly
as he mounts on rapid wing above the ramparts. We

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 381

ascend the ramparts. From the cavalier looking
north the eye ranges over the mounds that have, for
sixteen hundred years, marked the site of Salamis,
and farther off the hills of Kanfara dropping into the
long peninsula of Karpos.

Along the rampart two coaches could drive abreast;
beneath the rampart are the arched dungeons wherein
Venice held her slaves ; ruined churches everywhere
within the walls — churches with deep doorways
traced in curious patterns of stone-carving, with the
frescoes still fresh on their walls, and the floors cum-
bered with overturned tomb effigies and prostrate
crosses. Little patches of wheat grow here and
there through the ruins. We try to count these
churches, but cannot do it. Tradition says there once
stood one hundred Christian temples within the walls
of Famagusta. ■V'^.-i--^'.--.^*.:. ^-^-^ ;'^^.--:- :v'>;-v' : .: ■:.;■■ -...v^.'

Towering high above all other ruins, the cathedral
raises its lofty Gothic towers, the most mournful of all
the relics of this saddest of cities. Amid wreck of
flying buttress and lancet window of Northern Gothic
art, the feathery palms seem strangely out of place.

Older ruins and wreck of time deeper in the bygone
can be met on all the shores of the Mediterranean ;
but nowhere a city like this one of Famagusta, no-
where else a scene which brings us so closely face to
face with the grandeur of Venice and the glory of the
Norman crusader both strangled in the grasp of the
Turk, and lying yet unburied by the merciful hand of
Time.

382 , FAR OUT.

•

We may quit Cyprus — no other scene, within her
shores, can grave upon our memory a deeper record of
her matchless ruin.

It is evening. We have crossed the ridge that
divides Famagusta from Larnaca, and are descending
towards the sea for embarkation. The sun is going
down behind the steep ridge of Santa Croce, whose
white monastery looks like a snow- cap on the summit.
The long waves roll in upon a wide cun'ing shore.
Far out to sea, one or two ships are standing to the
south, and around us the barren soil spreads a weed-
grown waste, with ruins at intei-vals that stand out
wondrously white and clear in the level sunlight. The
earth rings hollow under our mule hoofs, for the
honeycombed rock beneath has been a tomb for three
thousand years. No other word tells of Cyprus so
exactly. Tomb of Phoenician, of Egyptian, of Hittite,
of Greek, Roman, and Jew; tomb of the exile from
Lybia, from Athens, from Pontus; tomb of the rich
fugitives that fled before the armies of the Pharaohs
or the hosts of Babylon ; tomb of all those countless
waifs and strays of conquest, commerce, and commo-
tion, who in the dim dawn of civilisation found in this
island a refuge and a grave.

Tomb, too, of Byzantine, of Norman crusader, of
Venetian, and lastly of the Turk, whose grave scraped
shallow amid the ruins of empire has blurred the
record and scattered the ashes of twenty vanished
peoples.

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 383

And now what is to be the future of this island?
Can it be redeemed from ruin ? Yes. By us ? No.
By its people? Yes. The Turk ruined; the Greek
can renew. Let us beware of attempting to lead or to
direct a people who, when their first sensation of
surprise is past, are bound to hold us in ridicule and
in aversion. Already the symptoms of the first are
apparent. "What a pity it is," said the people of
Limasol, as they watched our road-making operations
into the mountains, "what a pity it is that God,
who has given these English so much money,
should not also have bestowed upon them some
brains!" .;, - :,

There is a singular delusion pervading the English
mind that we can civilise and improve a people. It is
just the one thing we have never been able to do. No
nation in history has ever had so many opportunities
of imparting Christianity and civilisation to thie
Gentile. We have been in close contact with the
heathen, with the fire-worshipper, with the Buddhist,
with the worshippers of the stick, and the stone, and
the bone for the better part of two centuries. Yet
what has been the sum total of our success ?

Have we really Christianised twenty square miles
of any continent or island ? Have we made any race
or people in the whole wide circle of our vast dominion
more truthful, more honest, more chaste, or even more
happy than they were before they came in contact
with us and our civilisation ? Few men will answer,
Yes.

384 FAR OUT.

The truth is, the Anglo-Saxon race can spread
itself, but cannot impart to others its Christianity or
its civilisation. We can only do what the Dane, the
Saxon, the Frank, or the Goth could do. The work of
the Greek or the Eoman is beyond our power, and the
reason of our incessant failure is obvious. We will
not take, as the Eomans took, the best strings of
native character and play our tune of civilisation and
progress on them; but we must invariably take our
own mould and proceed to run down into it whatever
type of national character we come in contact with.

We cannot train or teach; we can only multiply
and spread. If we conquer a nation we must either
destroy it or fail to govern it. French Canada is an
exception ; but French Canada won from our generals,
after our defeat at St. Eoche, so many national privi-
leges that its laws, language, religion, and territory
have remained French.

In fact, French Canada is a lasting proof of what
can be done by letting people develop themselves
upon their own lines. ; ; -3 v

One hundred and thirty years ago French Canada
had a population of less than one hundred thousand
souls. It was the poorest and most inhospitable
country in North America. It has to-day one million
and a half of French Canadian inhabitants.

In Ireland, on the other hand, we would only develop
on the British basis. For seven hundred years we
have been busy at this development, and it is only
now dawning upon us that it will not do.

A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 385

But people will say, "Ah, the Greek is different;
Tie is a semi- Asiatic. We really must train and
educate this Greek." My dear, good, Mr. Bull, you
are in sober truth a mere child to this Greek ; even at
your own long-practised game of buying and selling, of
barter and chaffer^ he can beat you hollow. He has
taken the trade of the Levant from you; he has
penetrated into the heart of your great city and holds
his own against your most able money-tnangers.
" Ah, but," I hear you say, " he can't fight." There
also you are mistaken. You yourself have never
fought against a tenth of the odds that he has con-
tended with. At Scios he performed an exploit in the
centre of the Ottoman fleet which, measuring it by the
" decorative period " of modern English warfare, all
the bronze in the Trafalgar lions could not yield
crosses for. When y6u have fought the tenth part of
what this Greek has fought, and suffered the hundredth
part of his sufferings in the cause of freedom, then you
may talk of teaching him how to fight or how
to die.

No ; let us endeavour to develop this island for the
Oreek peasant, and by the Greek peasant ; not for the
benefit of the usurer as we have done in India, or for
the landlord as we have done in Ireland, or for the
benefit of the Manchester man, or the Birmingham
man, or the London man, or the outside man gene-
rally, as we have done in other parts of the world. My
friend the sea-captain, who is still doubtless fully
prepared to settle the Greek question after his own

386 FAR OUT.

fashion, would probably urge the rule of thumb-Bcrew
and gallows in dealing with Cypras ; but the world
has got beyond that stage now.

If our dominion in Cyprus is to escape the fate of
our Ionian experiment, we must try to learn Greek
before we attempt to teach English.

THE END.

■-■■>■" ■■ '"^^ . ■:7- ■■.',••■■.■ ;i-'" ■ ■■■":;/'-:- .■.;■■;;-;■ ^■'::-i'"^\

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