j - -
 
 )
 
 ,-.?\ 1 Ml it
 
 FAR OUT: : ' 
 
 ROVINGS RETOLD. 
 
 BY 
 
 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 gloom 
 Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills ' 
 Mingling their flames with twilight on the verge 
 Of the remote horizon. 
 
 Shelley 
 
 LONDON : 
 Wm. ISBISTER, limited, 
 
 56, LUDGATE HILL, 
 1880.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 tage 
 
 Introductory Chapter ........ vii 
 
 A Dog and His Doings : 
 
 I i 
 
 II 20 
 
 A Journey of a Dog and a Man from Cariboo to 
 California : 
 
 1 68 
 
 II 84 
 
 III 101 
 
 IV 121 
 
 The Yosemite Valley 137 
 
 Afghanistan and the Afghans 158 
 
 The Zulus 175 
 
 South Africa : 
 
 1 193 
 
 II 220 
 
 HI 239 
 
 IV 255 
 
 A Plea for the Peasant 283 
 
 A Trip to Cyprus : 
 
 1 3 11 
 
 II 329 
 
 HI 347 
 
 IV. . * 368 
 
 - a U> i' £ i>
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 [" HAVE been told that an introductory chapter is 
 necessary ere the scattered papers of travel 
 which are here brought together can be taken from 
 the lower region of magazine literature, in which the} r 
 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 Republics, would be a task 
 beyond even the focussing faculty of my old fishing 
 friend, John Burns, of Derry-cluny. Burns was 
 frequently in the habit of expatiating upon the
 
 Vlll FAR OUT. 
 
 advantages of climate enjoyed by those who breathed 
 the air of his native river bank, whose salmon 
 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, he 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 
 Eome, Asia Minor, and them northern parts, and 
 didn't he give it up, for goodness, to the air on 
 Ballycarron Bridge ?" This "isothermal line" 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 line" 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 he 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 dairy 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, among 
 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, along 
 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
 
 XU 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 found, 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 conflict 
 thus inaugurated cost Great Britain a quarter of a 
 million sterling. I have no hesitation in saying 
 that live-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 native.--. 
 
 To the incoming settler the land of his adoption 
 is essentially a ncir land. There may have been 
 people in it for twenty centuries before he came to
 
 INTRODUCTORY. Xlll 
 
 it ; but their rights 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 ever 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 
 pursuit 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 ashed. 
 
 "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 hear 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 read}* 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. Pioss 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 he 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 
 he 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 the 
 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 be 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 at three large fires. The fires stood in 
 a single line in a slight hollow, the floor of which was 
 level, and w r hich level was continued to a small 
 thicket distant from it about one hundred and fifty 
 yards. 
 
 " 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. XV11 
 
 carronade told the rest. It was found lying some 
 distance back in the wood, 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 rilled 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. 
 
 A
 
 XV111 FAR OUT. 
 
 It would be unfair to our colonial brethren to sup- 
 pose that they are 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 
 Avill be found. Here is a little picture from a corps raised 
 for service 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 the 
 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 line 
 of sentries, I took care to keep 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, lie 
 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 cliase 
 
 Through rock?, 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 European 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 
 thirty 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 Africa 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 lied 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 ventured to express a doubt upon thefavourite 
 theory of the "forward school," that the Afghans 
 had only to be freely shot, plundered, and otherwise 
 
 a '2
 
 XX FAR OUT. 
 
 knocked about, to become our fast and firm allies, and 
 to hate the Russians with something of the discrimi- 
 nating fervour of a London music-hall audience. As 
 the best method of stating these views we 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-trees — 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 be written. 
 
 It may be remembered 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 was 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 
 fights 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
 
 XX11 FAR OUT. 
 
 baffled by a marten up a pine-tree, or intensely 
 puzzled by the sudden disappearance of a fisher into 
 a burrow, down which he 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. Frecmently 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 dog was affected at the memory of the 
 many caches he had made during his life of travel — - 
 those never 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 buffalo-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 sa}' 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- 
 Xoirs, Kuskytayatimoos, that had been boon com-
 
 INTRODUCTORY. XX111 
 
 panions, 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 bayed the 
 Northern Lights that flashed and flickered over the 
 pine-tops on the opposite shore, or answered bach 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 both of them. Ease 
 and age 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-off world. 
 
 Two years more and echoes, if such they were, 
 ceased. In the summer of 1878, Cerf Yola the Untiring- 
 made his last camp on the shore of life. His grave is
 
 XXIV FAR OUT. 
 
 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 murmur 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.
 
 FAR OUT: 
 ROVIXGS RETOLD. 
 
 A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 
 I. 
 
 TWR out. in that portion of the grim Laurentian 
 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 River. 
 
 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
 
 2 FAR OUT. 
 
 waving grasses, through which the wind makes cease- 
 less moan, as early autumn follows with rapid foot- 
 steps the September sun. 
 
 In summer, short though it be, there are sights to 
 be 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 
 surface, 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-furred otter from his haunt 
 beneath the rock to his nightly toil of fishing in 
 the quiet pools where the fish glance like silver 
 arrows in the moonlight ; that signals to the grey 
 owl that his time has come, too, to Hit amid the dusky 
 shadows ; that tells wild beast and wild bird they
 
 A DOG AND HIS DOIXGS. 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 mud 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 upon 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
 
 I 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 
 ut 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 Livers, 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 being- known as Esqui- 
 maux possess a breed of dogs unequalled for the value 
 of the assistance they afford to their human master.-. 
 The Arab has his horse, the Indian his canoe, tin 
 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. •> 
 
 From northern Norway, along the cold slopes of 
 Lapland and the 'White Sea, far into that unknown 
 region where Bussia*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, hut 
 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 inhospitable shore. 
 
 Deep-chested, broad-backed, long-woolled, clean- 
 legged, sharp-nosed, pointed-eared, bright-eyed, with
 
 6 FAR OT'T. 
 
 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 inarches distant from the 
 west shore of Hudson's Bay. Indians descending the 
 Beaver or Churchill Paver can easily roach 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 parties of Indians move at times back and 
 forward from Deer's Lake to Fort Churchill. Thus 
 there has arisen an intercourse between the two 
 stations, and as Y.ori 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 niav be
 
 A DOG AXD HIS DOINGS. 7 
 
 admitted that even that fact would for ever have 
 remained in the limbo of unrecorded history, if cir- 
 cumstances 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 
 stages 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.
 
 S 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 tret awav 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 manoeuvre 
 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 
 " sruiare 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 OFT. 
 
 moaning away into endless space over lake, and plain, 
 and forest. 
 
 The scene is in the neighbourhood of the fur fort 
 called Cumberland, on the shove of Pine 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-five 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 Hour. 
 
 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 DOG AND HIS DOIXGS. 11 
 
 to a spell out of harness; but that is not to be, and 
 a loud and stern word of command from the leading 
 driver makes them crouch together in the dry yielding 
 snow in the centre of the river. 
 
 The three men ascend the river bank and enter, one 
 by one, on their hands and knees, the low opening of 
 the Indian wigwam. The scene inside is a curious 
 one. Through the opening in the roof the light 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 part 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 
 party 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 burial in the graveyard 
 there." 
 
 "And the man, who was he ? What did he die of'?" 
 asked the leader of the party.
 
 12 FAR OUT. 
 
 " He was a French half-breed who had adopted the 
 Indian life, and he lived here in this wigwam, hunting 
 for the family. He died of cold caught in chasing a 
 black fox, which had carried away one of his traps. 
 He was a good hunter.*' 
 
 The story of this man's life and death was soon 
 told : meantime the Indian continued his song. 
 
 " What is he singing ? " 
 
 " He says that he is old and cannot hunt ; that his 
 support has gone from him ; that it would be 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 
 off 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 DOG AND HIS DOINGS. l?> 
 
 graces of the men of the party just come, and to 
 intimidate by a series of quick but ferocious " asides " 
 the new dogs. Thus he presented a singular contrast 
 of solicitude and swagger ; the upturned tail wagged to 
 man and shook menace to beast almost at the same 
 instant ; the face by turns glared and grimaced, and 
 the ground was trod by a sort of light springy motion, 
 which indicated a desire to give his paw to anybody 
 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 the front, the lower- 
 ing lineaments of Bismarck, the wrinkled ferocity of 
 Moltke, or the Mosaic ramrodism of the German 
 Emperor's face and figure 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 : lie 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 fur fort 
 called Cumberland the life of this dog and of his 
 future owner, it will be bettor 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 Tig-re, 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 other 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 thai 
 sum been three times what it was, and had that 
 triple amount been demanded for the single " fore-
 
 A DOG AND HIS 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 vast 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.
 
 10 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 the fire 
 jit 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 Hudson'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. 
 
 Tie had quitted the army and left England before 
 the era of the introduction of electricity, and "them
 
 A DOG AND HIS 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 Pied Eiver 
 Settlement had many temptations for Cerf Volant 
 and his comrades. There were some farmsteads in 
 the neighbourhood of my house, and ducks and 
 turkeys and a cock were things as 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 nutter 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 frazzling poultry. 
 
 At last the time came to quit the settlement for 
 
 c
 
 18 FAR OUT. 
 
 other and larger scenes of civilisation, into which the 
 clogs 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 my 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 or good-tempered at his dinner, or during his 
 leisure moments ; but if the daily routine of his work 
 leaves no frown 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 servant 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 HIS 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 ! 
 
 C h A
 
 II. 
 
 \ 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 ours 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 one atom of allov.
 
 A DOG AND HIS DOIXGS. 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 fill with its fragrance the winter garden of 
 his memory. 
 
 I got hack 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 Red 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. 
 
 Scotch deer-hounds from England, a huge bushy-tailed 
 dog came charging full tilt upon the new comers. He 
 was followed by 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 travelling 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 journey 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. 28 
 
 friend to the waters of the Pacific, and to the scenes 
 and customs of a new civilisation. 
 
 I was now entering the wilderness with no very 
 fixed purpose. Beyond the north and west of my 
 previous wandering there lay 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 prairie to the southern limit of the sub- 
 arctic forest : within that forest the horse could not 
 penetrate; it is the land of the snow-shoe and dog-sled 
 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 plan the reader may ask two 
 questions — AVhy, in going towards the Pacific Ocean, 
 should the current be against you '? And why did }'ou 
 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 Piocky 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 Silurian plain 
 lying east of the range, to finally join the Mackenzie 
 River, flowing into the Arctic Ocean. 
 
 In winter these rivers form vast frozen highways,
 
 24 FAR OUT. 
 
 along which dogs and men can travel with rapidity ; 
 and in summer, the rushing currents, swollen by the 
 melting snows of three mountain ranges, 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 possible to travel through the forest ; 
 innumerable swamps, unbridged rivers, cmantities of 
 fallen timber, lakes without number, are everywhere 
 to be found, and the longest detour by water is 
 generally more expeditious than the shortest line by 
 land ; but 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 recognition by ear,
 
 A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 25 
 
 eye, and paw were concerned, his demeanour towards 
 me left nothing to be desired. As eighteen months 
 earlier I had left Cumberland on the Saskatchewan 
 with this dog and his followers, so now again I quitted 
 the post of Frog Point, on the Red River, once more 
 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 the 
 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 the winding channels of the 
 Peace River, 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 light 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.
 
 26 FAR OUT. 
 
 So long continued had been his toil, and so bravely 
 had he borne his part by frozen flood and over icy 
 field, that I had long since conferred upon him the 
 sobriquet of " the Untiring." I had also cut his 
 original name into the shorter one of Cerf Yola — 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 nounderings 
 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 
 is 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 Yola on all 
 occasions when he considered that he had claims
 
 A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 27 
 
 upon society, which society, in the shape of my little 
 party, was slow to recognise. When the day's march 
 was at an end, should any delay occur in removing 
 him from harness, his laugh was instantly heard 
 from the traces of his train, and if his white fish had 
 been smaller than usual, or there existed an acute 
 craving for a moose bone or stray scrap of pemmican, 
 or an} 7 of those unused odds and ends which the great 
 dog world instinctively recognises as its perquisite, 
 then the Untiring was wont to curl his upper lip into 
 a smile, and to pour forth a whimper of universal 
 satisfaction with everybody 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 sleep of the wilder- 
 ness. It was midnight over the deep-sunk channel of 
 the Upper Peace River ; there was no need of moon 
 or star to show the river track, for its white frozen 
 channel lay broadly marked between the dark over- 
 hanging banks, now nearly clear of snow. I was 
 alone with 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
 
 28 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." 
 
 Piousing 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 dog ! 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 AXD 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 Rocky Mountains; in 
 front rose a range of snow-clad hills. We had reached 
 the western hounds 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 
 Tola 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 our 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 
 eight 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-DRIVER'S STORY. 
 
 A region of intense desolation is the northern 
 coast of Xorth America. The night of the Arctic 
 winter lies heavily upon it, crushing out all sense 
 or sound of life for Ions months together.
 
 oO 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 surface 
 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 
 
 nion 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 Y-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 River 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, Ptichardson, 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 different 
 times linked together the separate pieces of coast until 
 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 north 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 deepens 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 DOIXGS. 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 thu 
 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 
 into 'whose provision-store hunger could not enter. 
 
 i)
 
 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 
 blew 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'tiste, 
 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 courts, 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 DOIXGS. 35 
 
 the fur trade or in other pursuits ; but at the same 
 time it was to he 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 certain 
 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
 
 :><; FAR OUT. 
 
 dying man ? Promise me you'll do it, and 1*11 die 
 happy." The clerk gave the promise asked for, and 
 the sick man's fingers closed on his hands as he did 
 so. It was nearing the daylight hour ; the storm had 
 sunk into the strange hush of dawn ; 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. 
 
 " Ready for the road — for me. See, 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 placed 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 lie- 
 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 voyage.urs 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. 
 
 / C'%3
 
 6b FAR OUT. 
 
 It was the seventh 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 River. By means of landslips or sum- 
 mer water channels seeking the main river this high 
 bank 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 
 bearing provisions, 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 ? Letter take the dogs hum
 
 A DOG AXD HIS DOIXGS. 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 upon. 
 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 voijageur 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
 
 40 FAR OUT. 
 
 fuel, a fire lighted, shavings were cut from a dry 
 branch to quicker kindle the larger wood ; the provi- 
 sion sled was emptied of its load of blankets, kettles, 
 r and food, and the harness arranged for use in the 
 dim light of the morning. 
 
 All these preparations for the camp took some time 
 to complete, and darkness had fallen on the forest ere 
 the work of tree-cutting had been finished. 
 
 The Canadian's strong 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 kettle upon the ground, and rose to his feet 
 in the attitude of a man who hears some unexpected 
 voice suddenly call to him. 
 
 " Gaudet," he said to his companion, " did you 
 speak ? " 
 
 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 Marche .' — 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 familiar 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 DOG AND HIS DOIXGS. 41 
 
 The other man did not answer, for a thought had 
 possession of his brain that paralysed the power of 
 speech, and froze back into his heart the very current 
 of his life. The voice that uttered the well-known word 
 was no strange one to him ; it was the voice of his old 
 master, of the man whose dead body he was bearing 
 to the grave. 
 
 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 light, showing the 
 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 ears 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 the 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 AXD HIS DOIXGS. 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 purport 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. Xow and again 
 a wolf or a wolverine crossed the track in front, or
 
 44 FAR OUT. 
 
 clogged the 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 help 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 AXD. HIS DOIXGS. 45 
 
 At last the journey drew near a close. The twen- 
 tieth night, the last but one, found them camped 
 some twenty miles short of Fort Simpson. By the 
 morrow's sunset the funeral would he 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 daj'break, the men soon 
 lay down 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 was 
 quiet. 
 
 It was about the middle of the night when there 
 seemed suddenly to echo through the forest a sharp 
 cry. Both the travellers sprang hastily from their 
 deer-skin coverings ; the fire had burned out, but the 
 moonlight on the snow made surrounding objects 
 plainly visible. They were alone in the camp, the 
 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 away the body into the forest." As the 
 men listened, half uprisen from their robes, the sound 
 of snarling and snapping of teeth came from the 
 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
 
 46 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 daylight, 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 east 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 arc ready 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 Yola. 
 
 We left him pursuing an independent course, of his 
 own free-will and pleasure, westward towards the 
 Rocky 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 
 sinking in the slush of wet snow, or cutting one's feet 
 over the knife-like edges of the midnight ice. It 
 became necessary, therefore, to send forward, while 
 the river was yet frozen, the heavy portion of the 
 supplies 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 Tola was not to be found, 
 Spanker had also vanished. Either from a mistaken 
 idea that the Rocky Mountains were places sacred to 
 an indiscrimate distribution among dogs generally of 
 permnican and other condiments, or from some ever- 
 to-be-unknown reason, sot 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 AXD HIS DOIXGS. 40 
 
 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 have 
 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 the 
 possibility 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 Yola ; enough 
 to say, that not for all the costly furs ever gathered 
 into the forts of the Peace Paver 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 has 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, 
 
 JE
 
 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 
 V-shaped channel hecame 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 
 hank. 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 Rocky Mountains. 
 
 Cerf Tola, 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. 
 
 Where the grand stream of the Peace River 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 AXD HIS DOINGS. 5 1 
 
 lofty land the eye is lost in distance. One clear 
 afternoon in the end of April I stood upon this lofty 
 summit, to scan the land I had left behind, 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 caches 
 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 dee}) 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
 
 52 FAR OUT. 
 
 his cnche was usually so trampled over by feet and 
 pushed by nose as to be difficult to determine to the 
 eye of man, still I have little doubt that all his craft 
 of mc/i<?-making was utterly useless to delude for a 
 moment any wolf or wolverine, even of the meanest 
 mental capacity, who dogged or prowled our track. 
 
 Perhaps, as the "Untiring now looked from this 
 lofty standpoint over the immense waste of pine and 
 prairie land, the vision of these never-to-be-revisited 
 caches 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 Rocky 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 most of the 
 new ones ; and he began a precipitate descent of the 
 mountain in the direction of our halting-place for the 
 coining 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 Paver, 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 DOINGS. 53 
 
 out to force up against the rapid stream deeper into 
 the snow-clad hills. I had a crew of three men. 
 Cerf Tola lay in the bottom of the canoe. 
 
 For some days our upward passage was attended 
 by constant danger from the huge masses of ice, some 
 of them tons in weight, that came whirling down the 
 impetuous cm-rent ; at other times we had to struggle 
 hard beneath the shadow of impending cliffs of shore 
 ice, whose 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 himself by any process of dog thought that he 
 had a share in the locomotion of the boat ; he saw 
 the shore drift slowly by, 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-wild 
 things on moor, or river-side, or mountain ? 
 
 However that may be, the Untiring's success as a
 
 54 FAR OUT. 
 
 sporting clog was not commensurate with bis ambition. 
 The partridge scarcely ceased their "drumming" to 
 elude bis pursuit, the wild duck looked at him as an 
 impostor of the bear or beaver species, the geese 
 walked in dignified indifference across the sand-bars 
 as be approached their feeding grounds, and the blue 
 grouse bad the impertinence to fly into the nearest 
 tree and look down with inquisitive calmness at bis 
 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 bad set out 
 to climb the steep grassy bills that rose one above 
 the other until, gradually merging into higher moun- 
 tains, they became part 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 neighbouring thicket of dry dead 
 trees, the wrecks of a former lire, 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 be 
 regarded me not to have fully made up bis 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 Iry 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 DOG AND HIS DOIXGS. OJ 
 
 thud which ever tells the ear that the eye has truly 
 marked its distance ; and then, out from the thicket 
 at the further side, I saw the huge ungainly animal 
 trot with a heavy limp, and disappear beyond a neigh- 
 bouring hill-crest. To dash through the thicket of 
 bride and gaze down the valley beyond took me only 
 a short time ; but 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 presence, 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 power of a 
 white man, unaided, to kill a moose — a disbelief
 
 50 FAE OUT. 
 
 founded upon the practical proof of ages of experience. 
 Mine, however, had been a solitary chance. I had 
 come all at once upon a moose, without any of that- 
 long toil of stalk and stealth, of trail and track, of 
 which alone the wild man is master. 
 
 Explaining all this to my henchman, I proposed 
 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 
 with Raider. 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 valley 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 a 
 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 
 K aider listened to this annihilation of his hopes of
 
 A DOG AXD HIS DOINGS. i 
 
 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 
 overburdened sentiments. 
 
 TVe 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 Yola ! 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 masses, 
 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 pine-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 life ; 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 
 llowers shed their fragrance, birds sing their sweetest, 
 cold frost changes to silvery dew, rain becomes a 
 bridal veil of gentlest shower, and as thou turnest 
 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 gladness. 
 
 The middle of Ma}* had come. We had passed 
 through the Rocky Mountains, quitted the main stream 
 of the Peace River, and entered the impetuous torrent 
 of the Ominica, to find ourselves brought at last to 
 bay by the rapids and whirlpools of the Black Canon. 
 For three days we had waged a struggle, that began 
 soon after daylight to end onlv at dusk, with the two
 
 A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 59 
 
 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 our 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 rock 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,
 
 60 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 around him, and the 
 rocks tremble, and the dark canon 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 crush 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 breaking 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 torrent 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 canon, the full gravity 
 of the situation burst wholly upon us. Our camp and 
 all our supplies 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 way 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 AXD HIS DOIXGS. 61 
 
 Fallen timber, deep water-courses, tangled thickets, 
 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 
 with blankets, kettles, axes, and all the paraphernalia 
 of camp life in the wilderness, was an undertaking so 
 serious as to make even the hardy 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 perfectly 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. Cerf Tola, who had spent the last few days 
 in blissful repose in our camp, was now brought forth, 
 and crouching 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 canon, 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 Paver an 
 escape from this wilderness of rock and forest, into 
 the southern lands of British Columbia ; and 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 HIS DOIXGS. 03 
 
 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 on the south shore of the Ominica, 
 but there were traces of man. There was a camp, 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 flour (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 beaver-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.
 
 G4 FAR OUT. 
 
 •Jacques was the first to speak. 
 
 " It's Pete Toy," lie said, after a pause, during 
 which he had been steadfastly regarding the large 
 nails in the soles. " There's nary another foot on 
 the Ominica that could fill a hoot like that," he 
 added, flinging down the immense seven-leaguers in 
 intense admiration. "He's left his canoe ahove the 
 canon," 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-liar 
 on all the wide rivers of Columbia, 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 lifted 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 lay before us the delicacies of his provision bags —
 
 A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. Of) 
 
 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 
 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 better 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 fire in my hut down at the Forks of the 
 Peace and Parsnip rivers, I see the old place and the 
 old couple again." 
 
 "And you're going back to England?" he said 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 fresh 
 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. 
 
 F
 
 GO FAR OUT. 
 
 The man who thinks you can offer this class of 
 gold-miner gold knows little of such natures ; but 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 flushing at the thought. 
 
 " Xo, 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 ! we parted at the canon 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 own death scene. The pines that stand at the 
 gateway of the Black Canon are old and stately trees.
 
 A DOG AND HIS DOINGS. 07 
 
 For hundreds of years they have watched the wild 
 rush of water pour through that narrow passage, and 
 it may he that their unseen eyes, looking so far back 
 into 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 Toy, 
 his mind still running upon the home thoughts our 
 presence had evoked. Perhaps, while later on he 
 slept by the scene of that long sleep so soon to 
 come, the old trees swaying in the night wind bent 
 down to gently whisper "Never" into the home- 
 dream of his memory •
 
 A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAX 
 FROM CARIBOO TO CALIFORNIA. 
 
 I. 
 
 T 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 ; hut 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 
 tht' 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 loose 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 AXD A MAX. 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,
 
 TO 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 difficult 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 e}'e the hand which had held a much-used bino- 
 cular to that optic. " Thar's Bufus 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 alwa}"s 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
 
 (2 FAR OUT. 
 
 party on the opposite 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 expense 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 River, 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 year.- the city of Quesnelle
 
 A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAX. 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 upon 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 sound 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 precious metal had been 
 struck along the rocky ledges of the creeks of Cariboo, 
 the news went forth to the south of such a wondrous 
 yield of gold that thousands and tens of thousands 
 hurried to the scene. 
 
 That scene la}* a long way off from even a remote 
 civilisation. Four hundred miles farther south the 
 Frazer Paver entered the sea in a deep inlet 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 
 wild 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. 
 
 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 AXD A MAX. <0 
 
 pick and 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 swung 
 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 River, 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 purpose 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
 
 76 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 hapless 
 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 
 lay deep down in the white quartz reef, many hundred 
 feet below the surface, where machinery 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 Rivers 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 AXD A MAX. 77 
 
 Bald Mountains touch upon 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 these 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 hurrying 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 we 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 sufficient to cause the inhabitants of the now 
 declining city considerable excitement, and many were 
 the speculations among the group on the river side 
 as to the strange man and stranger dog described by 
 Mr. Bavron. 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 the 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. Davroirs 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 JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 79 
 
 at last approaching a centre of civilisation. The 
 wooden houses in a row, the three saloons, the group 
 of citizens on the river-bank, all these varied adjuncts 
 of civilisation caused him no emotion. He did not 
 appear even to notice the surprised looks with which 
 the inhabitants regarded him, but rapidly ascending 
 the shingle bank he precipitated himself with great 
 violence towards a very small dog, who, perceiving 
 that he was about to be attacked by an antagonist of 
 strange mien and powerful proportions, fled howling 
 in an opposite direction. 
 
 Then, seemingly satisfied with this assertion of 
 superiority, the large 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 
 boat 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 bear, 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, bis 
 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 conjectured 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 d"L r in all countries and among all
 
 A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 81 
 
 peoples. Pie 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 
 
 G
 
 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 Paver 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 AXD A MAX. 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 Californian 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 far-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 iournev. 
 
 G 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 railroad 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, 
 keeping 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 JOURXEY OF A DOG AND A MAX. SO 
 
 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 proverb 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 Escpiimaux 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
 
 8(J 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. Xo 
 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 JOURXEY OF A DOG AND A MAN". 8/ 
 
 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 canons 
 of the Frazer River, until, emerging at the village of 
 Yale, it lands its travellers at the gateway of the 
 Pacific. 
 
 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
 
 bJS 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 clipped 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 eas}' 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 AXD A MAX. 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 intervals 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 same 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 surface, British 
 Columbia, so far as settlement and civilisation were 
 concerned, was nothing but 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,
 
 90 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 
 Mr. 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. The}' 
 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, lleekless 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 OF A DOG AND A MAX. 91 
 
 fare traveller 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- 
 wav. " Bismarck has sot out ! " he exclaimed in
 
 1)2 FAR OUT. 
 
 hasty accents ; and then in more forcible language 
 than it is possible to repeat, he continued, " Gone, 
 clane gone, I tell ye ! " Had it been possible 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 
 soon 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 office 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 offer, following closely on the heels of the 
 exciting 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 JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAX. 93 
 
 At any rate, volunteers for the office of " running 
 in " the chancellor were as numerous as though the 
 drinking- score had been in a Southern German or 
 Hanoverian inn, and the absconding native had been 
 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 Columbian law, 
 had been incarcerated in a neighbouring log-hut. 
 
 It appeared that the conditions of prison discipline 
 had been 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 by letting himself out, 
 watching himself when he was 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 hitter portion 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 
 concerned, 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
 
 Of) FAE 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 
 hags, a wiser, a sadder, hut an unconvinced animal. 
 
 In a deep and narrow valley, close to the junction 
 of the Thompson with the Frazer River, 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 AXD A MAX. 9 i 
 
 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 
 
 H
 
 OS FAR OUT. 
 
 masters. Look at a man at the moment of his 
 waking, and nine times out of ten 3-011 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 ; 'hut 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 the 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. 
 
 Xo 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 AXI) A MAX. 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 road, 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 wh< i I? 
 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 alonjj 
 the ledge again. 
 
 The bad places had all been safely passed, Yale lay 
 
 ii -2
 
 100 FAR OUT. 
 
 hut 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. 
 
 4 LAEGE 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
 
 1 02 FAR OUT. 
 
 these old times the Jew clung to the baron, notwith- 
 standing 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 lights another 
 dawg. He means business, he does. Got his eddi- 
 cation among the Rocky Mountain coyotes, he did, 
 and afterwards served his time among the Rooshian 
 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 Rooshian American animal in 
 the boot gets out, that's all."
 
 A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAX. 103 
 
 It will be only necessary to remark that before the 
 unconscious object of these 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, some 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 canon, 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 Y'ale 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 OUT. 
 
 nacled against some rift of light ; but so quick the 
 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, a vivid 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 River, 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 JOURNEY OF A DOG AXD A MAX. 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 
 Cariboos lying still to be discovered 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
 
 10G FAR OUT. 
 
 respect only does he differ ; lie is a more sensible 
 fish. Xo 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 the 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 Xichaco ; but to 
 the allurements of the fly he is absolutely blind. 
 
 At Xew "Westminster, then, the 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 Red Eiver, but he had never tasted 
 salmon until here at Xew "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 MAX. 107 
 
 approached the man. " Stranger," he said, " I 
 guess I heard you talking Esquimo this morning." 
 It would have been unfair to have undeceived him ; 
 so the Esquimaux dialect was admitted. " Queer 
 langidge that Esquimo," he went on. "Mighty 
 queer langidge." " "With a knowledge of the Es- 
 quimo tongue," continued the man, " and some 
 acquaintance with the Athabascan language, dog- 
 driving becomes quite easy." " I never druv dogs," 
 replied the American, "but I've druv most other 
 druvable 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 waveless 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
 
 10S FAR OUT. 
 
 Vancouver, and the oak forest above the line of rocks 
 rippled in the full sheen of midsummer glory. 
 
 There may be spots on 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 ham 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 
 thi' Bay of Victoria when the steamboat emitted 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 AXD A MAX. 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 FAE OUT. 
 
 empire ! Perhaps that is the least annoying way of 
 looking at it. 
 
 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 he 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 Rooshian 
 dawg." and that he (the sailor) had fallen in with 
 similar " dawgs '" in Alaska, all of Russian 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 MAX. 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 hoard and rest 
 until the first streak of dawn called them again to the 
 road. This time it was coach again — coach without 
 the box scat 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 lie. 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 Tenino the railway would 
 carry the passengers southwards on their roads. 
 Ascending a steep road by the side of the Cowlitz 
 Paver, 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 open 
 space, a prairie composed of innumerable little hil- 
 locks all of the same size and shape. These mimic 
 mounds were covered with grass ; hut the spaces 
 between them showed stones and gravel on 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 tvrant will invariably be found abroad
 
 A JOURNEY OF A DOG AXD A MAX. 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 
 
 i
 
 I 11 FAR OUT. 
 
 the followers of Columbus. Thus the Oregon Paver of 
 the Spanish geographers was lost sight of towards the 
 dose 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 
 tlie part of rediscovery, and claimed for the Republic, 
 still in its teens, "the great river of the West." It 
 would In- 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 Xorth 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. 
 
 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. 
 Front 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 MAX. 1 1 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
 
 1 L() FAR OUT. 
 
 times as large as England and three thousand miles 
 from the scat 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 stilted : 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 corners. 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 la 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 axd a max. 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 there 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 River next morning, and 
 taking their places in a railway ear, 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
 
 1 i 8 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 lioseburg, 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 
 laid debate among themselves upon the amount 
 which should be charged upon the dog's pas-a.uv 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 oi'iice. "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 -eat beside it, but no
 
 A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 119 
 
 sooner did the side on which he sat begin to swing to 
 the adjustment of the weights than he was out on the 
 ground again. Finally, the matter was arranged to 
 the satisfaction 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 30th of June, the coach 
 rolled slowly away from the village of Eoseburg. 
 
 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 FAE (JUT. 
 
 comfort became stronger. A place called Eock Point 
 was frequently named by the driver as being remark- 
 able for cleanliness and good living. The scenery, 
 too, began to change; 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 Rogue Paver,*' 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 Pock Point Hotel." 
 
 Had the traveller even been less sick and sore than 
 he was, lie 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 grew 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.
 
 IV 
 
 A T Eock Point the man and the dog called a halt 
 for the day, and the coach rolled away on its 
 southern road, leaving the valley of the Rogue Paver 
 in perfect peace. After the sixteen hours' jolting 
 which the travellers had undergone since quitting 
 Pioseburg, the complete rest and unbroken quiet of 
 this lovely spot were grateful to both man and beast. 
 
 Never was afternoon siesta more needed, never 
 was it more enjoyed, than on that bright 1st 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 Eock 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 reasonino; 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 hy any hotel proprietors in 
 Oregon, Washington, or British Columbia; neverthe- 
 less, if you think he injures your furniture I shall 
 remove him, hut his removal must be conditional 
 upon a safe place, 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 Modoes no longer held 
 their lava burrows, and the valley of Rogue River had
 
 A JOURXEY OF A DOG AXD A MAX. 123 
 
 to deplore the loss (upon brisk commissariat demand) 
 of its farm produce, and exciting topics of conversa- 
 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 
 the 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. 
 
 "On the near side," answered the innkeeper. "Me 
 and my old woman are on the ground iioor, 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, Rogue 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 effect 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. 
 
 li llv 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 OF A DOG AND A MAX. 125 
 
 the journey became advisable, and a little after mid- 
 day the travellers quitted Rock 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 Fourth 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 Sliirtfi.il, 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 
 bearing the names of Nolan, Xiel, Rasper 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 Bvlie's Grove, there to
 
 120 fai: 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 
 of Temples. Bearers of Beauseant, Principal Sojour- 
 ners, and Chief Citizens were to be seen in different 
 degrees of dilapidated sickliness along the stations of 
 the Oregon and Calif ornian railroad; but that was the 
 day after the glorious " Fourth," and to-day, at Jack- 
 sonville, the Kasper Kublis, and the Xol Sachs, and 
 the rest of the heroes have their drams and their 
 headaches all before them. 
 
 Speeding along the upper valley of the Rogue River, 
 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 tiling 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 ]). M. Cawley, of Yreka. Cal. He 
 \v;b frieiidlv with the man-traveller at once, he Lad
 
 A JOURNEY OF A DOG AXI) A MAX. 127 
 
 a dozen kind words for the dog, lie 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 hill upon 
 the other. At length a black quick-flowing river lay 
 across the road — it was the Klamath Paver. 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 Paver 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 lour 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 Paver, under treaty 
 with the United States ; but incoming settlers hun- 
 gered for this land, and the Modocs were moved by 
 force into the wretched region just spoken of. It was 
 a poor and arid waste. The people starved. The 
 streams were without fish, the sage bush sheltered no 
 deer, the Modocs killed and ate their horses for food, 
 and then they starved. 
 
 One night they passed 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 
 i liver. There were those amongst them who as boys 
 had roved the entire country within sight of Shasta's 
 Jofty 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 horses and their does
 
 A JOURNEY OF A DOG AXD A MAX. 12,) 
 
 for food, the hungry band moved back into their 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 ant 
 
 K
 
 1,50 FAR OUT. 
 
 he killed was all they sought for. Meantime, very 
 famous dispatches 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 mingled ruffianism and civilisation of America — 
 became prominent headings all over the States. Of 
 course the slaughter among the Modocs was reported 
 as very great. On one occasion a vigorous cannonade 
 had resulted in the destruction 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' duration, 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 line morning two companies of United States' 
 soldiers had advanced to storm some outlying position 
 held by the Indians. The Modocs opened fire. 
 •• The companies, thrown into confusion,"' wrote the 
 general, " received orders to retire ; they obeyed, 
 but failing to halt, Arc, the field was abandoned to 
 tbe enemy." Failing to halt! the good old man-
 
 A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAX. 131 
 
 ceuvre of "running away " never appeared in garb so 
 delicate. To all future commanders in these warlike 
 da}*s 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 wretched 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 AYilliam, 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 
 English ; nor will any be more spared on either
 
 h'!2 FAR OUT. 
 
 account." Tt lias mattered little through history 
 whether the foe was civilised or savage, or man or 
 woman. The character given by Duke William has 
 been verified throughout succeeding ages. 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 
 upon, bound and helpless as the Modoc s 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, Tack, 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 1 ask is that Lizzie, my wife, 
 may be allowed to sit beside me." 
 
 lie 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 sha.de of 
 death. 
 
 A dawn full of weird lights, of many-hued bars of 
 clouds stretched horizontally along the eastern sky, 
 of while vapours clinging to stream courses over a 
 vast plain, and above the vapours sharp serrated 
 cones rise to view, and .-till hiuTi above the cones one
 
 A JOURNEY OF A DOG AND A MAN. 133 
 
 grand mountain mass rears up into the pale green 
 sky. A complete change had taken place in the 
 character of the scenery and the land. The road lay 
 across a level plain, covered with sage hush. Num- 
 bers of long-eared rabbits were to be 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, would 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
 
 134 FAR OUT. 
 
 if ye'd have a spare minute, and just drop a line to 
 D. M. Cawley, Yreka, California, I'd be glad to get it." 
 
 Some few miles south of Butteville the road hegan 
 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 hare 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 
 sun 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 lon£
 
 A JOURNEY OF A DOG AXD A MAN. lo.) 
 
 summer day stole on into the west, such lights glowed 
 on Shasta's splintered shoulders that the man-travel- 
 ler, rousing himself from rest, looked out of the little 
 window of his room and could not go to sleep again. 
 The heat had been great, hut it was eminently a 
 bearable heat. The ground whereon Sisson's stood 
 was three thousand seven hundred feet above sea- 
 level ; the snow upon the last four thousand feet of 
 Shasta's mass made cool, at least to the eye, the 
 clear bright atmosphere. Beneath the pines dark 
 shadows slowly moved with the changing sun. 
 
 It was a rare good time for the dog ; he squatted in 
 the clear cold water-rills. He was an object 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 the old music of the earth, and the 
 grand Californian forest was murmuring its melody 
 at the feet of Shasta. 
 
 The snow that lies upon the crest of Shasta is as
 
 FAR OUT 
 
 old as earth itself; nor yet more youthful 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 sung 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. 
 
 fTVHEY have written much about it ; they have 
 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 Mariposa, there occurred ever and anon certain 
 drawbacks to farmers' prosperity. Indians descended 
 from the sierras, and swept cattle and horses from 
 the randies 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 with difficulty the rock 
 sides of this valley, the pursuers found themselves on 
 a broken plateau, thickly forested. Wandering on, in 
 the hope of again recovering 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
 
 Ill) FAT! 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 crystal 
 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 
 (dearly 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. 
 
 Xight 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. Another 
 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 growth of pine-trees. Down 
 this sin lving bank they managed to travel for about 
 n thousand feet : then the scarped rock was again 
 met with. Descending through a kind of causewav
 
 THE YOSEMITE VALLEY. 141 
 
 opening, cut by a water-course in this wall, tliey 
 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 California. 
 
 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 loot of the fall that is one
 
 142 FAR OUT. 
 
 thousand feet 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 hanks were deep in grass and flowers. 
 Tlie}' found, too, some scattered hands 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 spot 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 
 favourite home ; but henceforth all was to be changed. 
 The loafer, the lying guide, the man of the mint 
 julep, the man with the camera obseura, 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 YOSEMITE VALLEY. 143 
 
 going to Japan, the man with the paper-collar, the 
 man who has been 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 
 " Royal 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 
 efforts 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 been 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 Calif ornian 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 the 
 publication of a work entitled " From Xangasaki 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.
 
 ] 14 FAR OUT. 
 
 With many twists and bends the road climbs 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 flying- 
 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 
 something 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 h >tel 
 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 "A I said 
 to him. ' Yes,' lie replied, ' I had a bully day to-day. 
 1 lirst 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. Rising 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 lied Indians disappear wholly 
 before you ; but this Asiatic, older than any, retains 
 
 L
 
 14 G FAR OUT. 
 
 unchanged the essence of bis national life. lie defies 
 your power of assimilation, lie uses you for his own 
 iiuls : lie builds roads, bridges, railways, wharves, 
 but you cannot induce him to go this 'ticket' or 
 that ' ticket " at your State elections. Greely and 
 Grant are unknown quantities to him : nevertheless 
 he knows the difference between a greenback and a 
 • shin-plaster,' and can beat you at a game of euchre 
 or ' fives up.' He can live in comfort where you 
 would die in misery, lie takes your gold and gives you 
 labour, but nothing more ; in his secret heart he 
 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." 
 
 Never before had such a view of the hated China- 
 man be< n 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 — he is the 
 first American whose English we can fully under- 
 stand '? '" " Ah, yi .-,'" replied the traveller. " he is an 
 Irishman, ami 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 passengers who wished to visit the "big- 
 trees " that day set out for a further six miles through 
 the forest. 
 
 Here, at an elevation varying between six and nine 
 thousand feet, this hoary monarch 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 "big trees" 
 giants themselves, but 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 flower 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 anything 
 we have yet come to. Assuredly a big tree, but is it 
 one of the "big trees" '? So many 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 difficult to take in all at once 
 
 l 2
 
 148 FAR OUT. 
 
 the real vastness of these great reel tree-trunks. It is 
 only when we come to one fallen giant, and, dis- 
 mounting, go up his side by a ladder, and walk the 
 broad pathway of his upper surface, along a space 
 wide enough for four men to walk abreast upon, that 
 we realise the true nature of these gigantic pines. 
 The '•Fallen 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 Republican 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 scene. Eufus 13. 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
 
 THE YOSEMITE VALLEY. 149 
 
 upon its bark as large as good-sized trees each of 
 them. How pleasant it would be if the man who is 
 bound for Japan would proceed there, if the man 
 going round the world would continue his circum- 
 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 we 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^ 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 down 
 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 -Tones 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 expressions 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 Yosemite 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 Hashes 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 ii] ion 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.
 
 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, grouped 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 Bock 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 will 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 to 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, smooth 
 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 " Tutuckanuba," 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. 15o 
 
 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 beyond 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, flowers, and 
 ever-recurring vistas of water, clear, green, sparkling ; 
 a noise of falling water fills the air ; the sunlight is 
 streaming across the valley high above our head. 
 We are in the shadow as 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, Ram- 
 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 
 wonderful 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 
 the 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 
 Water 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 once you
 
 THE YOSEMITE VALLEY. 155 
 
 are face to face with the Nevada Fall. It is seven 
 hundred feet. Close beside it, steep as the face of a 
 wall, there rises up a single solid rock which is three 
 thousand eight hundred feet above the edge of the fall ; 
 the Cap of Liberty it is called. Can 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. There 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-tops. 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 the neck 
 and look up at the Cap. It is very far above ; a
 
 156 FAR 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 particle 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 Eock 
 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 scaffolding was 
 stretched over the smaller channel to the rock, a shaft 
 was bored in it, dynamite did the rest ; and in the
 
 tup: 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 " repaired" fall; looking at the re- 
 pairer in the full tide of his holiday offensiveness, and 
 then glancing aloft at the grim giant Cap, set high 
 above our world, one feels inclined to say, " Some day 
 thy thunderbolts will avenge the outrage."
 
 AFGHANISTAN AND THE AFGHANS. 
 
 TT^EST of the quivering plains of the middle Indus, 
 where the five rivers of the Punjaub meet in 
 one common channel, there is seen a great mountain 
 range, whose peaks prolong a broken outline along the 
 horizon far into the north and into the south. When 
 the sim sinks behind this mountain, in the days pre- 
 ceding the beginning of the cool season, masses of 
 fantastic-shaped clouds sore frequently seen piled above 
 and beyond the loftiest peaks of the range, as though 
 they reflected in the heaven- n 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 
 bind that lies beneath them. In fact, this range of 
 tlie Sulimani marks one of the most abrupt transitions 
 from level plain to rugged mountain that the surface 
 of the globe presents to us — India, the land of plains, 
 upon one side ; Afghanistan, the realm of mountains, 
 on the other.
 
 AFGHANISTAN. 150 
 
 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 hut 
 little change in the lines of communication 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 heds 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 II, Ave 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
 
 J GO FAR OUT. 
 
 the point where the central connecting line intersects 
 the left arm ; place the fortress of Ghizni in the centre 
 of this connecting line, and let Cahul mark its point 
 of intersection with the right-hand line 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 he formed. The distances, 
 however, 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-hound fast- 
 ness. There are, it is true, other routes through the 
 country 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 Khorassan
 
 AFGHANISTAN". 161 
 
 horsemen have swept by turns through those arid 
 hills. All the wild spirits of two thousand years of 
 Asiatic conquest have passed and repassed amid those 
 stony glens and gloomy valleys, stamping each in 
 turn upon the fierce Highland clans some quality of 
 freedom, some faculty of fighting power. And ever 
 as the tides of war and conquest ebbed and flowed 
 around the lofty shores 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 Vienna. 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 group 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 swept by 
 to transient empire 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 with 
 
 M
 
 l(i'2 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 retained 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 Bactria, 
 Prometheus lay bound for ages, and still, where the 
 great range of the Hindoo Ivoosh sinks down to meet 
 tbe valley of the Oxus, a vast mountain cavern is 
 called in Sanscrit lore the Cave of Prometheus. 
 
 So much for the past ; 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 
 l)ost Mahomed Khan, held possession of Ghizni and 
 its surrounding fastness. The Hooranee kingdom 
 was a prey to civil strife ; the chiefs of Cabul 
 were in open revolt against L'llah 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. Why not replenish the exhausted 
 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 down 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 plunder of the unfortunate ? God forbid ! Victory 
 is of God, and He conferreth glory and power upon 
 those whom He will 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 dreamt of by the 
 turbulent factions whose voices had given him power. 
 This mountain 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 adds, " 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 merchant at the 
 equity of his decisions and the protection of his pro- 
 perty, and the soldiers at the regular 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 Bungeet, 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.
 
 1G6 PAR 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 break 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 LS88, "that the 
 Barukzye chiefs, from their disunion and unpopularity, 
 were ill-fitted under any circumstances 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. 107 
 
 do what we liked with him if we would only make 
 Eimgeet 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 portion 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 Rungeet 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 
 x\fghanistan only one lay open to us in 1888, 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 Gabul. It was now mid- 
 summer, but the mornings were deliciously cool, for 
 the long winding columns had climbed 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 . 169 
 
 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 
 flings 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 great book it was ruled that this
 
 170 FAR OUT. 
 
 dark day of defeat and desertion should be the mid- 
 night of his disaster. Henceforth there would be 
 many hours of darkness, but they would all be shorten- 
 ing towards the dawn. 
 
 Over the wild pass of Bamian, Dost Mahomed 
 passed, a fugitive, to the Uzbegs of Kunduz. A couple 
 of thousand devoted adherents still clung to his ruined 
 fortunes. To add to his overwhelming misfortunes, a 
 favourite son was borne along with difficulty in the 
 rapid flight, fainting with fever. The deserters to the 
 British camp had carried these particulars of 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 latelv surrendered by him
 
 AFGHANISTAN. 171 
 
 to Eungeet Singh, the Sikh ruler of Lahore. And 
 now the work was over. The curtain had fallen upon 
 the last act, the lights were being turned off, and the 
 crowd pressed out in all haste to get away. If it had 
 been so easy to conquer Afghanistan, the retention of 
 the country must be 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 had 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 FAR OUT. 
 
 and many other heads of departments awoke one 
 morning to find Cabul in revolt. To extreme confi- 
 dence succeeded complete paralysis. From Bamian 
 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 chapters 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 land was the indecision 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. 173 
 
 deed was committed by Akbar Khan, it is also evident 
 that it was not premeditated. To obtain possession 
 of the envoy, and to use that possession as a hostage 
 for the fulfilment of certain conditions, was the real 
 object aimed at by the Afghan leaders. Had murder 
 been meant it is evident that no attempt at capture 
 was necessary ; but the unfortunate envoy strenuously 
 resisted, and in the struggle that ensued between him 
 and Akbar Khan, met his death. 
 
 On the morning of the 6th of January the retreat 
 from Cabul began. Four thousand five hundred 
 righting men and three times that number of followers: 
 turned their faces towards India, beginning the most 
 disastrous movement recorded 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 Jugdullock — he was all that remained of the 
 army of Cabul.
 
 17-4 FAR OUT. 
 
 The spring of the following year saw two armies 
 again marching into Afghanistan, along the two great 
 highways. Their work was to relieve beleaguered 
 garrisons in Kandahar and Cabul, to avenge and to 
 retire. The garrisons were relieved. For nine hun- 
 dred years Mahomed of Ghizni had lain at rest in the 
 mausoleum at Eioza. 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 years' wandering 
 in search of a scientific frontier.
 
 THE ZULUS. 
 
 rpHE vast disjointed dominion which upon the maps 
 of the world bears the colour and the cognomen of 
 British 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 entire colonies, and serenely 
 unconscious of political or territorial divisions whose 
 superficial area would measure ten times that of Great 
 Britain.
 
 170 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 produce 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 enmity 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 turned. It does nut 
 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 should 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 laws 
 that propelled it two centuries 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 
 
 N
 
 178 FAR OUT. 
 
 of the difficulties that besot 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 driven back into more compact masses outside 
 our 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 blessings 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 obev-
 
 THE ZULUS. 170 
 
 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 
 sj)ears 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 Drakensberg 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 Xatal, 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 grew 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 numbered 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 buffer between us and. the native races. By 
 the annexation of the Transvaal Republic we removed 
 that buffer, and placed ourselves 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 shining stones flocked also many thousands of 
 black men. From far-away tropic regions beyond the 
 Limpopo, from nearer Basuto mountains, from Zulu- 
 land and Kaflirland, 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 grew 
 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 were 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. 
 
 distribution of arms and ammunition amongst them 
 as wages for work, must produce war between the 
 white and black races. It has been computed that 
 more than four hundred thousand stand of arms, 
 principally rilles, 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 imbibed at the same time. 
 
 Thus it will easily be understood how, at the 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 question 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 races, or
 
 THE ZULUS. 185 
 
 whether the annexation of the Dutch republic was not 
 a necessary consequence of the error which, in 1854, 
 permitted the formation of foreign states beyond our 
 frontiers. While holding 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 
 are 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 policy 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 warlike habits of the people whom to-day we 
 call Zulus. 
 
 Four hundred years from the present time a great 
 wave of black men swept southward towards the Cape 
 of Good Hope from the vast interior highlands of 
 equatorial Africa. At times the waves surged east till 
 they touched the early Portuguese kingdom of Quilli- 
 mane on the one hand, and west until they reached 
 that of Angola and Congo upon the other. At each 
 side the story was the same. The Gaigas, as this 
 torrent was called, carried death and destruction 
 wherever they went. They moved under rigid rules 
 of martial 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. 
 
 The narratives of the Portuguese missionaries of 
 the 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 River, 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 last to comparative quiet, 
 and settled down to pastoral life over all that great 
 wilderness of beauty which is to-day South Africa. 
 That this human wave, which probably was first set 
 in motion by the Arab conquests in North Africa 
 during the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, drove 
 out the aboriginal races of Southern Africa — the 
 Bushman and the Hottentots — there cannot be a 
 doubt ; and there is every reason to suppose that the 
 wide human family known to us to-day under the 
 appellation Kaffir — a name 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 characteristics of 
 courage from the torrent which so long rolled its 
 troubled course along the great central highland of 
 the continent. The military organisation 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 conflict 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 FAR 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 the 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. Their 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 Germany put together, 
 there is not room for three hundred thousand white 
 men and a million and a half of 1 (lacks ? and can all 
 your teaching, preaching, and civilisation evolve 
 nothing 1 tetter 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 believes 
 to lie the right. And mark 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 lights of 
 faith and justice. Let us not imagine that by trade 
 these precious gifts can he carried into the dim 
 interior. The first principle of trade with the savage, 
 whether it he 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 flourishes 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 lies 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 riiles, 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 never yet been lighted in the 
 black man's mind — the idea that he may be made an 
 independent unit in a civilised community ; the idea
 
 192 FAR OUT. 
 
 that he will he 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 his 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 fully 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 lias never been even attempted. The 
 outlay necessary to start the machinery which might effect the change 
 has ahvavs 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, hopeless lines of punishment and repression.
 
 SOUTH AFRICA. 
 
 I. 
 
 TjWR up in the mountains of South Africa, where 
 the peaks of the Drakensberg and the ridges of 
 the Malutis attain their loftiest level, there lies a 
 region hut 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 
 
 o
 
 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 hecome 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 
 tile 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 
 begins in a line so abrupt, so rugged, so scarped into 
 precipice, and turret, and pinnacle, that it would 
 seem as though nature had 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. rlashing 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 rivers 
 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- 
 
 o 2
 
 196 FAR OUT. 
 
 sion of hill and valley, table-topped mountain, gleam- 
 ing river — 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-off 
 world. 
 
 This great range of the Drakensberg, called by the 
 natives Kathalama, runs nearly north and south 
 alonjr the west frontier of Natal; but near the twenty-
 
 SOUTH AFRICA. 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 
 River and its many tributaries. 
 
 Three other large rivers rise in this impenetrable 
 fastness, the Wilge, or south fork of the Yaal, 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 Rhode Berg ; the Wilge Paver rising on the north 
 face of the Mont aux Sources, and flowing down into 
 the Orange Free State to join the diamond-famous 
 Yaal ; 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
 
 108 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 these 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 mountains of the land. 
 Now for the people who have made their dwellings 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 
 
 their organisation, and now, as he 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 listened to his 
 counsel and his plans. 
 
 Soon the youth of the Umtetwa were formed into 
 bodies, fighting under distinct chiefs, 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 became 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 spirits 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 his 
 time of chieftainship had come, a new power had 
 dawned among the scattered tribes of South-Eastern 
 Africa.
 
 200 FAR OUT. 
 
 Some time about 1814, Chaka began his career of 
 conquest. Everything went down before him. He 
 changed the mode of fighting in the field — of move- 
 ment in the campaign. To throw the assagai 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 Yaal — 
 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 AFRICA. 201 
 
 The scattered tribes that had been unable to oppose 
 the Zulu chief had withdrawn into remote countries. 
 One powerful band, attacked in the open country, had 
 retreated along the Yaal, and by the fastnesses of the 
 Drakensberg, into what is now called Basutoland. 
 They were without cohesion. 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 differing in every respect 
 from the Zulu conqueror. He was a shrewd observer, 
 apt in council, held peculiar views about the white 
 man's dominion, and had more faith in the 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 years 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 
 Caledon. 
 
 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-tropic
 
 202 FAR OUT. 
 
 shore-line, was known to the outside world. A vast 
 unmeasured solitude was this land beyond all the 
 Orange River. From 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 bk'ssbok, 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 rid^e of the Drakensbercr 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 Retief 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, Eetief 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 Rivers ; how these brave 
 savages rushed the laager by the Bushman River 
 drift, and carried such destruction through the camps, 
 that to-day an immense tract of country bears the 
 name of "TVeenan," 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 River 
 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 Basutoiand 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 Basutoiand. 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 ruck 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 with 
 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 
 hlesshoks ; 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 fix- pert of Natal, a 
 small English settlement had taken mot. 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 changi d. 
 The Dutch attacked the English settlement, and for a' 
 time had matters their own way. B< aten by superior 
 numbers the English commander shut himself up in a 
 hastily built fort, composed verses to the Southern
 
 SOUTH AFRICA. 200 
 
 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 upper 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 
 
 p
 
 210 FAR OUT. 
 
 new governor ; he had been a dashing leader of 
 dashing men. British power, as represented by a few 
 squadrons of British cavalry, was, in his eyes, irresis- 
 tible. Dutch Boers setting up a republic of their own 
 beyond the Orange River — the thing was absurd to the 
 last degree. "Forward the Cape Corps. March away 
 the Pdfie 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 Paver, 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 Paries to advance. They 
 come up at the double, spread out into the hills, and 
 move straight up against the rocks. Suddenly the 
 puffs of smoke cease. "This is not a proper way to 
 light/' 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 hills, and
 
 SOUTH AFRICA. 211 
 
 gallop away to northern wilds, their brave leader, one 
 Prsetorius by name, never drawing rein until sixty 
 miles lay between him and the Boomplatz. 
 
 The Orange Eepublic was no more. Moshesh 
 heard with joy, up in his mountain, the tidings of 
 Boomplatz, and he marched out from the hills, with 
 his army, to greet the English Governor, and to show 
 his respect for the Queen's authority. 
 
 They met at TYinburg. 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 spirits. " 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, that 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 living 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 
 tlie first rule of Dutch agricultural 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 
 [farrv Smith offered to the flying Dutchmen the most
 
 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 
 Kaffir 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 
 Paver. 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 Barralongs 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 Kei was 
 over, and the English governor, Sir George Cathcart, 
 bethought him of a new move. He ordered the as- 
 sembly 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. Pie had with him the finest force- 
 ever seen in South Africa — a regiment of lancers, a 
 battery of artillery, and four regiments of light 
 infantry. 
 
 About mid-December the little army reached Piatt - 
 berg, on the Caledon; a few miles across the river 
 lay the mountain fastnesses of Thaba Bossiou, and 
 from the ridge of Plattberg could be seen the hills and 
 rocks of Basutoland stretching from the river side to 
 the Malutis. 
 
 On the 19th 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 grass grow," he said, 
 " war is 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 were not forthcoming on the 
 third day. "In that case I will go and take them," 
 was the reply. " War is bad," answered Moshesh ; 
 "but even a beaten dog will bite." Then he went 
 back to his mountain. 
 
 The 20th of December came. At daybreak the 
 army moved from its camp at Plattberg, crossed the 
 flooded 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 
 between 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 further 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 cavalry 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 
 manoeuvre 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 summit. A 
 mounted staff-officer was with them. Biding 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 staff. 
 
 " Die ! " exclaimed the fiery-spirited Eyre, who had 
 just arrived, maddened by the result 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 army 
 foiled bv such a foe ! Thev must advance again and
 
 SOUTH AFRICA. 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 
 short-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-off 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. 
 
 4 X evil day was drawing nigh for British interests 
 x in South Africa. The Orange River sovereignty 
 was to he 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. Xay, 
 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 stranger 
 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 doers' haunt, and the buffaloes' glen ; 
 
 By valleys remote, where the oribi plays, 
 
 "Where the gnoo, the gazelle, and the hartebeeste graze, 
 
 And the gemsbok and eland unheeded recline, 
 
 By the skirts of grey forest o'orgrown with wild vine, 
 
 And the elephant browses at peace in his wood, 
 
 And the river-horse gambols unscared by the flood, 
 
 And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will 
 
 In the "' vley" where the wild ass is drinking his fill. 
 
 True, there was one real desert in it, a region where 
 water was scarce and grass was scant, a spot looking 
 owr which the traveller might exclaim, "This is 
 worthless.*' Yet even there, in the centre of that 
 waste of red, brick-dust 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 River 
 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 turbulent 
 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 birthright 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 A'aal Paver, the Trans- 
 vaal Dutch Eepublic 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 negro 
 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 Praetoria, 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. 
 
 Lut 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 be 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 186(5 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 1807 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 
 breeehloading rifles, and Armstrong and YVhitworth 
 guns, were plentiful too.
 
 220 FAR OUT. 
 
 The Free State complained bitterly that we aided 
 the Basutos with arms and ammunition, and sym- 
 pathy ; but every rifle tired at Thaba Bossiou, 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 wretched 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 
 Dutch fur this savin" 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 system, 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 topography 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 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 FAR OUT. 
 
 but so seldom realise — this, perhaps, is the most 
 difficult task the reader has to learn from the writer ; 
 for it is a lesson hard enough for the man who has 
 himself looked upon the land which he would fain por- 
 tray ; and it is also a lesson without knowledge of 
 which all other knowledge of the people or policy of 
 distant lands is unfinished 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 great trea- 
 sures ; and these lie locked beneath the lands we 
 have 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 plain 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 grass 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 dee}) channel- 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 AFRICA. 229 
 
 heeded, unborn, lies a mighty future ; this is the 
 great coal-bed of South Africa. As the rider now 
 draws bridle by one of these breaks in the } r ellow 
 clay, he sees only the great stretch of plain, the wild 
 deer on the hilltop, the sun going down blood-red 
 through the smoke of distant grass-fires ; he hears 
 nothing but the rustle of wind through waving grass, 
 and the drip of water down the sandstone 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 the light 
 of heaven has also been blotted out and blurred ; of 
 the flare of gas on pallid cheek, and the roll of steam 
 along iron road, when, in the fulness of time, this 
 dark deep seam shall be followed into the bowels of 
 the earth, and flung forth to feed the furnaces of the 
 world's toil. 
 
 We have already spoken of the diamonds of the 
 Taal Eiver. We will now endeavour to place before 
 the reader an image of the gigantic pit in whose 
 depths ten thousand men are delving deeper year by 
 year. 
 
 We have said before that the Yaal and Orange 
 Pavers, 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 thorny mimosa grows, gnarled and stunted, in
 
 21)0 FAR OUT. 
 
 scattered clumps, pours westward a constantly 
 decreasing volume through the sands of Damara and 
 the arid plains of the Kalahari! 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-staffs. 
 High above roof or flag-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 
 arc the materials from which dwelling-house, church, 
 drinking-saloon, store, and shed have been built. The 
 city of Kimberley, or Colesberg, or New Rush, 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. 281 
 
 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 A'on. 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 thrown out by his immediate 
 friends of his being closely connected with Yon 
 Moltke, whose portrait (taken from an illustrated 
 paper) is hung conspicuously in his tin house. 
 
 Captain Yon Drinckliiskfils 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. 
 
 Yon 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 stra} 7 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. 
 
 And now, having glanced at some of the human 
 dwellers 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. 233 
 
 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 
 toAver 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. 
 
 But 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 
 scans 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 air, 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. Xow 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 always occurred to us to ask 
 our righteous white friend, " How do you think you 
 would fare if you employed twenty white men instead 
 of these twenty Zulus or Bechuanas ? Do you think 
 the pilfering would cease ? Not a hit of it ; it would 
 he 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, he 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 man 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 i'l 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. 
 
 What the black man does in this matter his white 
 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 pedigree of 
 toil " becomes considerably shortened when its tree 
 has its root in the "midriff" of the negro.
 
 III. 
 
 HPO revert to the question of diamond- stealing at 
 -*- the fields. 
 
 Let us think for a moment how facile is the theft. 
 Peter, good Christian Kaffir, Nehemiah, excellent 
 Basuto, Manyougootoosoo, pure original Kaffir, or 
 Whatdooyoocoolum, admirable Corrana, are at work, 
 individually and collectively, in claim Xo. 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 firm 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 this stolen diamond 
 finds sale — that is white. The black man does the 
 stealing, but it is the white man who generally gets 
 the stolen gem. Sometimes the stolen stones are 
 not disposed of at the fields, but are taken back into 
 the interior by the returning negro. The chief 
 Lo-Benguela dwells far away by the water of the 
 Limpopo. When he gave permission to fifty of his 
 young men to visit the diamond fields as labourers, 
 he stipulated that, in addition to every man bringing 
 back 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 bucket falling from the reef edge of the 
 pit settled for this world the account of Xo. 49 ; 
 50 had his thick head split in a row with the 
 Amakosae Kaffirs, so forty-eight go back to their 
 northern kraals, carrying forty-eight muskets, a 
 goodly store of ammunition, some red rugs, and forty- 
 eight bright 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 and 
 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 AFRICA. 241 
 
 white man comes to take my land, as come lie will, 
 be will get my land ; but then I take up this little 
 earthen bowl, which will by that time be 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 treasure-bowl again and again. All this 
 showing clearly enough that Lo-Benguela is wise in 
 bis generation with the wisdom of the white man. 
 
 Diamond-stealing is on the increase. The negroes 
 are yearly becoming more dishonest. It is a sad fact, 
 but 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, day 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 diamond-stealing at the great pit of Colesberg. 
 Kaffir from the Kei, Amaponda from the St. John's, 
 Zulu from the Umfolosi, Swasi from the Maputa. 
 Afatabilli 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 disappear 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 
 
 E
 
 242 FAR OUT. 
 
 who has come among thorn, and that the old dream 
 of a time drawing near, in which the black and white 
 races would share together their rival inheritances of 
 possession and knowledge, is only destined to develop 
 a reality in which knowledge and possession rest with 
 one race. 
 
 And in this we touch the real obstacle to what is 
 called the civilisation of wild or savage races. We 
 often marvel why the conversion of the heathen 
 becomes more difficult as time goes on, and yet a 
 moment's reflection will suffice to show us that the 
 reason of the thing is patent enough. 
 
 When the wild man or the negro 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. 243 
 
 vanished and race was not known ; and if he has 
 believed the teaching, how hitter must be the sense of 
 disappointment with which he learns the real nature 
 of the role he has accepted in the new creed and 
 social state ; how startling the discovery that this 
 beautiful theory of the white man's love and brother- 
 hood and charity to all men means, 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 opposed 
 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 Xorth 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. Xay, 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 the more we study it the more difficult it grows. 
 He will not die, he will not disappear. We will not 
 have him as an ecpial ; we cannot have him as a slave. 
 What then is to be the outcome ? Time will answer, 
 
 r 2
 
 244 FAR OUT. 
 
 as he always answers ; and, meanwhile, this hip; pit at 
 Kimberley promises to hasten the answer. 
 
 We said before that the black toilers in the pit 
 carried away with them when they returned to their 
 homes arms and ammunition, in addition to a certain 
 amount of dangerous knowledge. We 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 
 possession of South African negroes during the last- 
 seven years. "Aman 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 hack 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 Avar at the diamond 
 fields. 
 
 What is it all for? Ah! that is the question. 
 Some will tell you that it is for the chase : others for 
 war between tribe and tribe : others, again, set' 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 Whitworth have quad- 
 rupled the weight with which the 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. 24o 
 
 yet experienced ere the white line of conquest is 
 pushed home to the Limpopo. 
 
 Now let us say one word about the diamond itself, 
 ere we quit the "field 1 ' 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 steins there as elsewhere ; 
 sheep grazed on the stunted "karoo" bush; spring- 
 bok filed in long peaceful lines across the plain. All at 
 once the glistening stones are found, and in seven 
 years ten millions' worth of diamonds are unearthed. 
 
 It is not yet twenty years since the first diamonds 
 were found on the banks of the Yaal River. 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- 
 hed 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 ; hut at any rate 
 the great Hood poured forth and swept before it, not 
 the mere rock and debris of earth, hut 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 Hood; 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 tierce rush 
 of the waves, and at last, when the era of erosion had 
 passed, they remained to still carry on their smooth 
 summits, sometimes set three 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 
 bubbles seek the surface, so in bygone ages might 
 these carbonic bubbles have floated from the fur- 
 nace raging beneath through the funnel opening 
 under the lake, where, kept 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 
 
 * Sir T. Sbepstone, K.C.M.G.
 
 248 FAR OUT. 
 
 Led 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 Xew Rush. 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 Yaal River were 
 of exceeding brilliancy, fully equal in lustre to the 
 finest stones of Golconda or Brazil ; but in the pits 
 of Kimberley, I)e Beer's, and Du Toit's Pan they are 
 nearly all "off-coloured," or yellow. In the one case 
 they have been washed by the river, and exposed to 
 the action of air 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. YVe have already stated our 
 opinion that many other pits will be found in the 
 vast drv 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 for reflection. 
 
 Every branch of trade, commerce, and agriculture 
 has derived fresh life and new impulse from these 
 fields. The land deemed a desert 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 Republic 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
 
 2.30 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 hut 
 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 Bloemfontein — 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 
 South 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 tilings were drugs in 
 the markets; suddenly a vast demand arose for them. 
 Europe sent its steamships to supply what it could, 
 tinned things of all sorts ; but the Africanders did 
 littlt — the more adventurous ones flocked to the fields, 
 the lazv ones sat idle at home.
 
 SOUTH AFEICA. 251 
 
 Diamonds were to be gathered in garden or dairy far 
 away from those wonderful fields where men so often 
 lost their little all ; but 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 the last for a con- 
 tinuous export trade. All this is true ; but all this 
 only proves what we said before, that the people will 
 not work. 
 
 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 
 ostrich 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.
 
 252 FAR OUT. 
 
 "We do not mean to assert 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 husbandry are not congenial to the 
 habits of the Dutch farmer in any shape or form. 
 
 Hitherto, in these sketches of South Africa, we 
 have said but little upon a subject 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 
 still. 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 flu' continent. Natal, once the favourite home of 
 every animal, from the lordliest lion to the tiniest 
 antelope, is to-day nearly denuded of game. 
 
 But if the larger animals have retreated into the 
 wild-, tlie antelopes are numerous enough still in the 
 Dree State and in the more settled portions of the
 
 SOUTH AFRICA. 253 
 
 Transvaal. In the groat grassy plains of the middle 
 "Veldt" hundreds of blessbok and springbok 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 said that a few years since a member of the 
 "Yolksraad" 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 law 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 blessbok, and 
 wildebeestes, were shot and stabbed and galloped 
 over precipices, where they lay smashed and heaped 
 over one another, until at length the land was cleared 
 of them. 
 
 A few wild ostriches are still to be found in Natal 
 and in the Free State. x\s 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 ostriches 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 OUT. 
 
 that they (the lions) would have taken the post by 
 storm last night." 
 
 It may appear strange how it came to pass that 
 this great quantity of wild animals should have been 
 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 have been in all times and in all 
 places. We read that 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. Then 
 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 met 
 with form, perhaps, still the best work among the 
 many now existing on African wild 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.
 
 250 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 kraal of Moshesh, at 
 Thaba Bossiou, was not more than fifty miles. 
 
 Moroko paid an annual tribute to Moshesh, and 
 acknowledged the Basuto as his paramount: but when 
 difficulties 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 AVesleyan 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 -ides by the Orange 
 Free State. What is to-day called in the Free State 
 " 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 forgetfulness of the fact that the 
 Barrolongs 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. ATen 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 Bhodeberg, 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 
 
 s
 
 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 ilood-tide the bright blue water, or bordered, 
 when the tide had ebbed, a strand of velvet softness. 
 
 "Well might these weather-beaten mariners have 
 hailed 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 3-ears had to pass ere this fair region of
 
 SOUTn AFRICA. 259 
 
 Natal saw aught of white men save some stray sail 
 far out to sea. 
 
 The great captains 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 savage 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 his 
 life, among the wild seas and wilder savages of this 
 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 four 
 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 Boers 
 moved down to take possession of their Promised 
 Land. 
 
 Whatever we may think of Dutch civilisation, of 
 
 s 2
 
 2(30 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 the} 7 made a home. 
 
 The " fountain " was turned down the street; the 
 oak-tree was planted along the dusty thoroughfare ; 
 the orange grew before the doorway : and if, perhaps, 
 there was not altogether that improvement in farm 
 or that comfort in dwelling-house which nineteenth- 
 century civilisation has taught us to regard as indis- 
 pensably 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 — preserved cut off from intercourse 
 with their fatherlands, and exposed to contact with 
 savage peoples ; bereft of nearly all that can soften, 
 surrounded 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 certainty of seeing from the hilltop the proud 
 Drakensberc 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 which ran through the 
 valley, flowed close to the garden. Biding 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, and 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
 
 202 FAR OUT. 
 
 a chief: ho had stolen cattle from Dingaan the Zulu 
 king. "We sent messages to Dingaan. He treated 
 them well, and sent them hack 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 
 man}* 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 River 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 wen 
 scattered, and some of the outlying ones wen 
 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 Buslimai) 
 River, 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 as 
 they could stand, but I only thought this for an 
 instant; it was the sunlight on thousands of ox-hidt 
 shields carried by the Kaffirs, 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. 263 
 
 " 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 hag of bullets, 
 and a flask of powder. 
 
 " Well, I did not stop long on 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 
 our 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 your 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 our laager, for our turn 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 falling back to load again. 
 
 " I fired 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 ; 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 
 opened 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 all our people in them. Ah ! that
 
 2C5G 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 came we 
 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 stoiw, while his wife (who 
 had appeared at an early stage of the narrative with 
 a plateful 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 of valour" 
 
 for half that gallant morning's work by the laager on 
 
 the Bushman's River. What Goldsmith wrote of 
 
 The rude Carintliian boor, 
 "Who 'gainst the homeless stranger shuts his 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 Boerdoni have caused many
 
 SOUTH AFRICA. 2()7 
 
 a European scoundrel to migrate thither, and in the 
 simple and unlettered Africander the educated villain- 
 dom of Europe and America has 'found a rich field for 
 exploit. 
 
 As one travels now through upland South Africa 
 a hundred stories can he 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 but a shilling in the pound for his 
 herds, and only discovered his mistake months later 
 when he journeyed to the nearest market town, 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 natural that he should shrink from it 
 in alarm. 
 
 Not long ago there came a Boer from up-country to 
 Pietermaritzburg, 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 four 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. 
 "What 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 may 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. If 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 oan 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-Eichards 
 breechloading rifle against a rusty musket. He is 
 ever ready to take the field : his rifle and gun are in 
 the room-corner, 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 Yaal 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 shooting 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 force 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 Yaal Paver 
 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 arc 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 ; 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 ; hut 
 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 chronicle, "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- 
 east Africa. 
 
 The Penitent Pirate had probably as good a time of 
 it in old Natal as any retired buccaneer ever enjo3 7 ed. 
 Plenty of game, a delicious climate, at that time
 
 272 FAR OUT. 
 
 peaceable people, and no police ! What a premium 
 such a superannuation would have proved to piracy, 
 had it been generally known ! The world 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 pleasure, piracy, or politics, and gracefully 
 "retire out of harm's wa} 7 ." 
 
 " 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 as to climate. When the sun in Decem- 
 ber is with us low down in the southern horizon at 
 mid-day, ho 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 Kalahari! Desert, and of the 
 wild region lying west of the Transvaal Republic, 
 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 
 Drakensberg 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 odour 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 
 sends ceaseless music to the forest hill ; far out the 
 
 T
 
 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 hundred 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 3-011 with tin 
 breath of the mountain peak, breathing upon you a 
 spirit distilled from dew and starlight, and all the 
 endless freshness which dwells six thousand feet above 
 our 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 pasture 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 in the neighbourhood of Pieter- 
 maritzburg where that wish can be realised. It is a 
 nook set round with hills. Eight years ago it was as 
 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 
 which 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 easy 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 he 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 Kaffirs 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 limits 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 
 Aral)y has not been abandoned, and a New Jerusalem 
 has arisen on the shores of Lake N'Gami, founded by 
 the quaint and dauntless Kruger. 
 
 Before this steady stream of white men the fighting 
 Kaffir has fallen back. Fifty years ago the dreaded 
 Matabili dwelt upon the Yaal. Twenty-five years 
 ago 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 ? Wo 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 
 modern 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 River. 
 
 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. Repub- 
 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 
 modern 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 
 hemisphere. In wealth of precious metals it yields 
 to-day four-fifths of the world's gold. Its coal, iron, 
 and copper, of which there arc 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 FAR OUT. 
 
 pires called into existence fifty years ago in South 
 America have hitherto signally failed to fulfil the 
 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 he 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 harbours are, with few exceptions, 
 dangerous and shallow ; its distances are great ; it> 
 population scattered; its highways and roads are bad. 
 But it has soil fruitful to labour, splendid climate, 
 varied productions, scenery, a hardy healthy race, 
 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 expan-
 
 SOUTH AFRICA. 281 
 
 sion. Like [the term North or South America, it 
 means in reality a continent. Too long we have 
 sought to restrict the meaning of that term to the 
 Cape Colon}', 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 Paver. Events have been too strong for their 
 efforts, and already the tide has flowed far away over 
 the Orange River into lands which a score of years 
 hence will he looked upon as lying far within the 
 limits of civilisation. The natural pathway to the 
 dim interior lies not through the feverish swamp of 
 Zanzibar, not through Congo or Angola, but along the 
 loft}" 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 entire length 
 of Eastern Africa. Its summits guard Tanganika and 
 divide the Xyanzas ; 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 vast 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 ; but 
 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, he 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 wilds, 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 loft}- Drakensberg first catches the ray of 
 morning on its summits, when over the Indian Ocean 
 the sun rises from his sea-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 course would 
 force itself upon the attention of all whose object was 
 thu dissemination of knowledge on these subjects, it 
 is singular how readily people forget to apply such 
 first principles to the great questions 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 arc 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 literature, many articles and 
 letters upon the strength, military and monetary, of 
 England. We have been given a formidable array of 
 figures to show that our 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 Revolution 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 
 Avars, the successive occupation of every European 
 capital, have eclipsed in the eyes of history these 
 early campaigns of Republican 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 during four years' campaigning, Belgium
 
 2 86 FAR OUT. 
 
 and Holland had been overrun, French dominion 
 extended beyond the Rhine, 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 European capital, 
 save Moscow and Constantinople, had been occupied 
 by the French troops ere it occurred to the mind of 
 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 1800 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 Europe. 
 
 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 Revolution 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 Revolution 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 and amidst conditions of life from 
 which alone those principles touching all classes, and 
 centering in the true 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
 
 288 FAR OUT. 
 
 hands the completion of this great work. It was 
 completed. The foundations of the present military 
 s} T stem in Germany were laid deep by Scharnhorst 
 in the land policy of Stein, and, quickly catching 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 Russia, and to-day,' :: ere half a generation has 
 passed, Europe 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 had 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 Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, 
 and Minnesota, had poured from 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 
 
 u
 
 200 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 laud 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 existing.
 
 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 our Celtic peasants, 
 Irish and Scotch, that our armies were able to achieve 
 victory. 
 
 It was a glorious epoch, that of the Peninsular war ! 
 Xine-tenths of the names embroidered in golden 
 letters on our regimental colours were won in the five 
 years intervening between 1800 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
 
 202 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 influence 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 our expedi- 
 tions. In Egypt alone had our land forces been 
 successful, and in Egypt every element of success 
 was on our side. From 17!'3 to 180U we had not a 
 single result to show on the Continent of Europe for 
 the three hundred millions sterling which 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- 
 pi u'tionately great. 
 
 But the greatness of the success in Spain and at 
 Waterloo did much towards hiding from view then 
 and since the actual looses 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 with interest in these days of breechloaders : — 
 
 1808, including Piolica and Vimiera .... 192 
 18(19, ,, Talavera 777 
 
 1810, „ Busaeo, &c 159 
 
 1811, ,, Barossa, Albuera, &c 1,401 
 
 1812, ,, Ciudad Eodrigo, Badajoz, Sala- 
 
 manca, Burgos, &c 1,990 
 
 1813, ,, Vittoria, Pyrenees, San Sebas- 
 
 tian, Nivelle, and Nive . . . 2,234 
 
 1814, „ Orthez, Toulouse 672 
 
 1815, ,, Quatre 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 Bussian 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.
 
 204 FAR OUT. 
 
 In the years 1809-10 there were recruited in the 
 ordinary method 20,815 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 22,870 recruits each year for the six years. 
 
 The average annual losses during the same period, 
 1809-14, were — deaths from all causes, 12,356 ; dis- 
 charges, 3,618; desertions, 4.579; total, 20,553. 
 During the six years the average effective strength 
 of the army stood at 173,000 men; the bounty in 
 the same time ranged as high as £89, 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 effective strength averaged 179,49(5. 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 yearlv 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 suffice 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. This, 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 
 effective 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 unjust system had to he 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 
 Xelson, 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, " 1 see there is neither law nor 
 justice for a man that is called a Methodist." Then, 
 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
 
 A PLEA FOR THE PEASANT. 297 
 
 same stringent measures had to be resorted to, but 
 without effect. 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 
 Regiment, 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. 
 
 assorted 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 
 Roman 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 trilling cost of men, about 
 22,000 annually in the six years of its greatest 
 tension, it was maintained : yet to till the vacancies 
 caused by casualties in the held, which only amounted 
 to a yearly average of about 1,000 killed, the bounty 
 for recruits reached the enormous figure of ±.'39 16s. 
 per head, or 1*1(5 10s. to the recruit and £23 
 to the various persons connected with bringing 
 him. Even bovs 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. Tbev 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. Room for the hunted peasant ! The 
 room left for him was in the front line of light, 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 rear -lorn 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 the 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 century had run 
 its course. And yet while abroad over the earth 
 Highlanders were thus first in assault and last 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 Roman 
 legion, Saxon archer, or Norman chivalry — men whose 
 sons died freely for England's honour through those 
 wide dominions their 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 forty 
 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 became 
 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 not 
 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 1809, the stream 
 of Highland soldiery, which had been gradually ebb- 
 ing, gave symptoms of running completely dry. Re- 
 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,G00 Skye men stood in the ranks at Waterloo. 
 To-day, in Skye, far as the eye can reach, nothing 
 but a hare 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. 
 
 We have already stated that the absolute prohi- 
 bitions against the enlistment of Roman Catholic 
 soldiers were only removed in 1800. As may be 
 supposed, however, the removal of that prohibition 
 was not 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 offered for the army. These 
 100,000 Irish peasants redeemed the honour of the 
 English army, and saved the Empire. As they 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 lie 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 Roman 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 } T ou 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 cottages 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 looked better under the 
 new order of things ; vast areas, where men and 
 women had lived, were turned into deer forests and 
 erouse 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 ; 
 
 x
 
 306 FAR OUT. 
 
 the Irish peasant could be starved into the capitulation 
 of the hovel which, full}' 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 
 Russian war, the numbers stood — effective strength 
 of line infantry, 103,000; Irish, 32,810; 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 light, 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. 
 
 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 unlike the forest 
 tree. 
 
 lias 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 
 grenadier 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 imalities, but be- 
 cause the decrease of the Irish and Scotch elements 
 marks also the disappearance of the peasant soldier 
 in the ranks o\' 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 he 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 so 
 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 millions 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 thousands, 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.
 
 A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 
 
 /~\X board H.M.S. Chimborazo, in Portsmouth 
 harbour, there is much apparent confusion 
 and disorder. Men in all stages of uniform 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.
 
 ?>12 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 length, everything being on board, the Chim- 
 borazo 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 
 ritdit.
 
 A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 313 
 
 And now the Chimborazo, 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 Chimborazo is a mighty machine to look 
 at as she lies alongside a wharf or in a quiet harbour; 
 but 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 b} r 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 }-ou 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 
 
 sympathised 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 Manship 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 Avas 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
 
 ol6 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 Nyam-Xyam 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 place 
 his services at my disposal with the same inarticulate 
 manner of speech that had before alarmed me. 
 
 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. AVhen the four first terrible davs
 
 A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 317 
 
 had passed, and I had leisure to watch more closely 
 the method of life pursued by Manship, I perceived 
 daily some new trait in his character. It became 
 possible to "\vatch him at odd moments as he stood 
 by pantry-doors or at the foot of cabin-stairs, or in 
 those little nooks and corners 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 dirty, 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 grow more clean-looking when the hour 
 of rest had come and he did his little bit of loafing 
 around the pantry or bar-room doors. I believe that 
 had he been followed into the recesses of his sleeping 
 place he would have been found in costume, cap, and 
 semblance always and at all hours the same. 
 
 As I watched him day by day I found that he 
 was the servant of many masters. The navigating 
 lieutenant, the chaplain, the doctor, and two or three 
 others — all were ministered to by him in the matter 
 of boots, baths, and brushing; yet I could not detect 
 that any delay or inconvenience 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 ace pted 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 Chi nth/train 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 tlie 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 most 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,
 
 :}20 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 place 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 then' 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 live days later, the same circum- 
 stances of paper, pencil, and petition were again 
 exactly repeated. I then found that my position 
 was fifth on the " roster," or list for porter, and 
 that every five days 1 might expect to be called upon 
 to sign my name. 
 
 lint my s cond 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 
 hlue 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 in sight, until, beneath 
 the black muzzles of Gibraltar's thousand guns, the 
 Cldmhorazo 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, and 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 
 thirty-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 Bisca\", or 
 send the Bock itself backward into the Mediterranean. 
 
 Belies 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 
 
 Y
 
 H22 FAR OUT. 
 
 bores and blunderbusses ! You could have told the 
 colour of the man's beard 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 
 wonder 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 lodge, from 
 whose sunlit platform the eye marks, at one sweep, 
 the neutral ground, the two seas, and the far-off sheen 
 of snow upon the Sierra Nevadas. Plight below, in 
 the midst of the 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 "Rock Stakes" 
 stand cheek by jowl ; and as the members of the 
 Gibraltar Ring lay the odds and book their wagers, 
 over the fence, half a stone's throw distant, Death on 
 his pale horse has been busy for a century hiving 
 evenly the odds and ends of many a life-race. 
 
 But meantime the Clumhorazo 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 Yaletta, is face to face
 
 A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 323 
 
 with one of history's strangest perversions, yet how 
 little does he think about it ! 
 
 Ricasoli, 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 sole 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 Ehodes 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 graved its mark upon churchy and 
 
 y 2
 
 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 of 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 were 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 where, along 
 the shores of the Golden Horn, the great queen city 
 of the East sits crownless and defiled. How long is
 
 A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 325 
 
 lier 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 the auberge of Cas- 
 tile is a barrack, and that of Provence echoes with 
 the brandy-and-soda and sheriT-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 Yaletta, and a short distance to 
 the right of the road which leads to Citta Yecchia, 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 accmainted with statistics 
 informs us that it is either the second largest or the 
 third 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 great 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 
 things in his life, but there was one thing he had not 
 done, 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 impossible beyond him too. 
 
 And now the Chlmhorazo, having embarked a regi- 
 ment of infantry for a far-off 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 poor 
 Hong-Kong lads doing their best to look jolty. 
 
 Two days pass, and then at the sunset hour Crete 
 is in sight. jN'o 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 Chhiiborazo 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.
 
 II. 
 
 OIX months had scarcely gone since Cyprus had 
 been a word of interest to every English 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 honour" for armed expcctanc} T and dis- 
 trust. It possessed associations connected with the 
 earlier ages of our recorded history which rendered it 
 a familiar name to every schoolbov. 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 
 ilowed from Olympus, all the pictures woven of 
 sensuous fancy of the Greek and Eoman poets were 
 reproduced, with the morning lnuffin, 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 a j sthetic 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 developed, 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 
 C} T prus, 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 our younger 
 sons to "Ruff's Guide" and the "Racing 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 
 tongues 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 picture had arisen 
 of our new possession as utterly false to the reality as 
 though some German, deeply read in the Roman 
 History of Britain, 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
 
 o32 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 barrenness. 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- 
 dure, 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 Cheffiick 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 papers took sides upon it, 
 honourable members made motions upon it, people 
 wrote 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. 33') 
 
 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 1G5° 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 circle 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 
 win, he nevertheless, on his return to the bosom of his 
 inconsolable family, with the proceeds of a " Consola- 
 tion Stakes " and 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 lit 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 who 
 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 fled 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 Paphos, 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
 
 oob FAR OUT. 
 
 of movement -which the white speck of canvas bears 
 upon its glistening wing. To the south commerce is 
 not wholly dead. Between the wide arms of Capes do 
 Gat and Chitti ships 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; 
 hut even here, although the great highway of the 
 world's commerce is hut 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 — all 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. 
 
 Stepping out upon the crazy wooden stage that does 
 duty for a jetty at Larnaca, 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 suddenly upon him 
 the consciousness of having reached here in Cyprus a 
 place lying completely outside the pale of European 
 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 sun-baked hills and dull, brown, leafless land- 
 scape that holds watch over Larnaea. 
 
 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- 
 alterable desolation than had Larnaea 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 island was first occupied. 
 We 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 Larnaea, 
 
 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 had come 
 to a different conclusion regarding its excellence. 
 " W 7 hat 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. 339 
 
 "upon the solid freedom of the heart of the people. 
 The heart of Cyprus is dead and buried. It was dying 
 ere ever a Turkish galley crossed the Karamanian 
 Gulf, 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 b}- 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 
 iisually left the former place at five a.m., but as the 
 English mail- steamer had arrived from Alexandria at 
 midnight, the hour of the post-cart's departure 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 profound 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 hours 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 started. 
 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 the 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 short 
 altercation ensued. The Greek driver, reinforced by 
 the proprietor of the cart, 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 ourselves at the mail office at half- 
 past three a.m., that for two mortal hours we had 
 waited for the cart, 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 delay of a minute would be his 
 ruin. The mules must proceed.*'
 
 A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 341 
 
 " No; not until the Lag was brought up." 
 
 "Forward!" roared the proprietor. The driver 
 shook his reins and shouted to the mules. There was 
 nothing for it but to seize the reins and stop further 
 progress. The mules, four in number, instantly 
 declared themselves on our side of the controversy; 
 they stopped dead short, and the imprecations 
 of their owner and driver being alike powerless 
 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 minaret and wretched mosque and 
 squalid building 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 1)}* a small grey owl ; a 
 hawk hovering over the thistle-strewn ground ; 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 Ottoman throned on the
 
 342 FAR OUT. 
 
 ISosphortis was about as great an anomaly as the 
 blinking night-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 rugged 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 sharper lines of misery and of filth. 
 People are often in the habit of saying that no words- 
 could fitly express the appearance of some scene of 
 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- 
 what free and easy in matters of morality and habits 
 of life, perhaps; hut these are things which "young 
 England " has long learned to regard with a lenient 
 eye, and 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 English rustic, with even the additional attribute 
 in his moral character of a respect for the game laws 
 thrown in. 
 
 " Good old Turk ! " " Poor old Turk ! " 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 modern 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 pressure of the Tartar's hoof. Amid its 
 violated shrines he sees, overthrown and rifled, the 
 purest ideal of that grand faith which covered Western 
 Europe with temples so beautiful that all the wealth 
 and effort of the modern world has failed utterlv to
 
 344 FAR OUT. 
 
 equal them. On this pavement chivalry lies prostrate, 
 history is blotted out, knighthood is disgraced, the 
 soul of Christianity is denied. 
 
 Take the Abbe}* of Westminster, make curb-stones 
 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 has done for St. 
 Nicholas, at Nicosia. No, there never came on this 
 earth a "wrecker'' like this Turk; all his prede- 
 cessors in barbarism, his protot}*pes 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 le>s 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 Tartar 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 ; 1 (lasting into eternal decay Greek,
 
 A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 345 
 
 Roman, 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 he 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 departure. 
 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,
 
 .°)4G FAR OUT. 
 
 minarets, filth, and the towering mass of the dese- 
 crated cathedral. 
 
 But as the sunset hour draws nigh, and the wan- 
 derer turns his gaze outwards over the plain, he 
 beholds a glorious prospect. It is the sunset-glow 
 upon the northern range. 
 
 Beyond the waste that surrounds 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. 
 
 HHEN miles north of Nicosia a road or track crosses 
 this north range of hills through a depression 
 about 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 landscape. 
 
 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 Karpos 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 north face of the range opens
 
 348 FAR OUT. 
 
 out to the 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-quarters 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. Everywhere 
 around spread olive-trees of immense age. Their 
 gnarled trunks, clasped round with great arms 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 tapering head high above all other foliage. The 
 path, winding amid dells of myrtle, 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 
 
 ruin had scarcely touched. The cloisters had suffered, 
 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 whose 
 blue waters rose the snow-clad peaks of Karamania. 
 
 Beautiful Bellapays ! while thy great walls rise over 
 the fruit-clad land the loveliness of Cyprus 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 ! AVell have they named 
 thee beautiful, whose beauty has outlived the ruin 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 corridor 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 politeness and ease which charac- 
 terise the peasant of every land save the "free-born" 
 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 thirty 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 there 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 
 in particular, a little longer than his comrades, did 
 succeed in catching between his teeth the lowermost 
 twigs of 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 efforts were, therefore, 
 directed to maintaining a balance upon two legs and 
 holding on Iry 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 
 Turk ? 
 
 Leaving Kyrenia on the morning of January 20, 
 we held our 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 rolled 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, became 
 safe. Passing the summit of the depression in the 
 range, where Pentahaclyon lifts his five fingers 
 directly over the path to the left, we began to descend 
 the stony and now arid south side. Below us the 
 great plain of ATorphu, 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 natural sight to be seen to-da}* in 
 Cyprus. It was the spring of Kytherea. Out of the 
 sun-baked mountain gushes a stream of pure, cold 
 water. 
 
 "No stinted draught, no scanty tide," but a rush 
 that seems to come from an inexhaustible subter- 
 ranean source, that no neighbouring indication can 
 possibly account for. Above and around nothing can 
 be seen save bare brown 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 beneath. 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 corn and vine, 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. •>•'•» 
 
 covered court-yards ; and the blacksmith's anvil, tin- 
 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, fhen may the island see her golden 
 age revived, and count her million souls, and her 
 " hundred-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 part 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 controlled by the duration of his 
 turban in shape around his head. While his turban 
 lasted he was a Bashi-bazouk, when it fell off lie 
 became an ordinary Ottoman. One of these headlong 
 
 2 A
 
 354 FAR OUT. 
 
 flights, however, terminated more disastrously. He 
 was going along at a tremendous pace, stirrups 
 clattering, a hag 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 
 caunes rolled another; never was the spirit of Bashi- 
 bazouk taken more completely out of a hero. During 
 the remainder of the ride to Kytlierea he kept a crest- 
 fallen position in the rear; but now, on this Nieosian 
 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. Skirting 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 sitrs 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 
 Adelphi, made a prospect not wanting in beauty, but
 
 A TRTP TO CYPRUS. 600 
 
 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 badinage of the mess-hut at Mathiati, 
 and perhaps there was as much corn of sense lying 
 beneath the " chaff" as could have been found among 
 many of the graver reasons elsewhere advanced in 
 favour of the new possession. 
 
 •2 a 2
 
 35 G FAR OUT. 
 
 As clay 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, during 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 of tombs near 
 Nicosia, a few horsemen, the last of a weary and spent 
 British column, were moving off from a ridge, leaving 
 one thousand dead comrades lying 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. 60 i 
 
 that day'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 he wrong to say skin 
 and hones, 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 mount 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 pleasant would 
 it have been to jog along those narrow paths upon an 
 animal 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 person 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 
 trusted 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 walnut-trees, now leafless, 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. 
 
 them, "is neither better nor worse in looks than one 
 of the 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. I'll 
 give you Caesar, Alexander, Bonaparte, Tamerhme, 
 and Charlemagne, and all the great generals the 
 world has ever seen, on one side, and I'll 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 
 anv 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 rules 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 modern 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 hundred 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 Beale would probably cause an 
 average Briton to regard it with less tolerant eye than
 
 362 FAR OUT. 
 
 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 
 modern 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 differing 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 Russian 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 
 obeisance 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 protects the pilgrim.
 
 A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 363 
 
 Into this life comes the Englishman, 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.
 
 3G4 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. 305 
 
 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 is 
 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 rims round almost at 
 our present level to the foot of Troados. But every 
 second is 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
 
 3GG FAR OUT. 
 
 under the shadow of Olympus, whose white head, hare 
 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; hut there is 
 no time to note anything save the lessening light and 
 the bare summit that rises ahove 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 beyond 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 sink.-^ into 
 a golden haze of sunset in the west; sea where Karpos
 
 A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 3GT 
 
 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 sunlight 
 upon his frozen forehead. 
 
 "We will stay until this " light of Asia" is blotted 
 out. Another moment and the Karamanian 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.
 
 IV. 
 
 T\0\YN the snowy side of Troados we ran at top- 
 most speed, ploughing deep into drift, and 
 crushing through crust, 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 lose. 
 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. 
 
 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 TRIP TO CYPRUS. 3G9 
 
 As before it had been a race with the sun up moun- 
 tain, in which we had won, now it 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 quite 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
 
 oTO 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 direction, 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 TRIP TO CYPRUS. 371 
 
 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. Ruins 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 by 
 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 Seycl 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. H's 
 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 
 
 2 b 2
 
 ;> i 2 FAR OUT. 
 
 this poor old black Tameroo, and held our course by 
 Shivellas 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 
 present 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 
 Roman, 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. 
 
 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 wine 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 alwavs so shy, and that Mallia knew the flavour of
 
 A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 6 {A 
 
 a flagon 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 hills.
 
 374 FAR OUT. 
 
 The atmosphere is intensely clear ; we are about 
 four thousand feet above sea-level, and as the sun 
 draws to the vest the valley between us and Troados 
 seems shot with varying hues of light, yet all so 
 clear that every pine-tree 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 comes up the hillside and joins us. He 
 carries a gun and a bag, but no game. Then we dis- 
 mount 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 very deep wall ; 
 low-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 
 wav from Moscow — for the fame of Kiku's sanctity
 
 A TRIP TO CYPRUS. 61 D 
 
 goes far over the Greek world. How this bell was 
 ever carried up the mountain must remain a mystery. 
 It is of enormous 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 since. "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 came 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 return 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 garlic, he thanked us, bade us 
 good-night, and retired. 
 
 Early morning at Kiku. How very beautiful it is ! 
 The sun peeps 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 hundred 
 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 des'troyer ; 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. 
 
 Amid the farewells of the assembled brethren we 
 moved off next morning from Kiku, descending north- 
 wards towards Kampo 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 dissolved his court, and 
 became our host, adviser, and director. 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 FAR OUT. 
 
 away the character of this condiment, and that, 
 viewed in the capacity of a conserve, it might he 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 earthly 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 close by where the surf broke. 
 
 All lonely now this shore, but thick with memories. 
 On this very spot the Turk 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, 
 hut 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 famished 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 modern 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 FAR OUT. 
 
 see by clearer light this modern 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 shingle. 
 
 The name of the Venetian ruler is still bright in 
 letters that were carved and gilt at the time Columbus 
 was steering 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 are 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 
 rums. 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. 
 
 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 curving 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 intervals 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. Xo 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 the 
 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 the}' 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 Roman is beyond our power, and the 
 reason of our incessant failure is obvious. We will 
 not take, as the Romans 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. Roche, 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. 
 
 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; 
 he 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-changers. 
 "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 you 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 
 Greek 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 
 
 2 c
 
 380 FAR OUT. 
 
 fashion, would probably urge the rule of thumb-screw 
 and gallows in dealing with Cyprus ; 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. 
 
 A. 
 
 London: Noyi:llo, Ewer & Co., GO and 70, Dean Street, W,
 
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