Journal of
Residence in
by Thomas Baines
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Edited by R.F. Kennedy Thomas Baines in
Africa, c.1848 |
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Thomas Baines was one of Vol. II covers the Vaal
River Expedition of 1850, in which Baines travelled
through the The pleasures of sketching. Riet Rivier (2 August 1851) |
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sympathize but little with my
forlorn condition, and insisted upon a detail of my somewhat eccentric
peregrinations, while, parched with thirst
and half choked with dust, I was hardly able to ask him for a drop of water;
and how long I should have waited for the cooling draught I know not, had not a
female in the wagon expostulated with him on ‘the sin of withholding water from
a thirsty person.
On
reaching the highlands of Grass Ridge about eleven in the forenoon, I saw a
group of wagons outspanned by the roadside, and soon recognised them as those I sought. My dog, which had wisely
chosen rather to stay by the flesh-pots than to accompany my wanderings,
bounded forth to meet me, and Abram handed me a cake of coarse meal with which
to beguile the time while he cooked the coffee kettle. He informed me that they
had seen a tiger, or, rather a leopard or panther, near the wagons; and shortly
after we had inspanned he pointed out a couple of
ostriches swiftly skimming the horizon, and, when I awoke from a short sleep in
the wagon, told me that four lions had just passed us. Thinking myself . . . .
as, I believe, does every ‘fresh arrival’, in a land of savage beasts, I began
to look to my fire-arms, when it was explained that the lions in question were
perfectly tame and were being carried to Algoa Bay
on speculation.
About
six the same evening we crossed the Sundays River, and, passing the
comfortable-looking inn upon its western bank, entered the Addo
bush, which Abram, determined if possible to make me imagine myself in a savage
land, represented as the haunt of elephants, lions, and numberless other wild
animals. A few of these creatures, I believe, do still inhabit its deepest
recesses but they are rarely met with, and their spoor is only occasionally
seen upon the road. About nine the oxen were allowed to lie down in the yokes,
and, as I did not make coffee, Abram invited me to take tea with him,
remarking, as he handed me the pannikin, that the
water he had used was not dirty but only a little thickened by the trampling of
the oxen.
After
tea a discussion arose between him and Oom - Uncle -
Jonas. January respecting the treatment of children, on which they appeared to
speak with much kindness and good sense; the doctrines of predestination and
fatality were next argued, and, though their opinions seemed to differ, it was
at length pretty generally agreed that a blind reliance upon fate ‘came rather
from the Devil than the Lord’. Old Jonas, referring to my last night’s
adventure in refutation of something advanced by Abram, said that while I was
absent his heart was heavy for me, but that now I had returned and was safely
sleeping with them it was again light. My own, I thought, must have been hard
indeed had it not been touched with the kind feeling of the old man, expressed
when he thought I was asleep, and in a language he did not know I partially
understood.
[4 Mar.] On the
morning of the next day I beheld for the first time a son of Amakosa, followed by his wife, who bore upon her head his
scanty travelling equipment and what appeared to me
the shafts of his assagais, the blades being probably
concealed in the bundle; and could not help contrasting rather unfavourably the ragged garments of my friends with his
picturesque costume and proud bearing, rather inconsistent, by the way, with
the accounts I had heard of the thoroughly subdued and humbled Kafir; and regretting that so fine a subject for the pencil
should ever be rendered less inviting to the artist by the march of civilisation. We crossed the Bushman’s River before sunset
and about eleven halted on a hill, near a long-deserted Kafir
kraal; the oxen were again made fast to the yokes, the general opinion being
that wolves were too plentiful to allow of their being turned loose; and, in
answer to a question respecting the time they intended to start in the morning,
I was informed that they never travelled on a Sunday,
but were glad to see that I had a watch with me, as they would now be enabled
to know exactly when the sabbath was ended, and delay
no longer than was absolutely their duty.
[5 Mar.] The night was cold and damp, and in the morning
the clustering dewdrops trembling on every spray and blade of herbage glittered
in the light of the rising sun, reflecting to the eye of the spectator the prismatic
colours and all their brilliancy, and reminding me
more forcibly of my home than anything I had yet seen in Africa. Light mists
were rising from the valleys, and the course of the Bushman’s River might be
traced for many miles by the vapour which filled
almost to overflowing the space between the hills on either side; on the other
side [of] the road was a vlei or small pool, in the
clear bright surface of which the overhanging trees were mirrored; alas, that
its purity should be only superficial, but it seemed to me too true a picture
of life and not less perhaps of travel in South Africa. Nevertheless, the
coffee tasted well, and, as mud has little or no perceptible flavour, the transparency of the fluid is perhaps after all
a matter of slight importance. In the afternoon a detachment of artillery
arrived from Graham’s Town and encamped around the vlei,
their white tents and wagons and piled arms forming, in conjunction with the
dark foliage, as pretty a bit of scenery as could well be desired.
Shortly
after I had wrapped my kaross around me for the
night, the Bechuana gathered round the fire and,
having sung a hymn, listened to a prayer of considerable length, apparently a
form with extempore additions repeated by one of them with a solemn earnestness
that made me ashamed of my own cold and faint-hearted devotions and of the
comparison I had drawn the day before between them and the Kafir.
If they had lost the picturesque wildness of the savage state, here was at