The Covenant Part 47

'It's the law,' the would-be agent said with a bland smile, and Tjaart, realizing how impotent he was to press his legal rights, would probably have accepted the offer and received less than one-sixth of what he had originally been promised had not a deputation ridden in from Grahamstown to prevent this injustice.

It was composed of three Englishmen at whose side Tjaart had fought in the Xhosa war, and two of them were his special friends: Saltwood and Carleton. 'Have you signed any papers?' Saltwood cried as he rode in.

'No.'

'Thank G.o.d. Now you, sir, leave this district or be horsewhipped.' 'I have my rights,' the man whined.

With a snap of his short hippopotamus whip, Saltwood flicked the intruder's saddle and called to Carleton, 'Show him what you can do.' And with a somewhat longer whip the wagon builder also struck the saddle.

'You'd better ride on,' Saltwood said, and when the man started to protest that he had legal rights, Saltwood snapped his whip and caught him on the leg. 'Thief, ride out of here,' he said, and the man, now thoroughly frightened, hurried away. Throwing threats, but only after he was at a safe distance from the whips, he started across country to other farms whose rights he would try to buy at nine s.h.i.+llings to the pound.

'Disgraceful,' Saltwood said as he explained what he and Carleton were proposing to their Boer friends: 'You've been our good allies. Without you we'd have no town back there, and we can't stand by and see you robbed. So you give us your claims and I'll send them to my brother in Parliament. I promise you nothing, Tjaart, except an honest deal. We may win, we may not, but at least you have a chance.'

As they were discussing the matter, Carleton happened to see Van Doorn's scorched wagon and identified it as one of his: 'How did you get it?'

'Traded for it at Graaff-Reinet.'

'You should have come to me. I'd have given you a proper price.'

'My sheep were in Graaff-Reinet.'

Carleton picked up one of the charred timbers and pointed to a small rubric carved into the wood: TC TC-36 (Thomas Carleton-Wagon 36). Had he been satisfied to work rapidly and without careful attention, this wagon might have been numbered in the 80s.

'You'll need a new wagon,' he said. 'When you trek north.'

Tjaart looked at him strangely. First it had been Jakoba, years ago; then Saltwood, when they were returning from the Xhosa war; and now Carleton all saying that the Van Doorns must emigrate north, as though there were no alternative.

'Who's trekking north?' he asked.

'Haven't you heard? Hendrick Potgieter departed last week.'

'For where?'

'The north. That's all he said.'

'Alone?'

'No, he had forty or fifty people with him. Sarel Cilliers left with him, you know. And Louis Trichardt left with Van Rensburg. Months ago. Maybe ninety people and seventy or eighty servants.'

Tjaart felt weak. Things were happening at a speed and magnitude he could not comprehend, and reluctantly he conceded that perhaps his neighbors were right.

Saltwood said, 'We thought that if men like you and Piet Retief do finally decide to leave us, you must not depart with ill feelings toward us. h.e.l.l, Tjaart, you fought with usside by side.'

So an agreement was made, whereby Saltwood took the warrants of several Boersamong them, Van Doorn and De Grootpromising to send them to Sir Peter in London to collect whatever the government might allow, but in order for the transaction to be legal, it was necessary for the Boers to sign away their rights for one s.h.i.+lling each, relying upon the good faith of their English friends. This the men did with absolute a.s.surance that an honest reporting would be made, for the partic.i.p.ants in this arrangement had fought as brothers in defense of their homes. That the Boers were now thinking of quitting those homes was as distressing to the Englishmen as it was to the Boers themselves.

Tjaart was deeply moved by the sympathy shown by Saltwood and Carleton during their visit to his still-ruined farm. In the war he had volunteered to protect the English establishments, yet the government had shown itself powerless to save Boer farms; hundreds had been ravaged, and now the government sided with the Kaffirs. However, he was convinced that the Grahamstown fighters like Saltwood genuinely sought his friends.h.i.+p and deplored the losses they had suffered. As he moved among the charred timbers of his barn he pondered seriously what he should do. Seeking Jakoba's counsel, he asked, 'Shall we build a new house?'

'We must go north,' she said bluntly. 'To seek free land.'

When Lukas and Rachel de Groot came south to report on the sad condition of their farm they fortified Jakoba's advice: 'We haven't the heart to build again. We're leaving.' 'To where?'

'Cross the Orange River. Then down into Natal.'

'I think I shall stay here,' Tjaart said deliberately. 'This is a good farm in a good region. I think the English will govern it well, one day.'

When the De Groots volunteered to stay and help him rebuild, he had an opportunity to see what a fine lad their boy Paulus had become. He was four, a stocky little man who wore heavy trousers like his father's. His copious blond hair was cut straight across his forehead, bobbing this way and that when he ran, and his st.u.r.dy limbs indicated the strength he already had.

In the repairs to the farm the boy took to himself many tasks that might have gone to men, such as struggling with broken timbers and keeping the cattle to their proper areas. Tjaart, looking at the lad, thought: How splendid it would be if that boy married Minna's daughter. But when his thoughts ran in this pattern they were sooner or later diverted to that dazzling girl up north, Aletta Naude, and he wondered if he would ever see her again. He pictured the inadequacy of Ryk, and imagined various ways in which he might come to a bad end: he proved a coward and Xhosa slew him; he stole money and an English officer shot him; he led a hunting party and an elephant crushed him. Always he disappeared, leaving Aletta to be saved by Tjaart van Doorn. The years would pa.s.s, but she would never age; never do household tasks. She was forever the nubile girl he had seen in her father's shop at Graaff-Reinet.

That name came up in the conversation quite often these days. From the first Theunis Nel had felt uncomfortable about living with a girl to whom he was not married, and when she became pregnant he felt downright immoral. But now that he was the father of the beautiful girl Sybilla, he began to nag Tjaart about taking the family to Nachtmaal, 'so that we can become acceptable in the sight of the Lord.' But Tjaart had no wagon and he was loath to borrow a neighbor's; still, Theunis was so insistent in his desire to sanctify his marriage, that Tjaart had to respect him, for in his own marriages he had experienced the same emotion. He was not an overly religious man, and certainly his two wives were rugged, rough women accustomed to frontier exigencies, but they had felt vaguely uneasy until their marriages were solemnized; there was something about living with a person of the other s.e.x which had mysterious overtones: the pa.s.sing of the month, the s.p.a.cing of fertility, the birth of a child, the establishment of a home, the blessing of a barn to prevent lightning. These mysteries deserved attention, and prudent men gauged their lives accordingly. If Theunis Nel, a man of G.o.d, found himself enmeshed in these human complications and sought verification, Tjaart van Doorn was not going to ridicule him, even though sanctification lay ninety-two miles away, with no wagon to cover the distance.

Slowly, slowly in the rugged mind of this stubborn Boer his enthusiasm for rebuilding De Kraal waned and another stratagem began to coalesce: If we did go to Nachtmaal, Theunis and Minna could be married and Sybilla baptized, and we'd already be well on our way to the north. Three days' turning to the east, we'd be on the track the others took. The De Groots could ride in their good wagon. And I'm sure he'd help me build something usable on the burned frame.

Once he came close to weeping when he thought of that fine wagon, charred to dust in the ruin of his farm. But something could be built. The rims of the wheels were there, some of the fittings.

Very cautiously he said to Theunis, 'You are right. We must have a marriage and a baptism. In Graaff-Reinet.' That's all that was said, but everyone within the enfolding hills at De Kraal understood that the Van Doorns were preparing to abandon the farm they had spent sixty years in perfecting. The women began to sort away things for which they would have no s.p.a.ce. The men sold off the weaker cattle. And little Paulus, approaching five, carried a hammer and banged away at everything.

No one mentioned a date for their leaving, but someone said casually that Nachtmaal would start in seven weeks. No one picked up the comment, yet day by day departure became more inevitable, and one day when Tjaart came upon his wife gathering eggs he saw that she was close to weeping. 'What a woman! You shout at me, "Go north!" and when I start, you weep.' She denied this.

He had a bad moment himself one morning when two Coloured herdsmen shouted, 'Baas! Baas! Look what come!' There, entering the farmlands from the hills at the southwest, came seventeen sable antelope, the most beautiful creatures in Africa, stately dark animals with white blazes across their faces and incredible scimitar horns that curved backward from the head, reaching forty, fifty inches. No purpose for these horns had ever been demonstrated; they swung so far back that they could not possibly be used in fighting. Perhaps, just perhaps, they were intended merely to be beautiful.

All the Van Doorns came from the house to witness this elegant parade. 'They must be the last ones south of the Orange River,' Tjaart said. 'See how gently they lift their feet.' How beautiful they were, how stately, this remnant of a great herd now diminished. Never before had they been seen at De Kraal, and their quiet pa.s.sage across the farm seemed to presage a similar movement of the Van Doorns.

That night, while the majesty of the sables lingered in the valley, Tjaart said simply, 'We'll be following them north. Our life, too, has been used up here,' and once these words were thrown into the air, Jakoba and Minna felt free to weep.

If ever a group of people entered their exile with heavy hearts and moral reluctance it was the Van Doorns, and they spent one night drafting a letter of justification to their English neighbors in Grahamstown and their Boer friends in Graaff-Reinet. Tjaart began by saying, 'I think we've all heard the statement the Americans made when they broke away from England. I'm sure we must do the same.' And with ample guidance from Theunis, plus an occasional strong remark from Lukas de Groot, he compiled these thoughts which appeared in the papers of each community: When in the course of human events a group of people decide to leave their homes, they must, out of decent respect for their neighbors, explain why they are doing so. We leave our farms with sadness, our neighbors with deep regret, but we can do no other. Our reasons for leaving will be adjudged by all good men to be just and reasonable.

The ravages of the past war show to the world that this Government is incapable of protecting our farmers against invasions of the Kaffir, and it has removed the last hope for an effective barrier to keep these hordes out of the colony.

Government has taken our slaves from us without compensating us adequately or honestly. It has ridiculed our traditional way of handling slaves and has listened only to contumelious adversaries who parade up and down England preaching lies and defamations. The honest citizens of this land, who live with the problem, have not been listened to.

Government has placed in the pulpits of our church predikants unfamiliar with our language. It has sent us officials to try our law cases who cannot understand the words we speak in our defense. It fills our schools with teachers who erase our children's knowledge of their mother tongue.

We leave soil claimed by the English Government without rancor, or threats, or ill will. We pay testimony to the good people of English heritage who have befriended us and we wish them and their nation well. We are satisfied in our hearts that we owe England no further obligations, and we are sure that the Government will allow us to depart in peace, for all we seek is to establish in the north a nation more obedient to G.o.d's rule.

Well after midnight, when five of the six partic.i.p.ants judged that they had made a complete and honest statement, Jakoba startled them by pointing out that they had omitted their most important grievance, and when Tjaart asked, 'What might that be?' she explained. And after prayerful discussion her husband obediently added this paragraph, which came closer to the truth than any of the others; for that reason it would be widely quoted throughout the world: Through a series of unfortunate laws Government has tried to alter the natural relations.h.i.+p between the races, exalting the savage and debasing the Christian. It has asked us to form a society in which the proper distance between master and servant is not respected. This is against the teaching of G.o.d Himself and we cannot surrender to it. G.o.d has said that there shall be master and servant, and that each shall keep his proper place, and we propose to form a new nation in obedience to that law, one in which people of all color shall have their proper place, under the guidance of those whom G.o.d has elected to lead them.

At four that morning the Van Doorns and De Groots, a trivial group in the large movements of mankind, confirmed with prayer the fact that they were heading not only to the Nachtmaal at Graaff-Reinet, but on to a world they could not even imagine. The Great Trek was under way. The Voortrekkers were in motion.

On the afternoon that Tjaart's letter appeared in the Graham's Town Journal, Graham's Town Journal, Major Richard Saltwood and Thomas Carleton saddled their horses, rasped out a series of orders to their servants, and galloped westward to intercept the Voortrekkers before they left De Kraal. Major Richard Saltwood and Thomas Carleton saddled their horses, rasped out a series of orders to their servants, and galloped westward to intercept the Voortrekkers before they left De Kraal.

They arrived in time to see the wagons loaded, and they stood in shock to witness the pitiful thing in which Van Doorn proposed to carry his worldly goods into exile: 'Those wheels won't get them to Graaff-Reinet.' But of this they said nothing.

'We can't let you go away like this,' Saltwood said. 'You've been our brothers-in-arms.'

With a sweep of his hand Van Doorn indicated the ramshackle buildings: 'This is what is left of generations of Van Doorns.'

'I know,' Saltwood said.

'And the slave money. Will we ever get our share?'

'There's no word from London, Tjaart. These things take time.'

'We have no more time.'

'Tjaart, how old are you?'

'Forty-seven.'

'I thought so. You and I are twins. Same year. You are my brother, and I want to buy your farm, because I respect it.'

'This?' The two men looked about them.

'Yes. I can finish rebuilding it. I want my home here.'

'You would pay for this?'

'Yes. We made a kind of deal, last year. It wasn't your fault the facts changed.'

So they spent that day discussing what a fair price would be, and where the road north would take them, and whether they would ever return. Evening prayers were held, with Theunis Nel translating the Bible in his own inspired way, one-third Bible, two-thirds Theunis.

In the morning it became apparent that for some reason the Englishmen were reluctant to depart, and their stay was so protracted that finally Jakoba asked bluntly, 'When are you leaving?' and Carleton said, 'We have a present for you,' and after a painful hour, over the eastern rim of hills appeared twelve oxen dragging a new Carleton wagon with a tidy dissel-boom, a fine set of patented brakes, and a double canvas cover to keep out the rain and heat. On a board under the body was burned the rubric TC TC-43.

'I need my sheep for the journey north,' Tjaart said.

'You owe us no sheep,' Carleton replied. 'You helped us start our colony. We help you start yours.'

'I think we should have a prayer,' Theunis said, and from Exodus he wrenched four timely texts about Israelites moving across the Red Sea and toward their promised land. 'We are the new Israelites,' he said, whereupon the men who had fought together so many times started their farewells.

When the new wagon was packed and the five men were preparing to go their separate waystwo Englishmen back to Grahamstown, three Boer families north to lands unknownan incident occurred which seemed at the time to be of no significance, whereas in fact it altered the history of South Africa.

A bold and cunning Xhosa prophet named Mhlakaza, with a ridged scar across his forehead, had taken advantage of the confusion following the war to slip into the area to spy out the amount of damage done in the recent raids. Not realizing that five armed men were ahorse, he suddenly appeared on the horizon in a silhouette so exposed that any one of the men could have shot and killed him.

Automatically Tjaart van Doorn raised his rifle to do so, but his son-in-law Theunis grabbed at his arm and cried, 'No! He's done nothing.' So Tjaart lowered his gun, and the Xhosa, laughing derisively, disappeared from view.

If Tjaart had killed him, and in the presence of two Englishmen, word would certainly have filtered back to London; Dr. Keer would have asked persistent questions; a scandal would have ensued, proving once more the heartlessness of the Boer; and quite possibly Tjaart would have been hanged. So it was fortunate that Theunis restrained him.

On the other hand, if Tjaart had had killed this crafty man, the lives of many thousands of Xhosa would have been saved, a n.o.ble people would have been preserved at full strength, and the history of this area would have been dramatically modified. killed this crafty man, the lives of many thousands of Xhosa would have been saved, a n.o.ble people would have been preserved at full strength, and the history of this area would have been dramatically modified.

On 15 March 1836 the Van Doorn party, as it came to be called, crossed the Orange Riverthat moody giant between banks of sandleaving the jurisdiction of England and heading into those vast lands which Mai Adriaan had explored seventy years earlier.

Through gradual accretions the group now consisted of nineteen families with seventeen wagons. The latter number was most significant in that it was the smallest number that would allow the formation of a proper cordon, or laager, inside which women, children and cattle could be protected.

The emigrant party contained nineteen grown men, but this included Theunis Nel, deemed largely useless despite his heroic performance when the Xhosa overran De Kraal, and an equal number of mature women, making thirty-eight adults, all battle-tested. They had among them ninety-eight children: some, like the daughter of Theunis and Minna, mere infants; others, like the older sons of some of the families, almost men, well capable of handling a gun.

So there were a hundred and thirty-six white people, but they were attended by two hundred Coloureds and blacks. In most cases these servants had received reasonably good treatment on the farms and had come to accept that they belonged with the Boers, not in the way a slave belongs to an owner, but in a paternalistic pattern, as much a part of the white family as the children.

These servants had remained loyal when others had run off, and they saw no reason to leave the baas now. His life was theirs; they would find no other work they liked better; they were as excited as he by this adventure of heading into unexplored lands. They'd accept an old pair of shoes or a tattered jacket with a smiling 'Dankie, Baas,' a scolding with a great show of misery. And between the good and the bad, if they met with other Coloureds or blacks, they would argue that their baas was the best in the land. To show that they meant it, most were prepared to die for 'their' white people.

Each of the seventeen wagons had a span of from twelve to sixteen oxen, plus half a dozen spares; all men, most boys and many of the Coloureds had horses. And the party as a whole had two thousand cattle and eleven hundred sheep, which explained why the Voortrekkers were lucky if they covered six miles a day.

Of the hundred and thirty-six Boers, only two men could read, Tjaart van Doorn and Theunis Nel, but all could recite long pa.s.sages from the Bible, and as they prepared to enter a new land, they compared themselves constantly with the ancient Hebrews who appeared in the Book of Joshua. Night after night, when the wagons were a.s.sembled, not in laager, for there was as yet no enemy, Theunis Nel, in the manner of a predikant, would read from that chapter and apply the lessons of that n.o.ble journey to conditions faced by the Voortrekkers. Inevitably the Boers came to believe that they were a reincarnation of Joshua's army and that G.o.d watched over them, too: Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that I have given unto you . . . There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life ... I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee ... Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law . . . turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper withersoever thou goest.

One other characteristic of the Voortrekkers applied particularly to the Van Doorn party: all the adult men, except the unfortunate Theunis Nel, had had more than one wife, and he was lucky to have any. If one took seven leaders of seven representative groups, the number of their wives would be 2-2-3-3-3-4-5, and seven typical ages for the brides would be 13-13-14-15-29-31-34, the first series proving that men liked their wives young, the last indicating that no woman was allowed to remain a widow long. When men were Old Testament patriarchs, as these men were, they used up their women.

They were in general an intransigent, opinionated group of Dutchmen whose isolation had caused them to turn their backs on the liberalizing influences of the eighteenth century, except that Tjaart himself had quoted from the American Declaration of Independence in laying forth his reasons for emigrating. They felt no need for Rousseau, Locke, Kant or the German theologians who had begun to expose the mythological elements in the Old Testament. They were satisfied with the fundamentals their Dutch and Huguenot ancestors had brought with them in the middle 1600s and rejected any new ideas imported by the English. Above all, they were self-confident, so that when one Voortrekker came upon a little stream running due north, he had no hesitation in announcing, 'This is the beginning of the Nile River,' even though that body lay a good two thousand miles awayand forthwith he christened it Nylstroom (Nile Stream).

The wagons in which they would live for the next two or three years were special affairs, not at all like the great lumbering things that crossed the American prairies. They were small, only twelve to fifteen feet long, and rather low to the ground, except that when a canvas shelter was thrown over the top, they appeared higher. They were surprisingly narrow, and were so packed with family possessions that there was no room to sleep inside, except for the mother, who made a rough bed for herself atop the baggage. The iron-banded wheels were invariable: small front ones with ten spokes, larger back ones with fourteen.

A superior feature of the Voortrekker wagon was its disselboom, the pivoted main shaft that was so fixed to the front axle that it provided maximum flexibility in both guiding and in riding easily over the b.u.mpy trail. But only the last pair of oxen were harnessed to the disselboom; all others pulled against chains and harness that were attached to the wagon in various ways.

Since nearly two thousand wagons would partic.i.p.ate in the early move to the north, trails became marked across the veld, but many parties like the Van Doorn struck off on their own, making their way over the veld from one conspicuous flat-topped hill to the next.

It was a habit of the Voortrekkers to linger at any congenial spot, sometimes for a week, at other times for a month. Then the wagons would be brought into proximity, but not in laager, and the men would ride far afield to hunt while the women tended to sewing, and the making of needed articles, and the baking of special dishes. Jakoba was particularly pleased when the wagons halted at some spot which contained a good supply of ant hills, for as a girl she had learned how to utilize these remarkable constructions that rose two and three feet above the veld, s.h.i.+ning like little red-sand mountains.

Selecting a st.u.r.dy one off by itself, she would take a heavy stick and break open a small hole at the spot where the side of the dome touched the earth; she was careful not to disturb the upper part of the ant hill, for it was this dome which ensured fruitful use. When the hole was broken, a flood of small black ants scurried about the landscape and soon disappeared. Then the opening was crammed with sticks, leaves and other flammable debris and set afire; for an hour or so it blazed and smoldered, becoming in due course an effective, excellent oven in which all kinds of food could be prepared.

Jakoba liked to bake her bread in such ovens, but she also knew how to prepare a delicious toasted curry dish made of antelope strips bathed in a sauce flavored with dried onions. The men were so fond of this that as they traveled they kept an eye alert for ant hills, and the women learned that when such were plentiful, there would probably be a restful halt. And if there were no hills, they prepared a bobotie.

The determined movement of these Voortrekkers must not be thought of as a gallop across the landscape toward a known, specific destination; it was more like the slow displacement of a small villagewith all the utensils, the babies' cribs, and the cattle moving patiently along.

But in one startling aspect the trek did not resemble the slow displacement of a town: among the fourteen thousand Boers who would ultimately travel north, there was not one clergyman. The Dutch Reformed Church, which had played, and would play, so significant a role in the history of the Boers, refused to sanction the ma.s.s exodus, and for substantial reasons: it suspected that the exiles represented a revolutionary spirit, and Calvinism could not tolerate that; it feared that the farmers were moving away from church influence, and this had to be opposed; and it felt uneasy about unauthorized movement into unexplored territory, since in such unfamiliar land the dominance of the church might be diminished. Resolutely the church turned its back on the emigrants, castigated them as revolutionaries and ignored their pleas for a.s.sistance.

More remarkable was the fact that in the most significant event in South African history, individual predikants also cut themselves off from the people, with many dominees flatly refusing to accompany the wanderers. The Voortrekkers, one of the most religious people on earth, with a profound reliance upon the Bible, were thus rejected by their own church. There could be no baptisms, marriages, solemnized burials, or even weekly services, yet at the end of the travail the Voortrekkers would be even more solidly supportive of their church than they had been at the beginning, and after having refused the travelers the services of religion, the Dutch Reformed Church would gather the emigrants back into its hands, converting the whole nation into a theocracy.

The man who suffered most in this strange development was Theunis Nel. Acutely aware of the Voortrekkers' spiritual needs, and grieved by the refusal of his church to help, he volunteered at various intervals to serve as subst.i.tute predikant, but invariably the majority rejected him on the grounds of his blemished eye and crookbackt.

He did not complain. Patiently he bore his wife's scorn, the ridicule of his fellow travelers, the lack of support from leaders like Van Doorn and De Groot. He tended the sick, tried to teach the children, and recited prayers at the graves of those who died. At one funeral, when an old man was being buried short of the new home he had hoped to reach, Theunis was overcome by emotion and launched into a graveside homily, a sort of informal sermon about the transitory nature of human life, and after the burial party had left the site, Balthazar Bronk, who took religion most seriously, asked Theunis and Tjaart to stand aside, and when the others had left, he berated the sick-comforter.

'You're not to preach. You're not a predikant.'

'We were burying a poor old man.'

'Bury him. And keep your mouth shut.'

'But, Mijnheer Bronk'

'Tjaart, tell this simpleton to obey the rules.'

And when two young people from another party wanted to marry and came to Nel soliciting his a.s.sistance, he was willing to comply, but again Bronk intruded: 'Bed.a.m.ned, I've warned you five times against posing as a predikant.'

'But these young people want to start their new life'

'Let them wait till a real minister comes along.' And he was so adamant that the couple had to depart, their union unsanctified. But when Bronk was not spying, Theunis rode after the pair and told them, 'G.o.d wants his children to marry and multiply. I name you man and wife, and when a true predikant does arrive, ask him to bless your marriage properly.' When one did come after three years, he was able to baptize two children also.

Where was this exodus heading? No one worried. The families were more concerned with leaving English rule than with their destination: some proposed to cut east across the Drakensberg Mountains, which had hemmed Shaka's empire. Others, like Tjaart van Doorn , were determined to head north, cross the Vaal River and settle in remote valleys.