A day of historical discoveries

I wasn’t particularly interested in the life of Hans Bezuidenhout at the time. Remember, he was Freek Bezuidenhout’s older brother who had sworn revenge over the grave of his brother. The same Hans who insulted my great-great-great-great grandfather Frans Labuscagne and Great Willem Prinsloo at the funeral when they showed their disinclination to rebel against the British occupation.  The Oracle had told me about him, however. And Barry and Ernest Pringle had also told me about him. In fact, it seemed that everyone I talked to felt that I should make a point of visiting his grave.

There was another reason. His monument was on my way home, and I had passed it several times over the past ten years without seeing it. The final reason was that although his role in the Slagtersnek rebellion is adequately described in history, the exact places where it had all taken place were ill-defined. The places were usually called by their original Dutch names. Many of these names no longer existed, since they were replaced by Scottish settler names. I felt that it would be a historical contribution if I were to find and mark these sites with GPS coordinates so that other historians could pinpoint them exactly.

And so I left Braeside and retraced my steps a few miles. They told me I had driven past the monument where it stands against a mountainside near some poplars where the road crossed the Sakrivier. Those were practically the only directions I could get from everyone. It wasn’t much, but I was resolved to try.

After a while “just a few miles up the road,” started to feel like I was on the wrong road. I reached the Tarka/Bedfort/Cookhouse junction and stopped. I took the Tarka road, and then turned around less than a mile further. It instinctively felt wrong. There was a farmhouse by the junction, and the signboard said “Mickey Doo,” but I couldn’t see a sign of life so that I could enquire. I thought about turning left again, but I had already been there twice. I was certain turning right was wrong, but I went there anyway. At least this was the only stretch of road that I hadn’t been on the previous day.

I meet Scott of the Karoo

The scenery was charming, but I felt ill at ease with my direction of travel. After a goodly distance I began to drive more slowly, so that I could think faster. I felt I must have missed a clue somewhere. Then, in the distance I saw a thin line of dust appearing. It looked like a toy locomotive on a track. I could see that it was a man on a motorcycle, which I found strange, because you don’t encounter much traffic around these parts, and I don’t think I’d ever seen a bike here before. It was more than just a man on a motorbike, however. It was actually a dog on a motorbike with on the back. Well, in my romantic imagination that is how it seemed to be. The Jack Russell terrier on the petrol tank, with ears flapping in the wind, while its owner did the driving.

As he approached, I saw him slow down, so I did likewise. When I lifted my flipper in salute, I could see that the gentleman wanted to have a talk with the stranger with the outlandish license plate. I think he asked me whether I was lost or something. I forced a dignified expression and began to explain my quest. At hearing the name of Hans Bezuidenhout, the ruddy face cracked a smile and extended a hand of welcome.

“Chappy Scott’s the name” he said. “I live right back there.”
He motioned with his thumb across his shoulder to a farm which seemed to be half-hidden amongst some brilliant green trees up the road. I smiled back and met his grip.

“Herman Labuschagne,” I grinned back. “All the way from George.”

In his eyes I could see at once that I had just met an interesting man, and that he was interested in my quest as well. But first there was the matter of protocol and pleasantries. If you haven’t grown up in the country you wouldn’t understand. The object when two total strangers meet is always to first attempt to establish common ground. You explain who you are, you explain where you come from. Then you explain where you are going to. Those are the base essentials. If you really want to score points, however, you should now see if you have any kin in common. If you do, you make an instant transition from being regarded as a “potential friend,” to being so to speak a “ long lost brother.”

I knew this of course, and so I deliberately ventured: “My people lived here before the Great Trek, and they were involved in the Slagtersnek rebellion. I’m on a journey to trace their footsteps.”

From Chappie’s expression I could tell that I had spoken the magic words. We weren’t exactly family, but sharing common roots in this spot of wilderness counted as practically the same thing. I knew that all the strangeness was now something of the past.

Chappie wasted no time in starting to tell me what he knew about the history of the region. He told me his farm still had an old water powered mill which was used in olden times to grind flour for the local farmers. He himself, he explained, has been a professional hunter since the 1960’s. He seemed to have travelled the whole world over the years, and had been to the United States a great many times. He had even once partaken of a dog sled race across Canada, he said. Chappy also told me that I was lucky to have run into him, as he is not often home. I found it strange to think that a man like him in a place like this could be such a citizen of the world at large. But I forget how much the earth has shrunk.

When I told my mother about him a week later, she immediately smiled and said: “Oh I remember Chappy! We always used to see him at the Professional Hunter’s Association banquets in Sun City.” Later still, one of my business partner’s saw his picture on my Facebook page, and expressed with astonishment that he knew Chappie too. Chappie used to be a friend of his late father. Many people will know Chappie as the celebrated “Scott from Africa” who also operates a professional hunting school. His website is www.scottofafrica.co.za

This left me quite astonished. We had no modern ties with the Winterberg at all, and I would have wagered money that no-one there would have had a chance of knowing anyone that I knew. And yet, it was certain now that my father and Chappy must have met on many occasions.

A big cattle truck with a trailer passed us and went rumbling up the mountain road, leaving us full of dust.

While we talked, an SUV pulled up and a lady rolled the window down to squawk: “You look slightly lost.”

Chappy laughed, and said something like, “you reckon?”

I listened to two neighbours talking and enjoyed observing how people still had time for one another in the deep countryside.

I looked at what I had written in my journal beneath the blue wisteria that morning.

“There is a sense of timelessness here,” I had written. “Life feels colonial. It feels as if Nelson Mandela is still in jail on Robben Island for no-one looks down, servants seem respectful and people appear to have money. Not oceans of it, but certainly enough to live dignified and gracefully. I look at how these people live and I feel we’ve lost something. I keep trying to think what it is, but ultimately I think it is ourselves…”

After a while Chappy told me to follow me as he would go and show me the site of Hans Bezuidenhout’s grave. And so off we went, Chappy on his motorbike, with the dog on the petrol tank standing with his nose in the air and his ears flapping merrily. I trailed behind, feeling out of place, yet totally at home in this strangely familiar world. When we finally found Bezuidenhout’s grave, it was roughly where I had thought it should have been, but unlike at least two people had told me, you can practically not see it from the road. Perhaps if you knew exactly where to look, but to the eye of a passing stranger it was certainly invisible.

Chappy draw the fence wires apart for me so I could step through, and then I did the same for him. This too, is country protocol. These were the things you know simply for having been born there, for no-one teaches you how to behave like country folk, except time and observation. Another sign which silently distinguishes country folk from new intruders, is the way that country people have of holding branches and gently letting them go behind them when you file along a brush-lined trail. Townsfolk are not even aware of it, but they invariably pass and let the branches sweep back to hit the guy behind them in the face. So there are a dozen or a hundred little things that together combine to separate people who are in touch with the land from those who simply exist upon it.

We enjoyed the view, and Chappy told me about Bushman paintings in the cliffs. That’s another country characteristic, peculiar to modern times. We know that when you’re told where Bushman paintings are, you don’t reveal it in public. This is information that country folk share with country folk alone, lest the city folk should come to take their pictures, and spray Coka Cola on the precious drawings so that the pictures would look better.

I get to meet the Philips family

By the time Chappy wished me well and turned back to his farm, I had scribbled notes about several places and pictures down the road to Tarka which he suggested I should see. My schedule did not include more stops, but I was tempted to cheat a bit by lingering a little longer. And so when I drove on, I could not help myself. I had to turn in at the old stone house of Malcolm Philips. Chappie said he might know a thing or two, and he could give me directions to someone down the road who also knew a lot about the local history. I would thank Scott of the Karoo afterwards for this good suggestion.

If you’re used to country ways, you could have predicted what happened next. I introduced myself to Malcolm’s son. He said to come with him as he was sure his dad would like to meet me. That’s how I met Malcolm. Malcolm insisted I should come in for tea. There he introduced me to his wife, and together they introduced me to Willem, a boy who was spending the holidays with them on the farm.

We exchanged the usual country talk, which meant that within ten minutes it felt like we’d known each other all our lives. Malcolm’s son showed me his guns, and we talked about farming and hunting and the “bloody drought” that seemed to last forever. Malcolm told me how his father had lost his family farm in a drought of many years ago. He returned eventually and bought it back, as well as the farm next door. But times had not always been so bad. There also were some good years.

Consider, for example, the celebrated wool boom years, when all the sheep farmers had earned large profits. Such were the good times during which Malcolm’s beautiful old sandstone house had been built. Those where the years when wool fetched “a pound-a-pound,” or one pound sterling for each pound of wool. Wool was so expensive in these times, my grandmother once told me, that they used to walk along the barbed wire fences to collect even the barbs of wool upon the barbs. Malcolm smiled when I told him my story and nodded cheerfully. “That’s exactly how it was!” he confirmed.

As is the custom in the country, when it is meal-time, people invite visitors to join in. Even when they weren’t expected. Custom dictates that the stranger should protest and say that he would rather not, and fumble some excuse. Then the host is supposed to respond with, “nonsense! I won’t hear a word of it. You’re going to join us for a meal, provided that you don’t mind that it is just something simple.”

I have been part of the phoney modern world for long enough to feel a little uncomfortable to be imposing on people’s hospitality like this, but at the same time declining an invitation can be precariously close to insulting one’s host. Malcolm wanted to show me Hans Bezuidenhout’s monument again, plus a few other things, however, and he wanted to have lunch first. This it came that I had to join the family in the kitchen for a splendid country meal.

Malcolm had a universe of breathtaking country stories to share. There was, for instance, the story of horse trainer who used to work for his grandfather. He was an Irishman named John Towers. This man was so reclusive that he only went to town twice a year. When he did, he would not ride his horse. Instead, he used to lead the animal on foot so that he could roll away every sharp stone in the road which he thought might injure the hooves of his beloved beast.

The curious thing about the Irishman was that when in town, he would invariable go on a binge of epic proportions. By Monday he would be so drunk that he could no longer walk, and had to ride back to his farm draped across his patient horse like a wet rag. By then the horse would simply have to find his own way across the jagged stones.

People loved their horses in those years. Malcolm’s grandfather, he told us, would sometimes amuse everyone by riding his magnificent stallion into his grand stone house. Fortunately the house was more than big enough. The passage alone, seemed almost big enough to me to accommodate a small car.

To illustrate how confusing the matter of farm names had become over time, Malcolm told me that his farm is called Arendsberg on the title deed. It was, however, known as Klipheuwel by the locals. Within living memory, however, that had changed to Oxford. This is not the only example. It is no wonder, therefore, that historical places have become hard to find along these parts. Malcom said his grandfather had bought the farm from an old Voortrekker for the price of a trek waggon and a span of oxen, plus a few sheep and a bit of cash. That seemed expensive to me. Many of the Voortrekkers simply gave their farms away to their British neighbours. Or abandoned them. Or as in the case of the splendid Murray farm near Graaff-Reinet – traded it for a large cast iron cooking pot.

Visiting the old De Witt farm

After lunch we tumbled into Malcolm’s pickup and set out on my tour. I felt vaguely guilty at having clearly taken over the family’s whole day, but everyone seemed cheerful and excited about the outing, which set me more at ease. I wanted to return to the Bezuidenhout grave, but Malcolm wanted me to see other things. I was in no position to make demands.

Time and experience had taught me that there is within country folk a deep rooted desire to share the memories that they are the custodians of. It is not as if they merely want to treat a visitor to their stories. Instead, they sense an opportunity to pass them on. It is as much an act of sharing something that they treasure, as it is a subconscious attempt to pass on some of their custodianship. This is my theory and I think that I am right. If I am, I would be pleased, because it signifies a good thing. People want the tales of olden days to live on. And so they wrap each one in the cotton wool of ordinary conversation and basic pleasantries, before slowly handing it over to an interested visitor. The ceremony is cloaked in ordinariness, but there should be no mistake when understanding that it is a profound act. Something that should be valued and respected for the precious gift that it contains.

We drove down the river to where there was a very old house, which seemed to date back to somewhere near the Voortrekker times. It had been a simple pioneer’s cottage originally, but had later been converted to a barn. This farm used to belong to the De Witt family, which have long since vanished into the modern world. Malcolm said he wanted to show me something. Drawing up at the weathered old stone buildings, he tugged at a door of a building that was now being used as a hay shed.

When we stepped in we were greeted by the sweet warm scent of lucerne hay. The bales were stacked right to the beams, and from there even higher up into the roof space. We climbed up the tower of baled to the top where there was a gable window from which we could look out across the farm.

“Those were poplar beams,” Malcolm told me. “But the amazing thing is how they were joined.”

I followed his finger and then I saw it. I could not see a single nail in the entire roof structure. Where the beams were joined, holes had been drilled, with wooden pegs driven through. This had held the structure securely together for perhaps a 150 years. Even now they showed no sign of needing any maintenance. I was impressed. Something else which impressed me was the fact that even though I looked carefully I saw no sign of wood borer damage.

Malcolm explained that poplar timbers were useless outside, but as long as you kept them dry they were unusually long-lasting and durable for construction. Funny how these casual remarks from an older generation can sometimes explain the things we see around us without questioning them. It instantly made me understand why there were poplar groves across the entire Karoo region.

In this largely treeless land, the pioneers had to build homes which required timbers. Clearly they had learned that poplar was ideally suited, being very hardy for surviving the droughts, baking summers and freezing winters, and also being faster growers that would resist insect pests. I was starting to be glad that I had allowed Malcom his initiative.

Next to me Willem was staring out the window. I smiled when I considered him. He told me he was 15 years old. A townsboy from Queenstown who was visiting for a farm holiday. His father had brought him for a hunt the previous year, and he had quietly fallen in love with this wild and rugged landscape. He told me he hoped that he could become a farmer one day. He seemed an unlikely candidate with his spotlessly neat clothes, flawless white skin and china blue eyes. And yet, there was something of the pioneer about him.

I think I saw it in the way that he looked out the window as the sun was streaming through it, drawing long streaks in the floating dust. I knew he saw something that afternoon. Perhaps it was just a dream that was materializing. Or hope.

What do we see when we are 15? My world looked entirely different at that age. Life did not have as many dimensions. Or maybe it had more. Either way, I somewhat envied him his ability for still seeing like I thought he did. At the same time I also pitied him, knowing that he would lose it one day – just like we all do. It is one of life’s unappreciated gifts that we don’t see the realities of the future for what they are while we are young. In the meantime Willem was a pleasant curiosity. He spoke not a word of English, but he could understand it easily. Malcolm mostly spoke English. There were exceptions, though, when he wished to emphasize part of a story so that he could be sure that Willem would understand. Then he would speak Afrikaans in that peculiarly pleasant accent which is characteristic of the English farming folk. He chose his words slowly and carefully, like someone who had a respect for grammar, and who knew that words contain more meaning than dictionary might suggest.

The dogs enjoyed the hay loft, jumping about and sniffing into recesses for the scent of mice and rats. Malcolm then took us to a slight rise just behind the old house. There he pointed to a very large circle of stones.

“Willem, what do you think this is?” he asked the boy.

Willem squinted with concentration and then admitted that he had no idea.

It was a threshing ground. Many modern people would have no idea what this is. Such ignorance would have been unthinkable only 60 years ago. The site looked as if it might have some bedrock that might have been covered by sand and stones over time. Often such a threshing ground would be levelled out with a slab that was plastered with a mixture of clay and cow dung. This is also what the pioneers used as flooring in their homes. The mixture would be dry, smooth, pleasant to the touch, warm beneath bare feet – and completely odourless. There was nothing primitive about this ancient form of homemade concrete.

I knew exactly how threshing worked, but somehow I enjoyed it to hear Malcolm’s animated explanation to the lad. Threshing floors, he said, were always built on a high rise so that they would be exposed to the prevailing winds. Sheaves of wheat or grain would then be scattered across evenly across the surface. A horse or some similar animal would then be lead in circles across this carpet of grain. Gradually it would trample the stalks until most of the grain would separate from their stalks. After a while the farmer would then use hay forks to cast the stalks into the air. The grain seeds, being heavy, would then fall to the ground, while the lighter chaff and stalks would be blown away by the wind.

“The wind can’t be too weak,” Malcolm said, “and it cannot be too strong. It must be just right.”

This is how grain was threshed since time immemorial. The Bible speaks of the same practice several times. Our ancestors did it like this, and in third world countries the practice still continues. Afterwards the grain would be gathered into bags or baskets so that it could be stored or perhaps sent to Chappy Scot’s old stone mill to be ground into flour.

The De Witt graves

I wondered about this De Witt family. De Witt is a well-known Karoo family name. Malcolm drove down into the alluvial fields next to the river to show us two old lonely graves. One gravestone was smashed to pieces so that there was no inscription to read. The other was a cross which was still intact. We cleared some branches and deciphered the Dutch inscription which read:

Andries Johannes Jacobus De Witt geboren den 27 Junie 1877 en ont slapen den 31 October 1897. Ouderdom van slechts 20 jaren 4 maanden en 4 dagen. – “Andries Johannes Jacobus De Witt, born the 27^th June 1877 and deceased the 31^st October 1897. Age of only 20 years 4 months and 4 days.”

It seemed such a shame to me. At 20 life has barely started for a country lad. You can tell how precious time is from how his age was presented to the last day and month. Someone loved this young man. Someone grieved for him. Someone used to tend his grave. And now he is unknown to history. I wondered how he died? It could have been sickness, a fall from a horse, snakebite or a Bushman arrow. In frontier times life was a gentle flame that was always flickering before the draft of possible extinction.

While we were pondering this, I noticed ant bear holes around the graves and casually wondered why they often dug near graves. I would soon know the answer, and I will share it later.

A Boer fighter who was buried and ploughed under in the dead of night.

Meanwhile Malcolm drove to another part of the farm again. He wanted to show me the original settler’s fields where grain and vegetables used to be grown, but where he now plants alfalfa, or lucerne, as we call it in our country. The fields used to be irrigated from a very long irrigation furrow that had been dug by hand from far up the river so that the water could be fed by gravity. Along the banks of the furrow the pioneers had planted fruit trees. Although they were now extremely old, there were still a few gnarled quince trees, figs, apples and some bottle pear trees which bore pears of a size that we no longer see.

I could imagine that once upon a time it must have been a bustling farm, full of the sounds of animals and children, with everyone working together towards a common goal. Times have changed, however. Families have grown small. Young people are drawn to the cities, droughts have drained the energy of the original old souls who once lived there, and farmers have been forced to convert to more profitable mechanised endeavours. Life was still good, but I could see that in the process we had lost something. We had grown further from our roots, to where they were less able to feed us properly.

It was in one of the fields, however, that there lay a piece of history which Malcolm particularly wanted to share with me. During the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 he said, there had been a skirmish between the Boers and the British higher up the farm. In the process one of the Boers was wounded. Being too badly injured to travel, his companions brought him to the De Witt farm so he could be nursed. This was a very dangerous thing to do, for if they had been found aiding and abetting what the authorities considered to be the enemy, they would have been severely punished.

Unfortunately the wounded fighter died that night. Perhaps this really made things easier for the De Witts, except that now they had a new problem. How to dispose of the body without being seen? At the time it was common for farm labourers to be compulsive tale bearers, and everyone knew that the story of a wounded Burgher would find its way to British ears. It was subsequently decided that the man would be buried in the darkness of the night, somewhere in the family’s field.

The next morning early, the labourers were given the day off and told to go and enjoy themselves somewhere else. The farmer then took his oxen and set about to plough the field. In this manner the lonely grave of a Boer fighter became lost. Today the exact position of his grave remains unknown, and no-one even has an idea what his name was. It is possible that only Malcolm and his family knows the story, and if do not write it down, then in time it will probably be lost to the history of man.

This, I thought, illustrates to me that there is value after all in being what I consider myself to be sometimes – a minor league amateur historian who has spent his life slowly recording microscopic pieces of history that should ideally be preserved. They may not be of tremendous value, but I think they are worth salvaging. Let the big league historians write about the major battles and significant landmark events. I will pause to collect the little pebbles – and try to tell something about ordinary lives from extraordinary times.

Discovering the scene of an ancient Voortrekker tragedy

From the fighter’s grave, we bade the old De Witt farm adieu and headed up the road again. Malcolm was still not ready to go on to Hans Bezuidenhout’s monument. He had something else that he was saving for me. On the eastern side of the road, he finally turned in by a rusty farm gate. Bumping and squeaking we drove into the veld across the stones and dry Karoo bushes. We were heading for a delta-shaped valley that lay between the toes of the mountains. He wanted to show me a piece of history that has, as far as we know, never been recorded. It was the scene of a tremendous tragedy that has almost entirely been forgotten.

At a spot where old abandoned fields finally surrendered to rocky slope where the mountain starts to rise, Malcolm stopped the pickup and we got out. He walked over to some scattered stones and pointed at them. The story that he told was sad and frustratingly short, because the told people who had known the full story had long since passed away. Yet, even though the details have been lost, one cannot fail to be moved when one imagines what the circumstances must have been like. It proved the discovery that I would remember most about my entire journey.

During the time when Great Trek started, Malcolm said, the Voortrekkers chose this very spot to outspan their waggons and let their livestock graze. Little did they know it at the time, but this would mark the spot where the angel of death would come harvesting their field. It started when a dreadful plague broke out, as quietly as plagues invariably do. A rash or a fever here, a flickering candle in a tent late at night over there, and a family dressed in black in the morning. That’s how it must have begun.

They must have thought that it would be over soon, but they were wrong. The sickness soon began to spread from tent to tent. Whether it was smallpox or measles Malcolm doesn’t know for certain anymore. What is sure, however, is that the effect was devastating.

The first casualties were buried somewhat lower down where the soil was softer. Soon there was an entire row of graves, which ended where a rocky patch made digging difficult. The pioneers started a second row. And when that row was full, they started a third. So they kept on adding graves until they were at the base of the mountain. That is where the dying must have ended finally. It seemed poetically ironic that the dying stopped when the earth became too hard to dig anymore.

It was difficult to identify the graves today, because nature was reclaiming the last of the little piles of stones. Year after year, for decades and generations, baboons have been turning all the stones that can be moved along the mountain sides. This is what they do in their search of scorpions, which is a delicacy that all baboons prize. Unfortunately this has also had the effect of slowly destroying the graves.

Malcolm said that originally the rows could be seen more clearly. He reckoned there used to be roughly a hundred graves per row – and there had been more or less three rows. 300 people. I was not sure that there would have been as many as that, but what does it matter? Life was precious on the great frontier, and the border community could not afford to lose a single one. 12 would have been a tragedy. 50 would have been disaster. And there were more than 50 graves here. Perhaps, indeed, two or three hundred. One could not help but feel touched by gentle evidence of whispering tragedy in this solitary place.

I have visited a great many sad places in my life before. I’ve been to very many cemeteries where thousands of people lie buried. I’ve seen mummies in museums, foetuses in bottles, and military graves. This quiet and forgotten place, however, seemed to me the saddest place that I had ever visited. It made me want to sit down by one of the little piles, and press some flowers into the soil. Just so that humanity might show that it still cared about all the wasted human potential that was buried there. But it was dry again, as it always seemed to be, and there were no flowers. All you can do is stand and stare. Listen to the silence. And imagine that you hear the voices of vanished people who once upon a time had been no different at all from you and I.

I tried to imagine the dreadful trauma by imagining the valley filled with tents and waggons and thousands of head of sheep and cattle before my mind’s eye. The Voortrekkers had known death and fear for generations. They were used to it to some extent. They must have been both sad to leave their homes, and also excited at the great adventure that lay ahead. They must have been looking forward to rebuilding new lives with more happiness and dignity. That makes it to me all the more tragic to think that at the very doors of leaving a dark past in search of a brighter future, they had to be struck so dreadfully.

There was nothing that they could have done. Invisible germs killed without discrimination. Folk remedies, mountain herbs and Dutch patent medicine would have had no effect. There were no doctors, and even if there had been, they could only have tried to make the patients comfortable until they died. The pioneers could do nothing more than nurse their loved ones, bury them when their breath went still, and sing their melancholy psalms when the angel of death was done.

There were no inscriptions on the stones. The rock was too hard to be carved. There was no time to import proper stones. It was not even part of the custom of those times. Mothers and fathers simply prayed by the graves of their loved ones, watered the bitter soil with their tears, and then walked away into a brooding future. They would never see those little piles again. They knew they had to leave them behind where they would be framed by the golden hills and the blue sky. To be tended by the citizens of the mountains until they were made level with the ground once more. They had to leave the dead behind so that they living could find life ahead.

The Voortrekkers were cheerful people, though. They had to be. The routes of their migrations were marked with graves in the wilderness. If they did not have the faith of their religion and an ever-present sense of humour, I don’t think they would have made it. Had they known that there would yet be other acres of tragedy similar to this one – although not necessarily due to disease – they might have turned around and gone back home again. Fortunately, though, we do not know the ways of the future. And so, driven by the thirst for freedom, and sheltered by ignorance of not knowing how much more suffering they would encounter, they continued. Perhaps this doesn’t even count as bravery. Perhaps they were just like we would have been. Following the road of life that seemed to be the best at the time – mostly because it appeared to be the best out of a range of bad alternatives.

The plough of God

Later, when I returned home again, I wrote a piece about an ecological observation which we made near the graves and posted it on Facebook. I thought I might share it here.

“In the Eastern Cape there is a region around the towering Winterberg mountain, where you can vanish into a circular region of wilderness valleys in a forgotten circle of loneliness where time has partly been forgotten.

When my ancestors went on the Great Trek between 1836 and 1838 the British settlers who came in 1820 gradually took over the area, and their descendants still farm the region to this day.

After I had nursed my car across the torturously bad tracks that cross the Winterberg, I stopped at a beautiful 100 year old Victorian sandstone farmhouse to ask directions. A friendly man named Malcolm Philips came out to greet me. I was invited to lunch - and despite the fact that I had other plans, he kept me there for the rest of the day. Such are country folk in the faraway places of the world. They are somehow just more human than most.

Malcolm had with him a 15 year old boy named Willem Van der Linde. He was a townsboy from Queenstown, but he and his father had hunted with Malcolm in the past, and as he hoped to be a farmer one day, he had been sent to spend the holiday in the Winterberg. Willem spoke Afrikaans and Malcolm spoke English - just as the custom had been when my ancestors still lived there in the 1820's.

While Malcolm was showing me some ancient graves, Willem pointed to some patches of disturbed ground and wanted to know what caused them.

Malcolm, who had grown up in the mountains, immediately replied, "oh that is the plough of God."

I was mystified. I couldn't decide whether he was serious or confused. I had never heard the expression before.

Then Malcolm explained. When it is dry, like now, the baboons dig up large patches of grass, looking for grass and sedge roots to eat. In the beginning he used to be annoyed at this disturbance of his grazing and he used to shoot the baboons. But over time he came to realize that they fulfilled a unique purpose which was very much in his favour.

When Malcolm inherited the land from his father, and bought some adjacent portions, the farms had been severely overgrazed for many years. Sheet erosion had meant the washing away of topsoil so that large patches had become bare of vegetation, with the soil being hard and sterile just like porcelain. Even where vegetation did grow, it was mostly confined to inedible bushes and prickly grasses of low nutritional value.

Over the years, however, he noticed that whenever the baboons dug up patches, the soil would remain loose and soft for a long time. When grass seeds blew onto it, they worked their way into the ground where they would germinate. When it rained, the water would soak in, instead of simply running off. Malcolm showed us several patches where healthy stands of Themeda triandra - or Rooigras - had become decidedly dominant on the digging patches of previous years. In this manner, nature restores itself.

Willem was a contrast to the land. He was very fair-skilled and looked like a typical city boy, whom I would have rather expected to see with a skateboard under his arm at the mall, and out here in the perfect wilderness. Yet, in the violet blueness of his eyes, I could tell that he saw something in the dry and barren land which other did not. He had what I call "seeing eyes." I have noticed eyes like that before. They see more than just the world before them. They see into the past, and far beyond the past into the future. In his dreams, I thought, he was walking on land such as he would own himself one day.

I asked Willem if he knew that grass seeds drill into the ground? At this, Malcolm became excited and tried his best to find some seeds from last season. It is one of the wonders of the world that so few people know about. Many grasses have seeds that have a sharp-tipped head, about half as big as a match head. Attached to this would be a tail of up to the length of a matchbox, which is often comprised of one or more thick and hairy strands.

These strands, when they become moist, rapidly twist and turn. If you take a strand and moisten it in your mouth, you can see it twist and curl before your very eyes. When dropped onto the ground, the seeds will writhe and slowly bore their way deep into the ground. It is a miracle of nature, and a beautiful element of design in the complex machinery that God designed to keep the world alive and well.

Sharing the secrets of nature is one of the great privileges of life. As we stood there upon the sun-baked plains, we were childlike in our enthusiasm to share the knowledge with a new generation. I told Willem what I knew, and Malcolm told him what he remembered. We were exchanging jewels of country knowledge, not just with each other, but with ourselves that afternoon. There was a sense of discovery, just in finding that we knew as fact that things that the other explained to the listening youngster.

These were things my father taught me, which he had been taught by his father, and his father's father. It was the same with Malcolm. We were paying forward what we knew. We were letting nature speak with human voices. Willem didn't say much, but he listened with close attention to every word. Perhaps, if time and opportunity directed it this way, he would be telling his own children what he had learned from two nostalgic fuddy-duddies on a sunny afternoon one day.

It has taken Malcolm 30 years to restore his farms, and still the job is not complete. When the first bulldozers arrived in 1957, his predecessor had spent a thousand pounds to create a contour in this one valley alone, so that the water would not wash the soil away so fast. My father always told me, you can destroy the land in just a few short years, but it will take you 20 years or more to build it up again. And that was in the sour veld, which recovers far more quickly than here in these sweet veld parts. I told Malcolm this, and he agreed. The job of restoration would probably take until both of us are dead one day.

When we drove homeward late that afternoon, we were tired, thirsty and slightly sunburnt. I asked Willem if Malcolm's Labrador was going to ride back on the pickup.

"No, she's too fat," he said.

She would have to jog home, the way she came.

I smiled. Everything made me smile out here. I saw myself in Willem. I saw the future in him. I also saw myself in Malcolm, and recognized between us something that there used to be between my father and I. They were the same age, incidentally, Malcolm and my dad. Life brings you there, eventually. When 15 year olds start calling you "uncle," according to country custom, and when you start realizing that you must share what your father taught you, so that the world would have a future. Malcolm and I understood that. One day Willem will understand it too.”

Next instalment: The desperate gunfight in which Hans Bezuidenhout, his wife and his 14 year old son defended themselves against a unit of Pandoers; locating the grave of the fallen Hottentot soldier; learning about stone and the hidden smiles that 

Beyond the summit of the Winterberg

The sun was threatening to capitulate when I drove down the stately avenue of Eildon and nodded to the old stone church. I had spent much more time absorbing the stories of the Baviaans, and knew that I would have to hurry. The Oracle had told me to relax, however. Beyond the Winterberg there was a guest farm, and overnight should be no problem.

I squinted at the deepening amber of the surrounding skies and tried to measure how much daylight was left over. The sun sets late at these latitudes, but in this world of mountains one somehow feels disorientated. Phoning ahead was no option, because in these parts cell phones play  no part in communication. They will probably be growing mealies on mars before these old valleys ever get reception.

The road seems in deceptively good condition before you reach the foothills of the Winterberg.

Driving past the last remaining farms before burrowing into the Winterberg’s crumpled petticoat folds, one might think that one was in a Scotland where it doesn’t rain. The original farm names had all been changed by the British settlers. I drove past Craig Rennie, and began to think, “ag nee man, these roads are not so bad.” But at that very moment Winterberg began to snigger as I started to slip into first gear.

As the road became steeper, the road became rapidly worse, until after a while I started understanding the frowning looks upon people’s faces when they heard about my plans. I was beginning to worry that I had made a mistake. But it was by now most definitely too late to turn around. And so I crawled up the steep side of the stately mountain which dominated the mountain strongholds of the settlers.

Merino sheep stare with bland astonishment at an automobile that have found their mountain home.

I wrote in my diary later: “Drove back across mountains. Terrible road, but dry. Lovely countryside.”

“Rookseine op Winterberg,” the celebrated author, F.A.Venter wrote in his unforgettable books about the border years. Gelofteland, Offerland, Beloofde Land, Bedoelde Land. Literary treasures which, according to my knowledge, has been withheld from the world at large simply because they have never been translated into English.

That’s fine with me. I can be selfish too, and feel smug because at least my own eyes had read them as a youngster. No, I devoured them. They became part of me, because they described a world that really existed, and a people that my ancestors had been part of. The wars and fears and simple pleasures. They all originated in the land that I was driving through. These were books which nurtured patriotism. These were stories that made one appreciate what we have today, simply because they make us realize how high a price was paid for everything.

“Smoke signals on Winterberg.” That’s how the vagabonds communicated in the days when they made their sport by terrorising the pioneers who lived far from their own settlements towards the east. Smoke along these peaks often signalled imminent danger, and to this day it spells alarm to farmers, who know how quickly the eastern winds can drive its flames. Although the fields were greenish, the area has low rainfall, pasture burnt is slow to regrow. Fire is no friend along these parts.

At this point I have had to turn around twice before on previous expeditions when the road had been too soggy.

I did not pause near the summit of the Winterberg to drink in the view. I merely slowed down a little, an then plunged across into the seaward slopes that started losing altitude quite rapidly. It was then that I encountered a section of road that suffers from subterranean seepage. Here I had had to turn around twice in preceding years because the road had become churned into sucking mud so deep that I did not think a tractor would have made it through.

This time, however, it was still ugly, yet dry enough to enable me to pass. I was grateful, because I was now getting tired and hungry and I knew that I was bordering on becoming grumpy. I would have picked a fight with myself, but I knew I was too tired to talk back, so I just sulked and kept staring past two sets of white knuckles around the steering wheel, and trying to look past the bug splats on the windshield.

Hard baked in the recent drought, the road becomes a quagmire after rains.

Still, it was hard for one’s soul not to spread its wings in such enchanted country. I could tell that it must get freezing cold at this altitude. Even now the temperature had fallen and smoke was pouring from the chimneys of the precious few farmhouses that could occasionally be seen. Here people lived far from one another.

Small bridges cross charming streams.

I began to notice Dutch farm names again. Palmietfontein (Sedge fountain) and Zuurplaas (Sour farm). Then Kelso. Dutch and British, mixed together, the way it became in the frontier after 1820. The way it remains today.

Old abandoned homes reach out to passing strangers.

Here and there I noticed old abandoned houses. A few were ruins of crumbling stone. From some a melancholy whisper seemed to emanate.

“Save me!” I could imagine their hollow doorways crying.

“From what?” I could picture my reply.

“The greedy hands of time,” the would shout back at me.

To which I would answer back: “I can’t.”

“Why not?” the ruins sighed.

I shrugged and frowned.

“Because it’s none of my business. I’m just passing through.”

And then I could imagine them start to weep.

“That’s what I thought that you would say. That is what everyone who might have loved us always say…”

The junction where left and right lies equally far from nowhere.

After many miles of twisting through meandering vales and hills, the mountains finally spewed me into a valley where my day’s trail suddenly made a junction. It seemed strange to see a provincial road sign again. It seemed unreal to see the names upon it. To the right, Bedford and Adelaide. A very long and torturous journey across the mountain ridges, I knew from a previous exploration. To the left, Tarkastad.

Painted country towards the great north.

You get the impression that it was near. But if you did, you would be wrong. You’re still miles away from anywhere. You’re still in a world which tourist guide books have never heard of. The yuppies with their custom camping vehicles don’t really know about these parts. And that has preserved its graceful charm.

The old Voortrekker road used to run just left of the poplars.

Not certain which way the guest farm was, I ventured left and decided to hope for the best. If I was wrong, it wouldn’t be the first time. Wrong turns are the keys that often unlock adventure’s door. It transpired that my choice had been right, however.

Poplars creating a graceful tunnel.

Even so, I was thinking I was wrong before I found that I was right. The road continued for longer than I imagined it would, and the shadows were already very dark when I finally passed a grand old stone house, and then chanced upon a discreet signboard which read: “Ashley and Joanne King. Braeside.” The Oracle had been right after all. www.braesidesafaris.co.za

A hard but beautiful country.

The only problem was that it soon appeared as if I was going to be disappointed. Driving through a charming avenue of wizened trees, I stopped before a farmhouse, hidden in a dense growth of poplar trees. The powdered dust drift past and settled where it could. The car looked as if it had survived a pyroclastic flow.

Running out of daylight fast.

I got out and cautiously knocked on what seemed to be a lifeless household. There was no reply. A slow walk around the house convinced me that there was nobody home. It was then I knew that I would be having a long night drive ahead of me to Tarkastad. I was tired enough to dread the last haul, but I was more worried about the very real possibility that I would find no accommodation in Tarkastad. If you’ve ever been there, you would know why. After Tarka, I didn’t think chanced would be much better either. Queenstown was a long way off, and by then I’m sure the countryside would be fast asleep.

The avenue to Braeside.

Still, there was no point in prolonging the inevitable, so I slid back into the cockpit and turned the car around. Just before leaving the farm track however, a farmer’s pickup came driving down towards me. When farmers come bearing down upon strangers on deserted roads, I always get a sense of foreboding. The feeling that there would be shotguns pointed, and a vision of snarling dogs smearing their muzzles against your window and leaving evil streaks of foam and sounds of scratching nails upon the paintwork.

Fortunately reality could have been no kinder. Out stepped Greg, who respectfully approached a stranger who must by now have been looking like an air crash survivor.

When he stretched out his hand, I suddenly recognized him. Not that I had ever seen him before, but I knew his kind. One of those good country lads which every mother hopes her daughter would bring home one day. We exchanged pleasantries, and I explained my plans. There was a problem, though. Greg’s family was on their way to the big city the next morning and the house was still a mess after a whole batch of hunters had finished theirs safari and cleared out that day.

However, if I was prepared to tolerate some disorder, he explained, they might be able to make a plan. “Tolerate disorder?” I mused. This was a corner of precolonial Africa. I would have been happy to share a warthog’s burrow and tolerate a thousand fleas. An unmade hunter’s lodge would be a luxury beyond comparison. I think my tired smile must have given him the answer.

And so we continued our conversation while he radioed for his mother, who soon showed up with a maid, who hastily began to set things in order. Greg told me he was a business student at Rhodes University. I asked him what he had in mind for a career. And then I saw his eyes light up. He eventually wanted to return to the farm, he said. And be a professional hunter like his dad.

I smiled again as I listened to his plans. I only realized it later on, the reason why I liked him. I think it was because I saw myself before me. I was 19-something or 20 again and full of dreams. I had plans for the future. I was too young to know what lay ahead, and it was for the better. “God made the world round,” Isak Dinesen said in Out of Africa, “so we would not see too far ahead.”

I asked him about his business studies, and I listened to his words. I heard my own words then. He was saying what I would have said in those days. Later I would think about their beautiful family farm. It is a harsh land that they live in. Generous, in certain ways, but generous at a price. I did not think he was made for business. He was a child who belonged to the mountains, like I was myself.

I had no place to tell him so, but I secretly hoped that he would find his way back to his mountain home again one day – and that the mountains would treat him well. You don’t speak about the wilderness with eyes that sparkle like his did if the wilderness did not own your heart completely. And I have grown old enough to know that one’s life is most complete when lives where one’s heart is. Don’t ever go too far from that places that hold your heart. If you do you may not die. But you will wither. And wither is not far from dying, if you know it for what it really is.

There had been no need at all to set things in order at the lodge, I felt, but I knew the way of country folk. Joanne and her maid fluttered around and did a series of domestic things, and apologized that nothing was the way they wanted. I just stood around and felt guilty for having caused so much drama.

You don’t know true luxury until you’ve tasted mountain air in desolate country, though. You don’t know peace until you’ve heard it’s silence. Around me the night held practically no sound at all except perhaps two crickets. Full moon was drawing near, but it had not yet risen, and the night was without shadow.

These were country folk such as those I had known where I grew up. Solid, kind and generous to strangers. Joanne retired to the neighbouring farm where they live, and returned an hour later with her husband Ashley, bringing home-baked venison pie, homemade soup, eggs, cereals, milk, and rusks for coffee. What more could one ever ask for? Life could not possibly be more complete. I would not have trade a night in the mountain for a banquet at the Ritz.

And so I had a seven bedroom house all to myself, a grand home-made supper better than the fare of royalty, and a long day full of memories to digest. I thought about how similar my own world had been once upon a time. The culture of country hospitality, big old houses that were very quiet on unusually dark nights, stars that shone so brightly that they almost hurt your eyes – and a sense that nothing that the future holds could possibly be reason to concern oneself. 

Wrapped in all this pleasant familiarity I dropped into a bed with luxurious linen, and kept on falling into the darkness, through the stars and into a dreamless sleep that knew no interruption until I awake to perfect silence.

The beginning of another day. I had planned to head on early, but the beauty of this graceful land had laid its hands on me. I always take my own coffee with me, for I had learned that the finest things in life – good whiskey, good company – and good coffee – cannot be counted on when one is journeying to unexpected places.

I made my breakfast in a kitchen that had the typical safari scent that I remembered. A scent of people and food, and a hint of smoke from a fireplace where great stories had been told. That’s where I had obtained much of my most valuable education. Beside a fireplace, in the company of my father and his safari friends who talked about conservation – and how harvesting life from the wilderness is always an integral part of its sustainability. Of character and sportsmanship, of culture, and business and politics and investments.

I had been a little mouse back in those days, but a mouse that had big ears. And now it all came back to me.

Instead of clearing out right then, I sauntered across the water furrow bridge, through the poplar forest and down to the river which lay green and mysteriously clear as jade. I lingered where the weeping willows dip their branches into the mirror surface, and remembered a story that my uncle told me of his youth near Frankfort in the Riemland. There were bird cries that made unexpected echoes in the darkness of the poplar grove. The blue sky smelled sweetly and I wondered what the cause was. I could not bring myself to leave. It was too charming.

The python-like coils of a wisteria, shedding the last blossoms of the season.

I had another coffee on the patio, sitting beneath a truly ancient wisteria which had coiled itself around the pillars like an incredibly thick python. In the dust, I saw a movement, and realized what it was. It was a hoopoe bird. My father had always considered them to be a sign that good fortunate was ahead. It stemmed from his safari years, when, on several occasions when he and his faithful friend Cal Tipton had been unusually lucky, it had begun with the sigh of a rare and elusive hoopoe bird.

The hoopoe bird which my father had always considered synonymous with imminent good fortune.

I tried to remember when the last time was that I had seen a hoopoe. Then it came to me. It was on the morning of my father’s funeral, almost exactly a year ago. When we turned into the church yard, there had been two hoopoes before our vehicle. I remember that my mother and I both smiled when we saw them. It probably didn’t mean anything, but the sight of them were comforting. I was glad to see one this time also. And it made me look forward to the gathering morning.

The patio at the guest lodge of Braeside where I wrote my journal entry.

I wrote what I was thinking in my journal while the purple flowers slowly rained onto my pages, onto the table, and into my hair. I just held one hand over my coffee and continued to record what I had seen the previous day. “I noticed,” I wrote, “that people still take their hats off when they greet you in these parts.” I’m sure nobody else even notices these small gestures, but that is how Greg and Ashley had greeted me the previous day.

Where I grew up we were taught the same protocol which now you seldom see. To doff your hat when meeting strangers or your elders. This always seemed to be such a refined aspect of culture and respect to me. When I grew up I began to notice something else, though. I began to notice something that I don’t think people specifically taught their children, but which society had nevertheless quietly adopted as a natural custom. I namely became aware that even when the old men greeted me, they would lift their hats to me.

Showing respect to one’s betters in this way seemed well-deserved and natural. But showing such respect to juniors was something far greater. It suggested to me that these were people who respected humankind to a degree that we don’t understand today. The greatness of great men, I do believe, can be measured by how they treat those who are less important than they are.

At this realization I lifted the nib of my fountain pen. Sometimes you run out of words when you want to write down what you’re thinking. Mostly because words are just inadequate. I screwed the cap back onto my old Pelikan with a smile. When it was made in Germany, about 60 years ago, I don’t think the makers ever would have thought that it would be writing in a place like this in Africa – so far from what others would consider to be reality.

I sat and drank in the surroundings while the blue wisteria blessed me steadily with its purple rain. I have been on many spontaneous journeys in my life before. My carefully-made plans had been often changed by unexpected circumstances. These events frequently brought me to moments such as this one. It is then that you pause to wonder: – are we merely stumbling along the roads of life? Or is there an unseen hand that guides our journeys, directs our footsteps, and upon more occasions that we tend to realize, purposefully turns us off the beaten track to linger where still waters lie?

And so we revel in pleasant solitude for longer than we thought we would, and drink thirstily from what we have been offered. After that we continue on again, but differently from before. Nothing slakes one’s thirst as totally, as when you’ve drunk from quiet waters.

Next instalment: Forgotten tragedy in a mountain valley, the plough of God, a soldier’s grave that had to be a secret – and the reason why antbears always like to burrow where coffins are buried.