The Bechuana Boy

I sat at noontide in my tent,

And looked across the desert dun,

Beneath the cloudless firmament

Far gleaming in the sun,

When from the bosom of the waste

A swarthy stripling came in haste,

With foot unshod and naked limb;

And a tame springbok followed him.

With open aspect, frank yet bland,

And with a modest mien he stood,

Caressing with a gentle hand

That beast of gentle brood;

Then, meekly gazing in my face,

Said in the language of his race,

With smiling look yet pensive tone,

“Stranger--I’m in the world alone!”

“Poor boy,” I said, “thy native home

Lies far beyond the Stormberg blue:

Why hast thou left it, boy! to roam

This desolate Karroo?”

His face grew sadder while I spoke;

The smile forsook it; and he broke

Short silence with a sob-like sigh,

And told his hapless history.

“I have no home!” replied the boy;

“The Bergenaars--by night they came,

And raised their wolfish howl of joy,

While o’er our huts the flame

Resistless rushed; and aye their yell

Pealed louder as our warriors fell

In helpless heaps beneath their shot:

--One living man they left us not!

“The slaughter o’er, they gave the slain

To feast the foul-beaked birds of prey,

And with our herds across the plain

They hurried us away--

The widowed mothers and their brood.

Oft, in despair, for drink or food

We vainly cried; they heeded not,

But with sharp lash the captive smote.

“Three days we tracked that dreary wild,

Where thirst and anguish pressed us sore;

And many a mother and her child

Lay down to rise no more.

Behind us, on the desert brown,

We saw the vultures swooping down;

And heard, as the grim night was falling,

The wolf to his gorged comrade calling.

“At length was heard a river sounding

’Midst that dry and dismal land,

And, like a troop of wild deer bounding,

We hurried to its strand--

Among the maddened cattle rushing,

The crowd behind still forward pushing,

Till in the flood our limbs were drenched

And the fierce rage of thirst was quenched.

“Hoarse roaring, dark, the broad Gareep

In turbid streams was sweeping fast,

Huge sea-cows in its eddies deep

Loud snorting as we passed;

But that relentless robber clan

Right through those waters wild and wan

Drove on like sheep our wearied band:

--Some never reached the farther strand.

“All shivering from the foaming flood,

We stood upon the strangers’ ground,

When, with proud looks and gestures rude,

The white men gathered round:

And there, like cattle from the fold,

By Christians we were bought and sold,

’Midst laughter loud and looks of scorn--

And roughly from each other torn.

“My mother’s scream, so long and shrill,

My little sister’s wailing cry

(In dreams I often hear them still!),

Rose wildly to the sky.

A tiger’s heart came to me then,

And fiercely on those ruthless men

I sprang--alas! dashed on the sand

Bleeding, they bound me foot and hand.

“Away, away on prancing steeds

The stout man-stealers blithely go,

Through long low valleys fringed with reeds,

O’er mountains capped with snow

Each with his captive, far and fast;

Until yon rock-bound ridge we passed,

And distant strips of cultured soil

Bespoke the land of tears and toil.

“And tears and toil have been my lot

Since I the white-man’s thrall became,

And sorer griefs I wish forgot--

Harsh blows, and scorn, and shame!

Oh, Englishman! thou ne’er canst know

The injured bondman’s bitter woe,

When round his breast, like scorpions, cling

Black thoughts that madden while they sting!

“Yet this hard fate I might have borne,

And taught in time my soul to bend,

Had my sad yearning heart forlorn

But found a single friend:

My race extinct or far removed,

The Boer’s rough brood I could have loved;

But each to whom my bosom turned

Even like a hound the black boy spurned.

“While, friendless, thus, my master’s flocks

I tended on the upland waste,

It chanced this fawn leapt from the rocks,

By wolfish wild-dogs chased:

I rescued it, though wounded sore

And dabbled in its mother’s gore;

And nursed it in a cavern wild,

Until it loved me like a child.

“Gently I nursed it; for I thought

(Its hapless fate so like to mine)

By good UTÍKO it was brought

To bid me not repine,--

Since in this world of wrong and ill

One creature lived that loved me still,

Although its dark and dazzling eye

Beamed not with human sympathy.

“Thus lived I, a lone orphan lad,

My task the proud Boer’s flocks to tend;

And this poor fawn was all I had

To love or call my friend;

When suddenly, with haughty look

And taunting words, that tyrant took

My playmate for his pampered boy,

Who envied me my only joy.

“High swelled my heart!--But when the star

Of midnight gleamed, I softly led

My bounding favourite forth, and far

Into the desert fled.

And here, from human kind exiled,

Three moons on roots and berries wild

I’ve fared; and braved the beasts of prey,

To ’scape from spoilers worse than they.

“But yester morn a Bushman brought

The tidings that thy tents were near;

And now with hasty foot I’ve sought

Thy presence, void of fear;

Because they say, O English chief,

Thou scornest not the captive’s grief:

Then let me serve thee, as thine own--

For I am in the world alone!”

Such was Marossi’s touching tale.

Our breasts they were not made of stone:

His words, his winning looks prevail--

We took him for “our own.”

And one, with woman’s gentle art,

Unlocked the fountains of his heart;

And love gushed forth--till he became

Her child in everything but name.

Thomas Pringle.

[Illustration]

AFAR IN THE DESERT.

Afar in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:

When the sorrows of life the soul o’ercast,

And, sick of the Present, I cling to the past;

When the eye is suffused with regretful tears,

From the fond recollections of former years;

And shadows of things that have long since fled

Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead:

Bright visions of glory--that vanished too soon;

Day dreams--that departed ere manhood’s noon;

Attachments--by fate or by falsehood reft;

Companions of early days--lost or left;

And my native Land--whose magical name

Thrills to the heart like electric flame;

The home of my childhood; the haunts of my prime;

All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time

When the feelings were young and the world was new,

Like the fresh flowers of Eden unfolding to view;

All--all now forsaken--forgotten--foregone!

And I--a lone exile remembered by none--

My high aims abandoned,--my good acts undone,--

Aweary of all that is under the sun,--

With that sadness of heart which no stranger may scan,

I fly to the desert, afar from man!

Afar in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:

When the wild turmoil of this wearisome life,

With its scenes of oppression, corruption, and strife--

The proud man’s frown, and the base man’s fear,--

The scorner’s laugh, and the sufferer’s tear,--

And malice, and meanness, and falsehood, and folly,

Dispose me to musing and dark melancholy;

When my bosom is full, and my thoughts are high,

And my soul is sick with the bondsman’s sigh--

Oh! then there is freedom, and joy, and pride,

Afar in the desert alone to ride!

There is rapture to vault on the champing steed,

And to bound away with the eagle’s speed,

With the death-fraught firelock in my hand--

The only law in the Desert Land!

Afar in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:

Away, away, from the dwellings of men,

By the wild deer’s haunt, by the buffalo’s glen;

By valleys remote where the oribi plays,

Where the gnu, the gazelle, and the hartebeest graze,

And the kùdù and eland unhunted recline

By the skirts of grey forests o’erhung with wild vine;

Where the elephant browses at peace in his wood,

And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood,

And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will

In the fen where the wild ass is drinking his fill.

Afar in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:

O’er the brown Karroo, where the bleating cry

Of the springbok’s fawn sounds plaintively;

And the timorous quagga’s shrill whistling neigh

Is heard by the fountain at twilight grey;

Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane,

With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain;

And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste

Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste,

Hieing away to the home of her rest,

Where she and her mate have scooped their nest,

Far hid from the pitiless plunderer’s view

In the pathless depths of the parched Karroo.

Afar in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:

Away, away, in the wilderness vast,

Where the white man’s foot hath never passed,

And the quivered Coránna or Bechuán

Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan:

A region of emptiness, howling and drear,

Which man hath abandoned from famine and fear;

Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone,

With the twilight bat from the yawning stone;

Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root,

Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot;

And the bitter-melon, for food and drink,

Is the pilgrim’s fare by the salt lake’s brink:

A region of drought, where no river glides,

Nor rippling brook with osiered sides;

Where sedgy pool, nor bubbling fount,

Nor tree, nor cloud, nor misty mount,

Appears, to refresh the aching eye:

But the barren earth, and the burning sky,

And the blank horizon, round and round,

Spread--void of living sight and sound,

And here, while the night-winds round me sigh,

And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky,

As I sit apart by the desert stone,

Like Elijah at Horeb’s cave alone,

“A still small voice” comes through the wild

(Like a father consoling his fretful child),

Which banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear,--

Saying--MAN IS DISTANT, BUT GOD IS NEAR!

Thomas Pringle.

[Illustration]

EVENING RAMBLES.

The sultry summer-noon is past;

And mellow evening comes at last,

With a low and languid breeze

Fanning the mimosa trees,

That cluster o’er the yellow vale,

And oft perfume the panting gale

With fragrance faint; it seems to tell

Of primrose-tufts in Scottish dell,

Peeping forth in tender spring

When the blithe lark begins to sing.

But soon, amidst our Libyan vale,

Such soothing recollections fail;

Soon we raise the eye to range

O’er prospects wild, grotesque, and strange:

Sterile mountains, rough and steep,

That bound abrupt the valley deep,

Heaving to the clear blue sky

Their ribs of granite, bare and dry,

And ridges by the torrents worn,

Thinly streaked with scraggy thorn,

Which fringes nature’s savage dress,

Yet scarce relieves her nakedness.

But where the vale winds deep below

The landscape hath a warmer glow:

There the spekboom spreads its bowers

Of light green leaves and lilac flowers;

And the aloe rears her crimson crest,

Like stately queen for gala drest;

And the bright-blossomed bean-tree shakes

Its coral tufts above the brakes,

Brilliant as the glancing plumes

Of sugar birds among its blooms,

With the deep green verdure bending

In the stream of light descending.

And now along the grassy meads,

Where the skipping reebok feeds,

Let me through the mazes rove

Of the light acacia grove;

Now while yet the honey-bee

Hums around the blossomed tree;

And the turtles softly chide,

Wooingly, on every side;

And the clucking pheasant calls

To his mate at intervals;

And the duiker at my tread

Sudden lifts his startled head,

Then dives affrighted in the brake,

Like wild duck in the reedy lake.

My wonted seat receives me now--

This cliff with myrtle-tufted brow,

Towering high o’er grove and stream,

As if to greet the parting gleam.

With shattered rocks besprinkled o’er,

Behind ascends the mountain hoar,

Whose crest o’erhangs the Bushman’s cave

(His fortress once and now his grave),

Where the grim satyr-faced baboon

Sits gibbering on the rising moon,

Or chides with hoarse and angry cry

The herdsman as he wanders by.

Spread out below in sun and shade,

The shaggy Glen lies full displayed--

Its sheltered nooks, its sylvan bowers,

Its meadows flushed with purple flowers;

And through it like a dragon spread,

I trace the river’s tortuous bed.

Lo! there the Chaldee-willow weeps

Drooping o’er the headlong steeps,

Where the torrent in his wrath

Hath rifted him a rugged path,

Like fissure cleft by earthquake’s shock,

Through mead and jungle, mound and rock.

But the swoln water’s wasteful sway,

Like tyrant’s rage, hath passed away,

And left the ravage of its course

Memorial of its frantic force.

--Now o’er its shrunk and slimy bed

Rank weeds and withered wrack are spread,

With the faint rill just oozing through,

And vanishing again from view;

Save where the guana’s glassy pool

Holds to some cliff its mirror cool,

Girt by the palmite’s leafy screen,

Or graceful rock-ash, tall and green,

Whose slender sprays above the flood

Suspend the loxia’s callow brood

In cradle-nests, with porch below,

Secure from winged or creeping foe--

Weasel or hawk or writhing snake;

Light swinging, as the breezes wake,

Like the ripe fruit we love to see

Upon the rich pomegranate tree.

But lo! the sun’s descending car

Sinks o’er Mount Dunion’s peaks afar;

And now along the dusky vale

The homeward herds and flocks I hail,

Returning from their pastures dry

Amid the stony uplands high.

First, the brown Herder with his flock

Comes winding round my hermit-rock:

His mien and gait and gesture tell,

No shepherd he from Scottish fell;

For crook the guardian gun he bears,

For plaid the sheepskin mantle wears;

Sauntering languidly along;

Nor flute has he, nor merry song,

Nor book, nor tale, nor rustic lay,

To cheer him through his listless day.

His look is dull, his soul is dark;

He feels not hope’s electric spark;

But, born the white man’s servile thrall,

Knows that he cannot lower fall.

Next the stout Neat-herd passes by,

With bolder step and blither eye;

Humming low his tuneless song,

Or whistling to the hornèd throng.

From the destroying foeman fled,--

He serves the Colonist for bread:

Yet this poor heathen Bechuan

Bears on his brow the port of man;

A naked homeless exile he--

But not debased by slavery.

Now, wizard-like, slow Twilight sails

With soundless wing adown the vales,

Waving with his shadowy rod

The owl and bat to come abroad,

With things that hate the garish sun,

To frolic now when day is done.

Now along the meadows damp

The enamoured firefly lights his lamp.

Link-boy he of woodland green

To light fair Avon’s Elfin Queen;

Here, I ween, more wont to shine

To light the thievish porcupine,

Plundering my melon-bed,--

Or villain lynx, whose stealthy tread

Rouses not the wakeful hound

As he creeps the folds around.

But lo! the night-bird’s boding scream

Breaks abrupt my twilight dream;

And warns me it is time to haste

My homeward walk across the waste,

Lest my rash step provoke the wrath

Of adder coiled upon the path,

Or tempt the lion from the wood,

That soon will prowl athirst for blood,

--Thus, murmuring my thoughtful strain,

I seek our wattled cot again.

Thomas Pringle.

GLEN LYNDEN, 1822.

[Illustration]

THE LION HUNT.

Mount--mount for the hunting with musket and spear!

Call our friends to the field--for the lion is near!

Call Arend and Ekhard and Groepe to the spoor;

Call Muller and Coetzer and Lucas Van Vuur.

Ride up Eildon-Cleugh, and blow loudly the bugle:

Call Slinger and Allie and Dikkop and Dugal;

And George with the Elephant-gun on his shoulder--

In a perilous pinch none is better or bolder.

In the gorge of the glen lie the bones of my steed,

And the hoof of a heifer of fatherland’s breed:

But mount, my brave boys, if our rifles prove true,

We’ll soon make the spoiler his ravages rue.

Ho! the Hottentot lads have discovered the track--

To his den in the desert we’ll follow him back;

But tighten your girths, and look well to your flints,

For heavy and fresh are the villain’s foot-prints.

Through the rough rocky kloof into grey Huntly-Glen,

Past the wild-olive clump where the wolf has his den,

By the black eagle’s rock at the foot of the fell,

We have tracked him at last to the buffalo’s well.

Now mark yonder brake where the bloodhounds are howling;

And hark that hoarse sound--like the deep thunder growling;

’Tis his lair--’tis his voice!--from your saddles alight;

He’s at bay in the brushwood preparing for fight.

Leave the horses behind--and be still every man;

Let the Mullers and Rennies advance in the van:

Keep fast in your ranks;--by the yell of yon hound,

The savage, I guess, will be out--with a bound.

He comes! the tall jungle before him loud crashing,

His mane bristled fiercely, his fiery eyes flashing;

With a roar of disdain, he leaps forth in his wrath,

To challenge the foe that dare ’leaguer his path.

He couches,--ay, now we’ll see mischief, I dread:

Quick--level your rifles--and aim at his head:

Thrust forward the spears, and unsheath every knife--

St. George! he’s upon us!--now, fire, lads, for life!

He’s wounded--but yet he’ll draw blood ere he falls--

Ha! under his paw see Bezudenhout sprawls--

Now Diederik! Christian! right in the brain

Plant each man his bullet--Hurra! he is slain!

Bezudenhout--up, man!--’tis only a scratch--

(You were always a scamp and have met with your match!)

What a glorious lion!--what sinews--what claws--

And seven feet ten from the rump to the jaws!

His hide, with the paws and the bones of his skull,

With the spoils of the leopard and buffalo bull,

We’ll send to Sir Walter--now, boys, let us dine,

And talk of our deeds o’er a flask of old wine.

Thomas Pringle.

[Illustration]

THE LION AND THE GIRAFFE.

Wouldst thou view the lion’s den?

Search afar from haunts of men--

Where the reed-encircled rill

Oozes from the rocky hill,

By its verdure far descried

’Mid the desert brown and wide.

Close beside the sedgy brim

Couchant lurks the lion grim;

Watching till the close of day

Brings the death-devoted prey.

Heedless at the ambushed brink

The tall giraffe stoops down to drink.

Upon him straight the savage springs

With cruel joy. The desert rings

With clanging sound of desperate strife--

The prey is strong and he strives for life.

Plunging oft with frantic bound,

To shake the tyrant to the ground,

He shrieks, he rushes through the waste,

With glaring eye and headlong haste:

In vain!--the spoiler on his prize

Rides proudly--tearing as he flies.

For life--the victim’s utmost speed

Is mustered in this hour of need:

For life--for life--his giant might

He strains, and pours his soul in flight:

And mad with terror, thirst and pain,

Spurns with wild hoof the thundering plain.

’Tis vain; the thirsty sands are drinking

His streaming blood--his strength is sinking;

The victor’s fangs are in his veins--

His flanks are streaked with sanguine stains--

His panting breast in foam and gore

Is bathed--he reels--his race is o’er:

He falls--and, with convulsive throe,

Resigns his throat to the ravening foe!

--And lo! ere quivering life has fled,

The vultures, wheeling overhead,

Swoop down, to watch, in gaunt array,

Till the gorged tyrant quits his prey.

Thomas Pringle.

[Illustration]