Six Months at the Cape | Page 9

going to Somerset in the same "passenger-cart" with myself. His
name must have been a novelty once, though much of its freshness is
worn off now--it was Brown.
Our cart had a hood; the roads were very bad, and the behaviour of that
hood was stupendous! Its attachment to the cart was, so to speak,
partial; therefore it possessed a semi-independent motion which was
perplexing. You could not count on its actions. A sudden lurch of the
cart to right or left did, of course, carry the hood with it, and, counting
on that, you laid your sudden plans to avoid collision; but the elasticity
of the hood enabled it to give you a slap on the face before obeying its
proper impulse. So, too, it would come down on your head
unexpectedly, or, without the slightest provocation, would hit you on

the neck behind. I learned with painful certainty in that cart that I had a
"small" to my back! It seemed to me that it grew large before the
journey was over.
Brown was an intelligent man,--not an unusual state of things with the
"Browns." He had two pretty daughters with him, aged eight and
twelve respectively. We got on well together, and crossed the Zuurberg
range in company on the last day of the year.
It was over passes in this range that the settlers of 1820 went in long
trains of Cape wagons, with wives and little ones, and household goods,
and civilised implements of husbandry, and weapons of defence, with
high hopes and strong courage, and with their "lives in their hands," to
subdue the wilderness. It was from these heights that they looked over
the beautiful and bush-clad plains of "Albany," which lay before them
as the lot of their inheritance.
The breaking up and scattering of the various "parties" was most
eloquently and graphically told by the Reverend H.H. Dugmore in a
lecture delivered at Grahamstown, on the occasion of the "British
Settlers' Jubilee," in May 1870--fifty years after the arrival of the
"fathers." [See Note 1.] I quote one passage, which gives a good idea of
the manner in which the land was taken up.
"And now the Sunday's River is crossed, and the terrible old Ado Hill
is climbed, and Quaggas Flat is passed, and the Bushman's river heights
are scaled. The points of divergence are reached, and the long column
breaks into divisions. Baillie's party made their way to the mouth of the
Fish River, where, it was said, the `Head' had been allowed to choose a
territory, and where he hoped to realise imaginations of commercial
wealth by founding a seaport town. And the Duke of Newcastle's
proteges from Nottingham took possession of the beautiful vale of
Clumber, naming it in honour of their noble patron. And Wilson's party
settled between the plains of Waay-plaats and the Kowie bush, right
across the path of the elephants, some of which they tried to shoot with
fowling-pieces. And Sefton's party founded the village of Salem, the
religious importance of which to the early progress of the settlement, is
not to be estimated by its present size and population. These four were

the large parties. The smaller ones filled up the intervening spaces
between them. Behind the thicket-clad sandhills of the Kowie and
Green Fountain, and extending over the low plains beyond Bathurst,
were the locations of Cock's, Thornhill's, Ostler's, Smith's, and
Richardson's parties. Skirting the wooded Kloofs from Bathurst
towards the banks of the Klienemonden, were ranged the parties of
James and Hyman. It was the latter who gravely announced to Captain
Trapps, the Bathurst magistrate, the discovery of `precious stones' on
his location; and which the angry gentleman, jealous of the reserved
rights of Government, found, on further inquiry, were only `precious
big ones!' The rich valley of Lushington afforded a resting-place to
Dyason's party. Holder's people called their location New Bristol;
which never, however, acquired any resemblance to Old Bristol.
Passing on towards the front, there were Mouncey's party, Hayhurst's
party, Bradshaw's party, Southey's party, stretching along the edge of
the wide plains of the Round Hill, and drinking their Western waters.
The post of honour and of danger was the line of the Kap River. This
was occupied by the party of Scott below Kafir Drift, and by the Irish
party above it. The forlorn hope of the entire settlement was Mahony's
party at the clay pits, who had to bear the first brunt of every Kafir
depredation in the Lower Albany direction. Names thicken as we
proceed from Waay-plaats towards Grahamstown. Passing Greathead's
location, we come among the men of Dalgairns at Blauw Krantz. Then
those of Liversage about Manly's Flats. John Stanley, `Head of all
Parties,' as he styled himself, belonged to the same neighbourhood.
Turvey's party were