Swallow | Page 4

perhaps out of place that I should ask you to allow me
to put your name upon a book which deals more or less with the
peculiarities of those races--a tale of the great Trek of 1836.
You, as I know, entertain both for Dutchman and Bantu that regard
tempered by a sense of respectful superiority which we are apt to feel
for those who on sundry occasions have but just failed in bringing our
earthly career to an end. The latter of these admirations I share to the
full; and in the case of the first of them, as I hope that the dour but not
unkindly character of Vrouw Botmar will prove to you, time softens a
man's judgment. Nor have I ever questioned, as the worthy Vrouw tells
us, that in the beginning of the trouble the Boers met with much of

which to complain at the hands of English Governments. Their
maltreatment was not intentional indeed, but rather a result of
systematic neglect--to use a mild word--of colonies and their
inhabitants, which has culminated within our own experience, only,
thanks to a merciful change in public opinion, to pass away for ever.
Sympathy with the Voortrekkers of 1836 is easy; whether it remains so
in the case of their descendants, the present masters of the Transvaal, is
a matter that admits of many opinions. At the least, allowance should
always be made for the susceptibilities of a race that finds its
individuality and national life sinking slowly, but without hope of
resurrection, beneath an invading flood of Anglo- Saxons.
But these are issues of to-day with which this story has little to do.
Without further explanation, then, I hope that you will accept these
pages in memory of past time and friendship, and more especially of
the providential events connected with a night-long ride which once we
took on duty together among the "schanzes" and across the moon-lit
paths of Secocoeni's mountain.
Believe me, my dear Clarke, Your sincere friend, H. Rider Haggard.
To Lieut.-Colonel Sir Marshal Clarke, R.A., K.C.M.G.

SWALLOW
CHAPTER I
WHY VROUW BOTMAR TELLS HER TALE
It is a strange thing that I, an old Boer /vrouw/, should even think of
beginning to write a book when there are such numbers already in the
world, most of them worthless, and many of the rest a scandal and
offence in the face of the Lord. Notably is this so in the case of those
called novels, which are stiff as mealie-pap with lies that fill the heads
of silly girls with vain imaginings, causing them to neglect their

household duties and to look out of the corners of their eyes at young
men of whom their elders do not approve. In truth, my mother and
those whom I knew in my youth, fifty years ago, when women were
good and worthy and never had a thought beyond their husbands and
their children, would laugh aloud could any whisper in their dead ears
that Suzanne Naudé was about to write a book. Well might they laugh
indeed, seeing that to this hour the most that I can do with men and ink
is to sign my own name very large; in this matter alone, not being the
equal of my husband Jan, who, before he became paralysed, had so
much learning that he could read aloud from the Bible, leaving out the
names and long words.
No, no, /I/ am not going to write; it is my great-granddaughter, who is
named Suzanne after me, who writes. And who that had not seen her at
the work could even guess how she does it? I tell you that she has
brought up from Durban a machine about the size of a pumpkin which
goes tap-tap--like a woodpecker, and prints as it taps. Now, my
husband Jan was always very fond of music in his youth, and when first
the girl began to tap upon this strange instrument, he, being almost
blind and not able to see it, thought that she was playing on a spinet
such as stood in my grandfather's house away in the Old Colony. The
noise pleases him and sends him to sleep, reminding him of the days
when he courted me and I used to strum upon that spinet with one
finger. Therefore I am dictating this history that he may have plenty of
it, and that Suzanne may be kept out of mischief.
There, that is my joke. Still there is truth in it, for Jan Botmar, my
husband, he who was the strongest man among the fathers of the great
trek of 1836, when, like the Israelites of old, we escaped from the
English, our masters, into the wilderness, crouches in the corner yonder
a crippled giant with but one sense