THE SKIRTS OF FORTUNE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10770, 16 May 1913, Page 2

THE SKIRTS OF FORTUNE.

MEMOIRS OF A SOUTH AFRICAN PIONEEH. In an easy, pleasant, telling way, Mr Scully, in bis recently-published book, "The Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer," recounts some of the adventures of five-and-forty years in the wild, unsettled regions of South Africa. At one'moment the ,£ organtones of the Indian Ocean surf" fill a darkling glade where, the flamewinged lcories "call hoarsely through the aisles of greenery." At another it is a man-eating lion, slightly wounded. '■ coughing thunder-growls of wrath,'' as ho conies straight at his assailant. Hero we have the gleam of the first I diamonds discovered in South Africa, and there tho duller glow of the first nuggets of gold. There is pome iresh interest on almost every page. DUE SOUTH. In 1867 Mr Scully, a wiry little boy, emigrated with some members of his fa.inilv from Ireland to the Cape. Hospitable Port Elizabeth was far enough as vet from claiming the title of the Liverpool of South Africa. . Nowadays the excursionist buys a ticket to the Zambesi, and beyond; and a lady tells of a. safe and comfortable, trip by rail that was just, like a jaunt through an unending Zoo—with a very good peep at n lion or two. Tt was not thus in Mr Scully's pioneering days. Lions, indeed, there were, but yon did not survey them from the window of a smooth-running railway carriage. They stood in the path, and prowled around the flimsy tent at night, trying (unless they were, true man-eaters) to muster courage, for a charge. As for railways,' there was at this time but one in all South Africa, a single line between Cape Town and Wynberg. The vast tra-ct of South Africa lay unnoted and obscure. The settlers, most of them, wero toilsome, kindly folk, leading tlie bucolic life, raising flocks, and sometimes seeing them wiped out in an hour by a. hailstorm. Cecil Rhodes (whom Mr Scully knew well) was a tall, slim, taciturn youth, in a camp kicking his heels, probably not even dreaming of the gargantuan wealth so soon to be unsealed beneath them. DIAMONDS! For, iu an instant, and as it wero j haphazard, a. diamond or eo was flung upon the banks of the distant Vaal. A thrill went through the land. A fico now for the bare bucolic, life that late we led. All the world went dancing towards these fields where fortune lay for some and the aloes of experience for others. You were by fate a Cecil Rhodes, or you were a William Charles Scully. Mr Scully says:—"l was one of that band of light-hearted, haphazard pioneers who, rejoicing in youthful energy and careless of their own interests, unwillingly laid the foundation upon which so many great fortunes have been built." The chance was perpetually against him. There wero claims to be had for nothing. He just missed pegging out the first one that he coveted, and the man who secured it netted hundreds in no time. He very nearly discovered the Kimberley mine! But there is fame, at least, in being able to say so. So far as fame goes, to have misled finding the Kimberley should be the next best thing to having found it. Claims at one period were so cheap that when the Government began to ask £lO apiece for them the fortune-hunters protested they were being robbed. So slovenly in the dawn of the business was the handling of the soil that, says Mr Scully, ' there can be rio doubt that millions ot pounds' worth of diamonds were thrown away, owing to the clods not beihg properly pulverised.'' _ The vast plains surrounding the magic scene became rapidly populous. ' A great citv of tents and waggons sprang up like mushrooms in a night. ill ere was at first no attempt at orderly arrangement; each pitched Ins ca.mp wherever he listed. How, eventually, streets and a market square came to be laid out is more than I can explain. I wouid not like to guess the number of people and tents surrounding the mine three months after the lush, u the tents alone must have figured to mauv thousands. Money hteiallj abounded. I have more than once seen fools lighting their pipes with bank notes, thus giving tho banks concerned a present of the face value. • ■ • However, there was never in those days anvthing like the lawlessness that afterwards—as much under British as under Republican rule—prevailed on tho Rand." In Mr Scully's quest of gold he was mocked in just the way he had been wh'-;:i patientiy raiding the diamond country. " A man named Cunningham " slipped in one day ahead oi him on a likely spot: ""Within live minutes oi' Cunningham s first pickstroke he struck the 'lead.' On merely turning over the surface sods tho nuggets could be picked out like plums from a cake. The bedrock . . turned out to be scored by a small gutter or channel u few inches deep and about 18in wide, which ran for about 20ft through, the middle of the claim. The bottom of this channel was literally paved with nuggets. The stuff it contained gave an average ot over 4oz to the pan. Within a few weeks the claim was worked out, for there was no gold to be found outside the channel. But the gold won by Cunningham was worth over £4OOO. Tho legs of my bunk (a part of the site had been covered by Mr Scully's tent) had actually been sunk in the richest piece of the ground; they must have literally been touching some of the nugj ;iets. This was but one of the several ' occasions upon which I all but grasped the skirts of fortune." I A FINE PANORAMA.

Hut Mr Scully empties his wallet of more than diamonds and gold. All the panorama of the lifo of a young pioneer in a, rising, struggling, shifting and most beautiful colony unfolds itself before us. He takes us with him on interminable tramps after work, through virginal scenes of infinite variety and charm, where it is now a lion to be dodged and now a. snake, or shelter to be sought from storms that blind and deafen, or a meal and lodging to be bought at th? price of gardening, woodchopping or house-mending. There are the characters upon the road—the Scottish pessimist, the dean's son drinking himself to death at quarterly intervals, and the man under sentence of hanging who strolls into a bar to discuss it over drinks. There are weddings. " I regret to have to record the fact that the officiating parson was taken down to Tom Craddock's bar,

and there made very drunk indeed." There are glimpses of the teeming animal life of the seventies: " Those who nowadays travel by rail through the denuded tract between Delagoa Bay and the Drakonsberg can form no idea as to the marvellous richness of animal life on those plain'; in the early seventies. . . Blue wildebeeste and quaggo, so many that we seldom wasted ammunition on them. Buffalo abounded, sometimes in very large herds. Waterbuck were always to be found near the rivers. Elephants existed, but very wild, and usually scarce. Giraffe were numerous, but difficult to aproaeh on foot. The Koraati and the Crocodile were then wide, swiftly-flow-ing streams. Along their banks the dense, evergreen boscage lay soft and rich as velvet. In those enchanted thickets koodoo, sable and other beautiful antelopes of the rarer varieties were always to be found. Impa-la wera as jiumerous in the areas iymg along, the river-oourses as were springbucks on the upland southern plains."