After many hard treks12 through the broken foothills, with their rocky sideling slopes and boulder-strewn torrent13 beds, at last the Berg itself was reached. There, on a flat-topped terrace-like spur where the last outspan was, we took breath, halved14 our loads, double-spanned, and pulled ourselves together for the last big climb.
From there the scoured15 red streaks16 stood out revealed as road tracks—for, made road there was none; from there, lines of whitish rock and loose stones and big boulders17, that one had taken for the beds of mountain torrents18, stood revealed as bits of ‘road,’ linking up some of the broken sections of the route; but even from there not nearly all the track was visible. The bumpy19 rumbling20 and heavy clattering21 of waggons22 on the rocky trail, the shouts of drivers and the crack of whips, mixed with confusing echoes from somewhere above, set one puzzling and searching higher still. Then in unexpected places here and there other waggons would be seen against the shadowy mountains, creeping up with infinite labour foot by foot, tacking24 at all sorts of angles, winding25 by undetected spur and slope and ridge26 towards the summit—the long spans of oxen and the bulky loads, dwarfed27 into miniature by the vast background, looking like snails28 upon a face of rock.
To those who do not know, there is not much difference between spans of oxen; and the driving of them seems merely a matter of brute29 strength in arm and lung. One span looks like another; and the weird30 unearthly yells of the drivers, the cracks—like rifle-shots—of the long lashes31, and the hum and thud of the more cruel doubled whip, seem to be all that is needed. But it is not so: heart and training in the cattle, skill and judgment32 in the driver, are needed there; for the Berg is a searching test of man and beast. Some, double-spanned and relieved of half their three-ton loads, will stick for a whole day where the pull is steepest, the road too narrow to swing the spans, and the curves too sharp to let the fifteen couples of bewildered and despairing oxen get a straight pull; whilst others will pass along slowly but steadily33 and without check, knowing what each beast will do and stand, when to urge and when to ease it, when and where to stop them for a blow, and how to get them all leaning to the yoke34, ready and willing for the ‘heave together’ that is essential for restarting a heavy load against such a hill. Patience, understanding, judgment, and decision: those are the qualities it calls for, and here again the white man justifies36 his claim to lead and rule; for, although they are as ten or twenty to one, there is not a native driver who can compare with the best of the white men.
It was on the Berg that I first saw what a really first-class man can do. There were many waggons facing the pass that day; portions of loads, dumped off to ease the pull, dotted the roadside; tangles37 of disordered maddened spans blocked the way; and fragments of yokes38, skeys, strops, and reims, and broken disselbooms, told the tale of trouble.
Old Charlie Roberts came along with his two waggons. He was ‘old’ with us—being nearly fifty; he was also stout39 and in poor health. We buried him at Pilgrim’s Rest a week later: the cold, clear air on top of the Berg that night, when he brought the last load up, brought out the fever. It was his last trek11.
He walked slowly up past us, to “take a squint40 at things,” as he put it, and see if it was possible to get past the stuck waggons; and a little later he started, making three loads of his two and going up with single spans of eighteen oxen each, because the other waggons, stuck in various places on the road, did not give him room to work double-spans. To us it seemed madness to attempt with eighteen oxen a harder task than we and others were essaying with thirty; we would have waited until the road ahead was clear.
We were half-way up when we saw old Charlie coming along steadily and without any fuss at all. He had no second driver to help him; he did no shouting; he walked along heavily and with difficulty beside the span, playing the long whip lightly about as he gave the word to go or called quietly to individual oxen by name, but he did not touch them; and when he paused to ‘blow’ them he leaned heavily on his whip-stick to rest himself. We were stopped by some break in the gear and were completely blocking the road when he caught up. Any one else would have waited: he pulled out into the rough sideling track on the slope below, to pass us. Even a good span with a good driver may well come to grief in trying to pass another that is stuck—for the sight and example are demoralising—but old Charlie did not turn a hair; he went steadily on, giving a brisker call and touching42 up his oxen here and there with light flicks43. They used to say he could kill a fly on a front ox or on the toe of his own boot with the voorslag of his big whip.
The track he took was merely the scorings made by skidding44 waggons coming down the mountain; it was so steep and rough there that a pull of ten yards between the spells for breath was all one could hope for; and many were thankful to have done much less. At the second pause, as they were passing us, one of his oxen turned, leaning inwards against the chain, and looked back. Old Charlie remarked quietly, “I thought he would chuck it; only bought him last week. He’s got no heart.”
He walked along the span up to the shirking animal, which continued to glare back at him in a frightened way, and touched it behind with the butt45 of his long whip-stick to bring it up to the yoke. The ox started forward into place with a jerk, but eased back again slightly as Charlie went back to his place near the after-oxen. Once more the span went on and the shirker got a smart reminder46 as Charlie gave the call to start, and he warmed it up well as a lesson while they pulled. At the next stop it lay back worse than before.
Not one driver in a hundred would have done then what he did: they would have tried other courses first. Charlie dropped his whip quietly and outspanned the ox and its mate, saying to me as I gave him a hand:
“When I strike a rotter, I chuck him out before he spoils the others!” In another ten minutes he and his stalwarts had left us behind.
Old Charlie knew his oxen—each one of them, their characters and what they could do. I think he loved them too; at any rate, it was his care for them that day—handling them himself instead of leaving it to his boys—that killed him.
Other men had other methods. Some are by nature brutal47; others, only undiscerning or impatient. Most of them sooner or later realise that they are only harming themselves by ill-treating their own cattle; and that is one—but only the meanest—reason why the white man learns to drive better than the native, who seldom owns the span he drives; the better and bigger reasons belong to the qualities of race and the effects of civilisation48. But, with all this, experience is as essential as ever; a beginner has no balanced judgment, and that explains something that I heard an old transport-rider say in the earliest days—something which I did not understand then, and heard with resentment49 and a boy’s uppish scorn.
“The Lord help the beginner’s boys and bullocks: starts by pettin’, and ends by killin’. Too clever to learn; too young to own up; swearin’ and sloggin’ all the time; and never sets down to think until the boys are gone and the bullocks done!”
I felt hot all over, but had learned enough to keep quiet; besides, the hit was not meant for me, although the tip, I believe, was: the hit was at some one else who had just left us—one who had been given a start before he had gained experience and, naturally, was then busy making a mess of things himself and laying down the law for others. It was when the offender50 had gone that the old transport-rider took up the general question and finished his observations with a proverb which I had not heard before—perhaps invented it:
“Yah!” he said, rising and stretching himself, “there’s no rule for a young fool.”
I did not quite know what he meant, and it seemed safer not to inquire.
The driving of bullocks is not an exalted51 occupation: it is a very humble52 calling indeed; yet, if one is able to learn, there are things worth learning in that useful school. But it is not good to stay at school all one’s life.
Brains and character tell there as everywhere; experience only gives them scope; it is not a substitute. The men themselves would not tell you so; they never trouble themselves with introspections and analyses, and if you asked one of them the secret of success, he might tell you “Commonsense and hard work,” or curtly53 give you the maxims54 ‘Watch it,’ and ‘Stick to it’—which to him express the whole creed55, and to you, I suppose, convey nothing. Among themselves, when the prime topics of loads, rates, grass, water and disease have been disposed of, there is as much interest in talking about their own and each other’s oxen as there is in babies at a mothers’ meeting. Spans are compared; individual oxen discussed in minute detail; and the reputations of ‘front oxen,’ in pairs or singly, are canvassed56 as earnestly as the importance of the subject warrants—for, “The front oxen are half the span,” they say. The simple fact is that they ‘talk shop,’ and when you hear them discussing the characters and qualities of each individual animal you may be tempted57 to smile in a superior way, but it will not eventually escape you that they think and observe, and that they study their animals and reason out what to do to make the most of them; and when they preach patience, consistency58 and purpose, it is the fruit of much experience, and nothing more than what the best of them practise.
Every class has its world; each one’s world—however small—is a whole world, and therefore a big world; for the little things are magnified and seem big, which is much the same thing: Crusoe’s island was a world to him and he got as much satisfaction out of it as Alexander or Napoleon—probably a great deal more. The little world is less complicated than the big, but the factors do not vary; and so it may be that the simpler the calling, the more clearly apparent are the working of principles and the relations of cause and effect. It was so with us. To you, as a beginner, there surely comes a day when things get out of hand and your span, which was a good one when you bought it, goes wrong: the load is not too heavy; the hill not too steep; the work is not beyond them for they have done it all before; but now no power on earth, it seems, will make them face the pull. Some jib and pull back; some bellow59 and thrust across; some stand out or swerve60 under the chain; some turn tail to front, half choked by the twisted strops, the worn-out front oxen turn and charge downhill; and all are half frantic61 with excitement, bewilderment or terror. The constant shouting, the battle with refractory62 animals, the work with the whip, and the hopeless chaos63 and failure, have just about done you up; and then some one—who knows—comes along, and, because you block the way where he would pass and he can see what is wrong, offers to give a hand. Dropping his whip he moves the front oxen to where the foothold is best and a straight pull is possible; then walks up and down the team a couple of times talking to the oxen and getting them into place, using his hand to prod64 them up without frightening them, until he has the sixteen standing35 as true as soldiers on parade—their excitement calmed, their confidence won, and their attention given to him. Then, one word of encouragement and one clear call to start, and the sixteen lean forward like one, the waggon23 lifts and heaves, and out it goes with a rattle65 and rush.
It looks magical in its
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