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ILLUSTRATIONS
OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY.

BY

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

——●——

LIFE IN THE WILDS.

THE HILL AND THE VALLEY.

BROOKE AND BROOKE FARM.

——●——

IN NINE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

——●——

LONDON:

CHARLES FOX, PATERNOSTER-ROW.

——●——

MDCCCXXXIV.

LONDON.

Printed by William Clowes,

Duke-street, Lambeth.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE.

In an enlightened nation like our own, there are followers of every science which has been marked out for human pursuit. There is no study which has met with entire neglect from all classes of our countrymen. There are men of all ranks and every shade of opinion, who study the laws of Divine Providence and human duty. There are many more who inquire how the universe was formed and under what rules its movements proceed. Others look back to the records of society and study the history of their race. Others examine and compare the languages of many nations. Others study the principles on which civil laws are founded, and try to discover what there has been of good as well as of evil in the governments under which men have lived from the time of the patriarchs till now. Others—but they are very few—inquire into the principles which regulate the production and distribution of the necessaries and comforts of life in society.

It is a common and true observation that every man is apt to think his own principal pursuit the most important in the world. It is a persuasion which we all smile at in one another and justify in ourselves. This is one of the least mischievous of human weaknesses; since, as nobody questions that some pursuits are really more important than others, there will always be a majority of testimonies in favour of those which are so, only subject to a reservation which acts equally upon all. If, for instance, votes were taken as to the comparative value of the study of medicine, the divine would say that nothing could be more important except theology; the lawyer the same, excepting law; the mathematician the same, excepting mathematics; the chemist the same, excepting chemistry; and so on. As long as every man can split his vote, and all are agreed to give half to themselves, the amount of the poll will be the same as if all gave whole votes. There is encouragement, therefore, to canvass, as we are about to do, in favour of a candidate whom we would fain see more popular than at present.

Can anything more nearly concern all the members of any society than the way in which the necessaries and comforts of life may be best procured and enjoyed by all? Is there anything in any other study (which does not involve this) that can be compared with it in interest and importance? And yet Political Economy has been less studied than perhaps any other science whatever, and not at all by those whom it most concerns,—the mass of the people. This must be because its nature and its relation to other studies are not understood. It would not else be put away as dull, abstract and disagreeable. It would be too absurd to complain of its being difficult in an age when the difficulties of science appear to operate as they should do, in stimulating to enterprise and improving patience.

Political Economy treats of the Production, Distribution and Consumption of Wealth; by which term is meant whatever material objects contribute to the support and enjoyment of life. Domestic economy is an interesting subject to those who view it as a whole; who observe how, by good management in every department, all the members of a family have their proper business appointed them, their portion of leisure secured to them, their wants supplied, their comforts promoted, their pleasures cared for; how harmony is preserved within doors by the absence of all causes of jealousy; how good will prevail towards all abroad through the absence of all causes of quarrel. It is interesting to observe by what regulations all are temperately fed with wholesome food, instead of some being pampered above-stairs while others are starving below; how all are clad as becomes their several stations, instead of some being brilliant in jewels and purple and fine linen, while others are shivering in nakedness; how all have something, be it much or little, in their purses, instead of some having more than they can use, while others are tempted to snatch from them in the day-time or purloin by night. Such extremes as these are seldom or never to be met with under the same roof in the present day, when domestic economy is so much better understood than in the times when such sights were actually seen in rich men’s castles: but in that larger family,—the nation,—every one of these abuses still exists, and many more. If it has been interesting to watch and assist the improvement of domestic economy from the days of feudal chiefs till now, can it be uninteresting to observe the corresponding changes of a state? If it has been an important service to equalize the lot of the hundred members of a great man’s family, it must be incalculably more so to achieve the same benefit for the many millions of our population, and for other nations through them. This benefit cannot, of course, be achieved till the errors of our national management are traced to their source, and the principles of a better economy are established. It is the duty of the people to do this.

If a stranger had entered the castle of a nobleman, eight hundred years ago, and, grieved at what he saw, had endeavoured to put matters on a better footing, how ought he to set about it, and in what temper should he be listened to? If he had the opportunity of addressing the entire household at once, he would say, “I have been in your splendid halls, and I saw vast sums squandered in gaming, while hungry creditors were looking on from without with rage in their countenances. I have been in your banqueting-room, and I saw riot and drunkenness to-day where there will be disease and remorse to-morrow. I have been in your kitchens, and I saw as much waste below as there had been excess above, while the under servants were driven into a cold corner to eat the broken food which was not good enough for their masters’ dogs. I have been in your dungeons, and I saw prisoners who would fain have labored for themselves or their fellow-captives, condemned to converse in idleness with their own melancholy thoughts, or with companions more criminal and miserable than themselves. I have been among the abodes of those who hew your wood and draw your water, and till your fields, and weave your garments; and I find that they are not allowed to exchange the produce of their labor as they will, but that artificial prices are set upon it, and that gifts are added to the profits of some which are taken out of the earnings of others. I hear complaints from all in turn, from the highest to the lowest; complaints which I cannot call unreasonable, since it is equally true that the poor among you are oppressed, and that the rich are troubled; that the rulers are perplexed and the governed discontented. These things need not be. There are methods of governing a family which will secure the good of all. I invite you to join me in discovering what these methods are.” What would be thought of the good sense of such a household if they should reject the invitation,—if the rulers should say, “We are much perplexed, it is true, to know how to govern; but it is very difficult to change the customs of a family, and so we will go on as we are;” if the sons and daughters of the house should reply, “It is true the servants threaten us with vengeance, and we have more trouble than enough with their complaints; but we should find the inquiry you propose very dull and disagreeable, so do not let us hear any more about it,” if the servants should say, “We have many grievances certainly, and we can easily tell what ought to be remedied; but as to what the remedies are, we are told we cannot understand the subject; so instead of trying to learn, we shall redress our troubles in our own way?” If this is folly, if this is neglect, if this is madness, it is no more than as many people are guilty of as refuse to hear anything of Political Economy, because it is new, or because it is dull, or because it is difficult. No one could make any of these objections, if he knew the nature, or saw anything of the utility and beauty of the science.

Half-civilized states were like the half-civilized household we have described, eight centuries ago. We wish we could go on to say that civilized states are managed like civilized households, that Political Economy was nearly as well understood by governments as domestic economy is by the heads of families. That it is far otherwise, our national distresses too plainly show. The fault lies, however, quite as much with the governed as with their rulers. Unless the people will take the pains to learn what it is that goes wrong, and how it should be rectified, they cannot petition intelligently or effectually, and government will regard their complaints as unreasonable and their afflictions as past help. However true it may be that governments ought to look over the world at large for the purpose of profiting by universal experience and improving their measures in proportion as knowledge advances, it is equally true that the people should look abroad also, and observe and compare and reflect and take to heart whatever concerns the common interests of the millions of their countrymen. If many of them occupy such a position as that they cannot do this, is it not at least their duty, should it not be their pleasure, to listen to those who have observed and compared and reflected and come to a certain knowledge of a few grand principles, which, if generally understood, would gradually remove all the obstructions, and remedy the distresses, and equalize the lot of the population? Such ought to be the disposition of the people.

But the people complain, and justly, that no assistance has been offered them which they could make use of. They complain that all they can do is to pick up bits and scraps of knowledge of Political Economy, because the works which profess to teach it have been written for the learned, and can interest only the learned. This is very true, and it is the consequence of the science being new. All new sciences are for some time engrossed by the learned, both because preparation is required before they can be generally understood, and because it is some time before men perceive how close an interest the bulk of society has in every new truth. It is certain, however, that sciences are only valuable in as far as they involve the interests of mankind at large, and that nothing can prevent their sooner or later influencing general happiness. This is true with respect to the knowledge of the stars; to that of the formation and changes of the structure of the globe; to that of chemical elements and their combinations; and, above all, to that of the social condition of men. It is natural that the first eminent book on this new science should be very long, in some parts exceedingly difficult, and, however wonderful and beautiful as a whole, not so clear and precise in its arrangement as it might be. This is the case with Smith’s Wealth of Nations,—a book whose excellence is marvelous when all the circumstances are considered, but which is not fitted nor designed to teach the science to the great mass of the people. It has discharged and is discharging its proper office in engaging the learned to pursue the study, and in enabling them to place it in new lights according to the various needs of various learners. It is natural, again, that the first followers of the science should differ among themselves, and that some should think certain points important which others think trifling; and it is a matter of course that their disputes must be tiresome to those who know little of the grounds of them. It is perfectly natural that the science should be supposed obscure and the study of it fruitless which could thus cause contradictions and perplexities at the very outset. It is perfectly natural that when certainty began to be obtained and regularity to come out of the confusion, formality should be the order of the day; that truths should be offered in a cold dry form, and should be left bare of illustration, and made as abstract and unattractive as possible. This is a very hopeful state of things, however: for when truth is once laid hold of, it is easy to discover and display its beauty; and this, the last and easiest process, is what remains to be done for Political Economy. When it is done, nobody must again excuse himself from learning, out of discontent at the way in which it is taught.

The works already written on Political Economy almost all bear a reference to books which have preceded, or consist in part of discussions of disputed points. Such references and such discussions are very interesting to those whom they concern, but offer a poor introduction to those to whom the subject is new. There are a few, a very few, which teach the science systematically as far as it is yet understood. These too are very valuable: but they do not give us what we want—the science in a familiar, practical form. They give us its history; they give us its philosophy; but we want its picture. They give us truths, and leave us to look about us, and go hither and thither in search of illustrations of those truths. Some who have a wide range in society and plenty of leisure, find this all-sufficient; but there are many more who have neither time nor opportunity for such an application of what they learn. We cannot see why the truth and its application should not go together—why an explanation of the principles which regulate society should not be made more clear and interesting at the same time by pictures of what those principles are actually doing in communities.

For instance: if we want to teach that security of property is necessary to the prosperity of a people, and to shew how and in what proportion wealth increases where there is that security, and dwindles away where there is not, we may make the fact and the reasons very well understood by stating them in a dry, plain way: but the same thing will be quite as evident, and far more interesting and better remembered, if we confirm our doctrine by accounts of the hardships suffered by individuals, and the injuries by society, in such a country as Turkey, which remains in a state of barbarism chiefly through the insecurity of property. The story of a merchant in Turkey, in contrast with one of a merchant in England, will convey as much truth as any set of propositions on the subject, and will impress the memory and engage the interest in a much greater degree. This method of teaching Political Economy has never yet been tried, except in the instance of a short story or separate passage here and there.

This is the method in which we propose to convey the leading truths of Political Economy, as soundly, as systematically, as clearly and faithfully, as the utmost pains-taking and the strongest attachment to the subject will enable us to do. We trust we shall not be supposed to countenance the practice of making use of narrative as a trap to catch idle readers, and make them learn something they are afraid of. We detest the practice, and feel ourselves insulted whenever a book of the trap kind is put into our hands. It is many years since we grew sick of works that pretend to be stories, and turn out to be catechisms of some kind of knowledge which we had much rather become acquainted with in its undisguised form. The reason why we choose the form of narrative is, that we really think it the best in which Political Economy can be taught, as we should say of nearly every kind of moral science. Once more we must apply the old proverb, “Example is better than precept.” We take this proverb as the motto of our design. We declare frankly that our object is to teach Political Economy, and that we have chosen this method not only because it is new, not only because it is entertaining, but because we think it the most faithful and the most complete. There is no doubt that all that is true and important about any virtue—integrity, for instance—may be said in the form of a lecture, or written in a chapter of moral philosophy; but the faithful history of an upright man, his sayings and doings, his trials, his sorrows, his triumphs and rewards, teaches the same truths in a more effectual as well as more popular form. In like manner, the great principle of Freedom of Trade may be perfectly established by a very dry argument; but a tale of the troubles, and difficulties, and changes of good and evil fortune in a manufacturer and his operatives, or in the body of a manufacturing population, will display the same principle, and may be made very interesting besides, to say nothing of getting rid of the excuse that these subjects cannot be understood.

We do not dedicate our series to any particular class of society, because we are sure that all classes bear an equal relation to the science, and we much fear that it is as little familiar to the bulk of one as of another. We should not be so ready to suspect this ignorance if we heard less of the difficulty of the subject. We trust it will be found that as the leading principles come out in order, one after another, they are so clear, so indisputable, so apparently familiar, that the wonder is when the difficulty is to come,—where the knotty points are to be encountered. We suspect that these far-famed difficulties arise, like the difficulties of mathematical and other sciences, from not beginning at the beginning and going regularly on. A student who should open Euclid in the middle, could no more proceed from want of knowing what came before, than a sawyer who should insert his saw in a hole in the middle of a plank could go on sawing while the wood was closed both behind and before. In like manner, any novice who wishes to learn in a hurry the philosophy of Wages, and dips into a treatise for the purpose, can make nothing of it for want of understanding the previous chapters on Labour and Capital. This is the only way in which we can account for the common notion of the difficulty of the science; and as this notion is very prevalent, we are constrained to believe that the ignorance we speak of is prevalent too. When, therefore, we dedicate our series to all to whom it may be of use, we conceive that we are addressing many of every class.

If we were to dedicate our work to all whom it may concern, it would be the same thing as appealing to the total population of the empire. We say this, of course, in reference to the subject, and not to our peculiar method of treating it. Is there any one breathing to whom it is of no concern whether the production of food and clothing and the million articles of human consumption goes on or ceases? whether that production is proportioned to those who live? whether all obtain a fair proportion? whether the crimes of oppression and excess on the one hand, and violence and theft on the other, are encouraged or checked by the mode of distribution? Is there any one living to whom it matters not whether the improvement of the temporal condition of the race shall go on, or whether it shall relapse into barbarism? whether the supports of life, the comforts of home, and the pleasures of society, shall become more scanty or more abundant? whether there shall be increased facilities for the attainment of intellectual good, or whether the old times of slavery and hardship shall return? Is any one indifferent whether famine stalks through the land, laying low the helpless and humbling the proud; or whether, by a wise policy, the nations of the earth benefit one another, and secure peace and abundance at home by an exchange of advantages abroad? Is there any one living, in short, to whom it matters not whether the aggregate of human life is cheerful and virtuous or mournful and depraved? The question comes to this: for none will doubt whether a perpetuity of ease or hardship is the more favourable to virtue. If it concerns rulers that their measures should be wise, if it concerns the wealthy that their property should be secure, the middling classes that their industry should be rewarded, the poor that their hardships should be redressed, it concerns all that Political Economy should be understood. If it concerns all that the advantages of a social state should be preserved and improved, it concerns them likewise that Political Economy should be understood by all.

As society is in widely different states of advancement in various parts of the world, we have resolved to introduce as wide a diversity of scenery and characters as it might suit our object to employ. Each tale will therefore be usually, if not always, complete in itself, as a tale, while the principles it exhibits form a part of the system which the whole are designed to convey. As an instance of what we mean: the scene of the first tale is laid in a distant land, because there is no such thing to be found in our own country as Labour uncombined with Capital, and proceeding through many stages to a perfect union with Capital. In the next volume, which treats of the operation and increase of Capital, the scene is laid in a more familiar region, because Capital can be seen in full activity only in a highly civilized country.

As the necessaries and comforts of life must be produced before they can be distributed, and distributed before they can be consumed, the order of subjects seems to be determined by their nature.

We propose to show what Labour can effect, and how it is to be encouraged and economized and rewarded: to treat of Capital, its nature and operation, and the proportions of its increase; and to exhibit the union of these two mighty agents of Production. Under the second head, Distribution, occur the great questions of Rent, Profits, Wages, and Population, the various modes of Interchange at home and abroad, including the consideration of all Monopolies, domestic and foreign. Under the third head, Consumption, are considered the modes of Demand and Supply, and of Taxation. All these and many more will be exemplified in sketches of society, in narratives of those who labour and earn and spend, who are happy or otherwise, according as the institutions under which they live are good or bad. There can be no lack of subjects for such tales in our own country, where the pauper and the prince, the beneficent landlord and the unreasonable tenant, the dissolute grandee and the industrious artizan, are to be found in the near neighbourhood of each other. If we look farther abroad into lands where different institutions vary the interests of individuals, we are furnished with rich illustrations of every truth our science can furnish. If we could hope to supply the interest as abundantly as society does the subject-matter of our tales, we should reckon upon their success and usefulness as certain. We will do our best.

It is our design to affix to each volume a summary of the principles of Political Economy which it contains. In this volume only we shall prefix it, in order to lead the reader to a full understanding of the purpose of the work as he advances with it.

Summary of Principles illustrated in the first Volume.

Wealth consists of such commodities as are useful,—that is, necessary or agreeable to mankind.

Wealth is to be obtained by the employment of labour on materials furnished by nature.

As the materials of nature appear to be inexhaustible, and as the supply of labour is continually progressive, no other limits can be assigned to the operations of labour than those of human intelligence? And where are the limits of human intelligence?

Productive labour being a beneficial power, whatever stimulates and directs this power is beneficial also.

Many kinds of unproductive labour do this. Many kinds of unproductive labour are therefore beneficial.

All labour for which there is a fair demand is equally respectable.

Labour being a beneficial power, all economy of that labour must be beneficial.

Labour is economized,

• I. By Division of Labour;—in three ways.
• 1. Men do best what they are accustomed to do.
• 2. Men do the most quickly work which they stick to.
• 3. It is a saving of time to have several parts of a work going on at once.

Labour is economized,

• II. By the use of machinery, which
• 1. Eases man’s labour.
• 2. Shortens man’s labour; and thus, by doing his work, sets him at liberty for other work.

Labour should be protected by securing its natural liberty: that is,—

• 1. By showing no partiality.
• 2. By removing the effects of former partiality.

LIFE IN THE WILDS.

LIFE IN THE WILDS.

Chapter I.
WHAT HAVE THEY LEFT US?

There are few climates in the world more delightful to live in than that of the south of Africa.[Africa.] The air of the mountains behind the Cape of Good Hope is pure and wholesome, and the plains which stretch out towards the north at a great height above the sea, are fertile in native plants when uncultivated, and richly repay the toil of the farmer. The woods are remarkable for the variety of trees and shrubs, and there are as many animals which may serve for food or for beasts of burden as in this country. These advantages would lead numbers of our countrymen to settle in southern Africa, who now go elsewhere, if it were not for one great drawback. It is not that there are beasts of prey; for lions, leopards, and panthers, may be kept away from a settlement by the use of proper precautions: it is that a race of men, more fierce than wild beasts, and full of cunning, inhabit the mountains on the northern frontier of the European settlements, and descend, from time to time, upon the lonely farms or small villages scattered over the plain, and slaughter the inhabitants, burn their dwellings, and carry off their cattle and their goods. It is nearly impossible to guard against the attacks of these savages; and as a considerable force is required to resist them, it is no wonder that settlers are disposed to sacrifice many advantages of climate, soil, and productions, rather than be subject to the continual dread of a visit from the Bushmen, as these people are called. The settlements towards the northern frontier are therefore few and small, and consist of those whose poverty induces them to brave danger, and whose courage is improved by constant exercise.

The Bushmen were the original possessors of much of the country about the Cape, which the British and the Dutch have since taken for their own. The natives were hunted down like so many wild beasts. This usage naturally made them fierce and active in their revenge. The hardships they have undergone have affected their bodily make also; and their short stature and clumsy form are not, as some suppose, a sufficient proof that they are of an inferior race to the men they make war upon. If we may judge by the experiments which have been tried upon the natives of various countries, it seems probable that if Europeans were driven from their homes into the mountains, and exposed to the hardships of a savage life, they would become stunted in their forms, barbarous in their habits, and cruel in their revenge. They might, like the Bushmen, visit the sins of the first invaders upon their innocent successors, and cause as much undeserved distress as that we are about to relate.

It was in the month of September—a season of extreme heat in the climate we have described—when the inhabitants of a small British settlement in the north of the European territories of South Africa, met to consider what should be done to relieve the want to which they were suddenly reduced. The evening before, their village looked thriving, and its inhabitants gay and prosperous; and now, just when morning had dawned, they assembled to look on the ruin of their habitations, and the nakedness of their meadows, from which all the cattle had been driven away. The savages had carried off their tools and their arms, burned their little furniture with the houses, and left them nothing but the clothes they wore, and the seed which was buried in the ground. Happily, but few lives were lost, for the attack had been so sudden, that little resistance had been attempted: but yet some were gone whose services could ill be spared, even if they had not attached their companions to them by having shared the same toils, or by their several good qualities. Williams, the carpenter, was found dead among the ashes in the saw-pit; and Humby had been slaughtered on the threshold of the new hut he was building on his little farm. Some of the children, too, had perished in the flames; but the loss of life was found to be much less than every one had supposed before the numbers were called over. The most general and eager inquiries were for the safety of Captain Adams, and of Mr. and Mrs. Stone and their child, who were all alive and unhurt.

Mr. Stone was the best-educated man in the settlement, and was therefore much valued as a chaplain and teacher, as well as in his character of a practical farmer. His wife was an amiable, strong-minded woman, who assisted her husband in his labours abroad and at home. She was, by common consent, called the Lady of the settlement; but she refused the title; not because she was not really a lady, but because she thought there was no reason for such a distinction in a place where all were obliged to exert their own power for their own subsistence. She had one child, a girl of three years old.

Mr. Adams was called Captain only because he, in a manner, took the direction of the affairs of the settlement. Having been long accustomed to the climate, and acquainted with all the peculiarities of the country, he was well qualified to advise respecting the proceedings of his neighbours, who looked up to him as if he had really been what they called him, and had a captain’s authority over them. It was he who now assembled them under the shelter of a few trees which grew in a nook between two hills.[hills.]

When they met, they looked on one another, and no one seemed disposed to speak. The captain was about to break silence, when the sobbing of one of the women who had lost her child, and the wailing of the carpenter’s widow, affected him so much that he could not command his voice. Mr. Stone, who was remarkable for his self-command, next came forward, and said that the friends around him had been called together that they might determine what measures should be taken for their safety and subsistence; and that it appeared to him that the right way to begin was by addressing God in a spirit of resignation for what they had lost, and of thankfulness for what remained. This was the readiest means of consoling the mourners who were among them, and of so calming the minds of all, as that they might deliberate soberly, and judge wisely in an extremity so awful.

To this there was a general assent; and all heads were bowed, and all sounds, except the voice of Mr. Stone, hushed in prayer.

When this was over, and a pause had succeeded, the captain observed that the first consideration of every man among them must be to secure food and shelter,—food for the present day, and shelter for perhaps one night only, for the next question was, whether they should remain in the settlement and build up its ruins as well as they could, or set out southwards with the hope of finding a safer resting-place, or aid from their countrymen. In the first place, then, he must declare his hope that every individual would lay aside all selfish thoughts, and come forward to say what provisions remained in his hands or upon his portion of ground.

Mr. Stone offered an antelope which had been snared the day before, and fastened within an inclosure which the savages had not entered. He feared that but little was left of his first crop of fruit, and that the next would not be ripe for some weeks; but said, that whatever remained should be carried to any appointed spot. Campbell, the herdsman, said he had not a beast left of all the flocks he had charge of; but he would venture to follow on the track of the savages for a few miles, and if a stray ox or sheep should be left behind, it should be in the camp before nightfall. Upon this, two or three men offered to go out hunting if weapons were furnished; and others proposed fishing, if they had but tackle.

“This is all very well,” said the captain, who suspected that neither weapons nor tackle were to be had; “but our object is to find out what food is actually in our possession.”

Alas! this was soon made out. There was only Mr. Stone’s antelope, a few oranges, grapes, and figs; some eggs which were found near the roosts, and some fowls which began to appear again after having been scared away by the fires. This was all the provision that could be collected for fifty-four persons.

“It is clear, then,” said the captain, “that the greater number of us must disperse in search of food, and that all considerations of removal must be deferred till to-morrow, at least. We are in no condition to travel this day. But our night’s shelter must also be thought of. Let any one speak who has a plan to propose.”

Here again there was a pause, for every one was wishing that poor Williams, the carpenter, was among them. At length, Robertson, a farmer said,

“If we could find up tools enough, we might have a sort of roof over our heads before night, for I believe there are several here who have been used, like myself, to handle a hatchet, though not as a regular business, like poor Williams who is gone. But if we cannot have tools, I see nothing for it but to sleep under the open sky. It is damp in the woods; and besides, the beasts would couch in our neighbourhood, and the women and children would not sleep for their roaring, even supposing we men could.”

“The nights are frosty,” said Mr. Stone; “it is dangerous to sleep unsheltered after such hot days. Who has a hatchet to produce?”

Not one was forthcoming, and each looked at his neighbour in dismay.

A labourer then proposed that a party of two or three should explore the pass of the mountains to the east, and see whether there were caves, or any places in the rock which might be covered in with boughs and rushes so as to make a convenient sleeping-place.

“Excellent!” cried the captain. “And lest this plan should fail us, let another company go into the wood, and try whether we cannot get possession of some stout branches, though we have no tools. Some must have snapped in the wind last week, I should think; and so dry as the weather has been for many weeks, some will yield to force, if we put our strength into our hands. We must remember that our hands are our tools to-day, and we must ply them well.”

“I do not see,” said Mr. Stone, “why the weakest should be idle. Cannot the children pluck dry grass and brushwood to make fires round our sleeping-place?”

“My child shall do her part,” said Mrs. Stone. “She shall look for eggs about the roost; and some of the boys and I will gather the fruit and cook the antelope, and whatever game may be brought in.”

“And I,” said her husband, “will see that the bodies of those we have lost are buried without delay, and with proper respect. Let the mourners of their families follow me.”

When Mr. Stone and about eight of the company had retired, the captain proceeded to appoint to the others their various tasks. His office of superintendent was enough for him. His advice and help were wanted every moment; for it was no easy matter to perform tasks, all the materials for which were wanting.

First of all, Campbell, the herdsman, was sent with two of Robertson’s labourers to follow the Bushmen, and pick up any stray lamb or wearied beast which might have been left behind. They looked round wistfully for a noose, thinking that they might snare an antelope by the way; but not a thread of cordage was left. They were obliged to be content with a stout cudgel each, which they took from the trees as they passed.

Jack, the tanner’s man, set off with two companions up the pass in search of a sleeping-place; while his master, who was accustomed to go into the woods to obtain bark for tanning, guided a party of labourers to a tree of remarkably hard and tough wood which he had barked and stripped of its branches, of which he thought tools of a rude kind might be made. It occurred to him also that the want of ropes might be supplied by thongs of leather tanned and prepared according to the manner of the natives; and he wished, therefore, to proceed upon the antelope’s skin without delay. So his object was to obtain hard wood to make a rude sort of tools, and bark for tanning.

Hill, the barber-surgeon, had explored the whole neighbourhood in search of herbs for his medical purposes; and he told of a pool of remarkably fine water, about two miles off, which abounded with carp. They had only to pass a net through the water, he said, and they would soon catch enough to feed their company. This might be true, but where was the net? Hill could not furnish one; but he could tell how one might be obtained within a short time. He could shew where flax grew in abundance; and if two or three clever pairs of hands would help him, the fibres might be dried and pulled out and twisted and woven into a net, and in three days they might have a plentiful meal of fish. Hill’s wife and her sister Kate, and the three children, went with him about this business.

“If they had but left us our dogs,” said Arnall, a great sportsman and one of the partners of the store or shop where all the commodities of the settlement were exchanged,—“if they had but left us our dogs, we might have started game in abundance.”

“And much use it would be of to us,” replied his partner, Mr. Dunn, “when we have no guns to bring it down.”

“I shot a partridge without a gun, the other day,” said George Prest, the butcher’s son. “Mr. Arnall laughed at my bow and arrows then; but perhaps he would like such an one now very well.”

“If you will bring me such an one to-morrow, my boy,” said Arnall, “you shall have the first bird I bring down.”

“I am afraid your arrows are not strong enough to kill a hare,” said Dunn. “If you help me to a hare, you shall have her skin to make a cap of for your bare head.”

“If your dogs will run me down a porcupine,” said the boy, “you shall have your hare and her skin into the bargain. A hedgehog’s bristles are strong enough to wound a partridge, but nothing less than a porcupine quill will reach larger game.”

So saying, George ran off to beg a string of the gut of the antelope from Mrs. Stone, and to find a suitable slip of wood for a bow, and some lighter pieces for arrows, with tufts of the soft hair of the antelope, which must serve instead of feathers till a bird could be brought down. Meanwhile, Arnall climbed a hill, and whistled shrill and long for his dogs, one of which at length made his appearance, limping and wearied. Jowler had, however, sport enough in him to turn out a hedgehog, which was immediately killed, stripped of its bristles, and put away to be cooked the next day, after the manner of the natives, if better food should fall short.

The rest of the labourers, meanwhile, were employed under the captain’s direction in various tasks. Some assisted at the burial of their companions. As they had not the means of digging graves for the dead, and as it was necessary, on account of the extreme heat, not to defer the rite, the bodies were deposited together in the saw-pit, which was afterwards filled up with sand and earth. Others of the men built a sort of oven with stones; one large flat one being placed at the bottom of a hole scooped out in the sand, and others placed upright round the sides of the hole. This was filled with burning wood till the stones were thoroughly heated; then the ashes were swept out, and the meat (which had been skinned and cut up with fragments of granite) put in, and the whole closed with a hot stone; and lastly, fire was heaped above and round the whole.

“I wonder whether it will be good,” said one of the children, who watched the whole proceeding. “There is no flour to sprinkle it with, nor yet salt. There will be very little gravy.”

“And what there is will all run out between the stones into the sand,” said another. “And what shall we eat our dinner off? We have no dishes or plates. I never had my dinner without a plate.”

“If you cannot eat without a plate,” said Mrs. Stone, “suppose you try to find or make one, instead of standing with your hands behind you. If you and your brother go into that quarry which is just opened, I should not wonder if you find a service of plates which will answer our purpose very well.”

“There is nothing there but slates,” said the boy. “They are flat enough for plates, to be sure; but they have no rim; and even Jowler’s trencher had a rim.”

Being again reminded, however, that there was likely to be no gravy to run over, little Harry set off in search of a dinner service. He looked out a great many flat pieces of slate, and rubbed them so clean with dry grass, that no dust remained. His brother, meanwhile, broke stones against the hard rock, and picked out the sharpest bits to serve for knives.

When they had done this, Mrs. Stone called them to help her to gather fruit; and they climbed the trees in the orchard, where a few oranges were still hanging among the dark leaves. Some plums and apples also remained, and a purple bunch of grapes here and there upon the trailing vines. Little Betsy, their sister, had a quick ear; and while she was picking up oranges, she heard, some way off in the wood, the cry of a bird which she knew very well. So she slipped away, without being missed, to try whether she could not add something acceptable to the dessert, by the help of this bird. The Honey-cuckoo, as Betsy’s friend is called, lives on the honey which the wild bees store in the hollow trunks of trees. It is sometimes called the Indicator, because by uttering its peculiar cry whenever it meets with a stock of honey, it points out the way to the honey-tree. Betsy had often followed this bird from tree to tree, and when the bees were absent, (as wild bees usually are on a sunny day,) it was her custom to place a leaf on the ground with some honey on it for the bird, and then to carry off a part of what remained. Nothing had been easier, hitherto, than to obtain and bring away this honey, which was as clear and liquid as water. Betsy brushed it out of the hollows of the wood with a painter’s brush which she kept clean for the purpose; and she let it run into the white basin out of which she ate her breakfast. But now, the brush was burned and the basin gone; and when she had overtaken the bird in the wood, she did not know what to do for want of her utensils, and her guide fluttered onwards and did not like to be kept waiting. She twisted a wisp of dry grass, which did very well instead of her brush: but after she had taken possession of a leaf-full of honey, and found that it ran over and escaped between her fingers, she found she must devise a better plan or leave the honey behind. She had nothing on that she could make into a basket or basin;—no hat, no pocket; nothing but her shoes, and those she could not spare. At last, she bethought herself of marking the trees and returning for the honey when the bird should be gone: so she picked up a piece of red earth, and marked each honey-tree with a cross. When she had marked six and began to be tired, she followed the bird no farther, but sat down beside a pool of water where rushes grew in plenty, and began to weave them into a sort of basket or basin. She had been accustomed to make caps of rushes for her brothers in play, and was expert. She made just such an one now, and lined it thick with the large leaves of the fig-tree, and tied twigs crosswise over the top to keep it in shape. By the time this was done, she was rested, and made her way back merrily through the wood, delighted to find how abundant the honey was, and how well her vessel held it. On the way, it occurred to her that it would not be pleasant to eat honey by dipping the fingers into it when other persons were doing the same; and no better mode seemed to be left. She wondered whether she could make a spoon-brush, such as she had seen the natives prepare and use for taking up liquids. The plant of which this sort of brush is made grows in great abundance in those parts, and she had no difficulty in finding it. Its stem is hard and fibrous, and flat: being about two inches broad, and very thin. Betsy cut the stem off in the middle with a sharp stone, and then beat it till it was bruised so that she could separate the fibres with her fingers. When it was done, she dipped it into the honey, and found that it took up quite sufficient for a mouthful. She made six before she turned her face homewards. As she took down her honey-basket from the bough on which she had hung it, she was rather alarmed to see that the sun was getting low in the sky, and pursued her way as fast as she could, lest she should hear the roaring of wild beasts before she got out of the wood.

Just when she was quitting the shade, and going to cross the meadow, she heard a rustling in the bushes close beside her. She did not scream, but her limbs bent under her, for she expected to see a panther, or perhaps a lion, ready to spring upon her. She looked behind her for the fiery eyes which she supposed were glaring amidst the underwood. Her delight was great to see that it was the herdsman’s dog—an old acquaintance, whose bark now sounded cheerily, when she had listened only for a savage growl. Campbell himself soon appeared with a lamb on his shoulder, which he had overtaken feeding by itself upon the hills.

Betsy wished him joy of his prize; but he did not answer her, and looked very melancholy.

“Has any new thing happened?” asked the little girl. “Are Will and Richard safe?”

“Yes; they are behind, driving home a bullock; and Will has got a hare that Keeper took by the ears for us.”

“O, what good luck!” cried Betsy. “But one would not have thought it by your looks. What makes you look so gloomy?”

“Why, it seems ungrateful to say that it is this lamb,” said Campbell. “It is not that I do not like to have it back again; but it makes me pine for the rest. This morning, when I went out, I thought, as was fit, less about the poor beasts than about the folks we are going to, seeing how little prospect of food there was before them. But when I heard the bleat of this lamb, and I saw it come skipping towards me, I thought to myself, ‘Where are the rest?’ And then it seemed hard to see the very traces of them in the track, and to know what a little way they were before us, and yet to turn back and leave them to be slaughtered by those savages. I little thought when I called home the cows, and penned the sheep, last night, that I should never see one of all of them again but this poor beast.”

Little Betsy did not know what to say; and so she plucked a handful of grass for the lamb.

In a few minutes they reached the place where dinner was going forward. Though it was the first meal that day, many of the people had eaten sparingly, not knowing whether anything might be provided for the next day. When they saw the lamb, however, and heard of the bullock, they helped themselves again. They did not relish their hard-earned meal the less for the clumsy manner in which they were obliged to eat it.

Campbell would not join them till he had disposed of his charge. The fences were so injured that it was necessary to pile up all the wood that could be laid hold of to stop the gaps. This done, the herdsman cast a mournful glance at these poor remains of his droves and flocks, and sat down to refresh himself.

Mrs. Stone, and Betsy’s mother, Mrs. Links, the smith’s wife, had grown uneasy about the little girl, on account of her long absence: but they could not blame her when they saw what she had been doing. They bade her carry the honey and brushes to the captain, who acted as store-keeper, and receiver-general of whatever was brought in. He patted her on the head, and said she had done her part; and he moreover gave her his share of fruit, without which she would have had none, for there was not enough for everybody. The captain said that the honey should be for those who came too late for the fruit, that all might have some kind of vegetable nourishment. And as for the spoon-brushes, they were so useful that everybody must have one. So little Betsy determined to make plenty more the next day, and was quite happy.

“And now,” said the captain, “it is high time we were setting off to our sleeping-place. Jack, kindle your torch and go first, and Hill and Robertson will follow with lights. The rest of you must take care of your own families, and see that none are left behind but the few who have not returned from the woods. I will just stay to light the fire we have piled for them, and then follow you. If they do not come by the time that wood-heap is burnt, we shall not see them to-night.”[to-night.”]

So saying, the brave captain took his stand, and hurried the people away, first lighting his torch, and promising to follow soon. All the way as they went, Mr. Stone looked back, in hopes of seeing his friend advancing; but it was not till they had been settled at their sleeping-place nearly an hour, that they saw the glimmering light of his torch coming slowly up the pass between the rocks.

The sleeping-place was such an one as the whole party were very thankful to have found, though its distance (two miles) from the settlement was likely to add considerably to their daily toils. It consisted of two caverns, one within the other, sufficiently dry and open to the air to be wholesome, but not lofty enough to admit of a fire being kindled within, or even of a torch being burned there for any length of time. The inner cave, which was set apart for the women and children, had been swept out with bundles of rushes, and the floor thick-strewn with dry grass, by the men who had explored it in the morning. Mr. Stone entered it first this night, in order to satisfy himself that there was no other passage to it than from the larger cave; and when he came out, he delivered the torch to his wife, desiring her to give it into no hand less careful than her own, while her companions were laying themselves down to rest, and to return it to him before she should herself retire; for if a single spark should fall on the dry grass, they would inevitably be driven from their shelter.

“What a beautiful room!” cried some of the little children, as they opened their sleepy eyes, and saw how the sides and roof, glittering with crystals, sparkled in the torch-light.

“If they do but keep up the fire on the outside,” said one of the mothers, “we may sleep as safely and warmly as in our own houses.”

Perhaps she would not have said this if she had known what Jack could have told, but wisely kept to himself, that he had found in that very cave traces of a lion, which had perhaps couched there the night before. Jack properly considered that this was not a sufficient objection to the place, as there were few spots in the neighbourhood where lions had not couched some time or other, and as a good fire at the entrance of the cave was always a perfect security against the attack of wild beasts. Lest others should not think so, however, he held his peace towards everybody but the captain, taking care that brushwood enough was stored to keep up a large fire till sunrise.

When the captain had joined his people, Mr. Stone offered to conduct their devotions, as he had done this morning. Standing at the entrance, between the two caverns, so that he could be heard by those within and those without, he offered thanksgiving for their preservation during so eventful and perilous a day, and besought protection during the night.

He and the captain then took their station as watchers just within the outer cave, having promised that Robertson and Arnall should be called up to take their place when half the night had passed.

Chapter II.
WHAT IS WEALTH?

“Well, my friend,” said the captain to Mr. Stone, as they sat watching their fire, “how do you feel at the close of this strange day?”

“Very much as if I were in a dream. When I look round this place and think of all that I have seen and done since morning, I can scarcely believe that we are the same people, living in the same age of the world as yesterday. We seem to have gone back in the course of a night from a state of advanced civilization to a primitive condition of society.”

“Except,” interrupted his friend, “that the intelligence belonging to a state of advancement remains.”

“True,” replied Mr. Stone; “and it is this which makes the present too good an opportunity to be lost of observing what the real wealth of society consists of, and what the unassisted labour of man can do towards producing that wealth.”

“I wish,” said the captain, “that the people in England, who think that wealth consists in gold, and silver, and bank notes, would come here, and see how much their money is worth in our settlement. A thousand sovereigns would not here buy a hat, nor a roll of bank notes a loaf of bread. Here, at least, money is not wealth.”[wealth.”]

“Nor any where else,” said Mr. Stone, “as we may see by putting a very simple case. Put a man with a bag of gold into an empty house, in England or anywhere else, and he will starve in a week, unless he is allowed to give his gold in exchange for what will supply his wants. But give a man, who has not a shilling, a room well stocked with meat, and bread, and beer, and he has wealth enough to maintain him for a week or a fortnight, or as long as his provision lasts. And this is a test which holds good all the world over.”

“And yet gold and silver may be called riches,” said the captain, “while they procure us things of greater value than themselves.”

“Certainly they are, as long as they can be made use of, a part of wealth, though only one, and that not the greatest part. Wealth is made up of many things—of land, of houses, of clothes, furniture, food, and of the means (whether gold and silver, or anything else) by which these things may be obtained. Whatever lives, or grows, or can be produced, that is necessary, or useful, or agreeable to mankind, is wealth.”

“Then our settlement,” said the captain, “is not stripped of all its property. We have some wealth left.”

“Poor as we are,” said his friend, “we are richer than if we were in the midst of the sandy desert to the north of us, with a waggon full of gold in our possession. We have here what gold could not buy in such a place, food and shelter.”

“And other things too,” said the captain. “We have clothing, for flax grows in the woods, and there are plenty of animals within reach, whose skins can be dried and cleaned to make us cloaks or beds, or tanned for shoes and caps and aprons for our workmen. We have furniture, for there is plenty of timber in the woods to make tables and chairs. We have——”

“Stay,” interrupted his friend, “you are getting on too fast. All these things are likely to become ours, I grant you; but before we can call them our own,—before they become wealth to us, something must be added which we have not yet taken into consideration. You forget that there is no wealth without labour; and labour must be applied before the commonest productions can become wealth.”

“True,” replied the captain. “The flax must be gathered, and dried, and hackled, and woven, before it will make a shirt; and the animals must be caught, and a great deal of labour be spent upon their skins before they become fit for clothing or bedding; and the timber must be felled and sawn, and the pieces put skilfully together, before we possess it in the form of tables and chairs. But surely the case is different with food, of some kinds at least. There is fish in the pond, and fruit on the tree, ready made for man’s use. Man spends no labour on the fruit that grows wild in such a climate as this; and yet we daily find that it is wealth to us.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Stone. “There is the labour of gathering it. An orange is of no use to any man living unless he puts out his hand to pluck it. And as for the fish in the pond,—think of the carp that Hill told us of this morning. They are no wealth to us till we can catch them, though the pool is within reach, and they belong to nobody else.”

“We should have had them by this time if we had but got a net,” said the captain.

“The net is one thing wanting, certainly,” said his friend, “but labour is another. If the net were now lying ready on the bank, we should be no better for the fish, unless some one took the trouble of drawing them out of the water. I do not say that unassisted labour will furnish us with all that we want; but I do say that nothing can be had without the exertion of getting it; that is, that there is no wealth without labour.”

“True,” said the captain. “Even the manna in the wilderness would have been of no more use to the Hebrews than the carp in the pool to us, if they had not exerted themselves to gather it up. Food was never yet rained into the mouth of any man.”

“And if it had been,” said Mr. Stone, “he must have troubled himself to hold back his head and open his mouth. So you see what conclusion we come to, even in an extreme case.”

“But with all our labour,” said the captain, “how little we can do in comparison with what is done for us! Labour may be necessary to make the productions of Nature useful to us; but how much greater are the powers of Nature in preparing them for us! To look back on farther than to-day,—the antelope could not have been food for us unless human hands had prepared it; but how much was done beforehand! It was nourished, we know not how, by the grass it fed upon; it was made, we know not how, fit food for our bodies: and our bodies were so formed as to be strengthened by this food. Neither do we understand how fire acts upon the flesh so as to make it tender; or even how wood in its turn nourishes the fire. All that human labour has done was to bring together the wood, and the fire, and the animal, and then to eat the food prepared. Nature did the rest.”

“The case was the same with little Betsy’s treat of honey,” added Mr. Stone. “The earth, and the air, and the dew, had nourished the flowers from which the honey was collected: the bees were curiously formed and animated, so that they could gather and store the honey; and the hollows of the tree so made as to hold it. Then again, the rushes, and the twigs, and the leaves, were all fit for the use Betsy made of them; her business was to bring them together in a particular manner so as to make a basket. And thus it is in every case. And even where we seem to make the materials, we only bring together simple materials to make compound ones. We say that the materials of a rush basket are not made by human labour; but that the materials of a paper basket are made by human labour; but though paper is made of linen-rags, those rags are made of flax which grows out of the ground. So that Nature still works at the bottom.”

“In the same way,” said the captain, “we say that the material of a hare-skin waistcoat is not produced by human labour, but that the velvet one of a gentleman of fashion is altogether made by human hands; but still Nature works at the bottom, as you say; for velvet is woven of silk spun by a worm.”

“True,” said Mr. Stone; “and thus far only is the labour of man appointed to go. He works with Nature, and his only way of doing so is by motion. He moves her materials together; but how they act upon one another he does not know. You put your torch of wood into the flame, and it blazes. Robertson lets the seed fall into the ground, and it sprouts; he pulls up a root, and it withers. Hill applies certain herbs to a wound, or gives certain medicines, and his patients are cured; or, if they die, he does not know how to prevent it. Fulton dips and rubs his leather in a certain preparation of bark, and it becomes soft and fit for use. His mother puts flour and salt and barm together, and the dough works; she places it in a great heat, and it becomes fit for food. So man brings materials together; but Nature first furnishes them, and then makes them act upon one another.”

“It seems but little that man can do,” said the captain; “but yet that little is all-important to him.”

“Since it is necessary to him,” said Mr.[Mr.] Stone, “it becomes great; and indeed it may be said that there are no bounds to what man can do, since there seem to be no bounds to the powers of Nature. Look what has been done! There may have been, I doubt not there was, a time when the founders of nations could do nothing more than gather the wild fruits of the earth, and find shelter in caves; and now, the successors of these very men produce merchandize, and build ships, and rear splendid buildings, and make roads over mountains, and do a thousand things which would have appeared miracles to their forefathers: and all this time, the wisest men are aware that labour may be employed in a multitude of ways of which we yet know nothing.”

“I should like our people to remain in this settlement,” said the captain, “that we might observe how fast they will advance from the primitive state to which we are reduced, to that in which their countrymen are in England.”

“They will advance rapidly,” replied Mr. Stone; “because they know how to apply their labour. They know what improvements they would aim at, instead of having to try experiments. I hope we shall all stay, for I am curious to see how much may be done by pure labour; and pure labour is our only resource till we can get tools from Cape Town.”

“It will take a long time to do that,” said the captain: “but I am not uneasy. The Bushmen know well enough that nothing more is to be had from us; and we are therefore safe from another attack till we shall have gathered some property about us again. Do you know, my dear friend, nothing has given me so much satisfaction to-day as seeing your wife and yourself in such good spirits. None of our people had so much to lose in the way of property as yourselves,—for I, being a single man, do not care much about those matters. You neither of you seem to be downcast about your losses.”

“Nor are we,” replied Mr. Stone; “but you must remember how different it is to lose everything in such a place as this, and in England. Here there are so few inhabitants, and the natural productions are in such plenty, that we know we have only to work, under the blessing of Providence, to provide ourselves and our child with all that is necessary now, and with comforts and luxuries by and by. Besides, there is here no loss of rank, or sacrifice of independence, because all are in the same condition. It could not happen so in England; and if any calamity should there oblige us to descend to a lower rank in society, or, worse still, to be dependent for our subsistence upon others, we should try, I hope, to be patient, but we could not be so happy as you have seen us to-day.”

“You have both good health, and industry, and contentment,” said the captain; “and they are exactly the qualities we all have most need of just now.”

“Thank God! we have always had cause for content,” replied his friend; “and as for industry, the only difference is, that we must now work in another way. We have always declared that none deserved to be maintained who would not labour. Before, we worked most with our heads; now we must work with our hands as well. And we are both willing.”

“And in order to be fit for labour,” said the captain, “you must sleep; so let us pile some more wood on the fire, and then rouse our watchmen.”

So when they had arranged the time and place for a general consultation on the affairs of the settlement, the next morning, the gentlemen gave up their charge to Robertson and Arnall and betook themselves to rest.

Chapter III.
EARN YOUR BREAD BEFORE YOU EAT IT.

During the first day of the troubles of our settlers, before the impression of their terror was worn out, and when it remained doubtful whether their immediate wants could be supplied, there was a general concern for the good of the community, and forgetfulness of petty personal considerations. None but the little children were heard that day to cry, “What will become of me?” One little boy complained, as we have seen, that there was no rim to his plate; and it was said that one baby girl lifted up her voice in weeping for her doll; but the grown children of the society seemed to have laid aside their childishness on so great an occasion. It was not long in appearing again, however; for amidst the winding course of human life, character is sure to peep out and show itself at every turn, however it may occasionally be hidden. There was as great a variety of habits and dispositions among these settlers as there is among the same number of persons all the world over: and when the first fears and difficulties were surmounted, this variety began to be quite as evident as before any misfortune had befallen. It would have been a curious study to an observer,—it was so to Mr. Stone,—to mark the different deportment of the people who attended the morning’s consultation on the general state of their affairs. Some were in high spirits, excited by the novelty of their situation, and full of a spirit of enterprise. These were principally labourers, who had had little or nothing to lose, or young men whose activity was greater than their love of property. Some were gloomy and panic-struck: the old and the weak, whose terrors made them equally afraid to attempt, unprovided, a journey southwards, and to remain within reach of the Bushmen. Some were more careful of their own dignity than of all besides, ready to plead their rights, to refuse any employment they might fancy degrading, and to resent any hint that the less was now said of distinction of ranks the better.

At the head of these was Arnall, the storekeeper, who had always been disliked for his haughtiness. He had complained of his partner, Mr. Dunn, ever since their first connexion, for being on such familiar terms with the customers of all ranks who came to their shop; and it spoke well for Mr. Dunn that this was the only fault of which his fastidious partner did complain.[complain.] Arnall was as obsequious as any man to the public as a whole. No petitions for custom were so full of compliments and protestations as his; but he was not the less insolent for this. His insolence was particularly evident this morning, when the captain was offering his advice respecting the manner in which the various members of the society should employ their industry. Arnall was anxious to be sent out shooting, which he thought a very gentlemanly amusement; but as he had no gun, and had never practised with bows and arrows, it was thought best that he should yield the sport to the boys who were skilful at it, and assist, with all the hands that could be spared from other occupations, in carrying on the trenching, on which the growth of the crops depended. In very dry seasons in that climate, there is no means of preserving the young corn but by digging trenches from the neighbouring streams through the fields. A large trench, from which several smaller ones were to branch out, had been nearly finished in Mr. Stone’s field when the savages made their attack; and as the spring rains (for our autumn is their spring) were not expected for a month or more, it was of the utmost importance that water should be conveyed to the crops. Even if the settlers should wish to remove, they could not stir till they had provision for their journey, as, in a country like that, there was nothing to depend on by the way. Many were eager to be employed in a work of such pressing importance: but not so Mr. Arnall.

“Do you actually mean, captain,” said he, “that I am to work in a ditch with ploughmen and hedgers? I am as willing as any body to do my part; but I assure you I have not been used to such companionship.”

“Nor have I,” said Mr. Stone, “yet I am going about my work without delay.”

“But it is contrary to all my habits,” persisted Arnall.

“Not more so than to your partner, Mr. Dunn’s,” said the captain; “and there he is at work already. He and Jack made a very pretty spade between them this morning, of a piece of hard wood, which they sawed and burnt into shape with the fragments of the saw left in the pit, and with heated stones. They will give you that spade and make another, if you will go and ask them. Then you can work by yourself, which will suit your dignity better than helping those men who are turning out the clods so cleverly by crossing the stakes they have taken from the fence.”

“You must excuse me, indeed,” replied Arnall. “I must beg some other employment. Could not I be your messenger to Cape Town, and send out tools and all that you want? I shall have pleasure in undertaking the journey, and will represent your case forcibly to the Governor.”

“I am afraid, Sir, you are scarcely the man to be the representative of a hard-working agricultural community as ours must be now. There is a rival candidate in the person of Richard the labourer. We can ill spare him; but he is a hardy traveller on foot, and is, besides, a good judge of implements, which, by your own statement, you cannot be for want of experience. Stand aside, Sir, if you please, for my time is precious this morning. Choose your own occupation; but remember that you must find your own food unless you do our work.”

“The tables are turned, you see,” said one of the labourers to Arnall as he was retiring. “You held your head very high a week ago, because you had a genteeler employment than ours, as you thought. And now that we are all put to the test, see what a poor figure you make! I always said a farmer ought to rank above a shopkeeper.”

“Hey-day! what is that I hear?” said the captain. “Let me tell you, you are quite in the wrong, my friend. What our society is now, is no test of the value of its members a week ago. Because we cannot have a shop to-day, it does not follow that a shop was not a good thing when we had goods to buy and sell. If Mr. Arnall transacted his business properly, he deserved as well of society as the farmer who did his part honestly. As far as their labour is concerned, they rank equally.”

“But farmers do not give themselves airs like some shopkeepers I have known,” persisted the labourer; “and I see no gentility in such airs.”

“Nor I,” said the captain; “but I have seen farmers as haughty with their men as any shopkeeper. All this has nothing to do with the question. A man may make himself liked or disliked by his manners; but they do not affect his rank as a labourer in the community.”

Arnall did not much relish being called a labourer in any sense, having a very narrow notion of the meaning of the word. Some others who were present fell into the same mistake, as we shall see by-and-by. Business was so pressing just now, however, that there was no time for conversation: but many minds were active that day in thinking over what was happening, while the hands were busily employed in various tasks.

It was soon settled that no removal should be thought of till after the rains, at any rate, as the settlers could not hope to establish themselves elsewhere in the interval, and were unwilling to desert their fields after all the labour which had been spent upon them. With heart and good-will, therefore, men, women, and children set about improving their condition, determined to try what industry could do to make up for a scarcity of hands, and an almost total deficiency of tools.

Betsy’s father, the smith, was in high spirits at having found the fragments of the large saw. Of one part he believed a serviceable hand-saw might be made, and of another a hatchet, if he could but fix handles to them. This he thought he could do by burning grooves in two pieces of wood which he fixed at each end of the fragment, and tying them on with thongs of the leather cordage we have mentioned, the thongs being passed from one end to the other through holes also burned in the wood. Fulton, the tanner, was, meanwhile, twisting and tanning his thongs as expeditiously as possible, for as many were wanted as he could prepare. They could not even make houses without his help, for cordage must now supply the place of nails.

There was some deliberation about what these houses were to be made of. They were to be only temporary sheds to sleep in, to save the extra labour of walking two miles up the pass every night to their cave. It was evident that they could not be built like their former habitations with timbers. Till tools should arrive, this was impossible.—Harrison, the brickmaker and potter of the settlement, (for in several instances two somewhat similar employments were undertaken by one man,) was urgent to be allowed to begin brick-making, as the clay-pits were open, and stones and wood were all the implements he should require. But a quicker method was devised, and Harrison was to build in a new fashion. The huts of the natives were composed of reeds, bound together and plastered over with clay, inside and out. The roofs were covered in with branches of trees and dry grass. Such were to be the sheds of the settlers.

Thus there was work for everybody. The men were some digging, some tanning, some smoothing a space among the trees for the sheds, for, as no foundations could be dug, it was necessary to make the trees themselves the corner-posts. The boys were busy scooping out and working the clay, or making bows and arrows, or cutting reeds. The women were preparing flax or cooking the dinner, or, with their little girls, collecting brushwood and dry grass for the fires, and to thatch the sheds with. The captain meanwhile went about from one party to another, ready to advise, and encourage, and assist, wherever[wherever] he could.

One little party, however, escaped his notice, and that of everybody else. Little Betsy had taken her cue from what the captain had said the night before about her spoon-brushes and her basket. She could teach her little companions to make spoon-brushes, while she fancied that, with help from her brothers, she could make what was wanted much more, a strong substantial basket. There was a difficulty about carrying away the earth from the trench; and it occurred to her that, in the absence of barrows and all means of making them, it would be a good thing to have baskets which would take it all away in time, though it would certainly be slow work. Her brothers and she collected twigs in the wood, and she went for rushes to the water-side, and then they sat down to their work.

Having found, the day before, that she had no means of fastening the bottom in firm, she did not attempt to make a basket that would stand. She bent the twigs into the same shape she had been accustomed to make, only on a much larger scale, so that the basket, when finished, would look very like a sieve. She was particularly careful to fasten the ends of the twigs firmly to the stronger ones that made the rim, and to twist in the handles so that they would not easily give way. She tied the twigs wherever they crossed with bands of rushes, and then wove in the whole as closely as possible. This was not done in an hour’s time. She and her companions made many attempts before they could get the twigs into any shape at all, and their fingers were scarcely strong enough to twist the rim firmly. Once, just when she thought she should succeed, the little boys left hold, saying they were tired and hungry. She was very near crying; but she thought the wiser way would be to let them rest, and find them something to eat, when they would, perhaps, help her again; for she little expected that any better assistance would come. She desired one of the boys to watch her basket lest the monkeys, which abounded in the wood, should destroy it; while, with the other brother, she looked about for wild strawberries and chesnuts. There were a few strawberries still left, and a great many chesnuts lying in the grass, and more to be had by throwing stones at the monkeys in the trees, which provoked the animals to pelt them with chesnuts in return. After a hearty laugh at these mimics, Betsy returned with her treasure of fruit; but the young gentleman who, the day before, was mourning for gravy, could not, hungry as he was, eat his chesnuts unless they were roasted. Betsy cared much less about eating than about her basket; but she was a good-natured little girl, and ready to remember that her brother was younger than herself. So she advised him to run home and roast his chesnuts at the oven-fire; and told him not to come back again unless he liked. She sent a message to her mother to say that she was quite safe, and would be back before dark; but she charged Ned not to tell any body what she was busy about. Then she sent her other little companion with some chesnuts to the children who were making spoon-brushes some way off; and as soon as he was gone, she looked at her basket and sighed; for she feared she should not be able to finish it. Just then she heard some one coming through the bushes, and looking up, she saw it was Mr. Arnall. He had his hands in his pockets, and anybody would have thought by his appearance that it was a holiday in the colony.

“So you are eating chesnuts; my little girl,” said he. “Can you spare me some?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Betsy, pointing to the little heap beside her. “Will you help yourself?”

Arnall went on eating for some time in silence. “Where did you get these chesnuts?” he asked at length, when he had nearly made an end of them.

“Yonder, under the trees there.”

“They are very good. I dare say you will be my little maid, and get me some more: and here comes your brother; I will send him to roast them by the fire.”

“You must do it yourself, if you please, sir. We are very busy.”

“Indeed! What can children like you be busy about? Basket-making! Why, that basket will never stand.”

“It is not meant to stand,” said Betsy, who began to wish her visitor would go away and leave her to her business.

Arnall sat idly watching the little work-people, till seeing that greater strength of finger was what they wanted, he offered his services, which Betsy was very willing to accept. He became more interested as the affair went on, and continued his assistance till the framework was complete and the rim secure.

“And now,” said Betsy, jumping up joyfully, “now I will get you some chesnuts and welcome. I can easily finish the rest, for the weaving part will soon be done; and I should never have got so far without you.”

As soon as she was gone, Arnall took up the remainder of the twigs, and began another basket. He was really ashamed of doing nothing, and was glad to have found an employment which did not reduce him to toil with labourers or to provide his own dinner. He flattered himself that Betsy was saving his dignity by procuring his food; while she, in the innocence of her heart, thought he was working as much for her as she for him, and was grateful to him accordingly.

When it began to grow dusk, the little party in the wood made haste to gather up their materials and be gone. Arnall was no coward, as some very haughty people are. He had been long accustomed to the dangers of the woods, and if he had had his gun, would have been as ready as any man to make a defence against wild men or beasts: but it was only prudent, as he was unarmed, to leave the shade before night-fall. He did not choose to return to the settlement in company with the children; neither would he carry any of their goods. He lingered a while, till they were some way before him, and then appeared with his usual lounging gait, and his hands in his pockets. Of those who had time to observe him, some smiled at the unsuitability of his appearance to his circumstances, and others were indignant at his seating himself to eat that which they supposed he had done nothing to earn.

“Pardon me, sir,” said the captain; “but I hope you have your dinner in your pockets, or I am afraid you will have none. Our provisions are the right of those who work for them.”

“Mr. Arnall helped me to make my basket,” said little Betsy, “and he has got a great way with another; so I hope he may have the dinner I should have wanted if I had not found the chesnuts, and some for his own share besides.”

“Hold your tongue, child,” cried the gentleman, who was quite above owing his meal to the request of a little girl. “Who has any business with what I have been doing? Things have come to a pretty pass when one must account to anybody that asks for the use of one’s time and hands.[hands.]”

“By sitting down to table, sir”——

“To grass, you mean,” said Arnall. “We are in a fair way to eat in Nebuchadnezzar fashion, I think. Was ever a meal so served before?”

“If you will make us a table, we shall very thankfully accept it,” said the captain. “Meanwhile, as I was saying, by asking food, you demand the wages of labour, as we have agreed to live by the natural law, that food cannot be obtained without labour. You are accountable to us in no other way than all labourers are accountable to those who pay them wages. Little Betsy has settled your account with us: allow me, therefore, to help you to a lump (I wish I could say a slice) of lamb; or would you prefer hare?”

While the gentleman was picking his bone in silence, wondering when he should again be blessed with a knife and fork, Betsy placed beside him a pretty dessert of wild strawberries on a leaf.

He seemed barely to thank her, but began to resolve that he would either find some mode of being more useful, and thus feeling himself on equal terms with other people, or take himself off, where he need be accountable to nobody.

Chapter IV.
HAND-WORK AND HEAD WORK.

The heat of the weather was, we have said, very oppressive during the middle of the day. It was hard work to dig in the trench, for the badness of the tools more than compensated for the lightness of the soil. The labourers, fully aware of the importance of conveying water to the crops, toiled most diligently through all hours of the day, till it became evident that such exertion was injurious to their strength. A new regulation was made, according to which they began work two hours earlier in the morning, and rested in the shade for two hours at noon. Some slept, while others, who were stronger or more industrious, employed themselves in some light occupation, either preparing flax with the women, or looking for honey or fruit, or cutting the reeds of proper lengths, and binding them in bundles ready for the builder, or helping to make bows and arrows. This was the most pleasant and refreshing time of the day. It was the only time for conversation; for in working hours they were too busy, and at night too weary to enjoy it. Mr. Stone was always ready for cheerful talk at these intervals, both because he was sociable, and because he knew it to be a very important thing to keep up the spirits of the people by all such natural and proper means. A few days after the labours of the settlement were got into train, he was sitting with a party of companions on the trunk of a tree which served as a work-bench, and which was drawn within the shadow of a noble chesnut. He was making sandals for some of the people whose shoes were worn out, by fastening leather thongs to slips of wood made as nearly the size of the foot as the saw could bring them. Some of the men had been for walking barefoot; thinking shoes too great a luxury for the present state of their affairs: but Mr. Stone would not hear of this, on account of the venomous reptiles in the grass, from whose bite there could be no security to the barefooted. He engaged to furnish each man with sandals as his shoes wore out, till there should be leather enough to make a sort of socks with wooden soles, which would serve the purpose better still. While he was thus busied, his wife was beside him mending his coat, which had received a terrible rent. It was amusing enough at first to see her set about this new sort of tailoring; for she had neither needle, thimble, nor scissors. George had furnished her with a porcupine’s quill from the stock which had been placed in his hands for his arrows. With this she pricked holes in the cloth, through which a string of flax was passed; and thus, by slow degrees, the edges of the rent were brought together. To be sure, it did not look much like a gentleman’s coat after this; but, as all clothes were now worn for a covering and not for ornament, it did not much signify.[signify.] Next Mrs. Stone sat Hill, sorting and picking the herbs and roots he had gathered, that he might not be without medicines in case of sickness or accidental bruises. He had also furnished a poison in which the points of the arrows were dipped, as it was found that though the bristles wounded the game, they were not strong enough to bring it down. Hill had discovered how the natives procured, from a venomous snake, poison so powerful as to destroy all animals which it could be made to reach; and having provided himself with it, he suffered no one else to touch it, for fear of accidents. George, who formed one of the party, was therefore obliged to give up his arrows as they were made, and did not receive them again till the venom was dried on their tips. All the game, as it was brought in, was given into the charge of the butcher, who carefully took out the parts round the wound the arrow had made. His wife was now plucking partridges, which had become abundant since the best way of bringing down game had been discovered. The feathers were carefully dried and preserved to answer various purposes of clothing and bedding hereafter.

While the little party were thus busily employed and sociably conversing, they saw Arnall at a distance, practising shooting with bow and arrow at a mark.

“I wonder[“I wonder] at the captain,” said Hill, “for calling that gentleman yonder a labourer, as he did the other day.”

“Arnall himself was surprised,” said Mr. Stone; “and I do not wonder at it: but I should have expected you would allow him the title. Remember the captain spoke of him as he had been,—a shopkeeper.”

“He led a pretty genteel life as a shopkeeper,” replied Hill. “Look at his delicate hands and his slight make, and it seems ridiculous to call him a labourer.”

“Did he not buy his goods at Cape Town, and have them brought in his waggon; and did he not purchase various productions of his neighbours in large quantities and sell them by retail?” asked Mr. Stone.

“Certainly,” replied Hill; “but there was no hard work in all this. It would have done him good to have driven his own team over the mountains, and to have stuck fast among the rocks, as many a waggoner does, unless he can put his own shoulder to the wheel.”

“I should have liked to see him kill his own meat,” added the butcher’s wife, “or thresh the corn he used to sell. A heavy flail would be a fine thing to put into hands like his.”

“We are not inquiring,” replied Mr. Stone, “what sort of discipline would be good for such a man; but whether he can properly be called a labourer. You seem to think, Hill, that there is no labour but that of the hands, and that even that does not deserve the name unless it be rough and require bodily strength to a great degree.”

“I don’t mean to say so,” replied Hill. “I consider that I work pretty hard, and yet my hands shew it more by being dyed with these plants than roughened by toil. And there are the straw-platters of my native town in dear old England;—the Dunstable folks labour hard enough, delicate as their work is.”

“And you, sir,” said Mrs. Prest, the butcher’s wife, “have done so much, setting aside your farm, that it would be a sin to say you have not toiled night and day for us. If there was a person sick or unhappy, or if your advice was wanted any hour in the twenty-four, you were always ready to help us. But you would not call yourself a labourer, would you?”

“Certainly,” replied Mr. Stone. “There is labour of the head as well as of the hands, you know. Any man who does anything is a labourer, as far as his exertion goes.”

“The king of England is a labourer,” said Mrs. Stone. “If he does nothing more than sign the acts of parliament which are brought to him, he does a very great thing for society. Those acts cannot become law till they are so signed; and the man, whoever he be, who performs a necessary part in making laws, is a labourer of a very high order, however little trouble the act of signing may cost him.”

“Arnall did take more trouble than that, to do him justice,” said Hill. “He kept his books very well, besides purchasing and looking after and selling goods: but still I cannot think he was so useful a man as the ploughman who helps us to food; for food is the most necessary of all things.”

“A great deal of harm has been done,” said Mr. Stone, “by that notion of yours, when it has been held by people who have more power to act upon it than you. In many states, it has been a received maxim that commercial labour is inferior in value to agricultural; and agriculture has therefore been favoured with many privileges, and manufactures and commerce burdened with many difficulties. This seems to me to be a very unjust and foolish policy; for the greatest good of society cannot be attained without the union of both kinds of labour. The thresher, and the miller, and the baker, do not help to produce food like the ploughman; but they are quite as useful as he, because we could not have bread without their help. They are manufacturers, and the retail baker is engaged in commerce; but it would be absurd to say that they are on that account to be thought less valuable than the sower.”

“But is not the case different, sir,”[sir,”] said Hill, “when things of less importance than food are in question? Is not a weaver worth less than a ploughman in society?”

“Suppose,” said Mr. Stone, “that in our society, consisting of fifty-four persons, fifty-three were engaged in tilling the ground every day and all day long, and that the other was able to prepare flax and weave it into cloth and make it into clothes. Suppose you were that one; do not you think you would always have your hands full of business, and be looked to as a very important person; and that, if you died, you would be more missed than any one of the fifty-three ploughmen?”

“Certainly,” said Hill, laughing. “But what a folly it would be to raise ten or twenty times as much corn as we could eat, and to be in want of everything else!”

“It would,” replied Mr. Stone: “and in such a case, we should be ready to pass a vote of thanks to any man who would leave the plough and turn tanner or weaver; and then we would spare another to be a tailor; and, at last, when we had gathered a good many comforts about us, we would thank another to set up a shop where we might exchange our goods. Now, would it not be ungrateful and foolish, when we had reached this point, to say that the farmers were, after all, the most valuable to us; and that they must have particular honour and particular privileges?”

“To be sure,” said Hill. “The natural consequence of such partiality would be to tempt the shopkeeper to give up his shop, and the weaver his loom, and the tailor his sheers, to go back to the plough, and then we should be as badly off as before.”

“This would be the consequence in larger states, as well,” said Mr. Stone, “if the practice of the people were not wiser than the principles of the policy by which they have hitherto been governed. People buy clothes and furniture and other comforts as they have need of them, without stopping to pronounce how much less valuable they are than food.”

“All the world seems to have agreed,”[agreed,”] said Mrs. Stone, “that the right leg is worth more than the left; and if a man had the choice which he would lose, he would probably rather part with the left: but it would be a sad waste of time to argue about which is the more useful in walking.”

“All labour, then, should be equally respected,” said Hill, “and no one kind should be set above another.”

“Nay; I was far from saying that,” replied Mr.[Mr.] Stone. “Our friend George, there, makes beautiful little boats out of walnut-shells, and he must have spent a good deal of trouble on his art before he could carve the prow and stern and put in the deck as he does. If he were now to set to work and make us each one within a week, he would no more have earned his dinner every day than if he should lie down and sleep for seven days. We do not want walnut-shell boats, and his ill-directed labour would be worth no more than no labour at all.”

“The captain was telling me, though,” said George, “that if I were at some place he mentioned in England, I might get a very pretty living by those same boats. He said the quality would give me five shillings a-piece for them.”

“Very likely,” said Mr. Stone; “and in that case your labour would not be ill-directed. The rich, in any country, who have as much as they want of food and clothes and shelter, have a right to pay money for baubles, if they choose; and in such a state of things there are always labourers who, not being wanted for necessary occupations, are ready to employ their labour in making luxuries.”

“The lace-makers and jewellers and glass-cutters, and even those who spin glass for the amusement of the wealthy, are respectably employed in England, where there is a demand for their services,” observed Mrs. Stone; “but they would be sadly out of place here, and very ridiculous. All labour must be directed by the circumstances of the state of society in which it is employed; and all labour, so regulated, is equally respectable.”

“I am afraid, madam,” said Hill, “that your doctrine would go far towards doing away the difference between labour that is productive and that which is unproductive.”

“It is impossible,” replied Mr. Stone, “to do away that difference, because it is a difference of fact which no opinions can alter. It must always be as clear as observation can make it whether a man’s labour produces any of the things which constitute wealth. But the respectability of labour does not depend on this circumstance. I hope you do not think it does?”

“I have been accustomed, certainly, to think productive labourers more valuable than unproductive.”

“It depends upon what you mean by the word valuable,” replied Mr. Stone. “If you mean that productive labourers add more to the wealth of the society, the very way of putting the question shews that you are right: but we may see, in the case of every civilized state, that a mixture of productive and unproductive labourers is the best for the comfort and prosperity of society.”

“What would the English nation do,” said Mrs. Stone, “without household servants, without physicians and soldiers, and clergy and lawyers, without a parliament, without a government? If they were a nation of farmers and graziers and builders, without any unproductive labourers, they would have abundance of corn and cattle and houses; but no towns, no commerce, no law, and no king. They would be a savage nation.”

“Ours was not a savage settlement,” said George, “and we had no unproductive labourers. Everybody worked very hard.”

“However hard our people worked,” said Mr. Stone, “they were divided into productive and unproductive labourers, as the people of every civilized society are. If you will just run over a few names, we will try to divide the two classes.”

“Let us begin with the lowest,” said George. “The labourers on Robertson’s farm and on yours, sir, are productive labourers, because they produce corn for ourselves, and hay for the horses, and flax for our clothes. Then there are the other servants, who have wages paid them,—the captain’s errand-boy, and your maid, ma’am, who nurses the child, and kept the house clean when you had one, and Goody Fulton, who attended to Arnall’s shop when he was out shooting——”

“Well: go on,” said Mr. Stone; “tell us what they produced.”

George laid down his bow to consider; but he could not think of anything produced by these last-mentioned people. He owned that however industrious and useful they might be, domestic servants were unproductive labourers. Then he went on with his list.

“Fulton, I suppose, sir, produces leather out of what was only the hide of a beast; and Harrison makes bricks out of what was only clay; and Links——let me see, what does the farrier do? He puts on horse-shoes: that is not making anything. He is unproductive, I suppose.”

“As a farrier;—but he is also a smith, and makes horse shoes and nails, and implements of many sorts, out of what was only a lump or a bar of iron.”

“Then he is a labourer of both kinds. That is curious. And so are you, Mr. Hill. You make medicines; but when you give your advice, or bleed your patients, or shave my father on Saturday night, you are an unproductive labourer.”

“And at the same time, one of the last men we could spare,” said Mr. Stone. At which, Hill rose and bowed low.

“I am afraid my father is an unproductive labourer,” said George. “I cannot think of anything that a butcher makes.”

“Why should you say ‘afraid’?” inquired Mr. Stone. “Your father is of the same class with the captain.”

“Why, that’s true,” cried George; “and there’s an end of all objections to unproductive labour; for who works harder than the captain, and how should we get on without him?”

“And how do you class yourself, my dear?” said Mrs. Stone.

“Unproductive in my pulpit and in the school-room,” replied her husband, “and productive when I am working in my field. I leave it to my friends to say in which capacity I am most useful.”

“You have cleared up the matter completely, sir,” said Hill. “We see now that the words relate to wealth and not to usefulness. I am only sorry I ever understood any reproach by the word unproductive; but I shall never fall into the mistake again.”

“It is as well to observe, however,” said Mr. Stone, “that the prosperity of a nation depends much on the proportion between these two classes of labourers. If it would be a bad thing to have a population that could do nothing but produce food, and clothes, and habitations, with as many other comforts and luxuries as the industry of man can supply, it would be worse by far to have more unproductive labourers among us than the labour of the productive could maintain.”

“Our settlement would soon be ruined,” observed his wife, “if we had a great many soldiers, and two or three clergymen, and four or five surgeons, and several household servants in every family. However skilful all these might be in their several ways, they would soon eat us out of house and home. In the same way the welfare of an empire depends on its productive resources being abundant enough to supply the wants and reasonable wishes of the whole people. But, my dear, what noise is that?”

The little party started to their feet as they heard the sound of a horn. For a moment they were alarmed by the fear that an enemy was upon them; but some labourers passing by informed them that the captain had ordered the horns of the bullock which had been slain to be taken care of; and had turned one to the best account by using it as a summons to call the people together. It was, from this time forward, to be blown at the hours of work, of eating, and of rising and going to rest. The two hours of repose being now over, Mr. Stone went to his work in the trench, and the little party broke up.

Chapter V.
HEART-WORK.

In a few days from this time, some of the most thoughtful of the settlers began to ponder the necessity of increasing their supplies of food. Prest, the butcher, sighed every day as he passed the ruined paddocks and saw no cattle in them for him to exercise his skill upon. “Heaven knows,” said he to his wife, “when I may have the pleasure of slaying a beast again. And as for our ever having a drove or a herd, there is no possibility of it unless we can get hides enough to make thongs for snares. Fulton says he has used up every scrap of leather, and unless we can get more, Campbell and I may both lay aside our craft, for we shall never more have droves in our fields, or smoking joints on the table.”

“We must live like savages, on roots and fruit and fish,” said his wife. “Now, fish is very good in its way; but we have had so much lately, that one might fancy it was to be Lent all the year round.”

While they were thus talking, a plan was being settled between Arnall and the captain which promised fair to supply the butcher with employment, and the paddocks with stock which might increase in time so as to employ a herdsman on the hills. This magnificent plan entered Arnall’s head one day when he was thinking how he might distinguish himself in a genteel way, and shew himself a benefactor to the settlement without sacrificing his dignity.

He had once passed a pit, dug in the middle of a plain and quite empty and apparently useless. He could not make out at the time what it was for; but now he remembered having read that the natives of some countries dig pits for snaring wild animals, covering them over lightly so as to look even with the rest of the ground, that the beast may fall in unawares. He thought that he might secure antelopes in this way, or even the buffalo—fierce and strong as it is, and more difficult to deal with than the wildest bull of his own country. He could not prepare the pit with his own delicate hands, of course; and was therefore obliged to apply to the captain for leave to employ some labourers. Their help was promised as soon as the trench should be completed, which was to be in two days. Nothing must interrupt that important work, the captain said; and in the mean while they must live as well as they could on what might come in.

“Now is my time then,” thought the sportsman, “to try my new arrows, and my skill in using them; and if I fail, nobody will know but George Prest, and I can trust him for not telling. He will hold his tongue in return for my shewing him how to get the eggs.”

Here were three different schemes,—the pits for buffaloes, a new sort of arrows for smaller game, and a way of getting the enormous eggs of the ostrich,—a rich and nourishing food. Truly Arnall had exerted his wits to some purpose.

“If I succeed,” thought he, “I will give each man his due. I will own that Harrison gave me these reeds, so much stronger and more fit for arrows than the common sort. And I will thank Prest for pointing out how sharp the thigh bone of the antelope is, though he did not think of making an arrow-head of it; and Hill has the merit of the poison altogether. And then,—if the captain should say that no other man might have put these things together so ingeniously and made so good a use of them,—why, then I need not mind their laughing at me as they did last week, because I would not work in the trench. What a pity I cannot climb trees! for then I might get these eggs without any body’s help.”

Thus thinking, Arnall went out into the plain in search of game. He hid himself among some bushes till he saw a herd of buffaloes coming in sight. They ran for some way, tossing their horned heads in the air and lashing their tails; then some among them stopped to graze. Arnall determined that if a stray one came within shot, he would take aim at it; but it was long before any of the herd seem disposed to afford him the opportunity, and when they did, they seemed likely to give him too much of it. They all set off again at once, and exactly in the direction of the bushes where the sportsman lay. He knew something of what it was to be trodden and gored by a buffalo, as he had seen more than one man who had been maimed by such an accident, and had heard of the deaths of others: so when he saw the herd coming on in full trot, he had half a mind to try whether he could not really climb a tree. If he had had three minutes more, he would certainly have made the attempt; but it was now too late; and all he could do was to crouch in the thicket, and take his chance for escape. Only two entered the bushes, and they passed quickly through, and left poor Arnall breathing space again. He soon recovered from his terror; for, as we have said, he was not a timid man. Looking out upon the plain, he saw that two of the herd were again grazing, and now within bow-shot. Thinking this too good an opportunity to be lost, he let fly one of his precious arrows. It struck the animal in the flank, but was not strong enough to pierce the thick hide. It broke and fell to the ground, while the startled beast, now tossing his horns and now goring the ground beneath him, turned his flight first one way and then another, and at length followed his companions at full speed.

“There is one arrow gone to no purpose,” thought Arnall; “but I think I can recover the head. I must aim at a thinner hide next time.”

He looked for and found the fragments of his arrow, and took his station, waiting to see what game would next come by. In the course of a few hours, several flocks of ostriches passed within sight, but at a great distance. As Arnall watched these enormous birds, running swiftly with their wings outspread in the wind, like sails to help their progress, he longed to be near enough to fix an arrow in the tender part beneath the wing where it is easiest to wound them; but they kept their distance; and he was obliged to content himself with vowing a warfare against them for the sake of their eggs, if they would not let themselves be caught.

At last, he was rewarded by the approach of a troop of antelopes of the largest kind, called Elands. As he looked at their majestic form, (like that of the ox, only more slender,) and measured them with his eye, he felt that if he could secure one, he would have made a good day’s work of his hunting. Their length was, as nearly as he could measure by the eye, seven or eight feet, and their height between four and five; and he knew that the weight of each was seldom less than seven or eight hundred pounds. He counted fifteen of them, and thought it would be hard if not one of such a number should fall into his power. They came nearer, sometimes trotting all together, sometimes dispersing on the plain, and then collecting again. It seemed a wearisome time to Arnall, till, after many freaks and gambols, the whole herd began to graze very near him. He laid an arrow on the string, and disposed two more close beside him, that he might shoot one after another as quickly as possible. Whizz! went the first, and struck the nearest animal in the neck. While it was staggering away to a little distance, and before the alarm had well been given, he shot again and wounded another in the flank. The poor beast took flight, but Arnall knew that if the poison did its work, the run would be soon over. A third arrow which he despatched fell short, for the troop were making their escape full speed. Arnall came out of his hiding-place with the sort of stone-hatchet that he used for a knife, and seating himself on the head of his victims, which were quivering in the agonies of death, he cut their throats. As soon as they were quite dead, he carefully cut out all the parts round the poisoned arrow-head, and then prepared to carry home his trophies of victory. It was necessary to lose no time, if the carcasses were to be housed before night; so, severing the horns and gathering up his weapons, he hastened home. There was great joy in the settlement at his success; and Prest, the butcher, had soon formed his party, and prepared the hurdles on which the prey was to be dragged home. They took torches with them, to guard against the dangers of being benighted; and it was well they did; for the procession did not reappear till two hours after dark, and reported that the howlings of wild beasts were heard, not far off, the whole way as they were returning. Not the youngest child in the settlement went to rest that night till fires were lighted round the carcasses and the dogs set to watch.

The next day, all hands that could be spared were employed in preparing this new supply of meat for being preserved. There was a pool of very salt water in the neighbourhood—such as occurs very frequently in that part of the world—and the salt which had been procured from it by evaporation was rubbed into the meat as the butcher cut it into strips; and then the strips were hung up in the smoke of a wood fire till they were quite dry; after which they were buried in a hole in the sand, lined and well secured with stones. The honour of superintending the preparation of this game was offered to Arnall; but he declined it, asking, in preference, the favour of having George for his companion in an excursion, and the loan of a hide-sack which had been made for general use. George, who was not particularly fond of Arnall, and did not know what they were going to do, had much rather have stayed to help his father: but he felt that Arnall had earned the right of asking his assistance, and therefore willingly accompanied him.

When they were out upon the plain, Arnall looked round upon the various clumps of trees which grew here and there.

“Which is the highest, George,[George,]” said he, “yonder middle tree of that copse, or the straggler to the west?”

“That to the west,” answered George, “but they are neither of them fruit-trees, and they are not places likely for monkeys to lodge in.”

“I want neither monkeys nor fruit,” said Arnall. “They can be had nearer home. I want ostriches’ eggs.”

George looked puzzled, for he knew ostriches laid their eggs in the sand, far away from trees. His companion, however, explained that the ostrich is so shy a creature, that it is impossible to learn where her eggs are hid, unless she is watched from a distance, and even at that distance it must be from some place of concealment, so sharpsighted and timid are these singular birds.

“Do you get as high in the tree as you can,” said Arnall, “and watch for ostriches on all sides. If you see any one run round and round in a circle, mark the spot carefully, and when you are sure of it, come down. If the birds choose to go to a distance of their own accord and to leave the eggs (as they often do on so hot a day as this), we shall be obliged to them for saving us a deal of trouble; but if one remains sitting, I will go out with my dogs and make a hubbub, and put them all to flight. While we are pursuing them, do you take the sack and go straight to the nest, and carry off some eggs.”

“How many?” asked George.

“Why, I must tell you a little about the make of the nest. It is nothing more than a large hole in the ground, with a little bank round it, made by their scratching up the earth with their feet. Inside you will see the eggs set up on end, to save room. If there should be half a dozen or so, you may bring all; for then they can have been only just laid, and must be good eating. If you find as many as fifteen, bring away the outer circle, which will be eight or nine. If there are thirty—”

“Thirty eggs in one nest!” cried George. “I never heard of such a thing.”

“Perhaps not, because you may never before have heard of a tribe of birds whose habit is to unite in flocks that all the eggs of a flock may be laid in one nest. As I was saying, if there are as many as thirty, you will find some laid on the outside of the bank. They are the best that can be got, so bring them all, and as many of the next outer circle as you can carry.”

“And if I find any feathers,” said George, “shall I bring them too? The time may come when we shall be able to sell them to advantage. Ostrich feathers bear a good price in England at all times.”

“True,” said Arnall; “but when we deal in ostrich feathers, we must take more pains to get them than just picking them up. You will find plenty lying about the nest; but let them lie. They are good for nothing, unless it be to stuff our pillows by and by, when we come to have pillows again. The beautiful white feathers which English ladies wear must be plucked from the male ostrich. The feathers of the female are of a dark grey or black. When we get every thing comfortable about us, we will have ostrich-hunts, and sell the feathers for three or four shillings a-piece; but just now we want the eggs more by far.”

Arnall knew that a few snakes of the poisonous kind would be very acceptable to Hill; so he employed himself in looking for them in the copse, while George was swinging about at the top of the tree. There is little or no danger of a bite when people are on their guard; and the dogs having been trained to catch them, several were soon secured without difficulty, their heads cut off for a present to Hill, and the bodies put into the sack to be cooked for dinner, many people being as fond of them as of eels. Arnall was just carrying a beautiful one, lemon-coloured, and speckled with black, and five feet long, to the foot of the tree, to show to his young companion, when he saw George coming down in great haste.

“Off with you and your dogs,” said the boy.

“Which way?”

“Due east, to the left of yonder thicket, and I will follow and strip the nest presently. They are not three hundred paces off. But where’s the sack?”

Arnall pointed to the place in the copse where he had left it, whistled to his dogs, and set off at full speed. As soon as the ostriches saw him, they took flight; and as his pursuit was only a pretence, he was not too eager to observe their motions. There was something laughable in the way in which they sped along, one behind another, with their short wings and tufted tails spread, and their long legs clearing the ground as swiftly as a race-horse can follow. When they were out of sight, our sportsman whistled back his dogs, and stood to wipe his brows and look round for his companion. He could see no one, but supposed some rising of the ground might conceal the lad, or that he might be stooping after the eggs; so he walked leisurely back. Presently he came upon an ostrich’s nest, crowded with eggs, and with so many lying round the outside, that he was sure no one had meddled with it. He looked again and again, and measured the space with his eye, and calculated the direction, and after all could not make himself sure whether this was the right nest. It was not usual, he knew, for two nests to be so near together; but, if this were the one, he could not conceive the reason of George’s delay.

“He is so ready-witted and so quick-handed,” thought he, “it is impossible he should be groping for the sack all this time. I will carry off as many as I can take, and come back with him for more. I will put one of these feathers into my cap too, grey though they be, and give one to him too, for a trophy. And I do not see why these skins should not make us caps and waistcoats, under Fulton’s good management; so I shall take these dead beasts into the shade and skin them.”

The beasts he spoke of were a jackal and two wild cats, which had ventured near the nest for eggs in the night, and had apparently been crushed to death by a blow from the foot of the cock-ostrich, whose office it is to keep guard at night. Arnall tied them together by the tails, and slung them over his shoulder, and carried also three eggs, which were as many as he could manage without a sack; for they were each as large as a pumpkin. All the way as he went, he whistled aloud and shouted, but could see and hear nothing of George.

When he entered the shade of the copse, his heart misgave him, for at last he began to fear some accident had happened. Before he had advanced many paces, he saw the poor lad lying on his back, his face expressive of great suffering, and one of his legs swollen to an enormous size. His countenance brightened a little when Arnall appeared.

“I thought you would not go home without coming back to see what had become of me,” he said.

“And what has happened to you, my poor boy?” said his companion. “Have you been bitten by a snake, or a scorpion, or what?”

“By a horned-snake,” said George, “I did not see him till I was close upon him, so that I could not get away: so I tried to kill him as the natives do; but he struggled hard and slipped his neck from under my foot; and before I could get him down again, he bit me in the calf of my leg. I did kill him at last, and yonder he lies; but do you know, Mr. Arnall, I think he has killed me too!”

Arnall was too much grieved to speak. He examined the wound, and tried to ease the swollen limb by cutting off the trowser which confined it. He gathered some leaves of a particular plant, and bruised them, and applied them to the part, as he had seen the natives do on such an occasion, and then told George that he would carry him home as fast as possible.

“Can you carry me three miles?” said George. “I do not feel as if I could help myself at all, but I will try. I should like to see father and mother again.”

“They shall come to you if we cannot reach home,” replied Arnall; “but let us try without losing more time. I want that Hill should see your leg.”

“There[“There] would be little use in that,” said poor George, faintly, as, on trying to sit up, he felt sick and dizzy.

“Put your arm round my neck, and I will lift you up,” said Arnall; but George did not move. His companion put the arm over his shoulder; but it fell again. George seemed insensible.—Arnall made one more trial.

“Will you not make an effort to see your mother?”

George opened his eyes, raised himself, and made a sort of spring upon his companion’s shoulder, and then laid his head down, clinging with all his remaining strength. Arnall used all the speed he could with so heavy a burden, and was comforted by finding that either the air or the motion seemed to rouse the poor patient, who appeared better able to keep his hold, and even spoke from time to time.

“Mr. Arnall!” said he.

“Well, George.”

“There is a thing I want to tell you about making arrows. Bring me a reed when you put me down, and I will shew you how the natives barb them. I meant to have made the first myself, but as I can’t, I will teach you.”

“Thank you: but do not tire yourself with talking.”

After a while, however, George began again.

“Do you know, Mr. Arnall, I think when the crops are got in, and the houses built, and some cattle in the fields again, you will have the Bushmen down upon you some night?”

“Well, we have sent for arms and powder from Cape Town.”

“I know: but they will be of no use if every body is asleep. I meant to ask to be a watchman with as many as would join me, and to take it in turn, three or four every night. I wish you would see it done, and have all the boys taught to fire a gun.”

Arnall promised, and again urged him to be silent.