H. C. Adams

“ It was still broad daylight when they reached their place of ambush, and the spot was as vacant and still as though the whole landscape had been a part of the great Kalahari itself But they had not been there a quarter of an hour, when the sun disappeared behind the belt of woodland which bounded the sight, and the night of the tropics succeeded with its startling rapidity. The green waste of thorns and shrubs grew first dusky brown, and then deep black; the bright sparkling water a dull gleamy mirror, faintly rendering back the pale opal of the sky. ”

“ If the Reformation had done the race of Israel no other service than that of opening to them this place of shelter, they would still have been largely indebted to it. No dream of the imagination could exceed the wretchedness of the Jews in Spain and Portugal at the outset of the seventeenth century. They had to choose between ruin, torture, and death on the one hand,—not for themselves only, but for their wives and children also,—or the surrender of their cherished faith, which was, in their eyes, the surrender of all hope, here and hereafter. ”

“ The day does not slowly gather in the East, changing by imperceptible degrees from the depth of gloom to the fulness of light, but springs as it were with a single effort into brilliant splendour—an image of the great Creator’s power when He created the earth and skies—not toiling through long ages of successive processes and formations, as some would have us believe, but starting at one bound from shapeless chaos into life and harmony. ”

“ But I call upon Mr Vander Heyden here, if he is not a coward, to meet me in fair fight. He knows that I am entitled to it. My birth is as good as his own, I have served in the same army as himself, and I have twice challenged him. He is fond of saying that the English would be no match for the Dutch, if it wasn’t for the advantages that their position in the colony gives them. Does he dare meet an Englishman now, without advantage on either side? ”

“ Jerusalem has been long trodden down of the Gentiles; the times of the Gentiles are nearly fulfilled. What is to follow? Are the Jews to be restored, as a distinct people, to the Land of Promise, and there accept Him whom their fathers rejected as their King? There is no subject on which speculation is more busy, or on which more confident judgments are pronounced. But it is the voice of man that speaks, not of God. One thing alone is sure. God has not cast away His people. ”

“ Catching sight of the barrel of Frank’s rifle as it glanced in the morning sun, he charged directly at the tree in which he was seated. It was an acacia of tolerable size, and the branch which bore him was above the reach of the animal’s trunk. But so terrific was the force of his rush, that the trunk snapped like a rotten bough, and Frank, gun and all, was hurled to the ground. He sprang up, having been fortunately only bruised by the fall, and leaving his rifle to take care of itself, took to his heels as hard as he could. ”

“ The hundredth part of England’s power would be enough to crush them. I don’t suppose the Boers could bring 5000 men into the field, and England could easily send five times that number, or twenty times that number, if she chose. The Boers have but little discipline or material of war, or knowledge of strategy. England is a first-rate power in all those respects. It would be as absolute madness for the Transvaal to go to war with England, as it would be for a terrier dog to provoke a lion to fight with it. ”

“ Nay, secret Jews wielded the powers of the Holy Office itself. They saw men dragged before them, and tortured and condemned them to the stake, for holding precisely the same faith as themselves—pronounced, it may be, the sentence with their own lips, and then went to their homes to take part in the proscribed rites themselves. If anything could prove more clearly than has been already proved, the folly, no less than wickedness, of religious persecution, it would surely be this strange and startling history. ”

“ Frank hurried along the narrow defile leading to this cottage, putting out all strength to reach it. He was only a few yards from it, when the tempest at last broke forth in all its fury. The wind swept down with a force, which on the open plain no man or horse would have been able to stand against. The hail, or rather the large lumps of ice into which the rain was frozen, rattled against the rocks like cannon balls against the walls of a besieged fortress, and the sky grew so dark, that it was with difficulty that the travellers could discern each other’s features. ”

“ Such of the New Christians as had escaped the murderous hands of the mob again passed under the protection of the law. Yet they could not but have felt like men dwelling near the crater of some volcanic mountain, which might at any moment burst forth in torrents of burning lava, and overwhelm them utterly; and it is worthy of notice that, although the rioters were sternly punished for their lawless violence, no reparation was made to the Jews—not even an expression of regret was uttered for the unprovoked and cruel wrongs they had undergone. ”

“ Margetts reined in his horse in great surprise. “I may return your question, I think,” he said. “What brings you here? And, good heavens! what a condition you are in. You have swam the river, and are covered with blood besides! What has happened?”
“It will take a long time to tell that,” answered George, “and we must not stop here to tell it. Every moment is of incalculable importance. Give me your horse, Redgy. I think I can contrive to sit in the saddle, and Wilhelm must ride by me. You and Hardy must make your way as well as you can on foot. ”

“ Nick collected the grey leafless shrubs, which grew in abundance among the rocks; and which, though anything but picturesque in appearance, made capital firewood. Frank cut up the carcass, broiling some parts of it on the gridiron, and boiling as much more as the pot would hold. It was dark long before their preparations were completed, and they had to eat their dinner by the light of their fire, assisted by the stars, for the moon had not yet risen. But the road to the mouth is very easy to find, especially when men are hungry. ”

“ Rationalists might declare the Incarnate God to have been a personified myth, an ideal Being, in whose reputed words and acts Christian ideology found embodiment. But there were His words, which no man could have spoken; and there were His acts, which no man could have performed; there were His predictions, which the history of the world since His day had made good, and which nothing but Divine Wisdom could have uttered. The Jews had nothing of this to sustain them, and it cannot surprise us that many among them found no shelter in such a sea of doubt, except in embracing the Christian creed. ”

“ There were herds of buffaloes crowded so close together that it was with difficulty they could advance, whole legions of boks of every variety, a few jackals, hyenas, wild pigs, even here and there a lion or a rhinoceros, hurrying through the forest paths, in terror of being trampled under the feet of the elephants, which would have crushed them into atoms, scarcely aware of their presence. ”

“ Before Nick could fairly realise to himself his own success, the Bechuanas had surrounded the carcass, and were greeting the two boys with shouts of admiration and approval. They had not witnessed the manner in which the elephant had come by his death, a belt of shrubs having cut them off from the tree, in which Nick had been seated. They concluded that the animal had simply been brought down, as it was rushing by, by a successful shot from the lad’s rifle; which must indeed have been fired with extraordinary skill to be so instantaneously fatal. ”

“ Is he the genuine Hebrew of the sixteenth century, or the mere embodiment of blind and inveterate prejudice?
What do travellers answer when asked whether the soil of the Holy Land is waste and barren, unable to support even its sparse population? They will tell us that it is naturally rich and fertile, but has become unproductive by long neglect and abuse. [149] As it has been with the land of the Jews, so it has been with themselves. Their true national character is among the noblest—if it is not the very noblest—that the world has seen. ”

“ If you knew the colony as well as I do, Mr Rivers, you would be aware that there is a great difference observable among the Dutch settlers. Some of them are kind and friendly enough with all white men—”
“All white men?” interposed Redgy. “Not with blacks, then?”
“No, Mr Margetts,” returned the other gravely. “A man can know very little about the colony not to be aware that every Dutchman regards the natives as being of little more account than dogs or horses—of a good deal less account than many horses.” ”

“ Presently they came to a small pool, surrounded by a grove of oomahaamas and acacias, among the branches of which they noticed a quantity of grey-crested parrots, which kept up an incessant screaming, from the moment the travellers came in sight to that of their departure.
“Here’s a good place for a halt,” suggested Ernest. “This shade is most refreshing, and the water seems clear and cool.”
“I am quite of your mind, Ernest,” said Nick, flinging himself at full length on the grass at the edge of the pool. “Exhausted nature can’t go further without a respite. ”

“ Every now and then the waggons would enter upon a thick undergrowth of shrubs, ploughing their way, as it were, through an inland sea; the fragrance and beauty of the shrubs far exceeding anything that an English landscape presents. When a few miles had been accomplished, the oxen were outspanned, and allowed to graze, while the men took their mid-day meal, and afterwards smoked their pipes, under the shelter of some fragrant shrubs. ”

“ The childhood of the Jewish nation was a hard and harsh one. They grew up into national existence under alien rulers, who feared and hated them, imposed on them intolerable burdens, and would have destroyed them from off the face of the earth, but for the Divine protection extended over them. Delivered by the same visible display of Divine power from these tyrants, they were transported to a rich and genial land, powerful and warlike nations being ejected to make way for them. Their first national, and true, idea must needs have been their special privileges as the favoured people of Heaven ”

“ The confused mass of trunks and branches was now crowded with the most strangely assorted occupants that had ever been brought together since the day of the great deluge; their natural instincts being, for the time, completely overpowered by terror. The lion and the eland crouched close beside one another; the steinbok and the ocelot clung to the same limb; the hyena and the sheep, the tiger and zebra, jostled each other, all alike apparently unaware of the presence of their neighbours. More deadly enemies still were close at hand unheeded. ”

“ Slaveholders become inevitably selfish, unjust, and brutal, and incline to become cowardly also. It is the coward only that oppresses the weak, and they who habitually oppress the weak cannot but become cowards. But the Boers have virtues to which justice has not been done. They are kind-hearted and generous to all except the blacks. No nation exceeds them in industry, in simplicity of life, and in the practice of domestic virtues. ”

“ Why was the possession of the Holy City by them a greater outrage on the feelings of Christian men in one generation than in another? Or are we to suppose that men were more zealous for God’s honour in the eleventh than they had been in the seventh century? No, not so. The causes which provoked the Crusades were different from these, and they are of importance to us, because they throw a light on the feeling which simultaneously arose against the Jews also. ”

“ The moon rose higher in the heavens, and the stars came forth in all the unimaginable glories of a southern night—not mere specks of light as seen in the more cloudy skies of the north, but hung like cressets in the glowing air, the moon itself a bright globe of liquid fire. ”

“ Vander Heyden put his head out. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “This is my sister’s sleeping-place.”
“I know that, Mr Vander Heyden, and I know you, and you too know me. I am Langley Cargill, of the Nassau Regiment—your equal by birth and station. I design your sister no harm, but to make her my wife. Give her up to me, and I will ensure her safety and the most honourable treatment.”
“I would as soon give her into the hands of Satan!” cried Vander Heyden fiercely. “You and your ruffians will do wisely to move off at once, or we will fire on you without mercy.” ”

“ THE JEWS IN SPAIN. Turning now to Spain, we find that the Jews, during this century, still continued to enjoy, if not the full measure of justice to which they were entitled, yet nevertheless an amount of it which contrasts favourably with the treatment they underwent in other lands. The wisdom, justice, and clemency also shown by the Spanish kings on many occasions are so unlike the spirit manifested in after generations, that we can hardly believe that we are writing of the same Spain which approved the barbarities of Torquemada, or the horrors of the Jewish exodus. ”

“ I perceived that the village was surrounded by an armed enemy, and on a high bank on the opposite side of the village I could see a line of men armed with the long gun which the Boers then carried, while at the two ends of the village strong parties—also of Boers, for they had no black allies with them—were stationed. These, too, were armed to the teeth. I knew in a moment what had happened. The Boers had attacked the village by night, and were shooting the men down as they rushed in alarm out of their huts. There was no possibility of resistance or escape. ”

“ Even the sullen black rhinoceros, after bending his head awhile to listen, beat a leisurely retreat, viciously snorting as he retired. In a few minutes the shores of the pool were as still and vacant as they had been when the boys arrived, five or six hours before.
“What does this mean?” asked Nick in a whisper. “What have these brutes seen or heard, to alarm them so? Are your countrymen on their way to attack them?”
“No, it not that,” answered Kobo, in the same subdued accents. “Beasts hear elephant coming down to drink. All get out of elephant’s way. He king among them. ”

“ In the day when account will be required of all, may it not be found that the deadliest of their own sins was, that by their hideous travesty of the Christian faith they shut out from the Jew the knowledge of the reality?
For centuries the bitterest persecutions came from those who, while robbing and ill-treating the Jews, because they charged them with heaping ridicule upon Christianity and eagerly aiding its enemies, were themselves ignorant of the first principles of the Gospel, and devoted adherents of the Church of those times. ”

“ Let us consider what the guilt of the Jews, who slew the Lord, really amounted to. They do not, I believe, themselves deny that they are suffering under Divine displeasure, or that that displeasure has been occasioned by their sin. On the contrary, they hold that it is their sin that has delayed, and still delays, the coming of the Messiah. But, far from thinking that sin to have been the murder of Jesus Christ, they do not consider that their fathers were guilty in that matter at all. Their law, so they contend, requires them to put to death blasphemers and setters up of strange gods. ”

“ On the boughs immediately over his head, as far up as Frank could descry, a great number of baboons were to be seen, leaping from one resting-place to another, with hideous grimaces, and keeping up incessant and most discordant screams. The grotesqueness of their appearance was much increased by their having taken possession of such of Nick’s property as they had been able to lay their paws on. One wore the blue cloth cap, with the leather peak and white edging, which was a souvenir of Dr Staines’s establishment. ”

“ His army alone contains four times as many men as our whole white population, and every man among them is a trained warrior, as fearless of wounds and death, as any man in your English regiments.”
“How is it they do not attack you?” asked George.
“There are several reasons,” answered Baylen. “In the first place, the native races are not at unity among themselves. They hate one another even more bitterly than they hate the white man, and thus the English are enabled to array one tribe against another. ”

“ Most of the men had been shot down by arrows from a distance, or pierced by assegais. But the weaker portion of the enemy (if they could be so called) , had been killed by blows from clubs, or stabs delivered at close quarters; and the lads gazed with sickening disgust at the helpless and mangled figures, with which the plain for a long way round was overspread. But the slayers did not appear to feel the smallest compunction, and Lavie gathered from their conversation, that a considerable proportion of the men had effected their escape—a circumstance which had greatly provoked Umboo’s anger. ”

“ There is, first of all, the belief that the Jews are a people lying under the curse of God, and that to show any favour to them is to rebel against this decree. We have seen what revolting barbarities this idea led to during the Dark and Middle Ages. Its nineteenth-century form—of standing aloof, and withholding civil rights from them—is less shocking in its results, but equally false in principle. God has doubtless His own purposes towards them, and they are a standing miracle, an enduring evidence of the truth of His prophetic word. ”

“ Which among all the countless nations, overthrown by the military genius of Rome, ever resisted so long, or with such fatal effect, her illimitable power, as the defenders of Jerusalem? But, no doubt, centuries of oppression had their effect in deteriorating the nobler, and developing the meaner, features of the Jewish character, until the Jews became at last almost—though not quite—what their persecutors believed them to be. ”

“ Chuma hesitated. His belief in De Walden was shaken by what had happened, but not wholly overthrown. Maomo saw his embarrassment, and hastened to interfere.
“Chief,” he said, “it is not by prayers, which are but words, that the White Falsehood—man has prevailed on the Evil Spirits to send this curse upon our people. Nor will it be by prayers that he can prevail on them to take it off again. There are sacrifices that he offers to his gods. I know that he was seen to pour water on Gaiké’s forehead, and utter some charm while he did so. ”

“ Eighteen centuries have, in all other instances, effected so vast a change in the condition of a nation, that it is difficult to trace any identity between its earlier and its later generations. Eighteen centuries ago our own ancestors were savage tribes, living in wattled huts, staining their naked bodies with woad, and practising barbarous and bloody rites. In language, in religion, in mental and moral culture, in social organization, they were so wholly different from ourselves that it is difficult to discover any point of resemblance between the two. ”

“ The yells of the Kaffirs—as advancing at the same time from different quarters, they assailed the elephants with their assegais and arrows—were overpowered by the trumpeting of the huge brutes, and the crash of the thorn and seringa bushes, which gave way on every side before them, offering no more serious obstacle to their career, than long grass would to that of a man. Presently the whole herd broke from the cover of the jungle, hurrying on in a transport of mingled rage and terror—the solid earth seeming to tremble under their tread. ”

“ The haute noblesse were jealous of the court favour which the Jews had so long enjoyed, and were seeking for an opportunity to oust them from it; the lesser nobles were deeply in their debt, and looked to a popular outbreak as the readiest mode of ridding themselves of their encumbrances; the priesthood were, as a rule, though with some noble exceptions, their bitter enemies, continually denouncing them to the people, as the causes of every national misfortune that befell them. ”

“ Those who will recognise no law but force, must take their first lesson under that law. A savage has to learn that he must respect the rights and feelings of others. That is the foundation of all social order. Until he has learned it, you cannot civilise him.”
“Granted. But the means you take are not the right ones. In the first place, who gave the Dutch settlers the right to the land or the cattle? They found the Hottentot and Bushman in possession. What equivalent did they give them for their land? They were savages, you will say, and could not appreciate its value. ”

“ But in the tenth century, when the idea was widely entertained throughout Western Europe that the world was on the very point of coming to an end, and further, that all who died in the Holy Land would certainly be saved, the number of those who travelled thither was greatly multiplied. Those who returned brought back with them tales of outrage and unprovoked insult, which everywhere roused indignation. Jerusalem had passed into the hands of the Turks, a fierce and uncultured race, who had adopted Islamism in its most fanatic spirit. ”

“ If we could conceive that the gates of hell had been broken open, and its inmates had overrun the earth, the deeds we might have expected of them were just what the rabble of these German cities actually performed. They did not, however, wholly escape the consequences of their own lawless cruelty. In many places the Jews, before inflicting death upon themselves, turned their swords against their persecutors, and inflicted severe retribution on them; while in Frankfort their despairing rage caused the destruction of the town-hall and cathedral and a large portion of the city. ”