Veldt Marks Its Dwellers

1917

Loneliness and Silence Affect Those Doomed to Live in Plain of British South Africa

Before the Boer war there was a saying current among the Boers of South Africa that you could always recognize a man who had spent five years on the veldt. This was a saying no less true then than now, for the veldt is a place of great silence and loneliness and it leaves its mark on those who dwell in it.

The veldt is the great plain of what is now British South Africa, the limitless, featureless stretch of prairie dotted with knobs of hills that the Boers call kopjes, pierced and gashed by rain-washed gullies that run their twisting coarse from horizon to horizon. The word "veldt" is closely allied to the German word for "world" or "universe," and the relationship is something more than mere coincidence. To the man standing in the midst of this plain it seems to extend in every direction to the outermost limits of space.

The veldt is without sound or color, without striking features to catch the eye. A day's trek among low hills covered with gray grass, plods wearily through mile after mile of the same hills, and ends in a dry valley as like the valley of the morning as one pea is like to another. After a few days of this the traveler wonders if his progress is not a mere illusion, if he is not returning day after day to the same spot.

Now and again the monotony is broken by some veldt farm, a place of exceeding loneliness for the exiles who till it. There will be a farmhouse, a barn, a kraal, a well and a few huts for the kaffirs. To the railroad may be a distance of anywhere from 20 to 70 miles. Half the year the roads are impassable. The little community must be sufficient unto itself. Life on a veldt farm is a severe test of the inner resources of man or woman.

An Odd Superstition — The Name of "Graham" a Terror

1907

British Fishermen Balk at the Name of Graham

One of the most curious of British fishermen's superstitions, the one which perhaps to this day has the strongest hold upon them, is that connected with the name of Graham.

No fisherman will go to sea if he has heard this name mentioned, nor will he do any manner of work upon that day. He will refuse to sail in a boat with any one bearing the name, and a house painter from Newcastle called Graham, who had been sent to do some work in one of the large houses, found his life made so unbearable by the villagers that he incontinently returned to the town, leaving his work uncompleted.

The women who bait the lines in the winter will unbait every hook and rebait the whole length — the labor of hours — if they hear it mentioned. A local tradesman bearing this unfortunate patronymic is never referred to save as "Puff;" another, an innkeeper, is known as "Lucky Bits." No rational explanation is to be found.

One of the most intelligent fishermen being questioned on the subject, he laughed the idea to scorn. Why, his daughter was married to a Graham. But, he added, a strange thing happened, two years ago when he was off at the herring fishing and had not been home for some weeks. Having received a letter at Shields to say that his son-in-law was ill, he hailed a passing boat which had come from the north, asking if they had heard how Jack Graham was. "And, wad ye beleev't, ne soonor had aa syed the words than theor wes a crash, and the mast went ower the side!" None of the crew spoke to him for the rest of the day. — New York Post.

The Ghurkas — Monkey Men of the Himalayas

1898

The average "monkey-man of the Himalayas" is by no means a type of beauty. A short body, little legs, round head, and flat features are a few of his prominent physical characteristics; and being for a long period clothed in one of the ugliest uniforms the genius of man ever invented, he could not compete in picturesqueness with the fine physique and carriage of the handsome Sikhs, Pathans, or Bayputs.

But, in spite of his unprepossessing appearance, once let his officers gain his respect, and he is ready to follow them with doglike fidelity, to "go anywhere and do anything," to use a hackneyed phrase; and those qualities which commend themselves to a Ghurka are the same as those which serve to endear an officer to the British private.

Indeed, the devotion, courage, energy of character, and love of enterprise of these formidable but merry little warriors are such that the writer of a recent article on the native army gives expression to his conviction that "there is not a single instance on record of Ghurka soldiers having failed in their duty against an enemy." — Pall Mall.

Comment: We're all so superior, aren't we?