The covenant - James A. Michener [183]
'They speak with clicks,' Adriaan said, 'so they must be of the same family as the Hottentots, but Dikkop understood none of their words. They were a strong, really handsome people, but their only weapons were clubs and assegais.'
Hendrik was so interested that he summoned Dikkop, who conveyed the important information that so far as he could discern, they called themselves the Xhosa: Hkausa, he pronounced the word, giving it a pronounced click in the back of his throat. 'They said they were the Xhosa, who lived beyond a big river.'
'What river?' Hendrik asked.
'There were so many,' Adriaan and Dikkop said together, and for the first time they spelled out the geography of the vast lands to the east, and it was this report, laboriously written down in archaic language by Hendrik van Doorn, that ultimately reached the Cape, adding to the Compagnie's comprehension of the lands they were about to govern, whether they wanted to or not:
The land east of our farm is not to be traversed easily, because heavy mountains enclose it on the north, a chain unbroken for many miles that cannot be penetrated, for there seem to be no passes across it. Travel to the south along the seacoast is no easier, because deep ravines cut in from the shore, running many miles at times, not passable with wagons. But in between these impediments are lands of great productivity and greater beauty. Our farm lies at the western edge of what must be the finest lands on earth, a garden of flowers and birds and animals. Copious rivers produce water for every purpose, and if fruit trees can be made to grow there as easily as they do here, you will have a garden paradise. But we have reason to believe that black tribes are pressing down upon it from the east.
When Hendrik finished this writing he was proud to have remembered so much of his education, and ashamed that he had neglected it. At Trianon his parents had taught him his letters and to speak correct Dutch, but long years in the company of Hottentot and slave, and then with an illiterate wife, had caused him to speak in rough, unlettered sentences. Worse, he had taught none of his children to read.
But he engaged in no recriminations, for life was bountiful. With June came harvest time, and the family was busy gathering not only enough vegetables for the long winter, but also more than enough to dry for seeds: big yellow pumpkins, gnarled green squash, mealies, radishes, onions, cauliflower and cabbage for pickling. The fruit trees, of course, were too young to bear, but in his explorations of the surrounding terrain Hendrik had found wild lemons whose thick and oily skin proved so useful, and bitter almonds like the ones from the hedge his grandfather had cut down during his escape from Compagnie domination.
One heard little of the Compagnie out here. The farm was so distant from headquartersone hundred and sixty-two miles in a straight line, half again more according to the wandering path over the mountainsthat no official could easily reach it. No predikant ever arrived for marriages and baptisms, and certainly no assessor or tax collector. Still, a kind of supervision prevailed, distant and unenforced, but ready for implementation when roads should penetrate the area. A petulant Compagnie official who crossed the mountains in vast discomfort had come as far east as four farms short of Van Doorn's, and he had written upon his return to the Cape:
Wherever I went I heard of divers Dutchmen who occupied stupendous farms, Rooi van Valck to the north, Hendrik van Doorn to the east. They graze their cattle on our land without the Compagnie deriving any benefit. They plant their seeds on Compagnie land without any profit to us, and I think the Compagnie deserves better treatment from these rascals. I recommend that every man who occupies a farm pay to the Compagnie