The covenant - James A. Michener [337]
Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that I have given unto you . . . There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life ... I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee ... Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law . . . turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper withersoever thou goest.
One other characteristic of the Voortrekkers applied particularly to the Van Doorn party: all the adult men, except the unfortunate Theunis Nel, had had more than one wife, and he was lucky to have any. If one took seven leaders of seven representative groups, the number of their wives would be 2-2-3-3-3-4-5, and seven typical ages for the brides would be 13-13-14-15-29-31-34, the first series proving that men liked their wives young, the last indicating that no woman was allowed to remain a widow long. When men were Old Testament patriarchs, as these men were, they used up their women.
They were in general an intransigent, opinionated group of Dutchmen whose isolation had caused them to turn their backs on the liberalizing influences of the eighteenth century, except that Tjaart himself had quoted from the American Declaration of Independence in laying forth his reasons for emigrating. They felt no need for Rousseau, Locke, Kant or the German theologians who had begun to expose the mythological elements in the Old Testament. They were satisfied with the fundamentals their Dutch and Huguenot ancestors had brought with them in the middle 1600s and rejected any new ideas imported by the English. Above all, they were self-confident, so that when one Voortrekker came upon a little stream running due north, he had no hesitation in announcing, 'This is the beginning of the Nile River,' even though that body lay a good two thousand miles awayand forthwith he christened it Nylstroom (Nile Stream).
The wagons in which they would live for the next two or three years were special affairs, not at all like the great lumbering things that crossed the American prairies. They were small, only twelve to fifteen feet long, and rather low to the ground, except that when a canvas shelter was thrown over the top, they appeared higher. They were surprisingly narrow, and were so packed with family possessions that there was no room to sleep inside, except for the mother, who made a rough bed for herself atop the baggage. The iron-banded wheels were invariable: small front ones with ten spokes, larger back ones with fourteen.
A superior feature of the Voortrekker wagon was its disselboom, the pivoted main shaft that was so fixed to the front axle that it provided maximum flexibility in both guiding and in riding easily over the bumpy trail. But only the last pair of oxen were harnessed to the disselboom; all others pulled against chains and harness that were attached to the wagon in various ways.
Since nearly two thousand wagons would participate in the early move to the north, trails became marked across the veld, but many parties like the Van Doorn struck off on their own, making their way over the veld from one conspicuous flat-topped hill to the next.
It was a habit of the Voortrekkers to linger at any congenial spot, sometimes for a week, at other times for a month. Then the wagons would be brought into proximity, but not in laager, and the men would ride far afield to hunt while the women tended to sewing,