Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. IX.—February, 1851.—Vol. II.

"I stole it, I stole it!" he cried, pitifully.

The judge, hearing this, condemned him, as a thief and false accuser, to be hanged, instead of the boy, who journeyed on to see the world.

VISIT TO A COLLIERY

Abercarn Colliery is about ten miles from Newport, England. A very polite invitation had been sent from the proprietors or manager of this colliery to Dr. Pennington and myself to visit their pits, and instructions had been given to the agent at Newport to provide us a conveyance, and to offer us every attention. Accordingly, on Friday morning, a handsome carriage and pair were at our door, and a very gentlemanly young man presented himself as our guide. It was a lovely day, and the ride up to the mountains a most delightful one; the scenery becoming more and more wild and picturesque as we approached the coal district; and our guide gave us much curious information connected with our local Welsh legends and superstitions. We were also accompanied by a very intelligent young man, a draper at Newport, who was quite at home with the Welsh language, and gave us many particulars connected with the etymology of the names of places that we passed. Thus we sped along most agreeably until we reached the region of tall chimneys, ponderous engines, and all the apparatus for disemboweling the mountains. Dismissing our carriage at the entrance to the works, we proceeded to the counting-house, where we were most courteously received by the head clerk, who first unrolled a large map, and explained to us the geography of the diggings, the mode in which the shafts and levels were cut, and the coal worked; we then proceeded to the robing-room, and under the care of one or two grimy valets de chambre, we were soon rigged out in toggery that would render us the observed of all observers at a masquerade. Fancy the learned doctor in a coarse white flannel coat that was a sort of compromise between an Oxonian and a dustman, but with sleeves reaching only to the elbow; his trowsers turned half-way up his boots, and a coarse black felt sou-wester stuck on his head.

My costume was ditto. With a stout stick in our hand, we were conveyed to the pit's mouth, and handed over to the custody of "Thomas" – a great man, in every sense of the word. He was the overseer of the under-ground workings, and was one of the finest men I ever saw. The shaft down which we were to descend was a perpendicular well, I won't say how many hundred yards deep, up and down which traveled two platforms side by side, about the size of an ordinary breakfast table; one bringing up a full wagon of coal, while the other took down an empty wagon. The platform comes up, the full wagon is wheeled away; but instead of the empty one, Thomas takes his stand in the centre, and desires us four to stand round him, and hold on by his jacket, but not to grasp any part of the platform. We obey, with an unpleasantly vivid remembrance of the description given of the last moments of Rush and the Mannings. Thomas becomes a sort of momentary Calcraft; and when he roars out, "Go!" and we feel the platform give way beneath our feet, we cling desperately to him with a savage satisfaction that he is with us, and must share our fate. We are rattled, rumbled, jolted down a gigantic telescope, with just light enough from above to make us painfully aware that there is exactly sufficient room between the edge of our platform and the sides of the shaft for us to fall through. We are conscious of clammy drops falling and clinging to us – they may be cold sweat, or perhaps dirty water from the sides of the pit – it occurs to us that five lives are at the mercy, or rather tenacity, of a rusty link, and I enter into unpleasant calculations of the time it might take to fall, say 350 feet. There is a sensation that may be vertigo, perhaps faintness – possibly an inclination to suicide, when a sudden jolt brings us to the ground, and, but for our hold on Thomas, would certainly capsize our perpendicular. We are at the bottom of the shaft, and quit the platform, very glad that the meeting is dissolved. We find ourselves in a small, dark vault, just visible by the glimmer of a single candle stuck in the wall. Thomas lights five candles, and we each take one. We then perceive that there is an iron tramway winding from under the shaft toward a couple of low doors. We are placed in single file in the centre of this tramway, and Thomas suggests a game of follow the leader. The gate-keeper (a most important person, upon whom depends very much the proper ventilation of the mine) opens the doors, and we enter a level – the doors being immediately closed behind us. We find it necessary at once to stoop, and we tramp forward through the dirtiest of all Petticoat-lanes – a thick, black mud coming half-way over our insteps, and our candles being now and then reflected in a running gutter that might be thought to discharge itself from a waste pipe from Day and Martin's. There is an incessant rumbling over our heads, as though a procession of railway trains were out for the day. Large lumps of coal, dropped from the wagons, and cross-beams connecting the tram-rails, render the footing very precarious, and produce a very oscillating wave-like line of march. I am following the sable dustman; he suddenly flounders, flourishes his stick and his candle desperately for a moment; I see the white coat dash forward; I hear a shout and a hiss; the doctor's candle is in the gutter, and he is groping his way up to his feet again. We are more cautious, and find it necessary to stoop still lower; the stratification of the rock is pointed out to us, and we are told that this is a layer of coal, that of iron-stone, which, we believe from our boundless faith in Thomas's word, not that we see any thing to remind us of the contents of our scuttle at home, or of the handle of our pump. We go on so many hundred yards, but we do not count, when we come to a side cutting, and are conscious of a ghostly apparition at the entrance. It moves on; we might mistake it for a block of coal set up endways. It is a miner, who speaks, and his language seems exactly to harmonize with the place. The deep, guttural Welsh, from its utter incomprehensibility to us, seems, like the man, a part of the mine; and our reverence for Thomas rises when we find that this gibberish is as intelligible to him as all the other dark mysteries of the pit. This is a cutting where they are mining out the coal. At a short distance huge blocks are lying scattered over the path; the place is about four feet high and six feet broad. We are invited to enter and see the process of mining out a block. We seat ourselves on lumps of coal, and at the end of the hole we see a miner crouched upon the ground, hacking out a space about eighteen inches deep, into the coal at the bottom, forming a sort of recess wide enough to slip in a six inch drawer the whole width of the place; the labor of doing this is inconceivably great in the miner's cramped position; he pants loudly at every stroke of the pick, and breathes an atmosphere of thick coal dust. When he has scooped out the bottom place, he cuts, with a very sharp pick, a slice down each side, leaving the mass supported only by its hold above; a wedge is now driven in close to the ceiling, and with about a dozen heavy blows, down tumbles the whole mass, the miner and the little candle boy who lights him keeping a sharp look out to dart back just as the mass falls. Thus are we supplied with coal; and it is impossible to see these poor fellows toiling in those dark, stifling holes, crouching in positions that threaten dislocation to every joint, and with deep, rapid inspirations drawing in dust that must convert their lungs into so many coal-beds, without feeling how much of our comfort we owe to a race of men, the real character of whose labor is so little understood and appreciated. They are paid so much per ton, and generally remain under-ground about ten hours at a stretch; but sometimes, when they wish to fetch up lost time after a holiday or a drinking bout, they will work for fourteen hours without stopping. Their wages range from twenty to thirty shillings a week. They have been much addicted to drink, but the Temperance movement has produced a beneficial change in this respect in some districts. We remained under-ground nearly an hour; now and then a rumbling noise warned us of the approach of a wagon, and, stepping aside, a spectral-looking horse flitted by, tugging its hubbly load, visible a moment in the dim light, and vanishing again instantly into utter darkness. Having completed our inspection, and returned to the entrance of the shaft, we again endured the process of suspended animation, and emerged into daylight with a higher estimate than ever of the blessed sunlight and the green fields. We were taken into a shed at the pit's mouth, where Thomas curried us down with a birch broom and a wisp of straw, after which we doffed our togs, had a good wash, and once more resumed our civilized appearance, highly gratified and instructed by our introduction to the shades below.

THE KAFIR TRADER; OR, THE RECOIL OF AMBITION

Years, with their summers and winters, their joys and sorrows, have passed away, since the Cleopatra, her long and wearying voyage over, cast anchor in one of the extensive bays of Southern Africa. How eagerly and anxiously her many passengers looked across the belt of heaving waters toward the land, which, low at first, gradually rose into ranges of lofty hills, stretching far into the distance! For most of them had crossed the ocean, and bidden adieu to their remoter kindred, in the hope of finding, amid its secluded valleys, some "forest sanctuary," where the bonds of the world that had hitherto chafed them might be unfelt, and their efforts at earning a livelihood for themselves and little ones be better rewarded.

Foremost among them stood a man, the eagle keenness of whose eye bespoke him one fitted to cope, and successfully, with the world, in whatever phase it might present itself. But it was not so; and Robert Tryon, despite years of unwearying effort, now stood gazing on the shores of the far south, a world-worn and almost penniless man, and one whose spirit was embittered, and his heart hardened, by seeing others, whom he deemed less worthy, victors in the arena where he could achieve nothing.

While thus he stood pondering with contracted brow, on what might be the result of this last decisive step of emigration, a sweet, childish voice by his side exclaimed,

"Let me see too, father."

Immediately the stern expression passed away, and with a bright smile he raised the little girl to stand where she might easily look over the bulwark. Robert Tryon was devotedly attached to his wife and family; and the more the chilling blasts of adversity had frozen his heart toward the world, the more did it gush forth in warm affection to those surrounding his own humble and sometimes ill-supplied fireside; and he felt that to see them possessed of the comforts of life befitting their station – more he asked not, wished not – would be a happiness that would, in his estimation, render the labor of even a galley-slave light.

But dearer than all was his little fairy Kate, as fair and beautiful a child as the eye need wish to rest upon, with soft, dark, earnest eyes, looking forth from among her brown clustering curls as though the misfortunes of her parents had dispelled the joyous beams of childhood, and awakened her already to the realities of life, and a sweet smile playing upon her rosy lips, as if, in the buoyancy of her innocent spirit, hoping and trusting a brighter future.

And the child's trust seemed not misplaced, for brighter days soon began to dawn upon them. Robert Tryon obtained a small farm in one of the deep fertile hollows branching off from the great valley of the Fish River; and though it needed both time and labor to render it productive, both were ungrudgingly bestowed; and some five or six years after his arrival, Willow Dell (so named from the fringe of Babylonian willows that swept the little streamlet murmuring through it), was as fair a scene of rural promise as the wide frontier could show.

And for a while Robert Tryon was a happy and contented man; his loved ones were growing up beautiful and joyous around him, and the humble competence he once had sighed for was now theirs: few, indeed, are they whose wishes are so fully gratified! But it sufficed not long. With prosperity loftier ideas awoke in Tryon's breast; and after a time he began to pine for riches to bestow on the children whom every succeeding day rendered yet dearer, and whom he felt assured wealth would grace so well. How, as he wandered at evening beside the willows, he would dream of the proud future that – could his wishes be realized – might be in store for his promising sons and beautiful daughters, in some higher sphere; and how in years to come they might revisit their fatherland, and look scornfully down on those who in other days had despised himself!

Occupied with such visions, discontent began to take possession of his heart. It would be years – many years – ere by his farm he could hope to obtain such results; and ere that his children's youth would be passed – their lot in life decided, and riches not so precious; and again he felt that he could toil as man never yet had toiled, to bestow wealth on his children.

Of the many objects man pursues with avidity, gold is not the one that most frequently eludes him, for there are many modes by which it may be obtained, and one of these presented itself to Tryon.

He was riding with one of his nearest neighbors into Graham's Town, when on their way they passed an extensive and beautiful farm, and on a rising ground saw a large, well-built house peeping from among the trees. Tryon commented upon the beauty of the scene.

"Its owner's name is Brunt," observed his companion; "some twenty years ago he was sent out by the parish."

"How did he make his money?" demanded Tryon, almost breathlessly.

"As a Kafir trader."

A Kafir trader! It was strange that had never occurred to him, though he was aware that large fortunes had been made, were constantly being made, by taking into Kafirland various articles of British manufacture, and bartering them with the natives for ivory, skins, &c. That was a mode of acquiring wealth, that, amid all his search for a shorter road to riches, he had quite overlooked.

The farm at Willow Dell had so far improved Tryon's circumstances, that there was no difficulty in carrying out his new resolve; and a very short time saw him depart into Kafirland with two wagons heavily laden, two trusty drivers, and two boys, on the first of many journeys that brought more gold beneath his roof than had ever been there before.

Tryon was on his return from one of these expeditions. Evening was coming on; but he felt that, by riding fast, and using a nearer ford to cross the Fish River than that by which the wagons must pass, he might reach home that night, and he longed to see those for whose sake all this exertion was made. Therefore, leaving directions with his people to go round by the upper and shallow ford, and setting spurs to his horse, he started for the nearer one, well known on the frontier as the Kafir drift (or ford), and as being nearly or quite the most dangerous along the border, consisting merely of a ledge of rock across the bed of the deep and turbid river, considered scarcely passable save when the tide is low, and in attempting which at undue seasons, many an unwary traveler has met his death.

The light was so dim, that when Tryon stood on the steep hill overlooking the valley, he could not discern the state of the river so far beneath him, and it was not until he emerged from the trees, and stood beside the brink, that he was aware that the tide was up, or rather just begun to ebb. But he knew that with due caution the river might be crossed in safety even then, by one accustomed to it, and he accordingly prepared to take advantage of the remaining daylight by passing without delay.

His horse's fore-feet were already in the water, when a man started up on the opposite bank, and called aloud. Tryon paused.

"Do not attempt to cross; it is dangerous!" cried the stranger.

"I am not afraid; I am used to the drift," replied Tryon.

"But it is spring-tide!"

Tryon looked again at the river; it was certainly higher than was its wont, but not sufficiently so to alarm him who had crossed it so often that he thought he knew every stone of the way; and, intimating as much to the stranger, he spurred his horse in. But his knowledge was less accurate, or the tide was stronger than he deemed; for scarce had he reached the middle of the stream, when the good steed lost his footing, and both horse and rider were borne down among the eddies of the impetuous current toward the sea, which, at a short ten miles' distance, was breaking in giant surges on its rocky bar.

His idolized children! they were provided for, but not too well! was Tryon's last thought, ere the waters overpowered him; and, with a wild rushing in his ears, both sense and sensation passed away.

But the stranger on the southern bank was not one to stand idly by and see a fellow-creature perish, without making an effort for his rescue, even though that effort might involve him in a like danger; and when Walter Hume threw himself into that dark, troubled water, he knew the chances were equal that he would never tread those banks again. But Walter's was too generous and fearless a heart to be chilled by such selfish considerations, and he exerted himself to the uttermost in his arduous task. His efforts were successful: and Tryon was drawn to the shore some distance down the river, insensible, but still living; while the steed, whose fate he had so nearly shared, was borne more and more rapidly toward the waves that seemed roaring impatiently for their victim.

After this, Walter Hume was a frequent guest at Willow Dell, and a most welcome one to all save its master, for he soon divined that but for the dark eyes and sweet tones of his beautiful and gentle Kate, Walter had been less often seen. And Tryon destined not his Kate, the fairest flower in his fair parterre, to share the humble fortunes of a frontier farmer; though in bygone days he would have rejoiced to think so comfortable a home – and shared by one so worthy – would ever be hers. But now his hopes were higher far for her, his best beloved one; and though he might not receive otherwise than cordially the man who had risked life to save him from certain death, yet he looked with a displeased eye on Walter's evident devotion to Kate, and with a secret resolution that not even the weight of that obligation should induce him to sacrifice his daughter's welfare: rather, far rather, would he have perished among the dark eddies of the river.

Absorbed in his ambitious dreams, Tryon never thought of asking himself whether the true sacrifice to Kate might not consist in giving up one to whom, in the warmth of her gratitude and the worthiness of its object, her young heart was becoming deeply attached. And when at length he suspected that it was so, his regret and mortification knew no bounds; yet he shrunk from wounding the feelings of his child by any allusion to the subject, and contented himself by resolving that, even if redoubled efforts were required, they should be made to hasten the hour when he might be able to efface from his daughter's mind the impression which Walter Hume had made, by removing her to a sphere he considered more suited to her and her improving fortunes. Again he began to repine that wealth was so slow of attainment, and again he felt that he would willingly encounter any toil, any trial, ay, even any danger, to secure to his children – especially his Kate – riches and consideration.

With these feelings acting as a fresh incentive to exertion, Tryon started on another expedition into Kafirland. He had gained the territories of the chief Kuru, and was bartering with him some snuff for ivory; when, in the midst of the discussion that attends every mercantile transaction with the avaricious Kafirs, the chief turned pettishly away, exclaiming,

"You want too much for the brown powder; I will not give it; but I will give you ten times as much for black."

He stopped abruptly, and fixed his bright dark, searching eye on Tryon, as though eager to discover if his meaning was understood, and how the proposition was received.

The trader turned aside as if he heard it not. Nevertheless, it was both heard and comprehended. So the quick-witted Kafir suspected, and he resumed:

"Yes, I would give much ivory, white as the clouds in yonder sky, many skins, many horns, to him who will bring me the black powder and the fire-sticks. His wagons will be so heavy his oxen will scarce be able to draw them away, and he will never need to cross the rivers any more, but may sit in the sun before his kraal, and make his women hoe his corn."

Still Tryon answered not, but the Kafir's words struck a wild chord in his heart. Could he but bring himself to do the chief's bidding, the gold over whose tardy coming he had so lately sighed would at once be his; his children would no longer be buried on a frontier farm, and his daughter would go where Walter Hume would be forgotten. But he shrunk from the means by which all these objects, which he had so much at heart, must be obtained; for, by carrying powder and arms across the border – save for self-defense – he would infringe the laws of the land wherein he had prospered far more than he had ever hoped when he landed on its shores. Tryon had been eager in his pursuit of riches; he had bought cheap and sold dear, and he had exacted from every one to the uttermost; but he had broken no law save that of leniency, and now he shrank from doing so, and bade the temptation stand off from him: but it would not. The spirit of Gain, that he had so long cherished, entered into this new form, and haunted him day and night, filling his waking thoughts, and shedding a golden hue over his slumbering visions.

When Tryon next entered his home at Willow Dell, the first object that presented itself was the smiling, happy face of Kate, the next the almost detested one of him who had drawn him from the depths of the Fish River. It required little penetration to perceive that Walter Hume was now the declared lover of Kate; and as soon as might be Walter confirmed Tryon's suspicions by entreating his sanction to the already given consent of Kate.

The father was silent for a few moments. But it was only to consider how he might best reject the man to whom he owed so much, and what effect that rejection would have on the happiness of Kate; but on this latter point he soon satisfied himself that once removed to other scenes, this ill-placed (for so he considered it) prepossession would soon pass away, and Kate be a far happier and more prosperous woman than if he had yielded to what he knew were her present feelings. Then, rising from his seat he turned to the anxious suitor, and spoke kindly but firmly.

"I owe you much, Hume, very much, even a life, and believe me I do not underrate the service, nor the risk at which it was rendered; and had you asked me almost any other gift, it had been given with pleasure; but I can not put my own life in comparison with my daughter's welfare."

"Whatever may be your decision, Mr. Tryon," said Walter, proudly, though he turned deadly pale with apprehension, "and I much fear it is against me, I do not wish an act of common humanity due from one man to another to be remembered, far less looked on as a claim. But your daughter has given me her heart," he added, earnestly; "and if you will trust her to me, it shall be the study of my life that she never repents the gift."

"Her heart!" said Tryon, lightly. "Pooh! – she is scarce of an age to know she has one. But I have other hopes for her," he continued, seriously; "higher hopes – far higher: " and the once poverty-stricken man drew himself up proudly, as he thought on the wealth his children would possess.

Hume felt that those words and that manner sealed his lips to farther entreaty, near as was the object to his heart; and, simply expressing a hope that Kate might be happier in the future her father designed for her, than he could have made her, he bowed, and left the house with a crushed and embittered heart.

But however great might be Walter's sorrow, it did not exceed that of Kate, when she learned her father's unlooked-for decision regarding one toward whom she felt so much both of affection and gratitude. But all her tears, and the yet more touching eloquence of her pale cheeks and faded smiles were unavailing, and it seemed as if naught could shake Tryon's resolution.

And yet the father's heart was only less sad than those of the lovers. For Robert Tryon loved his daughter too fondly to look on her grief with indifference; and it was but the hopes of a proud future, when Walter Hume's name should have lost all interest for Kate, that enabled him to remain steadfast to his resolves.

Meanwhile he was occupied with preparations for another journey into Kafirland. At length the day came for his departure.

"Let me see more rosy cheeks on my return, child," he said, fondly, as he took leave of her. "Don't you know I mean to make my Kate a lady?"

"I have no wish to be a lady, father," said Kate, with a subdued smile; "if I can only do my duty in the state to which I am called, it will suffice for me."