Darkest England Read Online Free PDF Page A

he had been to Cape Town, even. So he knew the ways of the world.
    Sergeant De Waal, tearing his hair when he saw the Paper Promise from the great Queen, said, ‘This is the sortof thing that made all the trouble in our land. This is the paper that robbed the Boers of their birthright. And will do again!’ And he yelled at us to get out of the station before he kicked our arses to Timbuctoo.
    We knew then that the Paper Promise must be true. We sold my twelve sheep and started a fund. Our people collected money together for the first time in their lives. The fence-menders who work all day in the white heat, lining fences against the jackals who steal the farmers’ sheep; the hunters who bait their traps in the bush for the lynx; the shearing gangs who move from farm to farm: all gave to our fund, sure in their hearts that it was not too late to seek a newer world.
    Very conscious of the honour conferred upon me, I gave to the Society this promise: I would describe those in England as they were, as I saw them, and as I judged them, free from prejudice … The journey might be long, the country savage, all may be wild and brutal, hard and unfeeling, devoid of that holy instinct instilled by nature into the heart of man. But I, David Mungo Booi, would say what I saw and heard – however dark – among the English.
    For my travels I was equipped as follows: a great hat, its brim as wide as an ostrich feather, fashioned from finest buckskin; its cranial capacity very generous, measuring about the same volume as an ostrich egg, lined with three cunning pockets, sewn by Hippo-girl Lottering, with yarn made from the leaf fibres of the green rope bush, and strong enough to snare the wildest guinea fowl.
    In the first of these pockets were placed two good strong notebooks, six green Venus pencils, well sharpened, and a small knife.
    In the second of these pockets was hidden the flag of our people, which, until it was drawn by Stumpnose DuToit to show to the English Queen, had not existed. He was so old, this Stumpnose, that he dimly remembered something of the way our people had done these things once. On a good piece of linen, obtained from the General Dealer in Middlepost, Stumpnose painted our mother, the great moon. High in the right-hand corner, sailing golden and fat, as befits our mother. From the left-hand upper corner a swallow departs. The swallow is one of the rain’s things, as we are; and so, as the swallow departs, so we too have vanished from the lands that were once ours. And under the honey-moon, our mother, in the foreground we see two teams of men holding a tug-of-war. The team below is made of white men; for it was from below, from the sea, that the first visitors came to us, those whom we took to be pale Sea-Bushmen. Above is shown a team of Red People. The contest to which this refers took place in the time of the early world, when animals were still people. When the men from Europe arrived in our country they said to us, let us pull the rope to decide who owns the cattle and sheep and goats. And we pulled the rope until it broke, leaving most of it in the hands of the Bushmen. And the white men said: there you are, you have most of the rope, take it and use it to snare game: duiker and eland and springbuck are yours. But we will have the cattle and sheep. You may have tsama melons and dress in the skins of wild animals. But we will wear clothes and sleep under roofs when it rains.
    And watching this contest, in the right-hand lower corner, his hand to his eyes, is the praying mantis, the great Kaggen himself, who weeps for his lost Red People.
    This flag I was to fly on ceremonial occasions, preferably when the Sovereign and I formally exchanged gifts.
    Into the third pocket of my great hat there were placedfive thousand rand in old notes, this being the huge sum raised by our people for my expedition. With this money I would pay for guides and porters and provisions, as well as any taxes