Chapter 5: Batman and Robin
“
Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies”
Aristotle
The cape was seen at the time as nothing more than a base for anti slave patrols and a way to monitor the China tea ships. Before he would sail further, Holman planned to explore the interior, dominated by African tribes and the Boers.
This meant mastering an appropriate means of independent overland travel. In his travels so far, he had relied on preexisting arrangements: public transportation, hired carts, expeditions planned by others. Now he wanted to go far beyond the reach of any such measures. As soon as he landed in South Africa, he set about teaching himself to ride a horse.
He had ridden through Brazil on muleback, but his was a far more complicated proposition.
Those were pack animals, soundly tethered and proceeding at an amble. Horseback is an active, not a passive mode of travel: even the most docile saddle horse expects a constant stream of commands from its rider, and can become upset when those commands are unclear or contradictory.
Nor can a horse be fooled by a false show of confidence. Outside of Cape Town, Holman trotted a borrowed horse across variety of terrain. It took immense concentration , but he persisted, gradually growing adept at using the sounds of hoof eats as a sort of echolocator, not unlike the sharp metallic strike of his walking stick on stones.
Another rider kept him in sight, but this was not he same as being led, a fact dramatically demonstrated. As they passed by a public house, a pack of barking dogs beset and chased them, so spooking Holman's horse that it bolted careening widely through the underbush. “All I thought of was to keep my seat, and tug away at the bridle, without turning to the right or the left.”
It took a distressing while for his traveling companion to locate him, entirely disoriented and far from the trail. Clearly, it was a skill to be honed with practice. Holman kept at it, and grew in mastery until he could ride on a horseback for hours without indecent. Although he still relied on guides to point out particular trails, he needed no help on the trails themselves.
Asserting “that if I was once fairly in the saddle, I fancied I could contrive to keep there.” Holman aimed himself at the wilderness. Leaving Cape Town, he wended inland, though the lands claimed for agriculture by the Boers until he reached a frontier station called Caffre Drift. There he recruited a young boy named Robrecht to ride along with him, a member of the northern tribe that called themselves Khoikhoi
The Khoikhoi ("people people" or "real people") were a historical division of the Khoisan ethnic group, the native people of southwestern Africa, closely related to the Bushmen (or San, as the Khoikhoi called them). The dutch settlers dubbed them Hottentot (stutterer) for the clicking sounds they used in their language.
Robrecht as Holman learned had lived until a few month in Genadendal. The first mission station in southern Africa. It was founded by Georg Schmidt, a German missionary of the Moravian Church, who settled on 23 April 1738 in Baviaans Kloof (Ravine of the Baboons) in the Riviersonderend Valley and began to evangelize among the Khoi people. The Moravian Church (originated in 1457 in Moravia, today part of the Czech Republic) had a particular zeal for mission. Many thought that mission work among the Khoisan was attempting the impossible, but in spite of this Schmidt prevailed. He became acquainted with an impoverished and dispersed Khoi people who were practically on the threshold of complete extinction. Apart from the few Kraals, which still remained, there were already thirteen farms in the vicinity of Baviaans Kloof. Within a short while Schmidt formed a small Christian congregation. He taught the Khoi to read and write, but when he began to baptize his converts there was great dissatisfaction among the Cape Dutch Reformed Church clergy. According to them, Schmidt was not an ordained minister and as such, was not permitted to administer the sacraments.
The real reason behind the events was however that Schmidt had begun to teach the natives and escaped slaves how to read and write. Being literate made them better educated than many of the Boer neighbors. This was seen as completely unacceptable above all else. Consequently he had to abandon his work, and in 1744, after seven years at Baviaans Kloof, he left the country but the missionary station and the village that formed around stayed until present day.
Queen Rabodoandriana I
Robrecht wasn't keen to share where he came from with Holman and when he did wasn't willing to tell why he was heading in the middle of nowhere. We only know that he later claimed that he killed pastor Julius Schuhmacher in self defense (1). The common but never spoken assumption was that he had try to molest the boy. This would explain why the community and church wasn't so keen on hunting down Robrecht after he fled and why nobody in the Moravian Church would later accept him back into their mid so easily.
Holman glad to have found a willing and capable help, was satisfied with the explanation that he was “a kindred spirit” and “restless wanderer” such as himself. Together they ventured into the largely unexplored, unpacified Caffreland (caffre was used then as a generic term for unidentified tribes).
As Holman soon found out they were in the land of the Gaika chief of the Xhosai. (Holman had grown weary of his people's tendency to dub every chieftain a “king” and rather preferred to work with local terms”).
They paid their respect to Gaika and found him “so fond of rum...that both dignity and decency had so far merged into a brutal appetite.” After witnessing Gaika's sad habit of offering his wives in exchange for alcohol they moved on thorough disgusted.
After they had made some way Holman noted in his journal amused but not quit without seriousness either that his young friend saw that “his manor was unbecoming to a leader” and swore never to act as such should he ever come into a position of power. The longer they traveled the longer Robrecht's list of things not to do as ruler of your people grew.
For example the next place they visited was the territory of the “Zoola” (Zulu) who were as Holman wrote “in a very unsettled state.” Quiet an understatement. Their leader the charismatic and brilliant Shaka Zulu had become mad after the dead of his mother. He ordered that no crops should be planted during the following year, no milk (the basis of the Zulu diet at the time) was to be used, and any woman who became pregnant was to be killed along with her husband.
At least 7,000 people who were deemed to be insufficiently grief-stricken were executed, although the killing was not restricted to humans: cows were slaughtered so that their calves would know what losing a mother felt like. This insanity only ended after his half brother Dingane came to power.
Holman learned to appreciate Robrechts presents which he found quiet refreshing, while Robrecht himself had found a guarding and mentor for the time being. There was hardly a better or more entertaining source to learn about the outside world than the man who had actually “seen” it all by himself. Aside from the fact that Holman was pleased to find somebody so bright and adventurous in the middle of nowhere, it was a specific event that really forged their bond early.
Holman was very pressing to go forward, which landed him with a “wretched animal” for a horse “as large and heavy as a prize ox” a challenge for any rider to control. He bravely took the steed to a full canter, an assured pace, but then the horse abruptly stopped in his tracks Holman pitched over the horse's head and hit the ground instantly unconsciousness.
He later wrote about the indecent that:
“I remained senseless upon the ground for some time. When I recovered, I felt a sensation as though my skull had been split open, and on putting my hand to my forehead, I felt that the blood was streaming from a wound over the right eye, and that the skin was peeled of he greater part of my nose; I had also cut my upper lip severely, and felt great pain in my front teeth, so that, at first, I believed that I had fractured my skull, and sustained some internal injury, that would, in a few minutes, bring me to the
finale of all my adventures; and I must own that wanderer as I am, my
armur propre was deeply wounded a the idea of dying, after all my sojourning, on the roadside at a distance from any human dwelling. The one consoling though was that at least the boy was there witnessing my last moments, affording me that pious consolation of which we all stand in need. I used these last moments as I thought to tell him all my wishes, my fears everything that I desperately wanted to say, before the inevitable, this time total, darkness would set in.”
However the intensity of the pain ebbed up enough for Robrecht to help Holman onto the horse. Then clinging to the reigns, still bleeding but with restored hope and vitality for three hours they rode towards the nearest settlement, where they were greeted by the barking of the dogs.
Still a refugee Robrecht asked if they could venture out of Africa together, at least for a while. Obviously such a arrangement brought some difficulties with it, not the least potential allegations of a improper relationship between him an the boy. In the end however Holman agreed to it. Their time together had reminded him of his grand tour and the time he spend with Colebrook his first and only other traveling companion.
Their first stop on the way out of Africa was the island of Mauritius. There they encountered Dr. Lyall, the British ambassador to Madagascar. He had barely escaped captivity and informed them that Ranavalona I was recently crowned queen of the Kingdom of Madagascar after the mysterious death of her young husband, Radama I.
Certainly she had to be an interesting woman and potentially the first female entry for Robrecht's list of things not to do as a righteous ruler. Indeed later traveler would call her “one of the proudest and most cruel women on the face of earth”. In the end they only made it to the court of Ramanoulouna, “a native Ovah chief whose power is absolute in this part of the island and who has lately of the reigning queen of the Ovah tribe...”
Holman was tempted to make his way across the island to the queen's capital but at the last minute opted to sail toward Zanzibar instead. In hindsight both men Holman and Robrecht agreed it had been for the best. The Queen's bloody reign was by an extreme xenophobia that resulted in many European death.
In Zanzibar they visited a slave market sadly well equipped with “pretty young girls, gaily dressed, decorated with flowers in their hair and painting on their persons” although most of these actives were suppressed during the visit of the English man, since a treaty with Britain obliged him to fight slavery in his kingdom. ” This rather bleak location was also the point for Robrecht and Holman to depart. The former felt homesick and the later felt
fernweh.
After a truly heartfelt goodbye they both made their way. Robrecht went back to south Africa, were he heard about Andries Stockenstrom, Commissioner General of the Eastern Districts, and his plan to resettle the Khoi to the "Kat River" near the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony. The Kat river region was an extensive and very fertile area, that held great promises for those willing to leave behind their past to seek their fortune.
As for Holman, he continued his journey, feeling enriched by his time spend in Africa. Not only did he find a lifelong, loyal friend but during their time together he had also acquired a new skill, which would soon earn him the nickname “The Bat-Man”.
Notes:
Finally we got there
:
(1) The birth of Julius Schuhmacher is the POD for this timline. Not much changes until butterflies created Robrecht and his meeting with Holman. The first big repercussion of their friendship will be explained in the next update.