by Percy FitzPatrick · 1907
Memoir · Classics
The story of Jock, a Staffordshire bull terrier cross who shared the life of his master, a transport rider and hunter, in the Transvaal lowveld during the 1880s gold rush. A much-loved South African classic told as a true account.
Content note: Written in 1907 from the viewpoint of a white colonist, with hunting scenes and the attitudes and terms of its time towards African people.
The Background.
Of the people who live lonely lives, on the veld or elsewhere, few do so of their own free choice. Some there are shut off from all their kind—souls sheathed in some film invisible, through which no thrill of sympathy may pass; some barred by their self-consciousness, heart hungry still, who never learned in childhood to make friends; some have a secret or a grief; some, thoughts too big or bad for comradeship. But most will charge to Fate the thoughtless choice, the chance, or hard necessity, that drew or drove them to the life apart; they know the lesson that was learned of old: “It is not good for man to be alone.”
Go out among them, ever moving on, whose white bones mark the way for others’ feet—who shun the cities, living in the wilds, and move in silence, self-contained. Who knows what they think, or dream, or hope, or suffer? Who can know? For speech among that hard-schooled lot is but a half-remembered art.
Yet something you may guess, since with the man there often goes—his dog; his silent tribute to The Book.
