16 April 1979

This is the beautifully worked-out plot that Errol Uys had in his possession when we first met to discuss whether or not he could find it congenial to work with me, and I with him. It should be studied carefully to see the points at which he had anticipated some of my own ideas, where he paralleled some, and where he introduced lines that I found quite extraneous.

Examples of the latter are the Iranians in whom I could show no interest whatever, (Green); the American line (Black) although after having composed my last chapter with an Australian I diverted to an American as more fruitful; most of the English line (Green also) which seemed too melodramatic for me; and much of the Bantu (Blue and Brown) which again seemed too dramatic. There were, of course, elements in all the lines which had no attraction.

Examples of the first, in which Uys anticipated me beautifully, were the background materials on the creation of the diamond ( that is the geology, which has always been a preoccupation with me and not specifically the diamond itself); the man-apes; Australopithecus, although I could express no interest in Pithecanthropus for the good reason that I know nothing whatever about him; the Bushmen; the fleeting allusion to Zimbabwe, which had always been of major importance to me. Indeed, it was Uys's interest in these pre-historical materials which attracted me to him, for without an understanding of how my mind works on such themes he would have been unable to keep pace.

(CONTD)...

Examples of the middle group, the rough parallels, are numerous: Boer War, the shebeen, the good feeling for the Afrikaner, the elephant hunter (which I did not use but whose characteristics so closely paralleled my Mal Adriaan.) and the solid glimpses of the English at work and play.

Now let's look at the lines of actual plot development that he liked but which I found it better to avoid: The Portuguese, the heavy emphasis on Kimberley, the witchdoctor's ownership of the diamond; indeed the entire diamond theme; the Americans at Kimberley; the New York diamond merchants etc. I'm sure Uys would have discarded an equal amount of the ideas I'd developed, so the rejection was neither excessive nor important.

Finally, let's look at the large themes which I had generated prior to meeting Uys: the concept of 1647 as the beginning of the novel; the heavy emphasis on Java rather than Holland; the strong emphasis on the Huguenots, especially their religious background; the very heavy emphasis on the English; the long detail to be given to early Cape Town, a wine farm and the Trekboers; the confrontation with the Xhosa; the strong focus on the Voortrekkers; an equally strong focus on the Boer War and especially the concentration camps; the long sympathetic look at how a real Afrikaner was educated; and the sharp comment on apartheid. And in place of Uys's dramatics, I had from the start preferred emphasis on setting, slow development and the establishment of a site to which I could return again and again.

Now lets look at the specifics which Uys introduced into our long chat sessions when the big ides were thrown onto the table. He showed such a mastery and predilection for plotting that again and again he came up with dazzling ideas that again and again attracted my attention. I am no good at plotting, hold it to be almost an excrescence, and pay far to little attention to it, so that Uys's bold suggestions were often appreciated. It was he who suggested most of the coincidences, most of the confrontations, most of the wild occurrences and it was I who rejected a vast majority of them but I was deeply indebted to him for certain plot lines. As one can see, I accepted almost none from his own outline, but when we talked he was so quick to catch ideas that we bounced large concepts about with ease. He really was a remarkable man in his ability to visualize instantly and I rarely had to waste a moment explaining anything. Also, he had the capacity and willingness to catch an idea and run with it in his own direction, often proposing something so far from my intention that I was bedazzled. I judge he could plot six novels a year with intricate beauties; he should have been in G-2 in some complicated war situation.

Never once did I say, "So now we have this Englishman at the Mission Station in 1819. How does he get to the Orange River?" without his having nine or eleven possibilities, all good, all logical, all beautifully coordinated. Often I would say, "too complicated for our boy", or "I doubt that our boy would go so far," but just as often I would say, "That might be just what he'd do."

Once we broke away from his conception of a super-dramatic novel, at which he would have been excellent, he grasped immediately and totally my concept of a novel which would unfold the qualities of the Afrikaner heritage, and although he sometimes took a dim view of that heritage, he was brilliant in bringing to my attention aspects which I could not have thought of by myself, even though I had done and was doing considerable work in the field. RETURN TO PLOTTING

*This item is from the James A. Michener special collection at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley.

St. Michaels, MD

22 April 1978

For Tony Oursler and Errol Uys,

It is important, I think, for me to react to Uys's outline before we meet. I saw it for the first time an hour ago and responded most favorably to a great deal of it. But you must understand that I have been thinking casually about such a project for several years, and specifically for the past month. I have, as you saw from my notebook in New York, my own strong ideas as to what might be accomplished, and past experience has taught me to cling fairly, strongly, but not stubbornly, to my first solid impressions. This I will have to do in the case of a possible South African book.

Basically, the only difference between Uys's outline and mine is that as always I want to take things slowly, avoid the big central occurrences, avoid the big cities that others can write about better than I, avoid the super-dramatic confrontations, lay emphasis upon the physical settings which enclose all of us wherever we might be, and allow the story to unfold with its symbolism implied rather than stated, and its high moral instinct in the yarn rather than spelled out in chapter headings. These are devices and principles which I have worked out over several decades, and they fit my personality and skills, and to abandon them now would be perilous. (Also, they work!)

I think you can see where I'm heading. I found Uys's material one degree too dramatized for me, one degree too novelistic. But I'm mightily impressed with his keen instinct for weaving strands together, and I am sure I could learn something from him. In fact, I would like nothing better than to sit quietly with him and Oursler and kick these strands=ideas about for some days to see which are fruitful for my slower, less dramatic approach.

To be specific, so that you can be thinking along the same lines I am, I have already sketched the material dealing with the creation of the diamond and have everything under control except the facts! Can't find a good account anywhere at all! Conclude that I already know more than any of the writers, and that ain't one-fiftieth of what I need to know. For some years I've had a fine short chapter on Australopithecus and have come to consider it a focal point of this book. This time I have all the material I need, some from studies done years ago, many from recent reviews of new materials, but even so I would want to check each sentence with South African experts, because they discovered him and know far more about him than I do.

Instinct advises me that I ought to leapfrog immediately to Zimbabwe at about 1410, and I am fairly well prepared to do this, having seen the area on two previous trips. But I am impressed by Uys's belief that there out to be two interpositions between Australopithecus and Zimbabwe; the Bushmen and the putative Phoenicians, Arabians and Ophirites. I have done no work on the Bushmen and had planned to play them down in comparison with the Hottentots, whom I want to make a strong feature as those present when the Dutch arrived. I have done much work on the Indian littoral, but not in relation to this book. I visited all the ports, all the rivers and made copious mental notes against the day I might want to use either Sofala or Mozambique Island. But frankly I have not cranked this dormant material into my plans and do not, right now, see how best to do so. I would appreciate your thinking about this.

I have no interest in Uys's Portuguese explorers down the Atlantic side, although I did a heavy amount of work on them when I spent some time in Luanda. (The concept of those stelae looking out upon the ocean is alluring, but I am not strongly attached to them as literary devices.) But as the preceding paragraph indicates, I have done much work on the Indian Ocean side, either with the Portuguese or the Arabs, and am somewhat taken with this. Certainly, in the Zimbabwe chapter I would want to use Sofola; and I have always thought that one of the mournful tragedies of South African history, from the local point of view, which I am able to feel instantly, was that they never acquired control of Lorenço Marques, whose loss seems even now incalculable.

Naturally I would not want to attempt this important and difficult book if I did not do ample justice to the great black   tribes, and I have always had this in mind from the time years ago when I studied the Zulus intensely, visiting their new lands, their old battlefields, their university and their present-day homes. But I'm damned if I see clearly how best to handle this. I had thought I would focus on the Xhosa as the people who were forced south and west by Shaka, and this still appeals. But I belatedly see that the story is only half told if full emphasis is not given to Shaka, his antecedents and his followers in addition to Dingaan. But every instinct tells me to wait on this till after the Dutch have been established. It makes for a better book, I am convinced. I am, however, open for suggestions as how best to introduce the material.

I have great interest in the shipwrecked Haerlem of about 1648 because I want to stress Java and Batavia as counterweights to Cape Town, and it occurs to me it would e fruitful to use the Haerlem incident as the one way to introduce my continuing Dutch family. In my plan of some years ago, this would form Chapter   IV and would get the story launched, insofar as the Europeans are concerned. But I find absolutely nothing about the Haerlem !

Like Uys I want to stress the Huguenot strain, but as of now I have no clear plan for accomplishing this. I deem the French influence to be rather stronger than the average writer indicates; many of the profound strains of the Dutch-Boer-Afrikaans character show a clear Huguenot component. But this can be easily worked out as the characters move across the pages.

My Chapter V, assuming that the French do not merit a chapter to themselves but an ancillary treatment, would leap directly to the Xhosa Wars and the coming of the English as a kind of afterthought. This could be a very solid and focal chapter, stressing the confrontation of Xhosa-Dutch and Dutch-English. But I have never done much work on the Xhosa, except as they were caught in Zulu history, and would need a lot of specific work to make myself competent. I much prefer the Zulus and the Matabele, but the more I think about Afrikaner history, the more significant the Xhosa become, a fact I did not appreciate some years ago.

Then the trek, on which I am fairly well informed. I have always thought it ought to be done as the South African version of the American trek to the west, and the Russian trek to the east, and I want to place it in its proper physical setting, comparing it with those other great treks which were so much more significant in terms of numbers of people involved and miles covered, and so much less important psychologically. I had always intended, as you know from what I told you, to bypass Natal, which meant also bypassing Dingaan, because I have always been much more interested in the trekkers who did just that. I felt that I could get all the values I wanted from the Xhosa, but what Uys said at our meeting made a deep impression on me and I have restudied this issue. Blood River is too important to be ignored, even though all my antecedents as a writer warn me to do so, and I am beginning to see how I can digress to that tragic scene and then get back on what is for me my main line. In fact, this can be done with certain advantages and should be, primarily for two reasons: Blood River is too deeply ingrained in Afrikaner memory to be ignored and is too good a phrase to be wasted; and I now think that the blacks I want to follow in the powerful later chapters ought to be Zulus.

And there my specific planning comes to a halt. (In my earlier notes I leapfrogged almost directly to the workings of the pass laws, which is too enormous a leap for a book of the kind I now visualize.) I want of course to establish the diamond theme, but not too heavily. I do not want to make much if anything of the Rhodes-Kruger confrontation, for others have done this commendably. Nor am I concerned about the Uitlanders or the fracases between the two Republics.

Whatever I decide upon this lacuna must lead to the Boer War, which I have fairly well structured. But I am not making any firm decisions because I want to see what happens to our characters in the preceding episodes: Boer heroes; English actors: Black majority.

As they move into the Twentieth Century their obligations become clearer, and I have always had this fairly well in mind: much emphasis on 1938-1945; great stress on the intellectual conflicts of the 1948-1960 period; and in the final chapter a focus on perhaps only three central figures, each of which grows out of the preceding periods.

I have already given some thought to Oursler's idea that an American enter the final scenes, and now I see that Uys had the same idea. There may be some value in this: a fresh figure, a new view, a premonition of the 1990s. I don't want to use the diamond melodramatically, but if it is well handled in the opening chapter, and then again prior to the Boer War, there could be a way of utilizing it within the limitations I set myself. At any rate, I'm think about this and have so far come up with nothing. But the idea does persist, so maybe it's a good one.

Now you know all I know and the next move is yours. RETURN TO PLOTTING

Outline Second draft, pages 10 -13

Note: In first outline, covered the Van Doorns:

*         Adriaan's life from 1743-1788. His son, Lodevicus , b. 1750 and grandson, Johannes, b. 1777. We have Adriaan dying with his tremendous vision of Africa, a call to the future from the depth of his soul...

*        We saw Lodevicus, in 1774, trek into the heart of the Frontier settling at De Kraal and building his reputation as 'The Hammer' in the clashes with the Xhosa. And the birth of Tjaart van Doorn in 1800 — after the death of Johannes in the Third Kaffir War. Only thereafter do we have the arrival of the Stanworths — now Saltwood.

*        Also saw the Xhosa though the wars and reference to the Nongquase vision.

If to start Chapter Seven with Saltwood background, need a way to work in the above. (Also detail of Van Plettenberg's 1778 'grand apartheid' plan... The latter remains important for it brings an important historical perspective that underlines, boldly, the fact that the black-white confrontation in South Africa is centuries-in-the-making, with all today's fears, doubts, prejudices deeply ingrained in the volks -memory.)

The Xhosa story can, profitably, be introduced through the Saltwood missionary connection and the wars. More can come out in his clashes with the Van Doorns who'll undoubtedly reflect on his 'ignorance' of the real blacks ...Old Lodevicus can assert, for example, that you only get to know them when you've shed blood in battle against them.

If one accepts that the Xhosa tribes are really the 'overflow' of the great Zulu empire to the north, the black angle can be dealt with in depth in the next chapter on The Rise of the Zulu. That might be the answer - to live with this peripheral, almost narrow, view and then to bring - with the tremendous roar of a mighty Zulu impi, the story of the blacks crashing upon the reader's mind. All the time, through the Van Doorns, the Saltwoods and others, through the Xhosa wars, the reader suspects that there is much, much more "beyond" - also 'tailed down' through the pre-history sections - but cannot perceive just how immense the black presence is until he finds himself amid Shaka's empire.

As for the Van Doorns: See Adriaan and Hester - as per my last updated notes - leaving the Cape, presaging the breakpoint between the Cape Afrikaner-to-be and the North. Now, one picks up with Lodevicus and Tjaart. Saltwood can be valuable here: In his first confrontation with the Van Doorns, they as 2nd and 4th generation of trekkers can make clear their resentment of this 'intruder' in their midst. By reference to Adriaan, the visionary and Johannes, the victim, they can provide a flashback to earlier period. Removed need for interim settlement of family at Swellendam, allowing immediate move from Trianon to De Kraal .

Chapter Seven

The Eastern Cape Frontier... The Conflict between the English missionaries and the trekkers.   The arrival of the 1820 British Settlers. The Xhosa Wars.Events leading to The Great Trek.

The Saltwoods of Old Sarum:

When they're encountered (in England?), family structure might look something like this:

Father: (Name to come?) Saltwood.

Pre-Cape Colony:

• 1786-1801:John Saltwood at School in Salisbury (Godolphin, Bishop Wordsworth's or the Cathedral School?). Saltwood intro: As discussed, scene-setting to establish Old Sarum, Salisbury, Stonehenge. The meeting by the tree. The Saltwood prospect etc. Close look at the elder Saltwood, the brother Michael being groomed to follow in his father's political/landlording footsteps, the rotten borough of Old Sarum etc.

• 1802-1806: John Saltwood attends Oxford ...College? ...Theology.

(Research formation of London Missionary Society (LMS), Anti-Slave Committee etc. and see possible connections to Oxford or Salisbury.)

His commitment to the "innocent, noble savage" could develop at Oxford. Perhaps his tutor is active in LMS home-based work. Takes him to meetings, lectures etc. His calling to Africa intensifies after the Second British Occupation of the Cape in 1806. There could be special value to his ideas about Africa being shaped in England through these LMS contacts etc. He'll carry with him pre-conceptions that will, step by step, face grave erosion though he is unlikely to admit that. Despite the realities of the veldt the trekker lifestyle, the Frontier, he will long cling to his homeside prejudices seeing the trekkers as "boorish, uncivilized Africans." He accepts the LMS dictums against them, sides with the Hottentots and Blacks and frowns upon what he sees as unwelcome "intruders" upon the African panorama.

While he is genuine in his vocation and concern, there's room for comic relief here: I've this picture of John Saltwood, circa 1809, serious, studious, aesthetic (perhaps not unlike Phil Bateman:) gathered with the Saltwood relations in the manicured garden of the ancestral home. It is as fine and gentle a spring day as you could hope for. To his perplexed but properly polite family, he is trying to explain the 'savage' prospect that this Godly son of England faces in Africa. For the trekkers, especially, he has dark words ....He'd often have occasion to recall this placid parting.

Michael Saltwood is 45... Age raises possibility that he could be an elder statesman at the time of the abolition of slavery - if link-back to England's Saltwood's needed. or, at 56, a major supporter of the 1820 Settlers movement. Which could explain Richard Saltwood's connection with that group. (Though no real problem since it would be logical for soldiers going out to the Frontier to sail with such a ship etc.)

Michael, no doubt, is pleased to see his brother carrying the family banner to the colonies- a welcome contrast to the behavior of the irresponsible Matthew.

(Another vignette: I'm not sure whether timing is correct but, on occasion blacks were taken from Africa to England for 'exhibition'... It may be profitable to see the Rev. John's reactions to meeting with such a group in London. His first "experience" with the real thing!)

•  1809 Since voyage description saved for Richard Saltwood and the 1820 Settlers, we see John Saltwood taking up his appointment with LMS in the Cape Colony.

If value in cross-reference to American slavers, perhaps have high seas meeting between ships carrying John Saltwood and American slaver out of West Africa. Renegade Matthew Saltwood could be aboard the slaver - a traumatic finding that could offer an added dimension to John Saltwood's mission to Africa - a guilty secret locked away in his mind and perhaps later contributing toward his marriage to a black.

Saltwood arrives in 1809 after Read's "African peasants" atrocity letter published in Transactions of the LMS. This will contribute to the chill reception he receives and never forgets. Could crystallize in scene during stopover at Boer home on the fringe of Karoo on his journey from Cape Town to Bethelsdorp. Just how deeply one wants to get involved with the Reads/Van der Kemps etc. is debatable: Perhaps, just make point of their existence, motives, work etc., have Saltwood 'check' in with them briefly and then move on to do his own thing. Occasional, necessary contacts follow. (Facts of LMS operations may suggest otherwise, once researched in detail.)

• 1809: First Hottentot Ordinance

• 1811: Circuit Courts Established: These tried trekboers for, among other allegations, mistreatment of their slaves and Hottentot servants.

Things have gone all but smoothly for John Saltwood in the first two years of his missionary experience. His station - within a day's journey of the Van Doorn farm, De Kraal? - has attracted a number of Hottentots and blacks, many of them indolent hangers-on. He has proved to be a poor organizer and the station has the semblance of a squatters' camp etc. Some of the n'er-do-wells he has attracted pay lip service to his sermonizing etc., but rudely laugh behind his back but most are honest, God-fearing folk.

Saltwood naturally agrees with the views of Read/Van der Kemp etc. but falters when it comes to taking as strong a stand as they do. He will indeed raise his voice in protest against the "boors" and their mistreatment of the Hottentots etc but takes care to avoid direct confrontation on these issues. Pusillanimous, faint-hearted, Saltwood is, however, forced into a situation where he clashes with the Van Doorns.

Several possibilities here, perhaps the sole proviso being that one should avoid closely paralleling the case of Frederick Bezuidenhout which has been used several times before.

Saltwood could give refuge to a Hottentot implicated in the theft of cattle from De Kraal. Lodevicus now aged 61, and his "boss boys" ride over to the mission to demand that the Hottentot be turned over to them. Saltwood refuses to do so: In fact, he couldn't if he'd wanted to for the Hottentot is away from the station.

When they ride off, Lodevicus and his party encounter the Hottentot. Now convinced that he'll not be brought to justice, The Hammer deals with him in his own way - a whipping and beating etc.

At first Saltwood only commiserates with the Hottentot, but the story of The Hammer's justice does the rounds and he is forced to take up the case bringing an assault charge against Lodevicus who appears before the landdrost at Graaff Reinet, found guilty and fined. Unlike Bezuidenhout and others, Lodevicus goes through the affair with solemn dignity. Only when Saltwood tries to broaden the case against him with further accusations about the Van Doorn's treatment of their slaves etc. - only then does he lose his calm, blasting away at Saltwood in the courtroom and airing his feelings on all the grievances felt by the trekkers against the "meddlesome" missionaries.

Alternatively, could see Saltwood accepting largely false accusations brought to him by the Hottentot and directing the man to bring charges against Lodevicus. Perhaps too clear cut and fails to take into account fact that some of the missionaries charges were certainly justified?

In either case, with the exception of a possible 'thaw' in relations between Richard Saltwood and Tjaart van Doorn (below), this sets the scene for future between the two families.

• 1812:Fourth Xhosa War: January to March.

During which the "Saltwood" mission station is razed. Although mainly Hottentot inhabited, there are some blacks, including a 12-year-old Xhosa girl (check specific tribe?) who survives with her mother, Saltwood's servant. The two of them move off with him. (In 1821, he will marry the daughter.)

In original notes, Van Doorn farm is devastated. Suggest leave till pre-trek era. But this is Saltwood's "baptism by fire'°. When he flees with black woman and her daughter, there could be this picture of them passing close by the Van Doorn farm - maybe even on hill overlooking the De Kraal farmhouse -but unable to find or seek refuge there.

• 1812-1815: Perhaps, after abandonment of mission, Saltwood makes trip back to England. This could aid in rekindling his stuffy relationship with the girl back home. However, he cannot escape the destiny he feels lies back in South Africa and will return there.

There should be, in his own mind, some difficulty about his exact interpretation of that destiny. The young black girl. soon reaching toward womanhood... would've aroused something within him he doesn't fully understand. But, whatever, it adds to his continuing hesitancy to marry Vera Lambton(?). There's always this need to settle his affairs in Africa.

LMS background ops. will clarify, but hopefully he could return to the Colony, still under their auspices. He gets a new mission outpost in close proximity to army station (or fort?) where soldiers who will take part in Slagtersnek executions are billeted and is responsible for their ministry.

• 1816: Lodevicus and young Tjaart van Doorn, aged 16, witness Slagtersnek: Five trekkers who had rebelled against British were hung. In four cases, the noose broke. The men were strung up again in front of their friends and relatives - an atrocious event imprinted in infamy.

Furious confrontation between van Doorns and Saltwood, leaving Tjaart   with indelible resentment etc, Perhaps Van Doorns and other trekkers could chase away Saltwood when he wants to 'comfort' them when the bodies are removed from the gallows. Unstated symbolism to the scene among those gathered at the foot of Christ's cross.

At Slagtersnek Saltwood faces the most serious spiritual/moral challenge of his life. Greatly appalled by the burgher uprising, he nevertheless felt that they should not be executed. His appeals for mercy throw him into conflict with some of his own LMS people, and fail to impress Governor Somerset and other authorities. Nor does his stand, at this late hour, move the Van Dooms who continue to see him as the embodiment of the cause of many of their troubles.

From here on, Saltwood begins to retreat from an original vision of Christ's messenger among the "black heathene". So great is his disappointment and confusion at this failure that for 40 days and nights he will wander into the frontier as fever grips him. Found in delirium by a group of blacks, he is taken back to his people at the mission station.

• 1818: Lodevicus van Doorn dies, leaving young Tjaart, b. 1800 in control of De Kraal. After Johannes van Doorn's death in 1799 - a few months before the birth of Tjaart - Lodevicus "The Hammer" had taken the child under his care, instilling in him not only the spirit of old Mal Adriaan, his great-grandfather, but the treklus. ("trek-lust")

• 1819: Tjaart journeys briefly back to the Cape, affording a look at Trianon and the progress of the Van Doorns there. The Cape only deepen his conviction that life under the English flag cannot be for him. Someday, in the future, he will turn his back on all this to seek a new freedom.

• 1819: The Rev. Dr. Philip appears on the scene. Through some contact with him, Saltwood enjoys a brief re-charging of enthusiasm. At last, he also decides to send for Vera Lambton.

• 1820: Arrival of the 1820 British Settlers, 4000-plus immigrants brought out from Britain to reinforce the "buffer" zone between white and Xhosa.

Richard Saltwood (rank?) travels on the Alice Grace, a settler ship with Vera Lambton, wife-to-be of brother John. Fine description of actual voyage needed. (Also showing hopes, fears etc. of the settlers.) Since we have scrapped idea of using Huguenot voyage as "example, this seems good point for showing what was endured in making passage to Africa those days. Would see Alice Grace(?) in mighty seas off the Cape of Storms, grippingly capturing all the terrors men and women faced since they first began to sail beyond what pre-Prince Henry navigators regarded as "the end of the world". Making for Simonstown, they're blown south for two days, a period of fear and dread that will sharpen the passionate need Vera Lambton feels for the man she met and fell in love with aboard the good vessel Alice Grace. (named for the daughters of the owner?)

It had happened a few days out of Southampton (?). For the first time in her life, the 29-year-old woman knew true love with a 23-year-old, possibly junior officer of Saltwood. Aware of what this will mean to his brother, Richard tries to end the romance. He has the man put off at Simonstown but (arrange without having him disobey officer's order?) the lover will dash to Algoa Bar and be waiting for Vera when the Alice Grace drops anchor.

• 1820: Despite his dislike for the English, Tjaart van Doorn, in the good spirit shown by other frontier trekkers, welcomes the settlers, seeing hope in their strengthening of the community and the thin "white" line along the border. lie also sees good money in riding transport with his wagons for the incoming settlers.

• 1820: When the Rev. Saltwood - after a devastating scene on the beach at Algoa Bay - finally accepts that Vera Lambton has rejected him, he withdraws to his mission station and the young black girl he'd known, since she was a child. Suddenly, amid his great despair, all became clear: Had not Dr Philip and he, himself, preached that the coloured races were in every respect the equals of the white man? Here, with this black girl, would he not find the true communion with Mother Africa? The fulfillment of his mission? A spiritual closeness with those he sought to reach? A joyful salvation?

• 1821: The Rev. John Saltwood and the girl are married: A tragic and fore-doomed union in the eyes of others.

Previously we had Tjaart van Doorn marrying a Scot for 1820's group, but after the Van Doorn-Saltwood experience probably be less likely. Suggest he meets trekker girl at Graaff Reinet when he goes to Nachtmaal, courts and marries her at the same time as the Saltwood union is consummated. (Tjaart's wife will be massacred at Blaauwkrantz.)

• 1824: Richard Saltwood leaves army, aged 39, marries 1820 settler, Virginia Comstock from Grahamstown. These Saltwoods settle on a farm in the same district as Tjaart van Doorn. Anthony Saltwood is born in 1825.

• 1828: 50th Ordinance passed: Affecting relationships between settlers aid       Hottentots, Bushman and other free people of color. Latter relieved from the operation of pass laws, the apprenticeship of children etc. Placed them politically on a level with the whites.

• 1833: Slavery ends at the Cape. Rev. John Saltwood emerges briefly at this       time. In the 11 years that have passed since his marriage, he has fathered six children

• 1834-35: The Sixth Xhosa War. Richard Saltwood rides with the trekkers and other settlers and we see brief conciliation between Tjaart van Doorn and this Saltwood together in the field against the Xhosa. Van Doorn farm is destroyed, his wife and children seeking refuge with the Saltwood family.

Rev. John Saltwood is slain at his mission station. His family will trek to another settlement where, slowly, they will sink into poverty and distress. This line of the Saltwoods will die out tragic and foredoomed. Could use this breakdown as a link to Nongquase, for just as John Saltwood's vision of Africa withered, so did Nongqause's vision of the invincibility of her people come to grief: In 1856, a 16 year old girl Nongquase said that the Xhosa people should destroy all their cattle and fields and on a certain day the nation would rise, immune to the settlers' bullets, and drive the white man into the sea. As a result, thousands of Xhosas perished in the ensuing famine and the nation's strength was ruined.

The Covenant

Michener: A Writer's Journey