Quaker History

JAMES BACKHOUSE: A YORKSHIRE QUAKER IN SOUTH AFRICA (1838-1840) By Cecil Northcott* The early nineteenth century history of South Africa is greatly indebted to the journals and diaries of independent travellers whose observant eyes and pens recorded the passing scene in Cape Colony and along the colonial frontiers. The travel journals of Barrow (1801), Lichenstein (1803), Campbell (1815), Pringle (1835), Gardiner (1836) and Baines (1842) are examples of the resolute travelling of those years, and among the group James Backhouse (1844) deserves more prominence than he has had apart from his secure position in the footnotes of the major histories. Born in Darlington in 1794 of Quaker stock, he lived most of his adult life in York as a nurseryman, and his botanical skill and comments enliven the pages of his Narrative of a Visit to Mauritius and South Africa (1844) which runs to over 700 pages, including 60 on Mauritius, thrown in as a side excursion, complete with maps, woodcuts and etchings. Blackhouse's energy was prodigious. Before arriving at Cape Town in July, 1838, he had already done six years of relentless travelling in Australia and Tasmania, visiting the colonial settlements , especially the penal ones, with the Quakerly message of peace and goodwill. He carried with him a certificate from the York Monthly Meeting testifying to his good standing, and in Cape Town the authorities presented him with a letter that opened all the gaols to his Quakerly inspection and comment. Backhouse was under the compulsion of a "concern" in the Quaker sense: he wanted to see how the so-called "inferior" races were faring in South Africa, and what sort of racial policy was developing as the result of the thirty years' work of the "missionary institutions" established by missions from Britain and Germany, which by 1838 had affected an entire generation of coloured Hottentots. His wife died in 1827 and this freed him to fulfill his calling. Leaving his two small children with a sister-in-law, he left England for Australia in 1831 at the age of 37, travelling at his own expense. He was a well seasoned horseman by the time he got to the Cape in 1838 at the age of 44. *Cecil Northcott, the author of recent books on David Livingtone and Robert Moffat, lives in Cambridge, England. 105 106QUAKER HISTORY A short, wiry and heavily bearded man, Backhouse hired accommodation in Cape Town for nine shillings a week and set about planning his two years' itinerary. The heart of his scheme was to visit everyone of the 85 "missionary institutions" which, in spite of the virulent opposition of colonists and Boer farmers, had, at least, established the fact that Hottentots and their like were capable of "improvement" and could be won from a drifting, nomadic life to a pastoral, agricultural one and could be taught industrial skills. It was a significant year to be on the trail in South Africa for the meaning of Slave Emancipation in 1838 was beginning to penetrate to the innermost recesses of Cape Colony, driving even more Boer farmers to trek northwards, and persuading others that they had got to come to terms with the Coloured and Bantu races. Backhouse was no reformer-politician. The chief weapons in his wagon and in the saddle bags of his horse were pious tracts and "improving literature" and his technique on "out-spanning" was to gather little groups for edifying conversation and frequent admonition on the terrors of strong drink. But behind the piety was a shrewd observing mind, and always a charming willingness to wander from the track and note, as a botanist, the flowers by the wayside . On the Cape Flats, on the first day out, he notes: "Many pretty flowers, among them a pink Watsonia, resembling a Cornflag , a yellow Iris-like Morea, an orange Gazonia, and a few pink and white Mesembryanthemums, somewhat of the form of Marigolds ." He paid £67.10s. for his wagon (his 'little ship' as he called it) and his oxen cost him £3.15s each. On the second day "a Spotted Fox crossed our path among the sand hills," and he watched huge beetles "rolling balls of dung along...