A SOUTH AFRICAN PIONEER.* Tars generation probably hardly associates the
name of Oswell with the earlier travels of Livingstone and the big game south of the Zambesi. Yet the friendship of the two men ought to be famous, for we do not believe the great missionary wrote such charming letters to any man as he wrote to his friend Oswell. The humour of Livingstone was not vouchsafed to the world at large, who saw only the great pur- pose of the man, but it is abundantly evident in these letters.
* William Cotton °stall, Hunter and Explorer : the Story of his Life. By W.
Edward Oswalt, of the Middle Temple. With Illustrations. vols. London : Wm. Heinemann. [20ts.] Oswell was reckoned the greatest hunter of his day, and he fulfilled the highest standard as laid down for the ideal hiurter, having • neither the bloodthirstiness of Gordon-Cumming, nor the necessity of making his living by it, as was the case of Selous in the last quarter of the century. We mean no (lie: paragement to either of these great shikaris, but the first was a hunter and nothing else, and the second will scarcely earn the blessing of those who come after him. No one knows better than we do that Mr. Selous has carried his life in his hand times out of mind, that he has run risks that his modesty alone prevents his publishing, and that in a native rebellion we were only too glad to make use of him. We have no wish to fall deeper into the sin of making comparisons; but consider for a moment the tactics of Oswell. At a range which most men consider close enough to dangerous game, he could not trust to the accuracy of his smooth-bore ; he preferred to fire at his quarry at rather less than the length of a cricket pitch. His nerve and quickness were probably not greater than many another's, but he put them to a severe test. An escape he had from two rhinoceroses proves this. He waited for the two beasts till they came within twenty yards of him, but, unluckily, head on, so he continued to wait till the nearer of the two was within its own length of him. Of course, it would have been suicide to fire then, and he jumped up, dashed pact her with his hand on the brute's side, intending to take her from the rear. The rhinoceros swung round and gave chase, and catching Oswell up, tossed him as he laid the barrels along her head and fired. This was an exhibition of nerve which we may place somewhere between the sublime and the ridiculous; no man could do a thing like this twice and live; and indeed Oswell had the narrowest escape he ever had,—he was unconscious for three hours afterwards and crippled for a month. This, but one of many extraordinary escapes, shows that the man bad a confidence and a reckless . contempt of real danger that earned him part of his great reputation.
But Oswell was born under a lucky star, for though his father died four years after he was born, Benjamin Cotton, his uncle, acted in, loco parodic, and assisted Mrs. W. Oswell as few men, even uncles, help those partly dependent on them. The affectionate terms on which the Cottons were with the widow enabled her to give William Oswell a good education, and he went to Rugby and Haileybury, where "Handsome Oswell" was the hero of many a boy. He was one of Arnold's boys, and though his letters say little about Arnold, he spoke in after years of the confidence which the doctor inspired even in those whom he did not attract. His schoolfellows never forgot the "Muscleman " or "Handsome Oswell," and men who had not seen him for half a century renewed their worship of the boy who fascinated their eyes in Rugby days. His own wish was to enter the Indian Army, and to this the family were quite agreeable, when one of the uncles, a director of " John Company," procured, somewhat to their chagrin, a writership, which, however, was not to be refused. Accordingly Oswell became an assistant-collector of the Southern Division of Arcot. We hear of one or two hunting incidents, and a lament at the apparent inadequacy of his pay of 2650. He hints at a lack of domestic economy, but he was always a generous soul, and never thought of himself.
His Indian career was cut short by repeated and nearly fatal attacks of fever, and in September, 1844, he was carried on board a ship bound for the Cape. His doctors had advised the change, though in his last relapse it seemed madness to move him ; but go he would, and after a seven weeks' voyage landed at Cape Town with the famous smooth-bore,—not the only invalid, be it said, who has landed at Cape Town, and repaid a new lease of life by inaugurating a new era in South Africa. He " picked up " quickly in the fine climate, and early in the next year began to think of a hunting expedition with a friend, and in June, 1845, was at Kuruman with that " grand old patriarch of missionaries, Mr. Moffat." Moffat advised them to go to Livingstone at the last missionary station, and there °swell met "the Rev. Dr. Livingstone, the best, most intelligent, and most modest of the missionaries." After a two days' visit they continued their journey into the unknown, and for three months revelled, says Oswell, " in the finest climate, the fateet shooting, and anything but tame scenery." We have but fragmentary accounts of Oswell's trips ; but the few letters he wrote, and the recollections of this first expedition, show that it held in all probability the first place in his hunter's heart. To hunt with Bushmen who acknowledged him as their equal in the hunting craft, and to feel himself at the zenith of his most unusual physical powers, and to know that he was the first whiteman, exceedingly popular,and, as we know, probably the best white man they ever saw,—all this must have been pleasure unalloyed to the strong, unselfish heart. We get but little of his life, though some of his more exciting escapes and a vivid account of a night in the bush have come down to us. The second trip to the Limpopo was memorable for the meet- ing with Vardon, and two thrilling adventures with rhino- ceroses; one we have already related, the other resulted in the death of the best horse of the odd hundred who furnished him with mounts during his South African life. He shot from the saddle always if he could get near enough to do so.
An interval between the second and third African expedi- tions was occupied by a return to India to save the cancel- ling of his appointment, and the decision a few months later to return to England and quit India for good. He found himself in time to make the last few months of his mother's life easier and happier after their long separation. He sailed for the Cape again at the close of 1848, and in the following April left Colesberg with Murray to pick up Livingstone at Kolobeng. Then came the passage of the Kalahari Desert and the discovery of Lake Ngami, excellently described in a letter to Vardon, written, however, when he had returned to Cape Town. The fourth expedition, the next year, was made alone to explore the Zouga and examine Ngami again. Oswell in this gives an amusing description of the native dogs and their manner of outwitting alligators. They would assemble on the bank and run barking up-stream in full view of the alligators ; then, after a final chorus, dash back along a lower level out of sight, and mute, to their starting-point, and cross in safety. The fifth expedition with Livingstone was to visit Sebitoane, whom they had been unable to reach on the last journey, and ascertain the possibility of checking the slave trade and the position of the rivers. They saw Sebitoane, a great chief in every sense of the word, and beheld the- Zambesi. He sent a rough sketch-map of this journey to Vardon, which is reproduced in facsimile, and most interest- ing it is. Livingstone and Oswell became fast friends on this expedition. Oswell by going ahead and digging out the water holes made it possible for Mrs. Livingstone to accom- pany her husband. The journey only proved to her husband that it was not right to take her and the children through such a place as the Kalahari, for instance, and dangers unknown. He decided to send them home, and when on their return southwards Oswell left them hurriedly, it was not till they reached Cape Town, and found he had ordered an outfit for the homing family as a present, that they realised his good intentions. Early in '52 he sailed for England, and never again set foot in South Africa. He was only thirty-four, in the prime of life, and was to live another forty years ; and his withdrawal can never fail to be a regret to those who knew the courage and enterprise of the man, his natural ability, and his almost ideal perfection of character.
The second volume of this biography deals with the uneventful period of Oswell's life. It is an extraordinary contrast, the life of a country gentleman for forty years following a few years of such sport as Kings would pawn their crowns to enjoy ; and the line drawn before some men are considered to have reached their fullest powers ! No one can.doubt that Oswell felt it, but his marriage, his children, and the use to which he put his leisure removed the keener pangs of regret. He never spared himself or his time in ministering to others ; illness, accident, excited hid instant sympathy and actual aid, and to the readiest practical sympathy he added a personal fascination of manner and character that would have won a Patagonian or a Tchuktchi.
Mr.. W. E. Oswell tells us that fire consumed the first materials of his father's Life. These are a considerable loss doubtless, for his- references to contemporary politics are always -instructive, shring a strong common-sense, keen insight. and much, humour. But his letters to his sons at school are printed—too taany of them, we think—and one may wonder that his sons *aped spoiling ; admirable, nay per- fect, as the epistles are; boys ought to be left to a certain
extent to act for themselves. The earlier letters of the Cotton and Oswell families have a distinct interest of their own, yet their • bulk is large, as is that of Oswell's later English life compared to his Indian and African career. The reason for this lies at Oswell's door, and though we may not mention a fault with a character of so refined and unsel- fish a stamp as he showed to his generation, we cannot forget it. We may forgive, but we cannot forget that he had unexampled opportunities of seeing savage races at their best, of exploring unknown countries, and noting facts and features, and was possessed, moreover, of acute powers of observation and the gift of describing what he saw. But he did not choose to do so, and we are all the poorer for it. A few excellent letters, some rough notes, an account of an elephant " coopum," and a contribution on the big game of South Africa to a sporting library constitute the records of his life. Most of his notes he burnt lest they should during an illness be published and in any way forestall Livingstone's account. The motive was noble, but the deed inexcusable; suppose Livingstone's data had perished too. His family were much distressed at his silence, which seemed to prevent any notion of his ever receiving recognition of services rendered to civilisa- tion as well as to Livingstone. Oswell's silence on the dis- covery of Lake Ngami is a case in point. The French Geo- graphical Society sent Livingstone and him a medal. Absolutely unselfish as he was, he desired the great missionary to have all possible fame that it might assist his great purpose. Nevertheless, Oswell owed something to the family who had come forward in his infancy to help his mother and children, and later enabled him to marry, and he owed some trifle to his own reputation.
Thus it comes about. that Oswell is almost an unknown name, and has left to a large circle of friends the perpetuation of his fame as a great hunter, and a fame as a chevalier sans pear et sans reproche almost greater. It appears that he was actually persuaded to write to a publisher with a view to a book, but the answer being a discouraging one, he relin- quished the idea. Books of travel are not lightly embarked upon, but surely this was a very shortsighted mistake on the part of a publisher. The unfortunate accident which destroyed the first attempt at Oswell's biography, as the charming letters of the man proved, was a great misfortune. It is a sufficient excuse for large gaps, though not for the blank which occupies the busiest years of his career. It is in those years that we are held at a distance from the man, by his reserve. It must be our consolation that possibly the personality of that " prince of gentlemen," William Cotton Oswell, shows out the more clearly,—a splendid combination of the Greek and Christian ideals, beauty of person and beauty of character.
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