The Ferreira Millions

Marthinus Taljaard lived in a house that his grandfather had built on the slope of a koppie in the Dwarsberge (Oom Schalk Lourens said). It was a big, rambling house with more rooms than what Marthinus Taljaard needed for just his daughter, Rosina, and himself. Marthinus Taljaard was known as the richest man in the whole of the Dwarsberge. It was these two circumstances that led to the koppie around his house becoming hollowed out with tunnels like the nest of a white ant.

Only a man who, like Marthinus Taljaard, already had more possessions in cattle and money than he knew what to do with, would still want more. That was why he listened to the story that Giel Bothma came all the way from Johannesburg to tell him about the Ferreira millions.

Of course, any Marico farmer would have been interested to hear what a young man in city clothes had to say, talking fast, about the meaning of a piece of yellow paper with lines and words on it, that he held in his hand. If Giel Bothma had come to me in that way, I would have listened to him, also. We would have sat on the stoep, drinking coffee. And I would have told him that it was a good story. I would also have shown him, if he was a young man willing to learn, how he could improve on it. Furthermore, I would have told him a few stories of my own, by way of guidance to him as to how to tell a story.

But towards milking time I would have to leave that young man sitting on the stoep, the while I went out to see what was happening in the cattle-kraal.

That was where Marthinus Taljaard, because he was the wealthiest man in the Dwarsberge, was different. He listened to Giel Bothma’s story about the Ferreira millions from the early part of the forenoon onwards. He listened with his mouth open. And when it came to milking time, he invited Giel Bothma over to the kraal with him, with Giel Bothma still talking. And when it came to the time for feeding the pigs, Giel Bothma helped to carry a heavy bucket of swill to the troughs, without seeming to notice the looks of surprise on the faces of the Bechuana farm labourers.

A little later, when Giel Bothma saw what the leaking bucket of swill had done to the legs of his smoothly pressed trousers, he spoke a lot more. And what he used were not just all city words, either.

Anyway, the result of Giel Bothma’s visit from Johannesburg was that he convinced Marthinus Taljaard, by means of the words and lines on that bit of yellow paper, that the Ferreira millions, a treasure comprised of gold and diamonds and elephant tusks, was buried on his farm.

We in the Marico had, needless to say, never heard of the Ferreira millions before. We knew only that Ferreira was a good Afrikaner name. And we often sang that old song, “Vat Jou Goed en Trek, Ferreira” – meaning to journey northwards out of the Cape to get away from English rule. Moreover, there was the Hans Ferreira family. They were Doppers and lived near Enzelsberg. But when you saw Hans Ferreira at the Indian store at Ramoutsa, lifting a few sheep-skins out of his donkey-cart and trying to exchange them for coffee and sugar, then you could not help greeting with a certain measure of amusement the idea conveyed by the words, ‘Ferreira millions.’

These were the matters that we discussed one midday while we were sitting around in Jurie Steyn’s post office, waiting for our letters from Zeerust.

Marthinus Taljaard and his daughter, Rosina, had come to the post office, leaving Giel Bothma alone on the farm to work out, with the help of his yellowed map and the kaffirs, the place where to dig the tunnel.

“This map with the Ferreira millions in gold and diamonds and elephant tusks,” Marthinus Taljaard said, pompously, sitting forward on Jurie Steyn’s riempiestoel, “was made many years ago – before my grandfather’s time, even. That’s why it is so yellow. Giel Bothma got hold of it just by accident. And the map shows clearly that the Portuguese explorer, Ferreira, buried his treasure somewhere in that koppie in the middle of my farm.”

“Anyway, that piece of paper is yellow enough,” Jurie Steyn said with a slight sneer. “That paper is yellower than the iron pyrites that a prospector found at Witfontein, so it must be gold, all right. And I can also see that it is gold, from the way you hang on to it.”

Several of us laughed, then.

“But I can’t imagine there being such a thing as the Ferreira millions,” Stephanus van Tonder said, expressing what we all felt. “Not if you think that Hans Ferreira’s wife went to the last Nag­maal with a mimosa thorn holding up her skirt because they didn’t have a safety-pin in the house.”

Marthinus Taljaard explained to us where we were wrong.

“The treasure was buried on my farm very long ago,” Marthi­nus Taljaard said, “long before there were any white people in the Transvaal. It was the treasure that the Portuguese explorer, Ferreira, stole from the Mtosas. Maybe that Portuguese explorer was the ancestor of Hans Ferreira. I don’t know. But I am talking about very long ago, before the Ferreiras were Afrikaners, but were just Portuguese. I am talking of very long ago.”

We told Marthinus Taljaard that he had better not make wild statements like that in Hans Ferreira’s hearing. Hans Ferreira was a Dopper and quick-tempered. And even though he had to trade sheep-skins for coffee and sugar, we said, not being able to wait to change the skins into money first, he would nevertheless go many miles out of his way with a sjambok to look for a man who spoke of him as a Portuguese.

And no matter how long ago, either, we added.

Marthinus Taljaard sat up even straighter on the riempiestoel then.

By way of changing the conversation, Jurie Steyn asked Mar­thinus how he knew for certain that it was his farm on which the treasure was buried.

Marthinus Taljaard said that that part of the map was very clear.

“The site of the treasure, marked with a cross, is twelve thousand Cape feet north of Abjaterskop, in a straight line,” he said, “so that’s almost in the exact middle of my farm.”

He went on to explain, wistfully, that that was about the only part of the map that was in a straight line.

“It’s all in Cape roods and Cape ells, like it has on the back of the school exercise books,” Marthinus Taljaard’s daughter, Rosina, went on to tell us. “That’s what makes it so hard for Mr Bothma to work out the Ferreira map. We sometimes sit up quite late at night, working out sums.”

After Marthinus Taljaard and Rosina had left, we said that young Giel Bothma must be pretty slow for a young man. Sitting up late at night with an attractive girl like Rosina Taljaard, and being able to think of nothing better to do than working out sums.

We also said it was funny that that first Ferreira should have filled up his treasure map with Cape measurements, when the later Ferreiras were in so much of a hurry to trek away from anything that even looked like the Cape.

In the months that followed there was a great deal of activity on Marthinus Taljaard’s farm. I didn’t go over there myself, but other farmers had passed that way, driving slowly in their mule-carts down the Government Road and trying to see all they could without appearing inquisitive. From them I learnt that a large number of tunnels had been dug into the side of a hill on which the Taljaard farmhouse stood.

During those months, also, several of Marthinus Taljaard’s Bechuanas left him and came to work for me. That new kind of work on Baas Taljaard’s farm was too hard, one of them told me, brushing red soil off his elbow. He also said that Baas Taljaard was unappreciative of their best efforts at digging holes into the side of the koppie. And each time a hole came to an end, and there was no gold in it, or diamonds or elephant teeth, then Baas Taljaard would take a kick at whatever native was nearest.

“He kicked me as though it was my fault that there was no gold there,” another Bechuana said to me with a grin, “instead of blaming it on that yellow paper with the writing on it.”

The Bechuana said that on a subsequent occasion, when there was no gold at the end of a tunnel that was particularly wide and long, Marthinus Taljaard ran a few yards (Cape yards, I suppos­ed), and took a kick at Giel Bothma.

No doubt Baas Taljaard did that by mistake, the Bechuana added, his grin almost as wide as one of those tunnels.

More months passed before I again saw Marthinus Taljaard and his daughter in Jurie Steyn’s post office. Marthinus was saying that they were now digging a tunnel that he was sure was the right one.

“It points straight at my house,” he said, “and where it comes up, there we’ll find the treasure. We have now worked out from the map that the tunnel should go up, at the end. That wasn’t clear before, because there is something missing –”

“Yes, the treasure,” Jurie Steyn said, winking at Stephanus van Tonder.

“No,” Rosina interjected, flushing. “There is a corner missing from the map. That bit of the map remained between the thumb and forefinger of the man in the bar when he gave it to Giel Bothma.”

“We only found out afterwards that Giel Bothma had that map given to him by crooks in a bar,” Marthinus Taljaard said. “If I had known about that from the start, I don’t know if I would have been so keen about it. Why I listened was because Giel Bothma was so well dressed, in city clothes, and all.”

Marthinus Taljaard stirred his coffee.

“But he isn’t anymore,” he resumed, reflectively. “Not well dressed, I mean. You should have seen how his suit looked after the first week of tunnelling.”

We had quite a lot to say after Marthinus Taljaard and Rosina left.

“Crooks in a bar,” Stephanus van Tonder snorted. “It’s all clear to me, now. That tunnel is going to come up right under Mar­thinus Taljaard’s bed, where he keeps his money in that tamboetie chest. I am sure that map has got nothing to do with the Ferreira treasure at all. But it seems a pretty good map of the Taljaard treasure.”

We also said that it was a very peculiar way that that crook had of giving Giel Bothma the map. With one corner of it remaining in his hand. It certainly looked as though Giel Bothma must have pulled on it, a little.

We never found out how much truth there was in our speculations. For we learnt some time later that Giel Bothma did get hold of the Taljaard fortune, after all. He got it by marrying Rosina. And that last tunnel did come up under a part of Marthinus Taljaard’s rambling old house, built on the side of the koppie. It came up at the end of a long passage, right in front of the door of Rosina Taljaard’s bedroom.