“TRADER” HORN

Hokitika Guardian, 16 April 1929, Page 8

“TRADER” HORN

AX INTERESTING SKETCH

Tin' presence in New Zealand at tlio present time of Alfred Aloysius Smith hotter known as Trader Horn, gives special interest to the following sketch written from Johannesburg and published in the Christian Science .Monitor of February I last:—

“Trader Horn, the grey-bearded ad venturer whose exploits as a young man on the Cold Coast of Africa have become famous through the books o' .Mrs Ethelreda Lewis, a short time ago returned to Johannesburg from his travels in America and Great Britain. Like Ulysses of old, he came back to his home unannounced. Despite the hero worship that was extended to him wherever he went, he crept, like a shy. self-conscious child, back to the haunts and the companions he had known in poverty and in squalor before wealth and honour came to him. Nobody knew of his coming; nobody went to meet him. He sought out the lowly boarding house that had been his abode when, in between periods of wandering about the face of the continent, he had eked out a precarious livelihood. In those days he had hawked from house to house those cleverly but rudely fashioned gridirons and toasting forks which he made, when he wanted a few shillings to provide himself with food. “ Hut showing now no signs of the gay lile he had recently led as the hero If thousands of people in America, the old wanderer walked haltingly .down an unsuspected alley leading from an obscure street in a not altogether savoury suburb of the great gold city of South Africa. Chuckling to himself with delight, and with the pleasurable anticipation of surprising his old friends, of prospecting days, he entered the boarding house through the back entrance into the yard. Ho walked down the back passage and stopped at tin* door of the room which had been his but a few months previously. He knocked, but bis animated face fell with disappointment to discover a strange face looking at him from within. “ A child passing down the passage caught sight of the man and his long white beard. Immediately there was a cry of delight: “‘ Mr Smith is back. Hurrah, Mr Smith is here ’ —his real name being Alfred Aloysius Smith. “ At the cry a dozen doors in the passage opened, and a dozen people, old and young, were wringing the greybeard’s hands and welcoming him back to the fold. And he was unaffectedly 'glad to see all his old friends, and. within a few minutes, he had a child on each knee, telling the entranced little ones, in his own inimitable nhrases, of his visit to the mighty and (he great in other countries which, to them, were only names. “An hour later, with a beaming smile and a full heart, he wended his way slowly but purposefully to the home in I’arktown, Johannesburg’s premier residential suburb, of Mrs Ethelreda Lewis, his guide, philosopher and friend, the author, too, of all his now-found fortunes.

“ There, some hours’ later, beneath the shady tree In .Mrs Lewis’s garden, where the ‘Old Visitor’ had narrated so many of the romantic and thrilling stories of life on the Gold Coast of Africa which are embodied in the hooks now so popular in America and elsewhere, I found him sitting alone, and ‘revelling in the glory of a typical South African sunshine.

“ ‘Glad to ho hack?’ 1 asked

“‘Glad to he hack? Of course I am,’ replied the old man enthusiastically. ‘There’s no place like South Africa.’

“ Then wo had a long chat together. The l)ittor gloom and cold of tho English winter had, ho said, chased liiin hack to sunny South Africa to renew its warmth. Uc had travelled third class in the mail boat so as to escape the flattery and the laudation which would have been his lot otherwise. “ I. learned that Trader Horn is seriously considering going as passenger in a motor car on a speed dash (from Capo to Cairo. ‘Tt is easily done,’ he said. ‘Certainly it is not so difficult as other people try to mauc out. I should like to revisit once more the countries up north that I knew f>o well in days gone by. J could describe things which people in America told me they wanted lo know. .My travels are not over. I have been travelling since—well, since 1 can remember. The wanderlust is highly developed in some people; so it is in me. I suppose l shall go on wandering until I happen off to Mars and join the wanderers and the angels there.'

“ Talking of his experience in America, Trader Horn said that lie could see that America was tin* coming country of the world. l lt is a wonderful place,’ he declared with enthusiasm. ‘ They have the brains, and they have the men and the money. They have also the energy which gets tilings done. They treated me fine. It was all rather bewildering, but it was nice. It was like a pat for ail old dog. You take an old one, and you suddenly spring upon him fame —well, you know what happens.’ “ Finally, old Trader Horn paid a grateful tribute to his Iriond, Mrs Lewis. ‘ 1 Hut for her,’ lie said, ‘ I would still have been a nonentity. She stands for all I have got.’ “ And so I left him, sitting peacefully in the garden enjoying at last that freedom from care and trouble which lie had never had any time during a strenuous life of nearly 80years.”

CHEAP VEGETABLES AND FRUIT.

Apples, cooking, in 401 b. cases, 7s 0: apples, dessert, in 40lb. cases, 8s fid. quinces, in 401 b. cases, 1.0 s; cabbage, per largo sack, 7s fid; red cabbage foi pickling, per doz. os; French beans and scarlet runners, 241 b. boxes, fis fid: beetroot, per box, 3s fid; carrots, pci 501 b. bag, ss; parsnips, per 501 b. bag, ss; table potatoes, per 561 b. bag, ss; table swedes, per 561 b. bag, 4s; table onions, per 561 b. bag. is 6d ; pickling onions, per 561 b. bag, 8s; cucumbers, per dozen, 3s; garlic, for pickles, pei ||>. Od; dessert tomatoes, 221 b. boxes. 7s 6d.

Tins above prices include FREIGHT PAID to any station if c-dered in case or bag lots as quoted.

GRAIN

Milling wheat, 2001 b. bags, 22s Od: wheat, broken seconds, 2001 b. bags. 20s; table potatoes, 1121 b. bags, 8s: Guidon oats, per sack, 16s Od ; pigmeal. per sack, 12s Od; wheatmeal, 251 b; bags, ss; fowl grit, oyster shell, 501 b. bags, ss; pollard, 2001 b. bags, 18s; bran lOOlb. bags, 12s; oatslieaf chaff, 115 s per ton. s' cks included; straw oliafT. 2s 9d sack, sacks included; baled clover bay, 4s per bale; babul straw, 2s pei bale.