Part 7 (2/2)
I reached the town of Nazareth (now called Middelburg ) early oneThe houses numbered, I should say, from thirty to forty, and stood so my way to a shop which stood about in the h stoep, I noticed that the streets were full of game spoors I spoke of this to the storekeeper
”Oh, yes,” he replied, ”the galanced in the direction indicated Just beyond the outskirts of the toere herds of wildebeeste, blesbuck, and quagga grazing quietly about, like so many herds of cattle But they were not so tame as they looked, as I found later in the day, when I went towards theh Veld, as the country to the north-east of Nazareth was called, I first saw the spoor of a lion I left the wagon, which had been obliged to round, and was ht across country towards a point close to which I knew the road passed On te, a shallow, nearly level valley For miles of its course this was filled with swarew
Game was very abundant I shot several blesbuck and wildebeeste, I ahter, as I could not possibly carry away the e I noticed a dried drop of blood I looked e animal This I followed, in the direction of the reeds, until I reached soround Then I saw that the track was undoubtedly that of a lion The aniht and carried the uess; I did not pursuebefore daylight, and started for another tra a course I had mapped out the previous afternoon
It was bitterly and unseasonably cold There was no wind, but the hoar-frost lay almost as thick as if a fairly heavy shower of snow had fallen I earing veldschoens, but had no socks As I trarass the frost spicules froainst filled the spaces between the leather and ht day would never break
My feet felt as though they did not belong to me Soon they ceased to be painful, but the pain-area had traveled upheard of frost-bite and its serious effects, I becath There was so far no ga a fire, but could find no fuel Just ahead a low, narrow dyke crossed my course I crept to this on h the stones Yes, there stood a shty yards away With great difficulty, for the light was still bad and I was shaking like an aspen, I gotinto the air and rolled over I hobbled forward to where the creature lay It was stone dead; shot through the heart I pulled the carcass up to a convenient stone, cut it open withknife and thrusthalf-hour I think I suffered ony than I have ever endured in the same period of time My feet must have been very nearly frost-bitten, and the process of circulation being restored was exquisitely painful I verily believe that h the accident of those blesbucks being behind the dyke and close enough for h in the heavens before I was able to resume my journey
One day I caa-match I was cordially welcomed, and invited to join in the coht their faons had been outspanned together, and several tents had been pitched
Girls, some of them very pretty, dispensed coffee in koed on very peculiar lines The targets were circular, and could not have e was a hundred paces Each competitor lay on a feather-bed, which was covered with a kaross, and rested his rifle on a pile of pillows The price of a lootje that is to say, the fee for entry was sixpence, and each could take as many lootjes as he liked
The number of shots fired in each case was five, and these were fired in succession The prizes were sheep, sacks of ar
In spite of the set there were but few ed to a hair's-breadth, and the judging was perfectly fair Strangely enough I ar As these were of no use to s and a hundred Westley Richards cartridges My shooting caused me to find favor in the eyes of these farmers; I was cordially invited to reht have done worse than accept; the life they were leading was a lordly one
However, I had to bid theon
The people ho, so frorim's Rest, my destination, a distance of about forty ” a process in which I was skillfully assisted by an old athered Then I set forth with three coed to that despised class known as ”new chums” that is, olde was a painful one; alledabout fifteen rove of trees Here we shi+vered through an apparently interht around an inadequate fire None of us were experienced bushather sufficient fuel The as cold, and I had not then acquired that toughness of fiber and insensibility to extres and aveOne was an ex-larrikin from Melbourne, ent by the name of ”Artful Joe”; his real name I never learnt Joe had been the victim of a horrible accident in the Kimberley mine about a year previously He had fallen fro table at the bottos had been broken in several places I was not present when the accident occurred, but I witnessed the tedious and terrible process of hoisting the injuredhiht laed, Joe had not suffered s to cheer us up during that night of dolor, filling the intervals between the ditties with anatheainst his South African luck and realistic stories of his Australian experiences
He had lived, he told us, for several years by earning pennies in the Melbourne streets Outside the sculleries of the large hotels, or where banquets had been held, barrels of 'feast fragments used to be set In these barrels the street-public were allowed to ”dab” with a fork, at the rate of a penny a timents of food
Occasionally a rich reould fall to the enterprising ”dabber”
Joe'sstroke of luck happened once when he dabbed out a whole fowl (feaoul, he called it) This h some extraordinary lapse of culinary carefulness
The description was so appetizing that I aested bird hovered over our rim was a Jew named L
He was extreest boots I have ever seen; literally, they covered hihed it, was the greatest sufferer; histo be corit When, towards , he slept, I took his boots and hid them behind a bush so and loud
The third of my companions was a nificance, except as an exari himself He was cut down before life was extinct, and on recovery was prosecuted for felo-de-se At the time Major Macdonald, the Gold Co temporarily filled by Mr Mansfield, the postreat amuseuilty of an attempt only, I will fine you 5, but if you had succeeded I should have felt bound to pass a much more severe sentence”
”Artful Joe” and I were the only two members of the party ere fit to travel next day, so after leaving the others the largest share of our joint stock of provisions ( the boots to their disconsolate owner, ent on We abandoned the road and traveled by a footpath across country in the compass direction of our objective It was in the middle of a cale of thethe Blyde River Valley The prospect was a es rolled away, seee on the opposite side of the valley, lay Pilgri endeavor
Between two and three miles from where the creek flowed into the Blyde River lay the little townshi+p Aroups of tents With the eye of i at the bottoers' variant of a well-known proverb: ”Nothing is gold that glitters”