Part 12 (1/2)
The unfortunate balala ”the people who are dead” those miserable fugitives from savage justice, or, more often, remnants of clans scattered in war, often perished in veld conflagrations. They wandered, naked and weaponless, in the neutral areas lying between the territories of the different tribes, preferring the mercy of the lion and the hyena to that of man. The appliances of these people for kindling a fire, and thus sending the conflagration on for the purpose of creating a zone of safety, were often quite inadequate for dealing with a sudden emergency.
I only know of one instance of a white man falling a victim to a veld fire. I forget this individual's name, although I knew him well. He, seeing the flames approaching, reached what he thought was a place of safety, for the gra.s.s was very spa.r.s.e, and he reckoned on being able to beat out the fire as it approached him. But he had not taken into account the contingency of the wind freshening and flinging forward sheets of flame from the places where the gra.s.s was longer. This actually happened. He got badly, but not fatally, scorched. A search-party found him and he was a.s.sisted back to camp. Next day he was placed in a rough litter and carried by four natives in the rear of the little caravan. The day was sultry, and he suffered great pain, so he persuaded the natives to set down the litter in a shady place, meaning to get them to carry him on when the afternoon cooled.
The rest of the party proceeded on its course, unaware that the injured man had been left behind. A gra.s.s fire was seen to sweep over the country just crossed, but no particular notice was taken of it. In this fire the unhappy loiterer had been burnt to death. His bearers, when they saw the flames approaching, lost their heads, and, instead of burning a patch to be used as a refuge, fled. There are, surely, few cases on record of such bad luck as this.
The most enchanting scenery in the Low Country was to be found in the vicinity of the rivers. These, considering that they are African, do not lie very far apart. Yet sometimes there were long stretches of waterless country to be traversed, and severe suffering from thirst was a possibility occasionally realized. Besides, as we were practically explorers in a country without human inhabitants or recognizable landmarks, we might unwittingly pa.s.s the bend of a winding river and thus recede from badly needed water. The general landscape was, as a rule, so flat, and the trees were so high, that one could draw no inference as to the whereabouts of a river from the configuration of the country.
But what joy it was, after a long, hot, fatiguing tramp, during which water had to be doled out in sips, to reach a mighty stream, perhaps several hundred yards wide, where one might drink one's fill, wash the grime from one's clothes and person, and loll in the shade of lordly trees.
In writing of those old days I find it hard to realize that the localities described are still in existence. I suppose the rivers are yet running in the old channels, but as the rainfall has been steadily decreasing they are not likely to be today the full, impetuous torrents of liquid crystal that I remember. Moreover, the game, that rapidly moving, kaleidoscopic pageant of varied animal life which made their forested banks a wonder and a joy, has disappeared.
Of all the lovely scenes through which I have wandered, the landscapes along the Olifant and the Letaba dwell in my memory as the loveliest.
In those one-time almost inviolate retreats were to be found everything best calculated to delight the heart of the hunter or the lover of nature. I am, of course, a.s.suming winter as the season, for in summer the worm ”that pierces the liver and blackens the blood” made these regions almost uninhabitable for Europeans. But from June to October, inclusive, the country was healthy, the sky rarely held a cloud, the sun shone mildly, and the night was seldom, if ever, cold.
Although the banks of the Low Country rivers were usually heavily wooded, one found here and there wide gra.s.sy glades opening to the waterside. The country being flat, the river-courses were usually wide, with many large rocks standing high out of the water. Between these the streams eddy and wind. Sometimes one would camp near a rapid, and below this a deep pool was invariably to be found; in such pools the sea-cows, snorting and champing, might sometimes be heard throughout the night.
The process of crossing rivers was believed to be dangerous on account of crocodiles, which were often to be seen in large numbers. These reptiles, however, seldom did any damage except in the vicinity of a native kraal, where they used occasionally to seize women and children who came down to fill their pots and calabashes with water. I once saw a dog taken by one; at least, I a.s.sumed that such was the case. The dog was swimming across a deep channel between two shallows when it gave a yelp and disappeared. There were many crocodiles in the river where this happened.
The rivers were full of fish, but I never carried any tackle, so could not catch any. But the natives of the lower reaches of the Olifant, the Letaba, and the Limpopo often spear them. Snakes I seldom saw in the Low Country. This may be accounted for by the circ.u.mstance that most of my wanderings there took place in winter. During the course of my various trips I did not see more than seven or eight snakes altogether.
Curiously enough, I saw three of these within the s.p.a.ce of a few minutes. Near the Lower Letaba I reached a circular depression the end of a long, winding, dry water-course late one afternoon. The spot was so beautiful that I decided to camp there, instead of going on several miles farther, as I had intended. In the depression was a clear pool surrounded by great rocks and tall trees. The ground in the vicinity was carpeted with bright green gra.s.s.
After selecting a spot for my camp, I sent one of the bearers to collect fuel, and the other to fetch water for the purpose of making soup. The pool was less than fifty yards away. I heard the second bearer give a yell; then he came running back, shouting that he had seen a big snake. Picking up my rifle, I ran to the spot he indicated, and saw about six feet of thick python disappearing among the creepers which lay tangled over the rocks. I fired at the creature but missed it.
In returning to the camping-place I nearly trod on a large puff-adder; this I killed with a stone. Almost immediately afterwards the boy who had been sent for firewood came up with a vicious-looking black and yellow serpent squirming, broken-backed, on his stick. This was more than my nerves could stand, so after filling the billy and the canteens with water, we retired to a spot a few hundred yards away, up the hillside. Here the vegetation was less rank, so we felt safer.
Next morning, just before daybreak, we heard a lion killing close to the water. After day had fully broken, I went down and found some hyenas breakfasting on the remains of a waterbuck.
Sleep's worst enemy in the Low Country was the hyena. The voice of this beast is horrible; it begins with a guttural growl and ends with a high-pitched screech. Although cowardly to a degree, hyenas would often come to within less than a hundred yards of the fire. Occasionally they might be heard on several sides at once, uttering their unspeakable yells. We always noticed that the smell of roast meat attracted them; when meat was boiled, they were not nearly so troublesome. A shot would always send them scampering to a distance, but cartridges were not things to be wasted by the traveler in the Low Country.
On arriving at Lourenco Marques in 1874 I met a man named Good, whom I had known slightly up country. I have been told but I do not guarantee the statement that he was the original of Rider Haggard's ”Allan Quatermain.” From Good I heard sad news; poor Pat Foote, one of my best friends, had died in the fortress during the previous night. I went up at once to see his remains; they lay on a wretched truckle-bed in a dingy cell.
The funeral took place that afternoon. The grave was dug among some cocoanut palms out beyond the fetid swamp which lay in those days a crescent of foulness on three sides of the town. A wall separated the swamp from the houses, and over this wall the sewage used to be cast.
Poles, bearing human heads, stuck out here and there. The swamp was crossed by a causeway.
The proceedings were marked by a melancholy lack of dignity. Several of those forming the cortege were drunk. Among them was a Portuguese officer. The military guard at the causeway gate failed to present arms, so the officer rushed at the men and belabored them with a stick.
However, poor Foote was too sound asleep to be disturbed by such trifles. I wonder whether, besides myself, any who took part in those squalid obsequies are alive. I believe the palms which shaded that lonely grave have been long since cut down and that the town has extended over the site.
In the early part of 1875, after I left ”The Reef,” I worked for a short time near the head of the creek. One day a friend named McCallum came and showed me a piece of gold he had picked up on a headland which jutted over the Blyde River near Peach tree Creek. Next day was Sunday, so we went together to the spot and took a prospect. The result was most encouraging; not alone was there a good yield for the amount of wash we had panned, but the quality of the gold suggested that it belonged to a genuine lead. Next morning we struck our tents and moved down to the scene of the discovery. As the area was not far enough from the nearest proclaimed diggings to ent.i.tle us to an extended miner's right, we just marked out a claim apiece and made no report of the matter. We pitched our tents in a little grove of peach-trees below the bluff, close to the river bank.
The thing was a ”surface” proposition; that is to say, the wash was only a few inches deep; it lay on a soft slate bottom. We fixed our sluice box in a rapid of the river which was some two hundred yards from the claim, and was reached by a footpath we scarped down the face of the bluff. We hired a couple of boys to carry down the wash. I did the pick and shovel work, which included the filling of the gunny-bags.
McCallum washed out each installment as it arrived. This was the easiest contract I ever took on; it meant about one minute's work alternating with nearly ten minutes' rest, all day long. The first couple of days' work gave splendid results; from the gravel cleared off a s.p.a.ce about eight feet square we got, so far as I can remember, about a pound weight of gold.
Naturally, we considered that at length our fortunes were made. Our claims measured together forty five thousand square feet, the area we had cleared was but sixty four. The latter number, when worked into the former, went nearly seven hundred times. And the surface appeared to be exactly the same over the whole area.
a.s.suming that any reliance could be placed on arithmetic, we were potential capitalists. We began to speculate as to what we would do with our money. 14,000 apiece was a large sum. I think McCallum decided to go to Scotland, there to recommence some lawsuit he had been obliged to drop for want of funds. My own firm intention was to organize an expedition to the Zambezi not to go ”foot-slogging,” as I had been doing in the Low Country, but with properly equipped wagons, the most modern armament, salted horses and all the rest of it. Well, for one night, at all events, we enjoyed ourselves. I do not think we slept at all.
But we never found so much as another half-ounce of gold in those claims; we had struck the one little ”patch” they contained. We hired more boys, we ran prospecting trenches in every direction, we worked late and early often carrying the bags of wash down the scarped footpath ourselves, long after the boys had knocked off. But all was in vain. Our pound of gold melted like an icicle in the sun. We were, in local parlance, ”bust.”