Chapter Seven.The Springbuck Drive—The Bushman Caves—Return to Gamoep.Morning,—and the cool west wind, laden with refreshment, hastened over the desert’s rim to where I lay, still on the border-land of sleep. The sweeping garments of the air-spirit were fragrant with the ichor of the sea on whose breast it had slept. Its sandals whispered through the swaying tussocks, its tresses trailed over the bending plumes of the “toa” shocks. It gently tried to draw me back to the mistress I loved and longed for, but was deserting because she would have slain me had I lingered at her unpitying feet.At sunrise I gazed around for one ecstatic moment and again sank to sleep—to a zone too deep for dreams to haunt. The long trampings of the previous two nights had made further slumber an almost absolute necessity. Andries might go hang; I would not move.The grateful aroma of coffee wakened me. I decided to breakfast in bed; that is without emerging from my kaross. Andries determined to go on with the wagon. Hendrick and the horses were to remain with me; also Piet Noona’s nephew who would, later, trot on and overtake the wagon with my kaross and pannikin. After another hour’s sleep the sun became insupportable, for the wind had somewhat died down, so I ordered my faithful Hun to saddle up. He had already located a herd of springbuck. It had been settled that we were to try and drive these near enough to the track to afford Andries some shooting. No one but Hendrick had seen the game; he said they were too far off—away, ahead,—on the left-hand side of the track,—for us to see. Andries was to lie in ambush at a certain knoll, while the wagon went on to Kanxas,—there to be outspanned.Hendrick’s powers of vision were phenomenal; when objects at a distance were in question, no one dreamt of disputing his verdict. His eyes were equal, if not superior to the best prismatic binoculars ever turned out by Dollond or Zeiss, and Nature had apparently corrected them for chromatic and all other aberrations.The western hills could now be distinctly seen; we might even recognise the contours of the ridge beyond the northern end of which Gamoep lay. Soon we should pass from the kingdom of ancient silence to where the squalid tents of nomadic men were temporarily pitched,—to where the fat-tailed sheep crowded, with anxious eyes, around the creaking derrick and the scanty trough. But to us, intruders as we were, the desert had still to pay tribute.We started, Hendrick and I, riding quietly forth on a course a little to the east of south, for we had a wide détour to make. I knew the vicinity well; it was, literally speaking, a part of the desert, but I found it hard to acknowledge it as such, for the reason that the western hills were in sight. These seemed to link us with the conventional world.We passed over a tract studded with small, dense patches of low scrub; it looked like a miniature archipelago in the boundless ocean of “toa.” Here brown “duiker” antelopes were numerous. So far as I knew this was the only part of Bushmanland where such were to be found. As we rode on the little creatures sprang out, right and left, from the patches of cover and bounded gracefully away.Far to the south-west the herd of springbuck was now clearly visible. Most of them were quietly grazing in the mild sunshine. Now and then a few detached themselves from the main body and, one behind the other, bounded away for a few hundred yards on a course curved like the blade of a scimitar—“pronking” with the sheer joy of unspoilt life. After such an excursion they would rejoin the others and go on feeding. And I had come to... But if I had let Jekyll climb to my crupper Andries would have got no shooting. The herd was a small one; it did not number more than about six hundred. It was curious that these bucks had not joined in the general migration eastward towards where the lightning had flashed its message of rain a few nights previously.The springbucks had not seen us as yet, for we were still about two miles distant from them. The eyes of these animals seem to be specialised to a definite range as the ear is tuned to a certain gamut of sound. I will endeavour to explain what is meant by this. They do not seem to notice anything at a greater distance than about fifteen hundred yards. Conversely, should you be lying in ambush and the bucks come to within fifty yards of you, they would evince far less alarm if you shewed yourself than on seeing you at a distance of from two to three hundred yards.This can easily be accounted for. The springbuck has always spent its life in an environment of menace, but as conditions change the nature of the menace changes with them. Formerly the danger-zone for these creatures was that from which the lion, the leopard or the wild dog could spring; it was only surprise at close quarters that the springbuck had to guard against. Given a few seconds’ notice of the approach of an enemy, this creature’s unsurpassed fleetness enabled it to laugh at danger. This laughter is still expressed in the manner in which a small herd of springbuck will circle round and round a pursuing dog that is not especially swift—as porpoises sometimes circle around a moving ship.We know from accounts left by the very old hunters that in early days, when the killing range of a bullet was little more than a hundred yards, springbuck would graze with apparent unconcern until approached to within about that distance. But with the disappearance of the larger carnivora before firearms, and the increase in the range of the rifle, a wider danger-zone has been created, while the danger of an enemy at close quarters has practically disappeared. The width of the danger-zone has gone on increasing with the longer range of the rifle.Wild animals are quick to learn and to unlearn—which is not quite the same as to forget. Thus the springbuck has ceased to dread the springing enemy, the creature of teeth and claws that used to lie in ambush; in fact he never contemplates the contingency of any enemy at close quarters, and on the rare occasions when he meets one, the experience appears to fill him with surprise rather than alarm.The distance between us and the herd had decreased to a little over two thousand yards, so I detached Hendrick and instructed him to alter his course to the left and endeavour to edge round the still unsuspecting animals. The object was to stampede the herd so that it would pass me on my right and head towards where Andries lay in ambush. Bucephalus and Hendrick loomed immense and black against the background of yellow shocks, but they were apparently unobserved by the game, for the latter still grazed and “pronked” about as though they had the whole desert to themselves,—as though no entangling web were being drawn about them.Hendrick had reached the limit of his arc; then the springbuck marked him and evidently realised that there was danger. Apprehension touched them; a quiver ran through the herd; they lifted their heads and gazed; they moved to and fro. So far it was not fear that they felt; for they knew their own fleetness and had trust in it. Then, suddenly, terror seemed to strike them like a blast, for as dead leaves are caught by a wind-eddy and whirled in a spiral, these imponderable-seeming, ethereal desert creatures swerved over an area resembling in form the sweep of a fan, and then streamed forth like a handful of white rose-petals before a gale.Why is it, I wonder, that during the forenoon springbuck in the desert appear to be white? For this is literally the case; these animals seemed to be as white as snow, as imponderable as thistledown. The fawn-tint of their necks and flanks, the broad, brown patches on their sides, the black, lyre-formed horns,—all were drowned in the milky foam of the dorsal manes. These were expanded laterally to their fullest extent; each long silvery hair stood erect and quivering.The creatures’ heads were depressed almost to the level of their feet. With backs deeply arched they bounded over the face of the desert like so many alabaster discs—mingling, separating and re-combining in a tracery of flying arabesques. They had adopted the attitude and movement usual to their kind in moments of sudden terror or delight. Surely their flight was the highest expression of grace revealed by animated nature in motion. It was a soundless melody; a symphony for the eye.The torrent was streaming to my right, straight for Andries. Hendrick thundered behind,—a black Centaur-monstrosity. How terrible he must have appeared to the fugitives. I wished Hendrick then would trend tohisright, for if the springbuck had swerved towards Kanxas and caught sight of the wagon, they would have doubled on their tracks and made for the depths of the desert. My object was to hold them on the course they were following for as long as possible. Ha! they must have sighted the wagon, for they wheeled to their right and attempted to escape past me, about three thousand yards on my side of where Andries lay waiting for his shot. The terror of death was upon them; their manes were down—hidden in the constricted dorsal tract. The eye could hardly follow the movement of their limbs; distance died beneath the lightning of their feet.The reins fell upon my horse’s neck, I pressed my spurless heels to his sides; he knew what was required of him. We dashed forward to cut the herd off. While we had to cover a thousand yards the springbuck had to cover nearly two—yet it was clear that they must win the race. When the springbuck runs his best the speed he attains is almost incredible. There remained but one thing to be done.After having altered my course so as to reach some slightly higher ground, I rolled from the saddle on to the soft sand and began firing—not at the bucks, but so that my bullets would strike some twenty or thirty yards in front of the leaders of the herd. Bullet after bullet scarred the ground, sending up spouts of red sand—now here, now there. The herd faltered in bewilderment, whirled round in a half-circle to the left, and headed straight for the ambush.A distant shot—another; several in rapid succession. It was the rifle of Andries speaking. It was Man taking toll of Nature, imposing his age-long tribute of blood and pain. It was Death eliminating Beauty become obsolete. It was like Autumn shedding the petals of a flower that had lived its allotted day.The hunted creatures, in their dismay, completed the circle of frantic effort; they sped back to the spot where they had been disturbed. They passed it; they grew smaller and smaller until they melted into the infinite mystery of the desert.Three bucks had fallen to Andries’ rifle. I dismounted, and we piled the carcases on Prince’s patient back. Bucephalus, as usual, grew frantic on being brought within smelling-distance of the slain game. Then we strolled to where the wagon was waiting for us, at a spot some three miles away, close to the head of the Kanxas Gorge. There we dined sumptuously on roasted springbuck liver,—one of the best of desert delicacies.Once more I explored the gorge—that deserted city which once teemed with human life. It was narrow, it was neither long nor deep; a mere scar it was on the desert’s flank. The greatest depth was not more than fifty feet; it was possibly a mile long and the width varied. The sides contained caves, on the walls of which could still be seen traces of fires lit long, long ago. And there, thickly traced on the ledges was the mysterious, black-pigmented script—the groups of short, diagonal lines crossing each other at various angles. What did they indicate; was nothing to be read from them even by those who deciphered the graven edict, five-and-twenty centuries old, of Mesha the Sheepmaster?Why was it that one did not find at Kanxas pictures of the eland, the oryx and the rhinoceros; why were there no perspectiveless battle-pieces depicting the successful defence of some cave-stronghold, with the baffled invaders being hurled down precipices? Such pictures are found distributed over vast areas of South Eastern Africa; it seemed remarkable that none exist, so far as I am aware, in Bushmanland.Perhaps the plants from which the necessary pigments had to be extracted do not grow on that side of South Africa. But, deep in the Orange River gorge is a continuous strip of rich and varied woodland, in which most of the South African forest flora is represented. Moreover, on the islands which gem the river’s course near its mouth are to be found myriads of eastern plants, the progeny of seeds carried down by the annual flood from far-off Basutoland and its environs,—and it is precisely in that vicinity that Bushman paintings are most plentiful. The thing remains a puzzle.And the strange, highly-evolved dramatic art of that vanished race,—a drama in which human beings took the parts of animals,—how often had it not found expression there in days of bygone plenty; days when the baskets of dried-locust cakes crowded every ledge and the children went pot-bellied and sleek.There was the stage; there the auditorium; yonder the ledge along which, no doubt, the actors made their exits and their entrances. Was the audience a critical one; did it generously applaud a nervous new actor of evident talent; did it hurl stones, at one who bungled his part or tried to make up in pretentiousness what he lacked in ability? Did the author of a successful play advance to the proscenium and enjoy the tribute of plaudits paid to a successful playwright?I fancy there must have been a chorus; possibly a semi-chorus as well. Thespis and Aeschylus probably adopted those obvious aids to rudimentary drama from the shepherd,—who is first-cousin to the savage. And the more one sees of various savages, belong they to Bushmanland or to the Bowery, the more astonishing is the kinship revealed between them. I could find no box-office—no gallery from which the gods could have jibed. The auditorium must have been all pit.And what dramas of real life must have been enacted in that rocky valley; what rudimentary idylls had not the moon looked upon as her slanting beams searched slowly down among the rocks on summer nights. There men and women loved; there jealousy, cruel as the grave, had brooded. There vengeance had stalked abroad and taken toll for Fate. Finally, from there—after an age-long struggle—Death had evicted Life. It was, after all, only appropriate that the Kanxas fountain should have ceased to flow.How often had not some old lion—some gaunt, lonely brute with blunted teeth and claws worn to the quick, crouched among those rocks, bent on spoil of the cave-men? During how many nights of livid fear must not the horrible purring of the man-eater, as he quested up the gorge, have sunk to the deadlier horror of silence. For then every member of the little community would have known that the prowler had at length selected a dwelling from which presently to drag a shrieking victim.And later, the arch-enemy, the more cruel spoiler, man. Man—the spoiler to-day,—to-morrow the spoiled. The European revenged the Bushman on the Hottentot; who would revenge the Hottentot on the European? “For that which hath been is, and that which will be hath been, and there is no new thing.” The thought made “a goblin of the sun.” “O stars that sway our fate; O orbs that should be very wise, for you have circled the heavens and regarded the earth from the most ancient days,—you who, impassively, have seen an endless succession of civilisations arise, decline and die,—when, and at whose hand, will our nemesis come?”A spirit of laziness had overcome us all. Andries lay fast asleep under the wagon; his large frame was loosened, his placid, handsome, weather-beaten face relaxed. He would have looked just as he did then, had he been dead, for his days had been days of quietness and all his pathways peaceful. Yet in that man’s deliberate arteries flowed the blood of those who withstood Alva in the Netherlands, and of others who abandoned France, with all that seemed to make life worth the living, rather than bend the knee at the shrine of a false god. I wondered whether that large-boned, contented, easy-going farmer were capable of standing on the ramparts of another Leyden and, from hunger-bitten, indomitable lips roaring heroic and vitriolic defiance at a seemingly-unconquerable foe. Would he have abandoned honour, riches, comfort, roof-tree and friends for the sake of conscience,—that discipliner whose whip-lash does not, unfortunately, bite as severely as it once was wont to do? I wondered, and in wondering breathed one of those wishes which are the essence of prayer, that he might never be put to the test.The afternoon was young. I decided to stroll on, ahead. I found Danster and Piet Noona’s nephew just above the krantz—preventing, with some difficulty, the oxen from stampeding to Gamoep, which was now only about ten miles distant. I sent them back to the wagon with instructions to do the thing my heart had failed of,—to waken a human being from that highest condition of well-being—perfect sleep. But it was now time to inspan; for the first time since they had last drunk the oxen were really suffering from thirst. They, too, had their rights. Andries, moreover, was one of those fortunate beings who could slumber at will.So I again strolled on. I left the track and climbed to the top of the Koeberg, the hill from which the big beacon—that farthest outpost of the trigonometrical survey on this side—springs like a startled finger. This was one of the actual portals of the desert. I was now, alas! once more within sight of the dwellings of men. Several tents had been pitched, and quite a number of mat-houses set up at Gamoep since we had left it, a little more than a week previously.I turned eastward and cast mournful eyes back over the sun-bathed immensity from which I had emerged, and from the deepest depths of which sounded a call that I knew would for ever echo in my soul. What a strange regret it was that tugged at my aching heartstrings...The wind had here died down. The morrow would be torrid,—perhaps with a tornado from the north. As the last skirts of the sea-cooled breeze trailed away into the infinite east, their track was marked by a line of towering sand-spouts. So gently did these move across the plains that it seemed as though they stood like a row of lofty columns sustaining the temple-dome of the sky. Yet a careful eye might detect their rhythmic and concerted movement. What was the stately measure they were treading,—to what sphere-music did their gliding feet keep time?And then, O desert—O steadfast face that I loved—I had to bid you farewell. These eyes would gaze upon you again, but the day was swiftly coming when I should have to take leave of you for ever. But if when the body dies the spirit still lives, this soul which was nourished by your hand until it grew to a stature sufficient to enable it to realise its own littleness, will return and merge itself in your immensity.
Morning,—and the cool west wind, laden with refreshment, hastened over the desert’s rim to where I lay, still on the border-land of sleep. The sweeping garments of the air-spirit were fragrant with the ichor of the sea on whose breast it had slept. Its sandals whispered through the swaying tussocks, its tresses trailed over the bending plumes of the “toa” shocks. It gently tried to draw me back to the mistress I loved and longed for, but was deserting because she would have slain me had I lingered at her unpitying feet.
At sunrise I gazed around for one ecstatic moment and again sank to sleep—to a zone too deep for dreams to haunt. The long trampings of the previous two nights had made further slumber an almost absolute necessity. Andries might go hang; I would not move.
The grateful aroma of coffee wakened me. I decided to breakfast in bed; that is without emerging from my kaross. Andries determined to go on with the wagon. Hendrick and the horses were to remain with me; also Piet Noona’s nephew who would, later, trot on and overtake the wagon with my kaross and pannikin. After another hour’s sleep the sun became insupportable, for the wind had somewhat died down, so I ordered my faithful Hun to saddle up. He had already located a herd of springbuck. It had been settled that we were to try and drive these near enough to the track to afford Andries some shooting. No one but Hendrick had seen the game; he said they were too far off—away, ahead,—on the left-hand side of the track,—for us to see. Andries was to lie in ambush at a certain knoll, while the wagon went on to Kanxas,—there to be outspanned.
Hendrick’s powers of vision were phenomenal; when objects at a distance were in question, no one dreamt of disputing his verdict. His eyes were equal, if not superior to the best prismatic binoculars ever turned out by Dollond or Zeiss, and Nature had apparently corrected them for chromatic and all other aberrations.
The western hills could now be distinctly seen; we might even recognise the contours of the ridge beyond the northern end of which Gamoep lay. Soon we should pass from the kingdom of ancient silence to where the squalid tents of nomadic men were temporarily pitched,—to where the fat-tailed sheep crowded, with anxious eyes, around the creaking derrick and the scanty trough. But to us, intruders as we were, the desert had still to pay tribute.
We started, Hendrick and I, riding quietly forth on a course a little to the east of south, for we had a wide détour to make. I knew the vicinity well; it was, literally speaking, a part of the desert, but I found it hard to acknowledge it as such, for the reason that the western hills were in sight. These seemed to link us with the conventional world.
We passed over a tract studded with small, dense patches of low scrub; it looked like a miniature archipelago in the boundless ocean of “toa.” Here brown “duiker” antelopes were numerous. So far as I knew this was the only part of Bushmanland where such were to be found. As we rode on the little creatures sprang out, right and left, from the patches of cover and bounded gracefully away.
Far to the south-west the herd of springbuck was now clearly visible. Most of them were quietly grazing in the mild sunshine. Now and then a few detached themselves from the main body and, one behind the other, bounded away for a few hundred yards on a course curved like the blade of a scimitar—“pronking” with the sheer joy of unspoilt life. After such an excursion they would rejoin the others and go on feeding. And I had come to... But if I had let Jekyll climb to my crupper Andries would have got no shooting. The herd was a small one; it did not number more than about six hundred. It was curious that these bucks had not joined in the general migration eastward towards where the lightning had flashed its message of rain a few nights previously.
The springbucks had not seen us as yet, for we were still about two miles distant from them. The eyes of these animals seem to be specialised to a definite range as the ear is tuned to a certain gamut of sound. I will endeavour to explain what is meant by this. They do not seem to notice anything at a greater distance than about fifteen hundred yards. Conversely, should you be lying in ambush and the bucks come to within fifty yards of you, they would evince far less alarm if you shewed yourself than on seeing you at a distance of from two to three hundred yards.
This can easily be accounted for. The springbuck has always spent its life in an environment of menace, but as conditions change the nature of the menace changes with them. Formerly the danger-zone for these creatures was that from which the lion, the leopard or the wild dog could spring; it was only surprise at close quarters that the springbuck had to guard against. Given a few seconds’ notice of the approach of an enemy, this creature’s unsurpassed fleetness enabled it to laugh at danger. This laughter is still expressed in the manner in which a small herd of springbuck will circle round and round a pursuing dog that is not especially swift—as porpoises sometimes circle around a moving ship.
We know from accounts left by the very old hunters that in early days, when the killing range of a bullet was little more than a hundred yards, springbuck would graze with apparent unconcern until approached to within about that distance. But with the disappearance of the larger carnivora before firearms, and the increase in the range of the rifle, a wider danger-zone has been created, while the danger of an enemy at close quarters has practically disappeared. The width of the danger-zone has gone on increasing with the longer range of the rifle.
Wild animals are quick to learn and to unlearn—which is not quite the same as to forget. Thus the springbuck has ceased to dread the springing enemy, the creature of teeth and claws that used to lie in ambush; in fact he never contemplates the contingency of any enemy at close quarters, and on the rare occasions when he meets one, the experience appears to fill him with surprise rather than alarm.
The distance between us and the herd had decreased to a little over two thousand yards, so I detached Hendrick and instructed him to alter his course to the left and endeavour to edge round the still unsuspecting animals. The object was to stampede the herd so that it would pass me on my right and head towards where Andries lay in ambush. Bucephalus and Hendrick loomed immense and black against the background of yellow shocks, but they were apparently unobserved by the game, for the latter still grazed and “pronked” about as though they had the whole desert to themselves,—as though no entangling web were being drawn about them.
Hendrick had reached the limit of his arc; then the springbuck marked him and evidently realised that there was danger. Apprehension touched them; a quiver ran through the herd; they lifted their heads and gazed; they moved to and fro. So far it was not fear that they felt; for they knew their own fleetness and had trust in it. Then, suddenly, terror seemed to strike them like a blast, for as dead leaves are caught by a wind-eddy and whirled in a spiral, these imponderable-seeming, ethereal desert creatures swerved over an area resembling in form the sweep of a fan, and then streamed forth like a handful of white rose-petals before a gale.
Why is it, I wonder, that during the forenoon springbuck in the desert appear to be white? For this is literally the case; these animals seemed to be as white as snow, as imponderable as thistledown. The fawn-tint of their necks and flanks, the broad, brown patches on their sides, the black, lyre-formed horns,—all were drowned in the milky foam of the dorsal manes. These were expanded laterally to their fullest extent; each long silvery hair stood erect and quivering.
The creatures’ heads were depressed almost to the level of their feet. With backs deeply arched they bounded over the face of the desert like so many alabaster discs—mingling, separating and re-combining in a tracery of flying arabesques. They had adopted the attitude and movement usual to their kind in moments of sudden terror or delight. Surely their flight was the highest expression of grace revealed by animated nature in motion. It was a soundless melody; a symphony for the eye.
The torrent was streaming to my right, straight for Andries. Hendrick thundered behind,—a black Centaur-monstrosity. How terrible he must have appeared to the fugitives. I wished Hendrick then would trend tohisright, for if the springbuck had swerved towards Kanxas and caught sight of the wagon, they would have doubled on their tracks and made for the depths of the desert. My object was to hold them on the course they were following for as long as possible. Ha! they must have sighted the wagon, for they wheeled to their right and attempted to escape past me, about three thousand yards on my side of where Andries lay waiting for his shot. The terror of death was upon them; their manes were down—hidden in the constricted dorsal tract. The eye could hardly follow the movement of their limbs; distance died beneath the lightning of their feet.
The reins fell upon my horse’s neck, I pressed my spurless heels to his sides; he knew what was required of him. We dashed forward to cut the herd off. While we had to cover a thousand yards the springbuck had to cover nearly two—yet it was clear that they must win the race. When the springbuck runs his best the speed he attains is almost incredible. There remained but one thing to be done.
After having altered my course so as to reach some slightly higher ground, I rolled from the saddle on to the soft sand and began firing—not at the bucks, but so that my bullets would strike some twenty or thirty yards in front of the leaders of the herd. Bullet after bullet scarred the ground, sending up spouts of red sand—now here, now there. The herd faltered in bewilderment, whirled round in a half-circle to the left, and headed straight for the ambush.
A distant shot—another; several in rapid succession. It was the rifle of Andries speaking. It was Man taking toll of Nature, imposing his age-long tribute of blood and pain. It was Death eliminating Beauty become obsolete. It was like Autumn shedding the petals of a flower that had lived its allotted day.
The hunted creatures, in their dismay, completed the circle of frantic effort; they sped back to the spot where they had been disturbed. They passed it; they grew smaller and smaller until they melted into the infinite mystery of the desert.
Three bucks had fallen to Andries’ rifle. I dismounted, and we piled the carcases on Prince’s patient back. Bucephalus, as usual, grew frantic on being brought within smelling-distance of the slain game. Then we strolled to where the wagon was waiting for us, at a spot some three miles away, close to the head of the Kanxas Gorge. There we dined sumptuously on roasted springbuck liver,—one of the best of desert delicacies.
Once more I explored the gorge—that deserted city which once teemed with human life. It was narrow, it was neither long nor deep; a mere scar it was on the desert’s flank. The greatest depth was not more than fifty feet; it was possibly a mile long and the width varied. The sides contained caves, on the walls of which could still be seen traces of fires lit long, long ago. And there, thickly traced on the ledges was the mysterious, black-pigmented script—the groups of short, diagonal lines crossing each other at various angles. What did they indicate; was nothing to be read from them even by those who deciphered the graven edict, five-and-twenty centuries old, of Mesha the Sheepmaster?
Why was it that one did not find at Kanxas pictures of the eland, the oryx and the rhinoceros; why were there no perspectiveless battle-pieces depicting the successful defence of some cave-stronghold, with the baffled invaders being hurled down precipices? Such pictures are found distributed over vast areas of South Eastern Africa; it seemed remarkable that none exist, so far as I am aware, in Bushmanland.
Perhaps the plants from which the necessary pigments had to be extracted do not grow on that side of South Africa. But, deep in the Orange River gorge is a continuous strip of rich and varied woodland, in which most of the South African forest flora is represented. Moreover, on the islands which gem the river’s course near its mouth are to be found myriads of eastern plants, the progeny of seeds carried down by the annual flood from far-off Basutoland and its environs,—and it is precisely in that vicinity that Bushman paintings are most plentiful. The thing remains a puzzle.
And the strange, highly-evolved dramatic art of that vanished race,—a drama in which human beings took the parts of animals,—how often had it not found expression there in days of bygone plenty; days when the baskets of dried-locust cakes crowded every ledge and the children went pot-bellied and sleek.
There was the stage; there the auditorium; yonder the ledge along which, no doubt, the actors made their exits and their entrances. Was the audience a critical one; did it generously applaud a nervous new actor of evident talent; did it hurl stones, at one who bungled his part or tried to make up in pretentiousness what he lacked in ability? Did the author of a successful play advance to the proscenium and enjoy the tribute of plaudits paid to a successful playwright?
I fancy there must have been a chorus; possibly a semi-chorus as well. Thespis and Aeschylus probably adopted those obvious aids to rudimentary drama from the shepherd,—who is first-cousin to the savage. And the more one sees of various savages, belong they to Bushmanland or to the Bowery, the more astonishing is the kinship revealed between them. I could find no box-office—no gallery from which the gods could have jibed. The auditorium must have been all pit.
And what dramas of real life must have been enacted in that rocky valley; what rudimentary idylls had not the moon looked upon as her slanting beams searched slowly down among the rocks on summer nights. There men and women loved; there jealousy, cruel as the grave, had brooded. There vengeance had stalked abroad and taken toll for Fate. Finally, from there—after an age-long struggle—Death had evicted Life. It was, after all, only appropriate that the Kanxas fountain should have ceased to flow.
How often had not some old lion—some gaunt, lonely brute with blunted teeth and claws worn to the quick, crouched among those rocks, bent on spoil of the cave-men? During how many nights of livid fear must not the horrible purring of the man-eater, as he quested up the gorge, have sunk to the deadlier horror of silence. For then every member of the little community would have known that the prowler had at length selected a dwelling from which presently to drag a shrieking victim.
And later, the arch-enemy, the more cruel spoiler, man. Man—the spoiler to-day,—to-morrow the spoiled. The European revenged the Bushman on the Hottentot; who would revenge the Hottentot on the European? “For that which hath been is, and that which will be hath been, and there is no new thing.” The thought made “a goblin of the sun.” “O stars that sway our fate; O orbs that should be very wise, for you have circled the heavens and regarded the earth from the most ancient days,—you who, impassively, have seen an endless succession of civilisations arise, decline and die,—when, and at whose hand, will our nemesis come?”
A spirit of laziness had overcome us all. Andries lay fast asleep under the wagon; his large frame was loosened, his placid, handsome, weather-beaten face relaxed. He would have looked just as he did then, had he been dead, for his days had been days of quietness and all his pathways peaceful. Yet in that man’s deliberate arteries flowed the blood of those who withstood Alva in the Netherlands, and of others who abandoned France, with all that seemed to make life worth the living, rather than bend the knee at the shrine of a false god. I wondered whether that large-boned, contented, easy-going farmer were capable of standing on the ramparts of another Leyden and, from hunger-bitten, indomitable lips roaring heroic and vitriolic defiance at a seemingly-unconquerable foe. Would he have abandoned honour, riches, comfort, roof-tree and friends for the sake of conscience,—that discipliner whose whip-lash does not, unfortunately, bite as severely as it once was wont to do? I wondered, and in wondering breathed one of those wishes which are the essence of prayer, that he might never be put to the test.
The afternoon was young. I decided to stroll on, ahead. I found Danster and Piet Noona’s nephew just above the krantz—preventing, with some difficulty, the oxen from stampeding to Gamoep, which was now only about ten miles distant. I sent them back to the wagon with instructions to do the thing my heart had failed of,—to waken a human being from that highest condition of well-being—perfect sleep. But it was now time to inspan; for the first time since they had last drunk the oxen were really suffering from thirst. They, too, had their rights. Andries, moreover, was one of those fortunate beings who could slumber at will.
So I again strolled on. I left the track and climbed to the top of the Koeberg, the hill from which the big beacon—that farthest outpost of the trigonometrical survey on this side—springs like a startled finger. This was one of the actual portals of the desert. I was now, alas! once more within sight of the dwellings of men. Several tents had been pitched, and quite a number of mat-houses set up at Gamoep since we had left it, a little more than a week previously.
I turned eastward and cast mournful eyes back over the sun-bathed immensity from which I had emerged, and from the deepest depths of which sounded a call that I knew would for ever echo in my soul. What a strange regret it was that tugged at my aching heartstrings...
The wind had here died down. The morrow would be torrid,—perhaps with a tornado from the north. As the last skirts of the sea-cooled breeze trailed away into the infinite east, their track was marked by a line of towering sand-spouts. So gently did these move across the plains that it seemed as though they stood like a row of lofty columns sustaining the temple-dome of the sky. Yet a careful eye might detect their rhythmic and concerted movement. What was the stately measure they were treading,—to what sphere-music did their gliding feet keep time?
And then, O desert—O steadfast face that I loved—I had to bid you farewell. These eyes would gaze upon you again, but the day was swiftly coming when I should have to take leave of you for ever. But if when the body dies the spirit still lives, this soul which was nourished by your hand until it grew to a stature sufficient to enable it to realise its own littleness, will return and merge itself in your immensity.
Chapter Eight.The Summer Clouds—News of Rain—Start for Pella—The Vedic Hymns—Digging for Water—Arrival at Pella—Terrible Heat—The Tribe—Aquinas in the Wilderness—The Mission—The River Gorge—The Tarantula Invasion.That mountain tract stretching like a back-bone through Namaqualand, parallel with the coast upon which the Atlantic ceaselessly thunders, is the region which catches the sparse, south-western winter rains,—but which in summer is the abode of drought. On the in-lying Bushmanland plains the winters are quite arid; it is only in summer, when occasional thunderstorms stray down from the north-east, that the level desert gets rain.In a season when the Storm Gods go forth mightily to war on the aether seas, and the capricious heavens are bountiful, it is a striking experience to climb, on a torrid afternoon, some peak jutting from the eastern margin of the mountain tract, and from there to watch the ordered procession of the thunder-ships as they sweep down from their far-off port of assembly. Like great battle-craft, black beneath and equipped with dreadful artillery,—their dazzling decks heaped and laden with ocean-gleaned merchandise of crudded white,—they charge menacingly across the illimitable plains as though to overwhelm the granite ranges. But each stately vessel barely touches some outlying buttress; then the aery hull swerves and changes its course due south, bearing its most precious freight to more fortunate regions. It is as though some immense, invisible fender were being lowered from the sky to guard the range from the shock of impact.There came good news from Bushmanland; thunderstorm after thunder-storm had trailed over the plains, each marking its path with verdure and filling every rock-depression with water. The drought had broken, so my long-postponed trip to Pella, that remote outpost of French-Roman Catholicism, could be undertaken. Pella lies where the iron mountains, like a leash of black panthers, spring from the northern margin of the plains,—and then sink to their lair in that great gorge through whose depths the Orange River swirls and eddies with its drainage of a million hills.We were to travel with horses along a route I had special reasons for wishing to take, but which, had the drought still prevailed, we would not have dared to traverse. But under the existing circumstances it would never be necessary to travel more than twenty miles without finding a spot where a water-pit might be dug.So Andries brought his spring-wagon in to the Copper Mines and we made busy preparations for a start. Our wagon-team numbered eight, four belonging to Andries and four to me. Old Prince pulled as a wheeler; my two young chestnuts as leaders. Besides the wagon we had another vehicle,—a strange, springless, nondescript contraption knocked together by Andries out of the remains of an old horse-wagon which he had broken up. It had low, strong wheels set very wide apart, with a rough framework of yellow-wood boards superimposed. There was no seat, but a box-like rim of woodwork edged the frame. To this vehicle four half-trained horses were yoked. It was intended to be used in pursuing springbuck over the plains. Hendrick was to be the driver; his task would not be an easy one. Andries owned a mob of over sixty horses, the greater number of which had been taught but the merest rudiments of service.We reached the outer periphery of the hills late in the afternoon, and camped on the margin of the pale-green ocean of feathery “toa.” Far-off, to eastward, we marked the rose-litten turrets of a thunder-cloud. When the sun went down these were illuminated by incessant lightnings, symbols of destruction heralding the advent of the only giver of life-rain.I had formerly been accustomed to bring books to Bushmanland, but, with one exception, I did so no longer. The exception was Ludwig’s translation of the Vedic Hymns. The open Volume of the desert, so insistent to be read, was sufficient; nevertheless those large, primordial utterances of the Vedas seemed appropriate whenever one was brought into contact with unspoilt Nature in her vaster aspects. Although they originated under conditions very dissimilar to the local ones, the Vedic Hymns are tuned to the desert’s pitch. In India, as in Bushmanland, rain is the paramount necessity. When the rain-gods forget Bushmanland a few thousand fat-tailed sheep may perish; a hundred families may have to retire from its margins and live for a season by digging wild tubers among the granite hills, or by robbing the ants of their underground store of “toa” seed. But if a similar thing happen in India, perhaps ten millions of human beings die a horrible death.In the desert,—away from man and everything that suggested him, the Hebrew Scriptures seemed to be too overloaded with ethics, too exigent towards enlisting the services of the deity on the side of tribe against tribe. But the Vedic Hymnist was a worshipper who imposed no conditions upon his gods. He had passionately realised the fundamental fact that his own continued existence, as well as that of all organic life, depended upon the beneficient fury of the sky, so he offered awed and unconditioned adoration to Indra, Agni and the “golden-breasted” Storm Gods through a symbolism of sincere and homely dignity. Submissive, he accepted death or life, the thunder-bolt or the Soma-flower,—the drought that slew its millions or the rain that brought a bounteous harvest.We started at break of day. Although rain had fallen, we felt it necessary to plan our course carefully, for water was only to be found in the sand-covered rock-depressions—and these, albeit more than ordinarily frequent in that section of the desert over which our route lay, were nevertheless few and far between. The weather was hot; therefore the horses, unlike oxen, had to drink at least once a day. Even where it existed, water could only be obtained by digging to a depth of from five to eight feet; then it had to be scooped up in pannikins after having trickled in from the sides and collected at the bottom of the pit. Thus, even under favourable conditions, it took about two hours’ hard work to provide sufficient water to quench the thirst of twelve animals.With cocked ears and anxious looks the horses would crowd to where the smell of wet sand told them that relief was near; it became necessary to keep them off with a whip. Once I narrowly escaped being badly hurt owing to a mule flinging itself into a pit in which I was digging for water.We decided not to delay on our forward journey; therefore the various herds of game seen in the distance were not interfered with. We intended, after finishing our business at Pella, to seek out some temporary oasis favourably situated, pitch our camp there and spend a few days shooting in the vicinity.On the forenoon of the fourth day,—a day of terrible heat, we sighted the mission buildings of Pella in the far distance. These stood on a limestone ridge in a crescent-shaped bend of that stark range of mountains on the northern side of which the Orange River has carved its tremendous earth-scar. Here the colour of the mountains changed; they were no longer jet-black as I had found those a hundred miles to westward, but a deep chocolate brown. From Pella ran a steep ravine which cleft the range almost to its base. Down this a crooked track led to the river, which was said to be about nine miles away.It seemed as though we should never reach the mission; the trek over red-hot sand through which angular chunks of limestone were thickly distributed, seemed interminable in the fierce heat. But at length the journey ended, and the panting horses were released for their sand-bath, preliminary to a much-needed drink. The half-dozen low houses of the mission, built of unburnt brick and livid-grey in colour, lay huddled around the unfinished walls of what was intended to eventually be a church. That bare, sun-scourged, glaring ridge which had been selected as the site for the institution lacked every attribute tempting to man—save one: and that the all-essential,—water. For thither, to the midst of a howling desolation, Nature, in one of her moods of whimsical paradox, had enticed from the depths a spring of living crystal. Through torrid day and frosty night,—through short, adventitious rainy season and long, inevitable period of aridity which filled man and brute with dismay,—“ohne hast, ohne rast” the gentle fountain welled out, cold and clear. It seemed as though some spirit whose dwelling was deep in a zone untroubled by the moods of the changeful sky stretched forth a pitiful hand to touch the scarred forehead of the waste with comfort and with healing.The heat in the wagon had been a burthen and almost a misery, yet I was able to sustain it while we were in motion. But the stillness of the atmosphere and the glare from the limestone surrounding the mission, made one desperate. Shade—coolness—where were they to be found? Even mere darkness would have been a relief. I sought refuge under a verandah, but got no assuagement. I longed for some corner into which to creep—for somewhere to hide, if only from the blistering light. Father Simon, the Director of the Mission, kindly vacated his house and placed it at my disposal. The building contained but one room.I entered and closed the door. For a few seconds the darkness brought a sense of easement, but the closeness, the thick stagnation of the air, made me gasp. And the heat was nearly as bad as it was outside. How was that? I put my hand to one of the clod-like bricks of which the walls were built. It was quite uncomfortably hot to the touch; the force of the sun had penetrated it.Something approaching despair seized me; it was then nearly noon—could I live through another six hours of such torture? I began to speculate as to what were the initial symptoms of heat-apoplexy. The labouring blood thundered in my ears; I felt perilously near delirium. It was as though one were being suffocated in the cellar of a burning house. I stripped off my clothes and grovelled naked on the clay floor, seeking relief in cobwebby corners. In the gloom I caught sight of a bucket of water. I tore a sheet from the bed, soaked it and wrapped it around me. In all my life I had never felt in such physical extremity. However, lying on the ground wrapped in the wet sheet brought a measure of relief. But the miseries of that day will never be forgotten.At length the sun went down—sank in golden ruin among the fang-like peaks of the umber-tinted western mountains. Soon the quivering earth flung off its Nessus-garment and a delicious interval followed. But shortly after nightfall the chilliness of the air became so uncomfortable that I overhauled my belongings in the wagon, seeking a warmer coat. Father Simon, with a smile, produced his thermometer; the mercury stood at 86 Fahrenheit. I learned that five hours previously it had reached 119 in the shade.Next day brought practically no diminution of temperature; but somehow I seemed to have acquired resisting power. The fear of possible collapse, even of death, which came upon me the previous day, had gone. Perhaps the fatigues of the long journey—more especially the heavy digging in the water-pits—may have lowered my vitality. Presently we had another severe ordeal to undergo, for we decided to make our way down the gorge and spend a night on the bank of the river. It seemed as though it would be like descending to the Gehenna-pit.But first to bend an examining eye upon that strange community of men and women,—those adventurers from the Old World to a world immeasurably older and less changeful. So far as I could gather, the personnel consisted of three priests, four lay-brothers and five nuns. It was to those women that my pity went out; they were so pallid, so debilitated,—so incongruous with their surroundings. As they flitted silently about, busied with hospitable service towards the guests, their hands looked like faded leaves. How the conventual habit, albeit the material had been lightened to accord with local conditions, must have weighed them down. The low-roofed, livid-grey brick building in which they lived must have got heated through and through as Father Simon’s dwelling did. One of those nuns had, so I was told, lost her reason and was shortly to be removed. Their lot must have been one of continuous martyrdom.Father Simon was suave in manner; I could judge him to be shrewd and clear-headed; evidently he was a man of affairs. His pallor was apparently congenital; it by no means suggested physical weakness. Salamander-like, he had habituated himself to the torrid climate. Like an Arab chief he ruled his clan of about two hundred subjects. This was as mixed a lot of human beings as one would find anywhere—even in South Africa, that land of varied human blends. Among them were pure-bred Europeans,—some bearing names held in honour from Cape Town to Pretoria. Others were frankly black,—and there were all intermediate shades.Just then the mat-houses of the tribe were pitched at one of the outlying water-places; I did not learn how far off, for distance is an unimportant detail in the desert. But it was some place where a thunderstorm had recently burst and, therefore, where pasturage existed. The wealth of the community consisted of fat-tailed sheep, horses, goats and a few cattle. The Pella lands were held by the Mission on ownership tenure; consequently the Superintendent was an autocrat. A community of that kind was as little fitted to govern itself as a reformatory would have been. The territory over which Father Simon held sway contained all the water-places which were to be found in that corner of the desert. The water in some of these was permanent, the severest drought occasioning no diminution in its flow. It was this circumstance, more than anything else, which rendered the autocracy effective.Acceptance of the forms of the Roman Catholic ritual was the only condition of membership; faith appeared to be taken on trust. It was told me that when Bushmanland happened to be blest with a few consecutive good seasons, scruples on points of dogma became prevalent and the tribe thinned out. But when the inevitable drought recurred, the doubters repented, returned to the forgiving bosom of Mother Church and recommenced, with more or less fervour, the practice of their religious duties. I was shewn one patriarch who, with his numerous family, had three times fallen from grace and had as often been received back as an erring but repentant sheep.Besides Father Simon and the nuns I met only two members of the community who interested me. One was an elderly, thickset priest with a dense, brown beard. I found him sitting, in a dingy hut, at a packing-case table. He was smoking an extremely black pipe and reading at an early 17th Century folio of Thomas Aquinas. His person was generally unclean; his coarse, stumpy hands were sickening to look upon.The reading was clearly a pretence; from the appearance of the volume I should say it had not been previously opened for a very long time. I felt instinctively that Father Simon, too, knew this, for he addressed a few sentences in French to the reader,—speaking in a low, even, firm voice. At once the folio was closed and put back on a cobwebby shelf.The episode interested me; I sympathised with that priest. In spite of his unsavoury physical condition my heart went out to him. His life must have been appallingly empty, for he had not, like Father Simon, the saving grace of responsibility and the opportunity of expressing his individuality in administrative work. He was nothing but a more or less superfluous cog in the wheel of a cranky machine driven by a despotic hand. The Adam within him cried out for an opportunity of attracting the attention of the only visitor from the outside world he was likely to see for the next six months. I found that little trifle of deception very human—very pitiful. I wonder did he, after all, read his Aquinas at times; perhaps he did. But I fear his development would rather have been in the direction of the “dumb ox” than towards the angels. Poor, lonely, unwashed human creature.The only way to save one’s soul alive in the desert is to wrestle with and overcome difficulties—as Jacob wrestled with the angel, and all the cobwebs ever spun by all the Schoolmen would not give so much strength to the human spirit as a gallop of ten miles over the plains, among the whispering shocks of the “toa.” That this was the case was evinced by a young lay-brother with whom I was able to converse in Dutch. He, of peasant origin and with quite a lot of fire glowing through his clay, found scope for his abounding energies in looking after the stock belonging to the Mission and generally carrying on the outside administrative work. It was he who shepherded the tribe from one water-place to another; it was he who took venturesome journeys across wide stretches of desert for the purpose of reporting as to the condition of the pasturage surrounding the far-outlying oases.This man was brown and muscular; his eye was steady and masterful—because his life was spent in action, not in futile dreaming. If he should have looked upon one of the daughters of the desert and found her fair, I would not have given much for his vocation. I sincerely hoped he might do so. The daughters of the desert are not, as a rule, comely—but, after all, beauty is relative. I imply nothing discreditable; this man had taken no irrevocable vow of celibacy.The Pella Mission was engaged in the hopeless task of endeavouring to make oil and water mix—or rather, to change the metaphor—to graft an archaic but vigorous and highly-specialised organism upon a rudimentary one of thin blood and low vitality. A creed rooted in and nourished by the most ancient human traditions could not possibly develop among people who possessed no traditions and had not enough positive original sin in them to make their asthenic souls worth the saving.On this desert tract where men are blown to and fro by the fiery breath of recurrent drought, they should be left to sink in the sand or swim in the aether,—to develop body and soul of a tenacious fibre, or else to be eliminated by the adverse conditions under which they exist. Subject to tuition, kept erect by outside support, they must presently stagnate and ultimately perish. From my point of view their preservation was not nearly so important as that of the herd of oryx I was endeavouring to protect from its legioned enemies in central Bushmanland.But the case of the Pella tribe was hopeless. Could these people have gone to war, had the desert they inhabited been ten times as wide and had its bounds contained tribes that raided one another, and thus made valour-cum-skill-in-arms the alternative to extinction, they might have developed positive virtues and vices. They might even have lifted their eyes to the stars and uttered songs of love and death.The blistering sun of noon was almost over our heads when we started on our pilgrimage to the river. A crooked pathway choked with sand, into which one’s feet sank deep at every step, led down the wedge-formed cleft between the towering mountains. We found the course fatiguing in the descent; what would it be when we came to retrace our steps? As we proceeded the gorge bent to the right and the glowing cliffs closed in.At length the stupendous mountain range on the other side of the river again sprang into view. Soon we caught a glimpse of the rich-green forest strip which fringed, on either side, the wide course of the stream. There at least we would find shade. The heat had become frightful; it was as though one breathed flame.We reached the river bank. The great torrent of a few weeks back had shrunk to a network of rivulets which swirled and eddied among the rocks and islanded sand-banks with a soothing murmur. The trees just there had been much thinned out; in places the undergrowth had completely disappeared,—eaten away by the stock which was sent thither in seasons of exceptional drought. A recent freshet had carpeted the shaded ground with soft, white sand. A dip in the tepid water refreshed one; the gentle, lapping wavelets whispered of coolness to come. But the river, so gentle that day, could at times arise like a wrathful Titan. In a high cliff-crevice hung a large tree-trunk flung up and wedged there during some recent flood.Who could paint the terrific desolation of that home of chaos,—the towering peaks, the jutting ledges, the Cyclopean, bulging protuberances? That amphitheatre was surely the haunt of some ferocious, inimical Nature-spirit—brother to Death and a hater of Life. Yet life flourished even here, for the river, like a mother holding her children with tender clasp, led westward her progeny of trees over strait and perilous pathways. But the feet of the brood dared not stray from the hem of her garment.The sun sank; as the glare was withdrawn each salient detail of the Titanic arena grew clearer and more definite against the background of darkening blue. Then shadow gathered all into her fold, and it was upon a pit whose black sides threatened to fall in and crush us, that the stars of the zenith looked down.It was deep in the night, but the heat still raged, for the sides of the glowing rock-pit in which we lay continued to radiate what energy they had absorbed while the sun still smote on them. We had emerged from among the trees and built a large fire of drift-wood on a sandbank,—our object being to obtain illumination. It was quite necessary to have a bright light; from many of the logs poisonous centipedes, and an occasional scorpion, were emerging. But even comparatively close to the fire we could feel no increase of heat. My gun stood against a stone some distance away. I picked the weapon up, but involuntarily dropped it, for the barrel almost scorched my hand. And this at nearly midnight!But what were those creatures darting here and there; anon rushing towards us over the livid surface of the sand? Horror. They were tarantulas,—red, hairy creatures, larger than mice. Within a few seconds there were hundreds of them circling around the fire with almost incredible swiftness. The firelight had attracted them from the cliff-chasms which yawned around us.This was too much for flesh and blood to endure, so I beat a retreat to the river and waded out until I reached a flat rock. This proved to be uncomfortably hot, but the soles of my boots were thick, and I could every now and then cool them in the water. However, a few yards away lay a small island of sand, and on this I took refuge. From my retreat I could see the fire and its environs. I did not think Africa contained so many tarantulas as were then visible. They had the fire to themselves, for every member of the party had fled.The air still felt as though one were in a closed room. But the murmur of the river became audible to an increasing degree on the western side, and soon a hot breath of air struck us. After a fitful succession of puffs a continuous wind set in,—a steady current, momentarily growing cooler. This was the sea-breeze stealing up the river gorge from the far-off Atlantic, rolling the mass of heated air before it and cooling the piled rocks,—helping them to fling off the yoke of torment put upon them by the cruel, arrogant sun. Soon the temperature began to fall rapidly, so I waded back, made a wide détour so as to avoid the tarantula-infested area, and fetched my kaross from where it lay among the trees. I then returned to my sand-islet and there sank into blessed sleep with the tepid water murmuring within a few feet of my weary head.I awoke soon after 3 a.m. The wind had turned perishingly cold,—so cold that I decided to retire from my exposed situation and seek for some spot more or less sheltered from the streaming air-current. So I once more waded back through the tepid water and sought a refuge among the trees. The fire was still alight; I had to pass it. Not a single tarantula was visible; no doubt they had retired to their lairs among the rocks on account of the fall in the temperature. Yet I do not suppose the latter was below 80 Fahrenheit; the susceptibility of one’s skin is relative; my discomfort was due to the sudden change. I wished I had not left my thermometer at the wagon; it would have been interesting to take a reading at midnight.Once more I fell asleep, with the tree-trunks groaning around me, as the boughs swayed in the ever-freshening gale.
That mountain tract stretching like a back-bone through Namaqualand, parallel with the coast upon which the Atlantic ceaselessly thunders, is the region which catches the sparse, south-western winter rains,—but which in summer is the abode of drought. On the in-lying Bushmanland plains the winters are quite arid; it is only in summer, when occasional thunderstorms stray down from the north-east, that the level desert gets rain.
In a season when the Storm Gods go forth mightily to war on the aether seas, and the capricious heavens are bountiful, it is a striking experience to climb, on a torrid afternoon, some peak jutting from the eastern margin of the mountain tract, and from there to watch the ordered procession of the thunder-ships as they sweep down from their far-off port of assembly. Like great battle-craft, black beneath and equipped with dreadful artillery,—their dazzling decks heaped and laden with ocean-gleaned merchandise of crudded white,—they charge menacingly across the illimitable plains as though to overwhelm the granite ranges. But each stately vessel barely touches some outlying buttress; then the aery hull swerves and changes its course due south, bearing its most precious freight to more fortunate regions. It is as though some immense, invisible fender were being lowered from the sky to guard the range from the shock of impact.
There came good news from Bushmanland; thunderstorm after thunder-storm had trailed over the plains, each marking its path with verdure and filling every rock-depression with water. The drought had broken, so my long-postponed trip to Pella, that remote outpost of French-Roman Catholicism, could be undertaken. Pella lies where the iron mountains, like a leash of black panthers, spring from the northern margin of the plains,—and then sink to their lair in that great gorge through whose depths the Orange River swirls and eddies with its drainage of a million hills.
We were to travel with horses along a route I had special reasons for wishing to take, but which, had the drought still prevailed, we would not have dared to traverse. But under the existing circumstances it would never be necessary to travel more than twenty miles without finding a spot where a water-pit might be dug.
So Andries brought his spring-wagon in to the Copper Mines and we made busy preparations for a start. Our wagon-team numbered eight, four belonging to Andries and four to me. Old Prince pulled as a wheeler; my two young chestnuts as leaders. Besides the wagon we had another vehicle,—a strange, springless, nondescript contraption knocked together by Andries out of the remains of an old horse-wagon which he had broken up. It had low, strong wheels set very wide apart, with a rough framework of yellow-wood boards superimposed. There was no seat, but a box-like rim of woodwork edged the frame. To this vehicle four half-trained horses were yoked. It was intended to be used in pursuing springbuck over the plains. Hendrick was to be the driver; his task would not be an easy one. Andries owned a mob of over sixty horses, the greater number of which had been taught but the merest rudiments of service.
We reached the outer periphery of the hills late in the afternoon, and camped on the margin of the pale-green ocean of feathery “toa.” Far-off, to eastward, we marked the rose-litten turrets of a thunder-cloud. When the sun went down these were illuminated by incessant lightnings, symbols of destruction heralding the advent of the only giver of life-rain.
I had formerly been accustomed to bring books to Bushmanland, but, with one exception, I did so no longer. The exception was Ludwig’s translation of the Vedic Hymns. The open Volume of the desert, so insistent to be read, was sufficient; nevertheless those large, primordial utterances of the Vedas seemed appropriate whenever one was brought into contact with unspoilt Nature in her vaster aspects. Although they originated under conditions very dissimilar to the local ones, the Vedic Hymns are tuned to the desert’s pitch. In India, as in Bushmanland, rain is the paramount necessity. When the rain-gods forget Bushmanland a few thousand fat-tailed sheep may perish; a hundred families may have to retire from its margins and live for a season by digging wild tubers among the granite hills, or by robbing the ants of their underground store of “toa” seed. But if a similar thing happen in India, perhaps ten millions of human beings die a horrible death.
In the desert,—away from man and everything that suggested him, the Hebrew Scriptures seemed to be too overloaded with ethics, too exigent towards enlisting the services of the deity on the side of tribe against tribe. But the Vedic Hymnist was a worshipper who imposed no conditions upon his gods. He had passionately realised the fundamental fact that his own continued existence, as well as that of all organic life, depended upon the beneficient fury of the sky, so he offered awed and unconditioned adoration to Indra, Agni and the “golden-breasted” Storm Gods through a symbolism of sincere and homely dignity. Submissive, he accepted death or life, the thunder-bolt or the Soma-flower,—the drought that slew its millions or the rain that brought a bounteous harvest.
We started at break of day. Although rain had fallen, we felt it necessary to plan our course carefully, for water was only to be found in the sand-covered rock-depressions—and these, albeit more than ordinarily frequent in that section of the desert over which our route lay, were nevertheless few and far between. The weather was hot; therefore the horses, unlike oxen, had to drink at least once a day. Even where it existed, water could only be obtained by digging to a depth of from five to eight feet; then it had to be scooped up in pannikins after having trickled in from the sides and collected at the bottom of the pit. Thus, even under favourable conditions, it took about two hours’ hard work to provide sufficient water to quench the thirst of twelve animals.
With cocked ears and anxious looks the horses would crowd to where the smell of wet sand told them that relief was near; it became necessary to keep them off with a whip. Once I narrowly escaped being badly hurt owing to a mule flinging itself into a pit in which I was digging for water.
We decided not to delay on our forward journey; therefore the various herds of game seen in the distance were not interfered with. We intended, after finishing our business at Pella, to seek out some temporary oasis favourably situated, pitch our camp there and spend a few days shooting in the vicinity.
On the forenoon of the fourth day,—a day of terrible heat, we sighted the mission buildings of Pella in the far distance. These stood on a limestone ridge in a crescent-shaped bend of that stark range of mountains on the northern side of which the Orange River has carved its tremendous earth-scar. Here the colour of the mountains changed; they were no longer jet-black as I had found those a hundred miles to westward, but a deep chocolate brown. From Pella ran a steep ravine which cleft the range almost to its base. Down this a crooked track led to the river, which was said to be about nine miles away.
It seemed as though we should never reach the mission; the trek over red-hot sand through which angular chunks of limestone were thickly distributed, seemed interminable in the fierce heat. But at length the journey ended, and the panting horses were released for their sand-bath, preliminary to a much-needed drink. The half-dozen low houses of the mission, built of unburnt brick and livid-grey in colour, lay huddled around the unfinished walls of what was intended to eventually be a church. That bare, sun-scourged, glaring ridge which had been selected as the site for the institution lacked every attribute tempting to man—save one: and that the all-essential,—water. For thither, to the midst of a howling desolation, Nature, in one of her moods of whimsical paradox, had enticed from the depths a spring of living crystal. Through torrid day and frosty night,—through short, adventitious rainy season and long, inevitable period of aridity which filled man and brute with dismay,—“ohne hast, ohne rast” the gentle fountain welled out, cold and clear. It seemed as though some spirit whose dwelling was deep in a zone untroubled by the moods of the changeful sky stretched forth a pitiful hand to touch the scarred forehead of the waste with comfort and with healing.
The heat in the wagon had been a burthen and almost a misery, yet I was able to sustain it while we were in motion. But the stillness of the atmosphere and the glare from the limestone surrounding the mission, made one desperate. Shade—coolness—where were they to be found? Even mere darkness would have been a relief. I sought refuge under a verandah, but got no assuagement. I longed for some corner into which to creep—for somewhere to hide, if only from the blistering light. Father Simon, the Director of the Mission, kindly vacated his house and placed it at my disposal. The building contained but one room.
I entered and closed the door. For a few seconds the darkness brought a sense of easement, but the closeness, the thick stagnation of the air, made me gasp. And the heat was nearly as bad as it was outside. How was that? I put my hand to one of the clod-like bricks of which the walls were built. It was quite uncomfortably hot to the touch; the force of the sun had penetrated it.
Something approaching despair seized me; it was then nearly noon—could I live through another six hours of such torture? I began to speculate as to what were the initial symptoms of heat-apoplexy. The labouring blood thundered in my ears; I felt perilously near delirium. It was as though one were being suffocated in the cellar of a burning house. I stripped off my clothes and grovelled naked on the clay floor, seeking relief in cobwebby corners. In the gloom I caught sight of a bucket of water. I tore a sheet from the bed, soaked it and wrapped it around me. In all my life I had never felt in such physical extremity. However, lying on the ground wrapped in the wet sheet brought a measure of relief. But the miseries of that day will never be forgotten.
At length the sun went down—sank in golden ruin among the fang-like peaks of the umber-tinted western mountains. Soon the quivering earth flung off its Nessus-garment and a delicious interval followed. But shortly after nightfall the chilliness of the air became so uncomfortable that I overhauled my belongings in the wagon, seeking a warmer coat. Father Simon, with a smile, produced his thermometer; the mercury stood at 86 Fahrenheit. I learned that five hours previously it had reached 119 in the shade.
Next day brought practically no diminution of temperature; but somehow I seemed to have acquired resisting power. The fear of possible collapse, even of death, which came upon me the previous day, had gone. Perhaps the fatigues of the long journey—more especially the heavy digging in the water-pits—may have lowered my vitality. Presently we had another severe ordeal to undergo, for we decided to make our way down the gorge and spend a night on the bank of the river. It seemed as though it would be like descending to the Gehenna-pit.
But first to bend an examining eye upon that strange community of men and women,—those adventurers from the Old World to a world immeasurably older and less changeful. So far as I could gather, the personnel consisted of three priests, four lay-brothers and five nuns. It was to those women that my pity went out; they were so pallid, so debilitated,—so incongruous with their surroundings. As they flitted silently about, busied with hospitable service towards the guests, their hands looked like faded leaves. How the conventual habit, albeit the material had been lightened to accord with local conditions, must have weighed them down. The low-roofed, livid-grey brick building in which they lived must have got heated through and through as Father Simon’s dwelling did. One of those nuns had, so I was told, lost her reason and was shortly to be removed. Their lot must have been one of continuous martyrdom.
Father Simon was suave in manner; I could judge him to be shrewd and clear-headed; evidently he was a man of affairs. His pallor was apparently congenital; it by no means suggested physical weakness. Salamander-like, he had habituated himself to the torrid climate. Like an Arab chief he ruled his clan of about two hundred subjects. This was as mixed a lot of human beings as one would find anywhere—even in South Africa, that land of varied human blends. Among them were pure-bred Europeans,—some bearing names held in honour from Cape Town to Pretoria. Others were frankly black,—and there were all intermediate shades.
Just then the mat-houses of the tribe were pitched at one of the outlying water-places; I did not learn how far off, for distance is an unimportant detail in the desert. But it was some place where a thunderstorm had recently burst and, therefore, where pasturage existed. The wealth of the community consisted of fat-tailed sheep, horses, goats and a few cattle. The Pella lands were held by the Mission on ownership tenure; consequently the Superintendent was an autocrat. A community of that kind was as little fitted to govern itself as a reformatory would have been. The territory over which Father Simon held sway contained all the water-places which were to be found in that corner of the desert. The water in some of these was permanent, the severest drought occasioning no diminution in its flow. It was this circumstance, more than anything else, which rendered the autocracy effective.
Acceptance of the forms of the Roman Catholic ritual was the only condition of membership; faith appeared to be taken on trust. It was told me that when Bushmanland happened to be blest with a few consecutive good seasons, scruples on points of dogma became prevalent and the tribe thinned out. But when the inevitable drought recurred, the doubters repented, returned to the forgiving bosom of Mother Church and recommenced, with more or less fervour, the practice of their religious duties. I was shewn one patriarch who, with his numerous family, had three times fallen from grace and had as often been received back as an erring but repentant sheep.
Besides Father Simon and the nuns I met only two members of the community who interested me. One was an elderly, thickset priest with a dense, brown beard. I found him sitting, in a dingy hut, at a packing-case table. He was smoking an extremely black pipe and reading at an early 17th Century folio of Thomas Aquinas. His person was generally unclean; his coarse, stumpy hands were sickening to look upon.
The reading was clearly a pretence; from the appearance of the volume I should say it had not been previously opened for a very long time. I felt instinctively that Father Simon, too, knew this, for he addressed a few sentences in French to the reader,—speaking in a low, even, firm voice. At once the folio was closed and put back on a cobwebby shelf.
The episode interested me; I sympathised with that priest. In spite of his unsavoury physical condition my heart went out to him. His life must have been appallingly empty, for he had not, like Father Simon, the saving grace of responsibility and the opportunity of expressing his individuality in administrative work. He was nothing but a more or less superfluous cog in the wheel of a cranky machine driven by a despotic hand. The Adam within him cried out for an opportunity of attracting the attention of the only visitor from the outside world he was likely to see for the next six months. I found that little trifle of deception very human—very pitiful. I wonder did he, after all, read his Aquinas at times; perhaps he did. But I fear his development would rather have been in the direction of the “dumb ox” than towards the angels. Poor, lonely, unwashed human creature.
The only way to save one’s soul alive in the desert is to wrestle with and overcome difficulties—as Jacob wrestled with the angel, and all the cobwebs ever spun by all the Schoolmen would not give so much strength to the human spirit as a gallop of ten miles over the plains, among the whispering shocks of the “toa.” That this was the case was evinced by a young lay-brother with whom I was able to converse in Dutch. He, of peasant origin and with quite a lot of fire glowing through his clay, found scope for his abounding energies in looking after the stock belonging to the Mission and generally carrying on the outside administrative work. It was he who shepherded the tribe from one water-place to another; it was he who took venturesome journeys across wide stretches of desert for the purpose of reporting as to the condition of the pasturage surrounding the far-outlying oases.
This man was brown and muscular; his eye was steady and masterful—because his life was spent in action, not in futile dreaming. If he should have looked upon one of the daughters of the desert and found her fair, I would not have given much for his vocation. I sincerely hoped he might do so. The daughters of the desert are not, as a rule, comely—but, after all, beauty is relative. I imply nothing discreditable; this man had taken no irrevocable vow of celibacy.
The Pella Mission was engaged in the hopeless task of endeavouring to make oil and water mix—or rather, to change the metaphor—to graft an archaic but vigorous and highly-specialised organism upon a rudimentary one of thin blood and low vitality. A creed rooted in and nourished by the most ancient human traditions could not possibly develop among people who possessed no traditions and had not enough positive original sin in them to make their asthenic souls worth the saving.
On this desert tract where men are blown to and fro by the fiery breath of recurrent drought, they should be left to sink in the sand or swim in the aether,—to develop body and soul of a tenacious fibre, or else to be eliminated by the adverse conditions under which they exist. Subject to tuition, kept erect by outside support, they must presently stagnate and ultimately perish. From my point of view their preservation was not nearly so important as that of the herd of oryx I was endeavouring to protect from its legioned enemies in central Bushmanland.
But the case of the Pella tribe was hopeless. Could these people have gone to war, had the desert they inhabited been ten times as wide and had its bounds contained tribes that raided one another, and thus made valour-cum-skill-in-arms the alternative to extinction, they might have developed positive virtues and vices. They might even have lifted their eyes to the stars and uttered songs of love and death.
The blistering sun of noon was almost over our heads when we started on our pilgrimage to the river. A crooked pathway choked with sand, into which one’s feet sank deep at every step, led down the wedge-formed cleft between the towering mountains. We found the course fatiguing in the descent; what would it be when we came to retrace our steps? As we proceeded the gorge bent to the right and the glowing cliffs closed in.
At length the stupendous mountain range on the other side of the river again sprang into view. Soon we caught a glimpse of the rich-green forest strip which fringed, on either side, the wide course of the stream. There at least we would find shade. The heat had become frightful; it was as though one breathed flame.
We reached the river bank. The great torrent of a few weeks back had shrunk to a network of rivulets which swirled and eddied among the rocks and islanded sand-banks with a soothing murmur. The trees just there had been much thinned out; in places the undergrowth had completely disappeared,—eaten away by the stock which was sent thither in seasons of exceptional drought. A recent freshet had carpeted the shaded ground with soft, white sand. A dip in the tepid water refreshed one; the gentle, lapping wavelets whispered of coolness to come. But the river, so gentle that day, could at times arise like a wrathful Titan. In a high cliff-crevice hung a large tree-trunk flung up and wedged there during some recent flood.
Who could paint the terrific desolation of that home of chaos,—the towering peaks, the jutting ledges, the Cyclopean, bulging protuberances? That amphitheatre was surely the haunt of some ferocious, inimical Nature-spirit—brother to Death and a hater of Life. Yet life flourished even here, for the river, like a mother holding her children with tender clasp, led westward her progeny of trees over strait and perilous pathways. But the feet of the brood dared not stray from the hem of her garment.
The sun sank; as the glare was withdrawn each salient detail of the Titanic arena grew clearer and more definite against the background of darkening blue. Then shadow gathered all into her fold, and it was upon a pit whose black sides threatened to fall in and crush us, that the stars of the zenith looked down.
It was deep in the night, but the heat still raged, for the sides of the glowing rock-pit in which we lay continued to radiate what energy they had absorbed while the sun still smote on them. We had emerged from among the trees and built a large fire of drift-wood on a sandbank,—our object being to obtain illumination. It was quite necessary to have a bright light; from many of the logs poisonous centipedes, and an occasional scorpion, were emerging. But even comparatively close to the fire we could feel no increase of heat. My gun stood against a stone some distance away. I picked the weapon up, but involuntarily dropped it, for the barrel almost scorched my hand. And this at nearly midnight!
But what were those creatures darting here and there; anon rushing towards us over the livid surface of the sand? Horror. They were tarantulas,—red, hairy creatures, larger than mice. Within a few seconds there were hundreds of them circling around the fire with almost incredible swiftness. The firelight had attracted them from the cliff-chasms which yawned around us.
This was too much for flesh and blood to endure, so I beat a retreat to the river and waded out until I reached a flat rock. This proved to be uncomfortably hot, but the soles of my boots were thick, and I could every now and then cool them in the water. However, a few yards away lay a small island of sand, and on this I took refuge. From my retreat I could see the fire and its environs. I did not think Africa contained so many tarantulas as were then visible. They had the fire to themselves, for every member of the party had fled.
The air still felt as though one were in a closed room. But the murmur of the river became audible to an increasing degree on the western side, and soon a hot breath of air struck us. After a fitful succession of puffs a continuous wind set in,—a steady current, momentarily growing cooler. This was the sea-breeze stealing up the river gorge from the far-off Atlantic, rolling the mass of heated air before it and cooling the piled rocks,—helping them to fling off the yoke of torment put upon them by the cruel, arrogant sun. Soon the temperature began to fall rapidly, so I waded back, made a wide détour so as to avoid the tarantula-infested area, and fetched my kaross from where it lay among the trees. I then returned to my sand-islet and there sank into blessed sleep with the tepid water murmuring within a few feet of my weary head.
I awoke soon after 3 a.m. The wind had turned perishingly cold,—so cold that I decided to retire from my exposed situation and seek for some spot more or less sheltered from the streaming air-current. So I once more waded back through the tepid water and sought a refuge among the trees. The fire was still alight; I had to pass it. Not a single tarantula was visible; no doubt they had retired to their lairs among the rocks on account of the fall in the temperature. Yet I do not suppose the latter was below 80 Fahrenheit; the susceptibility of one’s skin is relative; my discomfort was due to the sudden change. I wished I had not left my thermometer at the wagon; it would have been interesting to take a reading at midnight.
Once more I fell asleep, with the tree-trunks groaning around me, as the boughs swayed in the ever-freshening gale.
Chapter Nine.Morning in the Gorge—Departure from Pella—Journey to Brabies—Protection of the Oryx—Its Peculiarities—Antelopes of the Desert and the Forest—Camping at Brabies.Daybreak,—and the chill sea-wind was still surging up the gorge. It was delightful; nevertheless, even among the sheltering trees, a fire was very comforting. The pageant of growing day was a wonder and a delight. The upper tiers of that titanic rock-city became glorious “under the opening eyelids of the morn.” They were refulgent with hitherto unsuspected beauty. Those acre-large splashes of vermilion, blue and amber-brown must have been due to lichen. It was strange that on the previous evening we had not noticed these. Perhaps they paled under the flames of day and only revived when the cool, moist sea-wind bathed them.After a hurried dip in the still-tepid water, followed by breakfast, we started on our journey back to Pella. The wind sank momentarily, but the air was still deliciously cool, for the bow of the sun-archer could not yet be depressed enough to send its searching arrows into the depths of the cleft through which our course lay. Soon the sea-wind folded its wings; not a breath stirred. From their eyries in the towering rock bastions the brown eagles swooped down as though to rend us, uttering wild and menacing cries.The relentless sunbeams searched ever lower upon the western face of the chasm. From the crannies gorgeous-hued lizards crept forth to bask. Their lovely colours—vivid crimson or deep, gentian blue seemed incongruous with their ungainly form and ferocious expression. Here and there rock-rabbits darted from ledge to ledge. Crossing our sandy pathway we occasionally noticed the spoor of a leopard, a badger or a snake. For such creatures night is the season of activity; by day they could choose the climate best suited to them,—among the deep, dark cavern-clefts with which this tumbled chaos is honeycombed.We were now beyond the area of shade; no longer did the cliff protect us. For an hour we laboured up the widening gorge, over the yielding sand,—in the glaring, unmitigated sunshine. It was with a grateful sense of relief that we reached Pella, somewhat breathless, but none the worse for our adventure.The teams were soon inspanned, so after thanking Father Simon and the nuns for their kind entertainment, and paying a farewell visit to the student of Aquinas in his dingy hut, we made a start for Brabies,—“the place of the withered flower,” as the Bushmen named it. At Brabies it was that we had decided to pitch our hunting camp, for we heard good reports as to the water in the vley there. No one, so far as we knew, had been there lately, but a heavy thunderstorm had been observed to pass over the vicinity of Brabies about a week previously. Our objective was about thirty miles away. There was a slight improvement in the weather. The cool spell of the distant sea, owing to last night’s wind, still lay upon the grateful desert.We pushed on steadily but could not travel fast, for the sand was heavy and the angular limestone fragments lay thick upon our course. However, we reached our destination just as the sun was going down. Brabies had no rock-saucer; its water was held in a vley, or shallow depression with a hard clay bottom. This vley was several hundred yards in circumference. It lay on an almost imperceptible rise; nevertheless this circumstance enabled anyone camping on its margin to gain a view over an immense area of desert. Usually, we had been told, at least one heavy thunderstorm broke over Brabies early in each season, and then the vley held water for about three weeks.With the exception of a few small troops of ostriches, immensely far off, no game was in sight. However, a long, low ridge—rising so slightly above the general level that the eye had difficulty in recognising it as an elevation at all—lay to the northward, some six miles away. We knew that the tract just on the other side of that ridge was one of the favourite feeding-grounds of the oryx. And it was oryx and nothing else that we were just then interested in. Judging by the amount of spoor, some of it quite fresh, our game could not be very far off.This more or less central area of Bushmanland,—a tract from ten to twelve hundred square miles in extent—was practically the last refuge of the oryx south of the Orange River. It is almost absolutely flat,—except on its northern and eastern margins, where the dunes intrude for an inconsiderable distance over its bounds. The tract is quite arid, but occasionally, in perhaps half-a-dozen spots, the underground rock-saucers hold water for from three to five weeks. So far as I had been able to ascertain, Brabies and one other, but nameless, vley were the only places in the whole enormous northern section of the desert where water ever lay on the surface. Brabies, as has been stated, usually contained water once, at least, during each season, but the other vley sometimes remained dry for years at a stretch. As might be imagined, the region was of no economic value.Owing to the circumstance that a measure of informal police protection had been afforded to the vicinity of Brabies during the previous two years, practically all the oryx in the desert had there congregated. I estimated their number at about twelve hundred. There was no reason why those animals should not have increased and multiplied. Andries was a Field Cornet,—an office combining the functions of a constable with those of a justice of the peace. I had appointed him Warden of the Desert Marches and Chief Protector of the Oryx and the Ostrich. Between us, we managed to protect these animals more or less effectively. But—“thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.”The oryx evinces several interesting peculiarities. I have mentioned in a previous chapter the remarkable formation of its foot,—the membrane connecting the wide-spreading toes, which enables it to gallop scathless over the Kanya stones which cripple all other animals. Another abnormality is shewn in the way the hair lies. If one wished to stroke the back of an oryx one would have to do so from back to front, as the hair slopes in a reverse direction as compared with all other antelopes. The oryx fawn is born with horns about four inches long, but the points are capped with a plug-like mass of horny substance. This falls off when the animal is about three weeks old.An oryx fawn, until it has reached the age of from three to four months, is a most extraordinary object. Its neck, chest and flanks are covered with long hair, vivid red in hue. It has a shaggy red mane and a big, black, muzzle; its ears are of enormous size. The first time I saw these creatures I almost mistook them for lions. Three of them stood up suddenly at a distance of about sixty yards and gazed at me. My horse was terrified to such an extent that he became unmanageable. It was only with difficulty that Andries was able to persuade me as to the true nature of the animals.The male and female oryx are identical in the matter of marking and are of approximately the same height, but the male is the heavier in build. The horns of the female are longer and straighter than those of the male, but are not so thick.Occasionally, in the cool season of the year, one used dogs in hunting the oryx. But unless a dog had been specially trained to the business, it was speedily killed. Under ordinary circumstances a dog most effectively attacks an animal behind or on the flank, but the oryx, without breaking his stride, can give a lightning-quick sweep with his formidable horns and impale anything within four feet of his heels or on either side. The dog that knows its business runs in front of the oryx, for the latter cannot depress his head sufficiently forward to make the horns effective against anything before it which is low on the ground. A trained dog can thus easily bring an oryx to bay, and hold him engaged until the hunter comes to close quarters.Here may be noted a contrast between the habits of the larger desert antelopes and of those antelopes which live in the forest. In the desert it is the males which head the flight, leaving the females and the weaklings to fend for themselves. But in the forest the male covers the retreat of his family and is always the last to flee. There is probably some connexion between the foregoing rule and the circumstance that the female of the antelope of the desert,—the oryx, the hartebeest and the blesbuck—is horned more or less as the male is, whereas the females of the forest dwellers,—the bushbuck, the koodoo and the impala—are hornless.The horses had been watered, fed and picketed; we had eaten our supper and finished our pipes. I took my kaross and wandered away for a few hundred yards so as to be alone and undisturbed by snoring men or snorting horses. The only possible cause of anxiety was in respect of snakes. We killed a large yellow cobra just at dusk. The spoor of the cobra,—the hooded yellow death,—could be seen among the tussocks in every direction. The previous year one of my men had had a horse killed by a snake close to where the wagon then stood; the skeleton of the animal was still in evidence.In the vicinity of the Brabies vley the sand was rather firmer than in most other parts of the desert; consequently cities of the desert mice abounded. Where mice were plentiful, so were snakes; they seemed to live together underground on the best of terms. In summer it was only at night that the snakes emerged and wandered abroad. However, cobras or no cobras, I intended to camp by myself.And then—once more the unutterable peace, the sumptuous palace of the night,—the purple curtains of infinity excluding all that made for discord,—the music of the whispering tongues that filled the void. How the limitless, made manifest in the throbbing universe of stars, responds to the infinite which the most insignificant human soul contains. These are the transcendent wonders which the mighty Kant bracketed together.An utterance of Shakespeare—embodying one of those cosmic imaginings only he or Goethe could have expressed, came to my mind—“the prophetic soul of the wide world dreaming on things to come.” If there be a spirit proper to our globe—a thinking and informing spirit—surely the desert should be its habitation. If such ever dwelt where men congregate, it does so no longer, for men have no longer leisure to think; they spend their strength in continuous futile labour, the fruits of which are ashes and dust. Leisure, opportunity to collate experience and appraise its results,—surely that is necessary to balanced thought,—towards being able to see things in their true proportions. But so-called progress has killed leisure.Where, to-day, is the voice of Truth to be heard? Not in the frantic and contradictory shoutings of the forum or the market place, nor in the groans of those doomed to unrequited and unleisured toil,—but I think that an attentive ear may sometimes hear her voice whispering in the wilderness. And this I know: that when a spent and wounded soul steals out and sinks humbly at the feet of Solitude, some kind and bountiful hand holds out to it the cup of Peace,—and often the pearl of Wisdom is dissolved in that cup for the spirit’s refreshment.
Daybreak,—and the chill sea-wind was still surging up the gorge. It was delightful; nevertheless, even among the sheltering trees, a fire was very comforting. The pageant of growing day was a wonder and a delight. The upper tiers of that titanic rock-city became glorious “under the opening eyelids of the morn.” They were refulgent with hitherto unsuspected beauty. Those acre-large splashes of vermilion, blue and amber-brown must have been due to lichen. It was strange that on the previous evening we had not noticed these. Perhaps they paled under the flames of day and only revived when the cool, moist sea-wind bathed them.
After a hurried dip in the still-tepid water, followed by breakfast, we started on our journey back to Pella. The wind sank momentarily, but the air was still deliciously cool, for the bow of the sun-archer could not yet be depressed enough to send its searching arrows into the depths of the cleft through which our course lay. Soon the sea-wind folded its wings; not a breath stirred. From their eyries in the towering rock bastions the brown eagles swooped down as though to rend us, uttering wild and menacing cries.
The relentless sunbeams searched ever lower upon the western face of the chasm. From the crannies gorgeous-hued lizards crept forth to bask. Their lovely colours—vivid crimson or deep, gentian blue seemed incongruous with their ungainly form and ferocious expression. Here and there rock-rabbits darted from ledge to ledge. Crossing our sandy pathway we occasionally noticed the spoor of a leopard, a badger or a snake. For such creatures night is the season of activity; by day they could choose the climate best suited to them,—among the deep, dark cavern-clefts with which this tumbled chaos is honeycombed.
We were now beyond the area of shade; no longer did the cliff protect us. For an hour we laboured up the widening gorge, over the yielding sand,—in the glaring, unmitigated sunshine. It was with a grateful sense of relief that we reached Pella, somewhat breathless, but none the worse for our adventure.
The teams were soon inspanned, so after thanking Father Simon and the nuns for their kind entertainment, and paying a farewell visit to the student of Aquinas in his dingy hut, we made a start for Brabies,—“the place of the withered flower,” as the Bushmen named it. At Brabies it was that we had decided to pitch our hunting camp, for we heard good reports as to the water in the vley there. No one, so far as we knew, had been there lately, but a heavy thunderstorm had been observed to pass over the vicinity of Brabies about a week previously. Our objective was about thirty miles away. There was a slight improvement in the weather. The cool spell of the distant sea, owing to last night’s wind, still lay upon the grateful desert.
We pushed on steadily but could not travel fast, for the sand was heavy and the angular limestone fragments lay thick upon our course. However, we reached our destination just as the sun was going down. Brabies had no rock-saucer; its water was held in a vley, or shallow depression with a hard clay bottom. This vley was several hundred yards in circumference. It lay on an almost imperceptible rise; nevertheless this circumstance enabled anyone camping on its margin to gain a view over an immense area of desert. Usually, we had been told, at least one heavy thunderstorm broke over Brabies early in each season, and then the vley held water for about three weeks.
With the exception of a few small troops of ostriches, immensely far off, no game was in sight. However, a long, low ridge—rising so slightly above the general level that the eye had difficulty in recognising it as an elevation at all—lay to the northward, some six miles away. We knew that the tract just on the other side of that ridge was one of the favourite feeding-grounds of the oryx. And it was oryx and nothing else that we were just then interested in. Judging by the amount of spoor, some of it quite fresh, our game could not be very far off.
This more or less central area of Bushmanland,—a tract from ten to twelve hundred square miles in extent—was practically the last refuge of the oryx south of the Orange River. It is almost absolutely flat,—except on its northern and eastern margins, where the dunes intrude for an inconsiderable distance over its bounds. The tract is quite arid, but occasionally, in perhaps half-a-dozen spots, the underground rock-saucers hold water for from three to five weeks. So far as I had been able to ascertain, Brabies and one other, but nameless, vley were the only places in the whole enormous northern section of the desert where water ever lay on the surface. Brabies, as has been stated, usually contained water once, at least, during each season, but the other vley sometimes remained dry for years at a stretch. As might be imagined, the region was of no economic value.
Owing to the circumstance that a measure of informal police protection had been afforded to the vicinity of Brabies during the previous two years, practically all the oryx in the desert had there congregated. I estimated their number at about twelve hundred. There was no reason why those animals should not have increased and multiplied. Andries was a Field Cornet,—an office combining the functions of a constable with those of a justice of the peace. I had appointed him Warden of the Desert Marches and Chief Protector of the Oryx and the Ostrich. Between us, we managed to protect these animals more or less effectively. But—“thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.”
The oryx evinces several interesting peculiarities. I have mentioned in a previous chapter the remarkable formation of its foot,—the membrane connecting the wide-spreading toes, which enables it to gallop scathless over the Kanya stones which cripple all other animals. Another abnormality is shewn in the way the hair lies. If one wished to stroke the back of an oryx one would have to do so from back to front, as the hair slopes in a reverse direction as compared with all other antelopes. The oryx fawn is born with horns about four inches long, but the points are capped with a plug-like mass of horny substance. This falls off when the animal is about three weeks old.
An oryx fawn, until it has reached the age of from three to four months, is a most extraordinary object. Its neck, chest and flanks are covered with long hair, vivid red in hue. It has a shaggy red mane and a big, black, muzzle; its ears are of enormous size. The first time I saw these creatures I almost mistook them for lions. Three of them stood up suddenly at a distance of about sixty yards and gazed at me. My horse was terrified to such an extent that he became unmanageable. It was only with difficulty that Andries was able to persuade me as to the true nature of the animals.
The male and female oryx are identical in the matter of marking and are of approximately the same height, but the male is the heavier in build. The horns of the female are longer and straighter than those of the male, but are not so thick.
Occasionally, in the cool season of the year, one used dogs in hunting the oryx. But unless a dog had been specially trained to the business, it was speedily killed. Under ordinary circumstances a dog most effectively attacks an animal behind or on the flank, but the oryx, without breaking his stride, can give a lightning-quick sweep with his formidable horns and impale anything within four feet of his heels or on either side. The dog that knows its business runs in front of the oryx, for the latter cannot depress his head sufficiently forward to make the horns effective against anything before it which is low on the ground. A trained dog can thus easily bring an oryx to bay, and hold him engaged until the hunter comes to close quarters.
Here may be noted a contrast between the habits of the larger desert antelopes and of those antelopes which live in the forest. In the desert it is the males which head the flight, leaving the females and the weaklings to fend for themselves. But in the forest the male covers the retreat of his family and is always the last to flee. There is probably some connexion between the foregoing rule and the circumstance that the female of the antelope of the desert,—the oryx, the hartebeest and the blesbuck—is horned more or less as the male is, whereas the females of the forest dwellers,—the bushbuck, the koodoo and the impala—are hornless.
The horses had been watered, fed and picketed; we had eaten our supper and finished our pipes. I took my kaross and wandered away for a few hundred yards so as to be alone and undisturbed by snoring men or snorting horses. The only possible cause of anxiety was in respect of snakes. We killed a large yellow cobra just at dusk. The spoor of the cobra,—the hooded yellow death,—could be seen among the tussocks in every direction. The previous year one of my men had had a horse killed by a snake close to where the wagon then stood; the skeleton of the animal was still in evidence.
In the vicinity of the Brabies vley the sand was rather firmer than in most other parts of the desert; consequently cities of the desert mice abounded. Where mice were plentiful, so were snakes; they seemed to live together underground on the best of terms. In summer it was only at night that the snakes emerged and wandered abroad. However, cobras or no cobras, I intended to camp by myself.
And then—once more the unutterable peace, the sumptuous palace of the night,—the purple curtains of infinity excluding all that made for discord,—the music of the whispering tongues that filled the void. How the limitless, made manifest in the throbbing universe of stars, responds to the infinite which the most insignificant human soul contains. These are the transcendent wonders which the mighty Kant bracketed together.
An utterance of Shakespeare—embodying one of those cosmic imaginings only he or Goethe could have expressed, came to my mind—“the prophetic soul of the wide world dreaming on things to come.” If there be a spirit proper to our globe—a thinking and informing spirit—surely the desert should be its habitation. If such ever dwelt where men congregate, it does so no longer, for men have no longer leisure to think; they spend their strength in continuous futile labour, the fruits of which are ashes and dust. Leisure, opportunity to collate experience and appraise its results,—surely that is necessary to balanced thought,—towards being able to see things in their true proportions. But so-called progress has killed leisure.
Where, to-day, is the voice of Truth to be heard? Not in the frantic and contradictory shoutings of the forum or the market place, nor in the groans of those doomed to unrequited and unleisured toil,—but I think that an attentive ear may sometimes hear her voice whispering in the wilderness. And this I know: that when a spent and wounded soul steals out and sinks humbly at the feet of Solitude, some kind and bountiful hand holds out to it the cup of Peace,—and often the pearl of Wisdom is dissolved in that cup for the spirit’s refreshment.