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Lodges in the Wilderness, by William Charles Scully.

THE BUSHMANLAND DESERT--ITS NATURE AND EXTENT--DESERT TRAVELLING--THE "TOA."

The world moves rapidly and with increasing momentum. Even regions remote from those communities which the stress of increasing population and the curse of unleisured industrialism send spinning "down the ringing grooves of change," are often so disturbed or overwhelmed by the overflow of what threatens to be an almost worldwide current of morbid energy, that within a strangely short period their character is apt completely to alter and their individuality to become utterly destroyed.

I do not know how the Great Bushmanland Desert has fared in this respect--not having visited it for several years--but if some unlikely combination of circumstances were to take me once more to Aroegas or Koisabies,--to the tiny spring of living water that trickles from the depths and lies like a precious jewel hidden in the dark, narrow cavern at Inkruip,--or to where the flaming, red-belted cone of Bantom Berg glares over the dragon-folds of the dune-devil sprawling at its feet, I should go in fear of finding empty sardine-tins and broken bottles lying among the fragments of prehistoric pottery and flint implements which were but recently the only traces of man to be found in those abodes of solitude.

The Bushmanland Desert is but little-known. A few nomads--some of European and some of mixed descent--hang on its fringe. Here and there ephemeral mat-house villages, whose dwellers are dependent on the sparse and uncertain bounty of the sky, will, perhaps, be found for a season. But when the greedy sun has reclaimed the last drop of moisture from shallow "pan" or sand-choked rock-saucer, the mat-houses are folded up and, like the Arabs, these dwellers steal silently away from the blighting visage of the Thirst King. But the greater portion of Bushmanland may be ranked among the most complete solitudes of the earth. The lion, the rhinoceros, and, in fact, most of the larger indigenous fauna have disappeared from it--with the autochthonous pygmy human inhabitants; nevertheless it is a region full of varied and distinctive interest. The landscape consists either of vast plains, mirage-haunted and as level as the sea,--arid mountain ranges--usually mere piles of naked rock, or immense sand-dunes, massed and convoluted. The latter often change their form and occasionally their location under stress of the violent winds which sweep down from the torrid north.

The tract is an extensive one, probably upwards of 50,000 square miles lie within its limits. It is bounded on the north by the Gariep or Orange River--but as that flows and eddies at the bottom of a tremendous gorge which is cut off from the plains by a lofty, stark range of mountains,--coal-black in colour for their greater extent and glowing hot throughout the long, cloudless day, the traveller seldom sees it. The western boundary is the Atlantic Ocean; the eastern an imaginary line drawn approximately south from the Great Aughrabies Falls to the Kat Kop Range. If we bisect this line with another drawn due east from the coast to the Lange Berg, we shall get a sufficiently recognisable boundary on the south. From the tract so defined must be deducted the small area surrounding the Copper Mines, and a narrow strip of mountain land running parallel with, and about sixty miles from the coast. This strip is sparsely inhabited by European farmers.

The occasional traversing of this vast tract lay within the scope of my official duties. My invariable travelling companion was Field Cornet Andries Esterhuizen and a small retinue of police, drivers, and after-riders. We never escaped hardship; the sun scorched fiercely and the sand over which we tramped was often hot enough to cook an egg in. Water, excepting the supply we carried with us, was as a rule unobtainable; consequently we had to eschew washing completely. We often had to travel by night so as to spare the oxen, and as the water-casks usually almost filled the wagon, we then had to tramp, vainly longing for sleep, through long, weary hours, from sunset to sunrise. And after the sun had arisen the heat, as a rule, made sleep impossible.

It was to the more inaccessible--and therefore comparatively inviolate-- expanses of this wilderness that I was always tempted to penetrate. Therein were to be found a scanty flora and a fauna--each unusual and distinctive,--composed of hardy organisms, which an apprenticeship from days unthinkably ancient had habituated to their most difficult conditions of existence. If, somewhere near the margin of the great central plain, we happened to cross the track of a vagrant thunderstorm, we would see myriads of delicately-petalled blossoms miraculously surviving, like the Faithful Rulers of Babylon in the Fiery Furnace. On the flank of some flaming sand-dune we would find the tulip-like blooms of the Gethyllis flourishing in leafless splendour. Their corollas were of crystalline white splashed with vivid crimson; deep in each goblet lay the clustered anthers,--a convoluted mass of glowing gold. Is this flower a grail, bearing beauty too ineffable to die, through an arid aeon from one cycle of fertility to another?

Sometimes our course led over tracts of sand--sand so light and powdery that the foot sank into it ankle-deep at every step. Occasionally we crossed high, abrupt ridges of black or chocolate-hued rock, separated from each other by gorges so deep that except at noontide, no sunbeam penetrated them. But usually our course lay across plains, infinite in extent. In the Summer season such were covered with heavy-headed shocks of "toa" grass,--yellow or light green in hue, according to the more or less scanty rainfall. But in Winter all the waving plumes crumbled away, leaving the bases of the tussocks as black as pitch. Where the hills and the plains met, stood groves of immense dragon aloes--some cumbered with nests of the sociable grossbeak--each as large as a hayrick.

The lordly oryx crossed our path; the ungainly hartebeest lumbered away to windward at a pace which made pursuit hopeless; the gazelles of the desert fled before us like thistledown borne on an eddying wind. The roofs of many a city of desert mice sank beneath our footsteps and the horned adder hissed defiance at our caravan from his home at the tussock's base. We crossed the zig-zag track made by the yellow cobra when prowling in the darkness. The plumed ostrich scudded away at our approach, the great bustard of the Kalihari spread his powerful wings and flew forth heavily until he almost crossed the horizon, and the "kapok vogeltje," no bigger than a wren, twittered at us from his seat of cunning on the outside of the simulated snowball which is his nest.

We did not fear the poisoned arrows of the Bushmen, for that strange race which formerly occupied the scenes of our wanderings had long since disappeared from the face of the earth. Within the wide bounds of that tract to which the Bushman gave his name, there existed but two individuals of his race,--an old, withered, toothless man, and a bent and ancient crone. These wraiths, who subsisted on roots, reptiles and insects, still haunted the mountains near Dabienoras, and levied a kind of toll on the very occasional traveller. This took the form of a trifling contribution of tobacco and sugar.

ANDRIES ESTERHUIZEN--SILVERFONTEIN--THE KOEKER-BOOM--GAMOEP-- SAND-GROUSE--OUR HORSES--KANXAS--NIGHT IN THE DESERT--DAWN--HEAT--THE MIRAGE--BANTOM BERG--THE DUNE-MONSTER--THE FLIGHT OF THE OXEN.

Andries Esterhuizen had lived all his life on the fringe of Bushmanland. His farm, Silverfontein, which lay a little more than twenty miles from the Ookiep Mines, had been for many years the principal jumping-off place for expeditions to the desert. Andries was a Field Cornet,--an office which empowered him to arrest offenders against the law. He was a typical Boer of the better class. Large-boned and tall, his increased bulk had for several years prevented his doing that which his soud loved above all else,--riding down a herd of oryx. His blue, laughing eyes shone from a ruddy face. His brown beard was streaked with grey. His great fist could have felled an ox; the tempest of his laughter was like the neighing of war-steeds.

Andries sent his ox-wagon to fetch my guns and baggage. Next day I followed in a cart drawn by four strong horses, for heavy stretches of sand had to be crossed before reaching Silverfontein.

On arrival there I met with a hearty welcome. The wagon stood, fully packed, before the farm-house door. The heaviest and most important item of the load was three casks of water, for we were about to enter and encamp in the deadly dune-veld where Thirst is a king who has reigned supreme since the world was young. We meant to storm his strong city and occupy it for a season,--well knowing, however, that we should soon have to retire, leaving his ancient realm unconquered and unspoiled. As we did not mean to be luxurious, our commissariat list only included coffee, sugar, salt and "Boer-biscuits" . Of these Mrs Esterhuizen had manufactured enough to fill three immense linen sacks. For meat we should have to depend upon our guns.

The country surrounding Silverfontein was wild and rugged. Long, dyked ridges, foam-tipped with snow-white quartzite rocks, stretched away to infinity, north and south; here and there a naked granite finger pointed to the cloudless sky. On the western side these ridges seemed to break like waves against the enormous bronze-hued bastions of the Kamiesbergen; on the eastward they sank by degrees into the ocean-like expanse of the desert.

Huddled in irregular patches where the dykes sprang from the red sand were the "koekerboome" These were gigantic aloes of archaic form and immense age. As a rule their height was from fifteen to twenty feet. Their ungainly trunks were cone-shaped, groined and heavily buttressed. The rosette-crowned ends of their dichotomous branches collectively formed a more or less irregular oval. But at one spot, as we crossed the line where the hills ended and the plains began, we noticed some with smooth, slender, white boles rising to a height of nearly sixty feet,--each crowned with a single cup-like whorl of leaves.

Gamoep, where the last water was to be found, lay on the actual edge of the level desert some distance to the south-east of Silverfontein. To reach it involved a long day's trek, for the route was through soft sand. At Gamoep was a permanent spring,--the water of which, although fit for animals, was not quite suitable for human consumption. Alongside the pool which the spring feeds we decided to rest for twenty-four hours, for the oxen had a heavy strain to undergo and we felt it necessary to cover as much as possible of the first part of our journey during the cool hours of night.

We slept soundly after our long tramp. Next morning, as the sun began to soar, sand-grouse in flocks of almost incredible numbers came sweeping in from the desert. The wearied birds alighted a few hundred yards from the pool, and there rested for about ten minutes. Then they arose, swooped down to the edge of the pool for a hurried sip, and sped back whence they came. We shot sufficient of these for our immediate needs.

Late in the afternoon, when the sting had gone out of the sunshine, we drove the oxen to the pool and let them drink their fill. We had brought two horses--my old hunting-horse, "Prince," and another "Swaitland," renamed "Bucephalus," for Hendrick, my after-rider. But the horses had to remain for the present at Gamoep, in charge of Danster, one of our Hottentots. Piet Noona, another Hottentot, and his nephew,--a lad of about twelve years of age, were also left behind for the purpose of taking charge of the oxen when they returned, maddened with thirst, after being released from the yoke at the camping-place under Bantom Berg and the Great Dune, which was our objective.

Shortly before sundown we inspanned and made a start, shaping our course north-east. Soon we had crossed the last rocky ridge,--the boundary separating the hilly country from the plains. The latter were covered with the shock-bearing tussocks of "toa,"--waving plumes at that time bleached to a light-yellow by the ardours of the summer sun. We passed the head of the Kanxas Gorge,--a miniature canyon whose rocky, perpendicular sides contained caves which had been until a comparatively recent date occupied by Bushmen. The walls of these caves shew records of their former inhabitants in the form of black-pigmented script. This consists mainly of groups of short, parallel lines crossed at various angles by lines similar. But neither here nor in any of the haunts of the now-vanished Bushmen I have visited in the north-western areas of the Cape Province, have I seen paintings of men and animals such as are to be found in other parts of South Africa. A spring had existed at Kanxas within the memory of living Trek-Boers. Of this no vestige then remained. Herein lies an additional item of evidence pointing to the ominous conclusion that South Africa is slowly but surely drying up.

Night fell; the primrose-yellow of the "toa" faded to ghostly white; not a breath of wind stirred. Excepting the creak, creak, of the straining yokes not a sound was audible. Day faded from the sky and the cupola of stars seemed to descend around us like a curtain. We walked apart and communed with our individual selves. When by night one enters the door of the desert speech seems banal and incongruous.

At about midnight we outspanned. The oxen were, however, kept tied to the yokes; we meant to take but an hour's rest. The patient cattle laid themselves down at once; an occasional long-drawn sigh being the only evidence of their existence. Anon the flame of our candle-bush fire ascended into the windless air,--straight as a column. Coffee was soon ready and biscuits distributed. After we had eaten and drunk, pipes were lit. Then we threw ourselves prone on the sand and gazed, wrapt, into the glittering folds of the star-curtain.

How unutterably still it was; how ineffably peaceful. The spell of silence still sealed our lips. The world of men--with its fierce and futile struggles, its crowded and ever-changing illusions, seemed but a dream. Could it be that in other regions of that earth, which there seemed so austere, so sinless and so ordered, men were struggling in warren-like cities? For that night, however, the desert was the only reality; there we seemed to have attained Nirvana.

The hour of rest soon came to an end; once more the oxen were yoked and our wagon lumbered on. There was no longer a track to guide us; our wheels drew a double-furrow through soil that had never groaned to the share of a plough forged by mortal hands,--that will never yield a crop sown by man. There were no dangers to dread but snakes; no obstacles to avoid--except an occasional tract, ten to fifteen yards in diameter, which had been undermined by desert mice. Through the crust of such a tract the wagon would have sunk to the axles; accordingly a Hottentot was detailed to walk a few yards ahead and give notice of the fact should a mouse-city lie in our course. We steered neither by the compass nor the stars, not yet by any landmark. It was the instinct of Andries and his desert-bred servants,--that "sense of direction" possessed by men whose perceptions have not been destroyed by civilisation,--which enabled them to steer us, straight as an arrow, towards an unseen objective we should only reach two days later.

As night wore slowly on the deep sand became a weariness. Sleep grew importunate; her fingers pressed down our eyelids and the folds of her trailing robe entangled our lead-shod feet. The moon, after her first majestic soar above the horizon, seemed to climb slower and more slowly towards the zenith. It would have been a luxury to fall prone on the velvet-soft sand and sink at once into dreamless oblivion.

But this might not be; our plan of campaign had been cunningly devised and had to be strictly adhered to. We were about to contend with an enemy who gave no quarter. The fiat of Andries had gone forth; we were to travel on without pause until sunrise. Then we might sleep if the sun permitted.

At length the seemingly interminable night ended: "the phantom of false morning," which so often had mocked us, gave place to dawn--virginal and splendid. Then day came on rapid feet. Just as the sun cleared the rim of the earth the wagon halted, and at once the yokes fell from the necks of the tired oxen. Within a few minutes we lay fast asleep beneath a hastily-constructed sun-screen.

Scarcely more than an hour had elapsed before the heat awoke us and we sprang to our feet with hardly a trace of fatigue. The strong sunshine seemed to sting us to vigour; it was aether rather than air that we breathed. Around us lay infinite expanses, glowing and quivering,-- radiating fervour against fervour into the moveless atmosphere. Before us and to our right and left the horizon was unbroken. Behind us could still be faintly traced the contour of the hilly country from which we had yesterday emerged.

The oxen, after feeding a little, wandered about--attempting from time to time to escape homeward. They dreaded this plunge into the waterless waste. They instinctively anticipated the heavy sufferings to which they were doomed. So far they were not painfully thirsty; cattle bred on the borders of the desert in their search for pasturage often go voluntarily waterless for forty-eight hours at a stretch. Even in summer they do not feel this much of an inconvenience. Late in the afternoon the team was driven up and once more inspanned. Again we pressed forward on our course.

The heat was still intense; we knew it would last until sundown. The primrose-tinted carpet of the desert seemed to have turned to flame. Before us some mocking genius of the sky painted mirage-pictures. Blue seas gemmed with verdant islands, rocky beaches from which sprang groves of lofty trees,--mountain ranges clothed with boskage and suggesting cool streams in their valleys--enticed us onward. Now and then the pictures grew distorted; occasionally they became inverted in the twinkling of an eye. Then the mountains stood poised upon their summits and the trees hung downward. Perhaps the operator of the magic lantern which projected these phantasms on the sky-screen was the vizier of the Thirst King--striving to lure the unwary to a terrible doom.

Although the heat was so intense, we were not badly distressed by it. The thrill of the unaccustomed exhilarated us; each breath we drew was as a draught of new wine. Interesting and unusual incidents befel. Ever and anon a troop of ostriches sped over the plains, their white plumes outstretched and thrilling. On the right, arising from the hollow of an undulation upwards of a mile away, could be seen a small thicket of "black sticks." Irregularly grouped and standing at various angles they shewed clear and distinct through the miraculously transparent air. "Gemsbokke," said Andries, laconically. The bodies of the oryx were out of sight; nothing was visible but their long and almost straight horns. Soon the earth-tremor betrayed us, and the thicket of "black sticks" became agitated. It broke up, scattered and reformed in smaller thickets. Then a herd of about fifty oryx swung at a gallop out of the hollow and sped up the wind, leaving a long trail of dust to mark its course.

Night fell again; again the star-curtain descended. At about ten o'clock we once more outspanned. There was not a breath of wind. The desert was vocal with unfamiliar sounds. The weird cries of the jackal were borne from afar across the plains; the clucking lizards put out their heads and conversed from burrow to burrow; the plaintive notes of the night-flying grouse fell from the sky like a rain of echoes. Under the protecting wing of darkness the solitude became populous and vocal with strange tongues.

We inspanned after an hour's rest. The longest and most wearying effort of our pilgrimage had now to be undertaken; our journey's end had to be reached before the yokes again were loosened. The night seemed endless; we were spent from the long travail. The yearning for sleep became acutely painful. We swayed and staggered as we followed the creaking wagon.

Dawn broke at length, but we were too weary, too undone to enjoy its loveliness. As the light grew we became aware of an abrupt eminence of granite on our left front; it arose, in the form of a steep cone, from a monstrous, agglomerated mass of copper-tinted, shapeless hummocks. This was Bantom Berg,--the "Belted Mountain,"--its red-cinctured bulk bathed in the first sunbeams, its feet entangled in the illimitable coils of the dune-tract. The latter at once seized and held the attention.

When day had fully dissipated the faint haze of morning we endeavoured to appraise the contours of this gross, amorphous entity,--for the concept that it was one and indivisible had gradually but irresistibly formed. It grew more and more enormous; more gross and inimical. Irregular and convoluted ridges arose from it here and there; it appeared to be absolutely bare of vegetation. In the centre was piled a humped, bulging mass; out of this Bantom Berg lifted its clean-cut cone of granite,--a soaring sphynx still waiting for the carver's chisel. Here and there columns of dust--slender beneath but widely dilating above at an enormous height, stalked slowly over the body of the prone monster, marking each the path of a miniature whirlwind. As we drew near, the face of the dune-tract once more became indefinite and complicated; for a time the eye could not follow nor appraise its details. But suddenly the thing explained itself; from the central mass, the prostrate carcase of the obscene creature, a number of league-long tentacles, consisting of sand-dunes, extended. These were thick at the base, but they tapered away to nothingness. Like a crouching spider or a half-huddled cuttle-fish the monstrosity sprawled,--its talon-tentacles seeming to gather in the plains--to infest them like a malignant cancer.

The character of the country we were traversing had changed; again the ground was hard beneath our feet; angular fragments of limestone were strewn over its surface. It was as though the dune-devil had collected and assimilated the surface sand so that its loathly limbs might develop. Inexpressibly sinister was this creature,--this mysterious, insatiable intruder from the desolate northern wastes. It seemed to be endowed with some low-graded form of rudimentary life; otherwise it was hard to account for the definite and arbitrary variations in the scheme of its southward advance. For the tentacles did not all extend in the same direction; occasionally one curved in its course and developed against the prevailing wind. The dune-monster was the slow-pacing steed of the Thirst King; it was his throne, his host and his strong city; it was the abhorrent body of which he was the resistless and implacable soul!

Our camping-place lay within the curve of one of the tentacles; it was expedient from the stand-point of the hunter to have the mounded sand between us and the plains--thus affording concealment. The sun was high when the yokes dropped once more. The unhappy oxen, now very thirsty, wandered about emitting low moans of distress. Their fundamental instincts told them that no water was near; their inherited faith in the wisdom and power of man had, however, given them the thought that relief might be provided. Suddenly, however, primordial instinct gained ascendency; their minds were made up. They paced, lowing, to the trail; then advanced along it at a trot. Soon the trot altered to a wild gallop. To-morrow, before noon, they would charge down on Gamoep--and woe to man or beast obstructing their course. Red-eyed, and with blackened tongues extended from roaring, tortured throats, they would fling themselves into the pool and drink their fill. At Gamoep they would remain for four restful days; then they would be brought back to our camp by Piet Noona and his nephew.

So at length we were within the dominions of the Thirst King--our gauntlet thrown down at the gates of his wrath; we were almost within the grasp of his awful hand. The last link with the world inhabited by men snapped when the hapless oxen disappeared over the rim of the desert. Like a water-logged ship in a tideless sea--like a derelict among the Sargossa weeds,--the wagon stood in the solitude and silence, with the cloudless sky above and the sun-scorched earth beneath--with the dune-fiend watching us from his lair. It was almost an insult to the landscape--this wood-and-canvas construction of man, hauled jolting and groaning across the pathless desert by tamed and tortured beasts. It was a disfigurement on the face of Solitude,--an incorporate insult flung like a guage against the ramparts of one of Nature's most jealously guarded fortresses.

Under the shadow of the wagon-sail we slept throughout the day; the sun was down before we awoke. Once more night put on the garment of life. It was a desert-dweller who wrote that the heavens declared the glory of God; the first astrologer must have had his home in the wilderness. Over the desert the stars, unfolding a glory not revealed elsewhere, descend like a swarm of bees and seem to busy themselves with destiny.

Whispers of ghostly voices close at hand,--faint and far-off cries,-- flutters of spectral wings--pulsed through the darkness. In the desert, the brighter the firmament at night, the more intensely darkness seems to brood over the earth,--the more insistent becomes the idea that one is surrounded by living beings, unhuman and unimaginable.

Hark! a sound of sinister import; involuntarily one sprang to grasp the rifle standing against the wagon-wheel. But an instant's reflection brought reassurance; it was but the booming of an ostrich far out on the plains that had conjured up scenes of other days,--when questing lions prowled around camp fires, now long since quenched. The most experienced ear can hardly distinguish the distant voice of a lion from that of an ostrich. Here, however, we might rest unscathed by beasts of prey; the only possible danger was from cobras and horned adders which, being unable to sustain the heat of the earth's surface by day, remain underground and emerge by night to practise their respective trades.

Sleep, sudden and imperative, would not be denied; we had the arrears of two wakeful nights to pay. Dune, desert and star,--past, present and future--what were they? Where were they? Whither was the awakening night-wind bearing us?

THE SEARCH FOR MEAT--DEATH OF THE ORYX--THE FLANK OF THE DUNE-- OUTWITTING A JACKAL--HENDRICK, MY GUARDIAN--THIRST--THE DISTANT RAIN-- TYPHON--THE SOUTHERN SIMOOM.

Daybreak found us sitting close to the candle-bush fire, for the air of morning was chill. Soon the kettle boiled and coffee was prepared. Meat was badly needed; we had eaten the last of the sand-grouse on the previous day, and a diet of unrelieved rusks is apt to pall. So we decided that I was to take my rifle and, accompanied by Hendrick, go forth in search of something to shoot.

Hendrick and I shaped our course along the western flank of the dune-tentacle close to which we were camped, meaning to cross it near its point of emergence from the main dune. On reaching a suitable spot we climbed to the top, a height of some twenty feet vertically, and carefully scanned the plain on the eastern side. The light was yet faint and, as we were facing the east, otherwise unfavourable. While we lay prone a jackal shambled up the steep slope of loose sand and met us, face to face. The creature regarded us with quaint bewilderment for a second, and then scampered back with a yelp of dismay.

So far as we could ascertain the plain before us was empty of game. Gloom, intensified by contrast with the developing pageant of morning, still lurked among the shrubs and tussocks. In front, some six hundred yards away, lay another dune-tentacle. This did not, however, extend in quite the same direction as the one we occupied, its course being a few degrees more to the southward for the greater length, while the extremity curved slightly back towards us. The intervening space was soon crossed. Once more we clambered up through loose sand that flowed at a touch; then we lay prone on the flat top, searching with expectant eyes the new expanse revealed.

The light had now improved; a limitless plain opened to south and east. Northward, the wind-scourged side of the main dune extended like a sea-worn cliff. The faint, diaphanous suspicion of haze incidental to newborn day, which lay film-wise over the yet-unawakened desert, did not interfere with our vision.

A twenty-foot elevation gives the eye an immense range. Game was now in sight; five separate groups of ostriches could be located. These were miles apart,--their units varying in number from five to twenty, or thereabouts. Away in the dim distance southward some large animals were visible; they moved slowly westward. These were almost certainly oryx. About six hundred yards off, straight before us, was a small herd of springbuck; they were busily grazing, moving to the right as they grazed. This circumstance, combined with the fact that the oryx were moving in the same direction, indicated that out on the plains there was an air-current from westward; consequently there was some likelihood of the day being fairly cool.

The springbuck were too far away to fire at; probabilities would have been too much in favour of a miss. On foot in the desert, missing one's shot meant that one's chances of obtaining meat were practically at an end for the day. So there was nothing for it but to wait. Perhaps a paauw might feed up to within range. We had seen many paauws on the wing the previous day.

What most surprised us was the number of jackals. Several of these sneaking marauders were visible, loping here and there. One approached the springbuck; a ram put down his head and charged straight at the intruder. The latter fled, yelping dolorously. The buck, his head still lowered, pursued, and gained easily upon the fugitive who, hard pressed, doubled over and over again on his devious course. At length the jackal took refuge in a burrow, and the buck trotted back to join his mates, who had apparently taken no notice of the incident.

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