Immediately to the south of the great Orange River for three hundred
arid miles of its course before it sinks through the thirsty sands, or
spooms in resistless torrent into the Atlantic Ocean, lies a region of
which little is known, in which dwell people unlike any others in South
Africa, or possibly in the world.
This region is known as Bushmanland--the name having reference to its
former inhabitants who, proving themselves "unfit," were abolished from
the face of the earth. Bushmanland is at present intermittently
inhabited by a nomadic population of Europeans of Dutch descent, who are
known as "Trek-Boers." To "trek" means, literally, to "pull," but its
colloquial significance is--to move about from place to place.
The Trek-Boers are, so to say, poor relations of the sturdy Dutchmen who
have done so much towards reclaiming South Africa from savagery. The
conditions under which they live are not favourable to moral or physical
improvement.
These people are dwellers in tents and beehive-shaped structures known
as "mat-houses," a form of architecture adopted from the Hottentots.
The latter are constructed of large mats made of rushes strung upon
strands of bark or other vegetable fibre, and are stretched over wattles
stuck by the larger end into the ground in a circle, the diameter of
which may vary from fifteen to twenty-five feet, and which have the thin
ends drawn down over each other until a dome is formed. Such structures
are lighter and more portable than the lodges of the North American
Indians--in fact one may easily be erected and pulled down within five
minutes. Strange to say they are almost completely water-tight.
A wagon and a couple of tents or mat-houses constitutes the camp and
castle of the Trek-Boer. He has never known anything else in the shape
of a dwelling; it satisfies all his architectural aspirations, it
fulfils his ideal of comfort in a tenement, and he harbours contempt for
any structure which cannot be moved about to suit the convenience or
caprice of its owner.
The Trek-Boer owns no land. He wanders with his flocks and herds over
the vast, unsurveyed tract which is all the world to him, following the
uncertain courses of thunderstorms which happen to have been deflected
from their ordinary beat and strayed across the desert. The rain from
these intermittently fills the shallow, cup-like depressions in the
underlying rock with water. Such depressions are invariably choked with
sand, but by digging at certain known spots a scanty supply of water may
sometimes be obtained.
The Trek-Boer occasionally becomes rich in flocks and herds, but every
eight or ten years the inevitable drought occurs. Then his stock dies
off from thirst and starvation, and he has to begin the world again, a
poor man.
The Trek-Boer is a being _sui generis_. He is usually ignorant to a
degree unknown among men called civilised. He is untruthful,
prejudiced, superstitious, cunning, lazy, and dirty. On the other hand
he is extremely hospitable. Simple as a child in many things, and as
trusting where his confidence has once been given, he cannot be known
without being loved, for all his peculiarities. The desert life, which
has filled the Arab with poetry and a sense of the higher mysteries, has
sapped the last remnant of idealism from the Trek-Boer's nature, and
left him without an aspiration or a dream. The usual lack of fresh meat
and the absence of green vegetables as an item in his diet, has reacted
upon his physique and made him listless and slouching in gait and
deportment, as well as anaemic and prone to disease. This is especially
true of his womankind, who, besides being extremely short-lived have, as
a rule, lost nearly all pretensions to beauty of face or form.
Bushmanland might be described as a desert, the aridity of which is
tempered by occasional thunderstorms. Its bounds begin immediately to
the eastward of the rugged mountain chain which runs parallel with the
coast-line, about eighty miles inland, and it stretches on for hundreds
of miles until merged with the central Karoo plains. These also form
its indefinite boundary to the southward. It is, for the most part,
almost absolutely level. To the northward, however, a chain of
mountains, occasionally very lofty, arises. For stern, uncompromising
aridity, for stark, grotesque, naked horror, these mountains stand
probably unsurpassed on the face of the globe. Composed of deep brown
granite, with here and there immense veins, or patches many miles in
extent, of jet-black, shining ironstone, they absorb the torrid sunshine
all day, becoming almost red-hot in the process. At night this heat is
radiated rapidly at high sunlight power, until the furnace of midnight
becomes like an ice-house at dawn.
The only vegetation to be found among these mountains is a species of
deadly Euphorbia--formerly much used by the Bushmen in poisoning their
arrows--and a few stunted shrubs which are rooted deep down in the
crannies, and which put forth a little timid foliage in the cooler
season. The only animals are "klipspringers"--antelopes very like the
chamois in form and habit; leopards which prey upon these; badgers, wild
cats, jackals of several kinds, an occasional hyaena, desert mice,
snakes, gorgeously hued lizards and fierce tarantulas. A few large
brown hawks hover above the gloomy gorges and wake weird and depressing
echoes with their shrill screams.
To the north of this almost impenetrable region the great "Gariep"--the
"Yellow River" of the Hottentots--now called the "Orange" in honour of a
former Stadtholder of the Netherlands, has carved out a gorge for its
devious course, thousands of feet in depth. Allowing for its many and
abrupt windings, this gorge, from the point at which the river hurtles
into it over an obstinate stratum of rock at what is known as the
Augrabies Falls, must be over four hundred miles in length. The greater
part of this gorge is unexplored, being totally inaccessible.
Like the Nile, the Orange River drains an immense area of fertile
country which is subject to heavy summer rains. It flows down in a
raging, brimming flood, which is charged with rich alluvium, during
several months of the year. Unlike the Nile, it has carved for itself a
deep and narrow channel, through which it hurls its fertilising load
with resistless momentum into the ocean which needs it not. Under
different circumstances its valley might have been the cradle of another
civilisation, and another Sphinx, of Hottentot or Bantu physiognomy,
might have stood, gazing through forgotten centuries, across the waste
of Bushmanland.
No more dreary prospect can be imagined than that afforded by
Bushmanland in its normal condition of drought. After rain, however, it
turns for a few short weeks into a smiling garden. This is especially
the case around the northern and western margins where, among the rocky
kopjes forming the fringe of the plain, gorgeous flowers cover the
ground with vivid patches of colour, and climb and trail over the grey
stones. This combination always suggests to the traveller a skull
crowned with flowers. The stark rocks, blasted by aeons of burning
sunshine, are always in evidence, and the wanton luxuriance of the
garlands seem to mock at and accentuate their death-like rigour.
The grass with which the greater part of the plain is covered grows in
thick shocks some thirty inches in height, from raised tussocks about
six feet apart. In dry weather the fibre of the grass crumbles away in
dust and the tussock turns black. After rain, however, the new blades
shoot out with marvellous rapidity, and the Desert becomes a sea of
waving plumes, which are tinted a beautifully delicate green. Between
the tussocks spring up flowers of marvellous colour, scent, and form.
It has been libellously affirmed that the flowers of the Desert have no
scent. It is true that in the hot, midday glare all are more or less
scentless, but in the early morning or when the afternoon cools the
heliophilas, the pelargoniums, the many species of lily, and others too
numerous to particularise, often make the Desert a veritable "scented
garden."
The great plain is almost absolutely treeless. Only in one or two
localities are a few acacias found. These are of very large size. They
are called "Camel-thorns," for the reason that the camelopard was fond
of browsing upon their foliage. Amongst the branches are often found
the enormous nests of the sociable grosbeaks, sometimes ten feet in
diameter. These nests are veritable cities--inhabited by countless
numbers of birds. Woe betide the exhausted hunter who seeks the
deceitful shade of these trees, for the ground beneath is full of the
dreaded "sampans," which bury themselves in the flesh and cause serious
injury.
In the fringe of kopjes grow immense aloes (_Aloe dichotoma_--probably
closely allied botanically to the almost extinct "Dragon Tree" of
Teneriffe). These sometimes reach a height of sixty feet, and may
measure twenty feet around their ridged and gnarled trunks. This tree
is locally known as the "koekerboom," or "quiver-tree," a reminiscence
of the fact that the Bushmen used to remove the fibrous wood from a
section of a bough and utilise the cylinder of tough bark as a quiver
for their poisoned arrows. The koekerbooms are believed to be of
immense age; the oldest Trek-Boers will point to small trees growing
close to their favourite camping-places, and tell you that they have not
sensibly increased in size in upwards of half a century. Their
appearance is extremely belated and archaic.
Running through Bushmanland from north-east to south-west is a curved
ridge which is known as the "Jacht Bult," or "hunt-ridge," from the
plentifulness of game upon it. This ridge rises so gradually from each
side that its very existence is not apparent except for a few minutes at
morning and evening--and then only if one happens to be on the top of
it. Here occurs a curious phenomenon; for, just as the sun is touching
the western horizon, if one looks eastward he will be startled at seeing
half of the immense plain shrouded in almost complete darkness. The
illusion is due to the western plain being flooded with sunlight whilst
from the other the sunlight is suddenly and completely cut off. When
the sun sinks the illusion vanishes and the eastern plain appears to be
no darker than the western. At sunrise these conditions are, of course,
reversed.
This region is the home of the "springbuck," which still survives in
countless myriads. After a large "trek," as the annual migration of
these animals across the Desert is called, has taken place, the wake of
the host looks like an irregularly-ploughed field. Every vestige of
vegetation is beaten out by the small, sharp, strong hoofs. It seems at
such times as if all the springbucks in the Desert were suddenly smitten
by a mad desire to collect and dash towards a certain point.
The springbucks as a rule live without drinking. Sometimes, however--
perhaps once in ten years--they develop a raging thirst, and rush madly
forward until they find water. It is not many years ago since millions
of them crossed the mountain range and made for the sea. They dashed
into the waves, drank the salt water, and died. Their bodies lay in one
continuous pile along the shore for over thirty miles, and the stench
drove the Trek-Boers who were camped near the coast far inland.
The oryx, or, as it is called in South Africa, the "gemsbok," is still
to be found in considerable numbers in the vicinity of the great and
almost inaccessible sand-dunes which encroach into the desert at several
points along its northwestern margin. The gemsbok manages to live
without drinking water, finding a substitute in a large, succulent root
which grows in the driest parts of the dunes, and which the animal digs
up from deep in the sand with its hoofs. A few hartebeests are also to
be found. Immense wild bustards, or, as they are called, "paauws," come
over from the Kalihari Desert in large flocks. From the same place the
desert grouse, which strongly resembles the sand-grouse of Central Asia,
throng over in countless myriads. These collect around the open
water-places every morning when the sun begins to sting. One dip of
water they must have. If the sportsman is hard-hearted enough to remain
close to the water-hole, they circle round and round uttering their
plaintive cry in a myriad-voiced chorus of strange twitterings. Should
the day be hot and no other water obtainable in the neighbourhood--as is
often the case--they will drink at one's very feet. From their cry the
colloquial name of "kalkivain" is derived.
In hot weather one may trace the zigzag spoor of many a yellow cobra
across the sands. By day these creatures remain underground among the
mouse-burrows--for they could not live upon the scorching sand--but at
night they wander far and near. The horned adder--identical in species
with the "worm of old Nile" with which Cleopatra eased herself of her
burthen of life--abounds at the roots of the small shrubs and
grass-tussocks, where it burrows into the sand to escape the heat, or
when hibernating.
Above all, however, Bushmanland is the home of the wild ostrich. Here,
in spite of the number of their enemies, human or other, these noble
birds are still to be found in considerable numbers. Their booming note
heard at night across the waste strongly suggests the distant roar of a
hungry lion. When one thinks of the number and ingenuity of the
ostrich's enemies one wonders that any still exist. Around every nest
that one finds are sure to be several jackals and white crows. The
jackal rolls the eggs about by butting them with his nose, and thus
dashes, them against each other until they break; the white crow carries
stones up into the air and drops them from a height among the eggs,
smashing them and befouling the nest with what it is unable to gorge of
the contents of the shell; the prowling Hottentot, or half-breed, will
follow for days on the spoor until he finds the nest and rifles it.
This region was once the favourite haunt of the Bushman, and long after
that unhappy race had disappeared from other parts it here maintained
itself. At every water-place may still be seen the polished grooves in
the rocks wherein they sharpened their arrows and bone skinning-knives;
fragments of their rude pottery lie thickly strewn around. Mixed with
the latter may be found, sometimes in considerable quantities, the
broken weapons of stone which belonged to a still older race, and which,
perhaps, was driven from the face of the land by the Bushmen, as we have
driven the latter, and as we ourselves may be driven by some race
developing a "fitness" superior to our own.
These water-places would thus seem to be of immense antiquity, and the
inference suggests that the climatic conditions of this end of the
African continent have not changed appreciably for ages.
The names of a few of these places in the Bushman tongue still survive.
Some are very suggestive, and indicate that the Bushman was not totally
devoid of sentiment. The following are specimens of local Bushman
topography: "Place of Bleeding," "Withered Flower," "Eggshell Cheeks,"
"Reed-Possessor," "Take-away-from-me-what-I-have-gained,"
"Place-where-you-may-dig-out-a-little-pot-of-water."
The Bushman used poisoned arrows. He obtained the poison usually from
three distinct sources, namely, the poison gland of the puffadder, the
black tarantula, and the deadly euphorbia which grows in the river
gorge. These he mixed in a paste and smeared upon the sides of his
arrow blade. This poison is extremely deadly in its effects, but it
works far more rapidly in the system of a ruminating animal than in that
of a man. The Bushman could also, however, run game down by sheer
fleetness of foot--running until blown and then handing the chase over
to another hunter who had posted himself upon the course which, by
instinct, he had known the animal would most likely take.
The ostrich was the Bushman's favourite and most profitable quarry.
Dressed in the plumes of a former victim he would stalk into the midst
of a troop and lay its members low one by one. When he found a nest he
would pierce the ends of each egg and blow out the contents. Then,
after carefully washing out the shell, he would fill it with water and
close up each aperture with a wooden peg. The shell would be buried
deep in the sand against contingencies of drought. By some secret sign
the members of each clan would know the exact spots where water had thus
been buried by their friends, and thus often avoid death by thirst when
travelling or hunting.
The Bushman was the true Ishmaelite; he was bound to be eliminated. As
a matter of fact there is no room for a Bushman and any one else in any
given area, no matter how large.
In the region described the Bushmen have left no record in the shape of
paintings on the rocks, which are so common in other parts. This may
perhaps be accounted for by the porous nature of many of the low
krantzes in which the caves they occupied are situated. It may be,
however, that the plants from which their pigments were obtained do not
grow in this arid region.
When rain has fallen freely, as it occasionally does, the Trek-Boers
flock into Bushmanland from its fringe, upon which they are always
hanging. A few weeks of dry weather, however, suffices to dry up the
moisture from the shallow, sand-clogged basins, and the country once
more becomes a solitude.
For some natures this region possesses a deep and abiding charm. The
fresh, crisp air of early morning; the peace which sinks like a
benediction upon the wearied earth when the scorching sun has fallen
from the sky, and the sand gives off its heat in rapid radiation; the
sense of immensity made manifest in the wide, wide plains by day, and in
the almost supernaturally bright skies at night; the booming of the
ostriches, the bellowing of the rutting springbucks; the queer, snarling
yelp of the jackals and the "tshok-tshok" of the paauw as it shakes out
its plumes to the rising sun--and who can define the vivid delight which
these have brought? Who that has ever been fortunate enough to
experience it can recall without a quickening pulse the mad gallop for
miles across the plains after a herd of gemsbok, or the fierce rapture
of meeting the noble brute at bay, and slaying the only animal of the
antelope tribe that has heart enough to face a lion?
It is among the dwellers of this region that the scene of the following
tale is laid. These people have but few ideas, and a vocabulary of
little more than three hundred words to express these ideas in. The
Bible is the only book they ever read, and of that they do not
understand more than half the sense. In all essentials, however, they
are of the same mould as other men. They live and love, hate and die,
in very much the same manner as do other human creatures. It is in the
incidentals that the reader may find some difference between these
people and the dwellers in more fortunate climes.