Before proceeding to describe the pleasant little trip which will
furnish the principal subject of the narrative that follows, it may be
as well to explain, briefly, the conditions under which I had found my
way into the Transvaal and what I was doing there. During 1876 and 1877
the Transvaal Republic had been at war with Sekukuni, and by the close
of the former year had become hopelessly bankrupt. The operations
against Sekukuni had been the reverse of successful; the Zulus were said
to be restless, and a large proportion of the Transvaal Boers declared
themselves in favour of annexation by Great Britain. Sir Theophilus
Shepstone—“Somsteu” as the Kaffirs named him—went up to Pretoria, as
Special Commissioner, in January, 1877; and in March my regiment (the
1st Battalion 13th Light Infantry), with two guns and a small detachment
of Royal Engineers, marched up country. A halt was made at Newcastle,
pending the result of the negotiations at Pretoria; but eventually we
reached the latter place, where the British flag was hoisted on the
Queen’s birthday. The march, as a military movement, was uneventful, and
the opportunities for sport as a rule scanty. We had some excellent duck
shooting near Newcastle, and just beyond Standerton we saw what can no
longer be seen, but what those who have seen it can never forget, the
annual migration of all kinds of game from the “High Veldt” to the “Bush
Veldt.” From as far westward as the eye could reach the great procession
kept coming, whilst its head was beyond the horizon in the east. All
kinds of antelopes, quaggas, &c., were to be measured not by hundreds or
thousands, but by _miles_. It may here be mentioned that the animal
which the Boers call a “quagga”—pronounced “quaaha”—is really Burchell’s
zebra. To me it has always seemed a shame to shoot these beautiful
creatures, except when scarcity of meat demands the sacrifice.
At first, after our arrival at Pretoria everything was quiet, but very
soon it became necessary to send four companies to Utrecht, on the Zulu
border, and in the absence of this detachment a party of some 1,500 Boer
malcontents assembled, armed, at Pretoria, where they held an
indignation meeting under our noses. Our strength was limited to about
350 men, lusty old soldiers indeed, yet a mere handful. Luckily,
however, the local military authorities were neither clever enough to
understand the danger nor foolish enough to provoke a contest. We had no
entrenchments of any sort; our camp was within 300 yards of the town,
and probably about ten minutes’ fighting would have sufficed for our
extinction. Perhaps the Boers assumed from our attitude of calm
indifference that a trap had been set? At all events no trouble ensued,
and the assembly dispersed.
Round Pretoria there was very little shooting to be had, but by trekking
northwards, to Warm Baths and Nylstroom, in the Waterberg district, some
fair sport was met with; and there a party of four of us spent a most
enjoyable month.
Meanwhile the 80th Regiment arrived in Natal, and a detachment having
been sent up to Utrecht relieved our four companies, which rejoined
headquarters at Pretoria, March 28th, 1877. On April 16th, three
companies, of which my own was one, marched off to Middelberg and
Lydenberg. Sekukuni had broken out once more, and it had been decided to
send up an expedition to suppress him. Our three companies were not to
go at once to the front, but to afford some protection until an
expeditionary force could be assembled. Thus it was that on July 16th,
T., W. and myself had the good fortune to start on a trip to the
district about the Sabie River, some sixty miles distant from Lydenberg.
Operations against Sekukuni were already imminent, and we were lucky in
obtaining even a fortnight’s leave under the circumstances. Indeed, it
was only three weeks after our return, namely, on August 22nd, that we
actually entered upon the campaign.
During our stay at Lydenberg we had been lucky enough to make friends
with a Mr. G., of Krugerspost, a British settler, a great sportsman, and
a right good fellow. Mr. G. had been in the habit of shooting on the
Sabie every season for many years, and upon this occasion very kindly
permitted us to join him, he providing everything—waggons, Kaffirs, &c.,
whilst we merely paid our share of the expenses. Our party consisted of
T. and myself, who were already at Lydenberg, and W., who arrived by
post-cart from Pretoria the day before we started. In order to economise
time the waggons had been sent on three days in advance, but in
consequence of a breakdown they had failed to reach their destination,
with the result that we caught them up about five miles east of the
Spitzkop Goldfields, and about thirty-five from Lydenberg. The waggons
were still trekking when we reached them and we continued with them to
the outspan about six miles further on. During this last part of the
day’s trek W. achieved a reputation as a shot by killing a paauw as it
flew overhead about one hundred yards up. W. fired from his horse’s back
with an ordinary service Martini-Henry rifle, and the feat was therefore
a notable one.
During the next two days we found ourselves rather unprofitably employed
in crossing a wide belt of country that had been burned by a party of
Boers just before our arrival. We met with lots of spoor of rhino,
giraffe, buffalo, &c., but saw nothing except small buck and quaggas,
and one troop of hartebeeste. Of these we shot a few, as we wanted meat.
During the time we were out on Friday 19th, an old Boer who had attached
himself to our party, whilst walking along about a mile from camp,
suddenly came upon the fresh spoor of a buffalo, which he proceeded to
follow in hopes of a shot. All at once, however, he heard “pooph, pooph”
_behind_ him, and in a moment the buffalo had tossed him clean over a
small mimosa bush on to another beyond. In the confusion the old man’s
rifle went off, and the buffalo, tail on end, sailed away without taking
any further notice. The Boer got off without any broken bones; but, as
may easily be imagined, not with a whole skin. Mimosa thorns are
somewhat retentive, and the descent from that tree, which took some
considerable time, was a painful process. Next morning, whilst searching
for buffalo, we passed over some of the ground that had been visited the
day before in pursuit of the quagga, and found that two carcases had
been appropriated by lions, but of the lions themselves we saw nothing,
nor did we meet any buffaloes; later, to our great satisfaction, we came
upon the fresh spoor of a considerable troop—too late in the day,
however, to follow it up.
Starting from camp at daybreak on Sunday, with niggers and dogs, we took
up the spoor, and after about two hours reached the spot where a lion
had killed a cow buffalo during the night. Jackals or hyenas had had the
leavings, and the horns, bones and skin were all that remained. At last,
about 10 a.m., the herd was sighted on the other side of a big donga,
into which any number of smaller ones ran from both sides. It was a very
bad bit of country from every point of view, and the bush in parts was
inconveniently thick. However, after a good deal of riding about we got
the herd on the move towards the more open veldt—not, indeed until after
they had given us a good deal of excitement, sometimes running in view,
but more often lost in the bush. Once they had their opportunity, and
had they taken advantage of it they might have bagged the whole lot of
us, as we crossed a donga in single file not more than a dozen yards
from where they were all standing. Having allowed us to cross in safety,
the buffalo made off in the opposite direction.
During this time some three or four of the buffalo had fallen before our
rifles, and at last out they came across a fine stretch of decently good
ground, beyond which was a wet donga with thick bush on the other side.
Midway was a small “pan.” I happened to be on the left, and in the best
place, with the result that I arrived first over a swell of the ground
and saw below me the buffalo in the act of lying down in the pan to cool
themselves. My appearance caused a wild commotion, during which,
however, I fired one shot off my horse into the back of a big bull just
as he was rising, and down he went to my great delight. But I had been
very foolish not to dismount: my horse was excited and so was I, with
the result that I missed my second barrel. The bull I had hit was
struggling below, and just as I was about to get off my horse and give
him the _coup de grace_ G. came galloping up. He cried, “don’t finish
him, he is quite safe, his back is broken, come on after the others.” I
complied, but looking round after I had gone about half a mile I saw my
bull on his legs and commencing to make tracks. The donga was only a
couple of hundred yards from him, and slowly as he went he was right on
the top of it before I came up with him, when he promptly turned to bay.
Thirty yards from a wounded buffalo I was discreet enough to take my
chance of a shot from the horse’s back. Just as I raised my rifle the
bull gave a “pooph, pooph,” and came at me. My horse shook his head and
I missed clean. The reins were on the animal’s neck, and before I could
gather them he had gone a couple of hundred yards. The bull charged only
a very short distance, turned and made for the donga. I returned quickly
and jumped off on the bank. I could just see the bull going through the
reeds and bush, and whether I hit him or not I cannot say. At all
events, I never saw him again. I got another soon afterwards, but this
did not comfort me for the loss of a far finer pair of horns. We bagged
nine bulls altogether, but none of them so good as the one I had failed
to secure. The Kaffirs afterwards tracked that bull for a long way, but
eventually lost his spoor in that of the rest of the herd.
Probably the poor brute died later on. My shot must have been close to
the spine, since it crippled him for the moment, and may or may not have
penetrated his body. Possibly it glanced off his ribs, but at a distance
of only about twenty yards this does not seem likely. At all events, he
was not brought to bag, and except to the poor bull himself the nature
of his wound was therefore of very little consequence.
Meanwhile we had killed a lot of meat, and it took us some time to go
round and make all the carcases safe against jackals, vultures, &c. Mr.
G. wanted to make biltong, for which purpose he left the Kaffirs on the
ground whilst we all rode slowly home to camp.
Next morning we found that both of Mr. G.’s horses had got loose during
the night, so that in addition to sending a waggon for the meat, the
recovery of the horses—assuming neither to have been eaten by lions—had
to be attended to. Mr. G. borrowed one of our horses, and with all
remaining Kaffirs, except one, started off; we three staying to guard
the camp. It was well that we had not persisted in setting forth
ourselves; for had we done so the whole camp would have been burned by a
veldt fire. Working frantically, it was all that we could do, after
burning the grass behind us, to carry or drag the whole of our
belongings to a place of safety. Scarcely had we finished, when the fire
came up and went past like an express train. Fortunately the grass in
the donga close at hand was green, and therefore escaped, but we had
much difficulty in keeping the horses and oxen in it; had they broken
away they would of course have galloped for miles before the fire, and
some not impossibly have been caught by it.
In the evening Mr. G. returned with his horses, and the waggon also came
in laden with meat; the greater part of the latter, however, was
useless, owing to the intense heat of the sun and the distance that had
been covered in bringing it to camp. Mr. G. regretted much that instead
of sending for the meat we had not shifted camp to where the buffalo had
been killed.
The following day we had some excellent sport with a troop of
wildebeeste which gave us a rare gallop. One of my horses was a grey
half-bred Arab and rather fast; the ground was fairly good going, and I
made up my mind to try whether I could get alongside for a shot off the
horse’s back. To my great delight, after about three miles as hard as we
could go, I raced up alongside the bull I had selected, and, firing from
the hip, bowled him over like a rabbit, shot through the heart. All
things considered, I am certain that next after a fast forty minutes
with hounds at home there is nothing to touch a gallop after antelopes
in South Africa. With a reasonably good horse it is fairly easy to get
within fifty yards, and then jump off and shoot, but only a very smart
horse can actually bring you alongside anything except a fat bull eland.
The last I believe is easy to catch up with, but I cannot speak of this
from personal experience. Riding homewards on the evening of the day I
have just mentioned I met T. As a rule, from the moment we started
galloping after the first troop of buck we met with, we seldom saw
anything more of each other until we had reached the camp. Every man
rode his own line towards any point of the compass, and it was long odds
against any two of the party afterwards falling in with each other.
Well, as we were riding slowly along, T. suddenly exclaimed, “Lions!”
and scrambled off his horse. In a moment I was off too, but being a
second behind was just late. What I saw as I was about to dismount was a
magnificent great lion, accompanied by two lionesses, on the edge of a
donga about 120 yards to our left. As I hastily put up my rifle they had
turned round and were just disappearing. I pulled the trigger at the
lion, and I always think that I was dead on him and must have got him.
But, horrible to relate, the rifle was on half-cock! The chance was
gone! T. meanwhile had missed. We jumped on to our horses and galloped
hard to the donga, but not a sign was to be seen. The lions were no
doubt lying down. T. had but one cartridge left, and I had only three;
otherwise by shooting at random here and there amongst the tall reeds we
might have moved the game. We were only about a mile from camp, and the
wind was blowing in that direction, so we were afraid to set fire to the
grass. There was, therefore, only one thing to be done, and this we
promptly did. We galloped home as fast as we could to fetch Kaffirs and
dogs, and get more cartridges. The dogs picked up the line at once, but
after following it for about a couple of miles we were obliged to whip
off, as it was nearly dark. These were the only lions we saw during the
trip. Spoor of them was plentiful and their voices could be heard in the
night, but that was all. Lions are very shy and very clever. To get a
lion one must, as a rule, trust to the chapter of accidents; looking for
them, as we often did upon this and other occasions, a chance seldom
comes. Upon the other hand, when game is not plentiful, it is well known
that lions make themselves a great nuisance prowling round the camp at
night looking for a chance to bag man, horse, or ox, and to keep them
off a good fire is very necessary.
A few days afterwards we made an excursion to the border of the “fly”
country. Several specimens of the murderous insect settled on various
horses, but as we took care to sheer off whenever a fly was seen, no
harm was done. A few bites are of no consequence. Here we stumbled upon
the camp of a Mr. S. whom we had seen at Pretoria months before, but not
since. He had been trekking all over the place, and it was rather
remarkable our meeting with him. He had had good sport in the “fly”
country, into which he had gone with a light kit and a few Kaffirs to
carry it. Finally, after a number of quite enjoyable days’ sport, during
which, however, nothing really remarkable took place, the time came for
us to return to Lydenburg. We had for the last three days been working
towards home, and in the end had only some sixty miles to ride. Leaving
the waggons to follow, we started at daybreak, and reached Lydenburg in
good time for dinner.
There is one matter to which it is worth while to call attention, in
reference to life on the veldt. It is wonderful how quickly and
accurately the “homing instinct” becomes developed. Every morning Mr. G.
would explain to us that the waggons would trek during the course of the
day to the banks of a certain river, or to a pool of water, say twenty
miles distant, in a direction that he pointed out. There might or might
not be some guiding landmark. Within a couple of hours it would
certainly have happened that no two of the party were together. All
would have ridden in various directions, wherever the game led them. Yet
throughout the trip not one of us ever failed to find the waggon in the
evening! The nearest approach to any one being lost was when W.,
actually heading straight for camp, was overtaken by the darkness when
still about a mile distant. He was just about to light a fire when,
becoming anxious about him, we began to fire shots to attract his
attention; he replied, and twenty minutes later walked in. Of course, I
must admit that this was not our first trip, and that we had all of us
ridden about the veldt a good deal during the previous two years. Yet
this power of finding the way from a place that one had necessarily but
slight knowledge of to another, fifteen or twenty miles distant, that
one had never seen at all, and there find, in the bush, a waggon, is
sufficiently remarkable. Clearly the result was not dependent upon
reasoning, not upon ordinary “lump of locality,” but simply upon
_instinct_. It should be remembered that this was not a case of riding
straight for a point; upon the contrary, one had been galloping hither
and thither, and not until the afternoon was the horse’s head directed
homewards, where, as a rule, all arrived before dark.
At the risk of being tedious I will quote an example of “homing
instinct” that in my opinion is rather curious. A year before the trip
which I have been writing about, I was one of a party of four shooting
in the Waterberg district. The ponies belonging to F. and myself were
both in need of a day’s rest, and F. and I walked with the others to a
place where some game had been killed the day before, in order to get
the horns and send them to camp, carried by Kaffirs. This done, F. and I
took a line through the bush with the idea of looking for guinea-fowls,
and after shooting a few to walk home. We had been about two hours on
our way when I was seized with a conviction that we had arrived close
home, and I said so. F. instantly replied that he had been just about to
make the same remark. The bush was very thick, and it was impossible to
see more than fifty yards. We agreed that F. should stand where he was
whilst I made a cast to the right. Two hundred yards brought me to the
open ground, and there by the waterhole, a hundred and fifty yards away,
was the waggon! This find was clearly due to instinct and nothing else;
we were neither of us prompted in the very least by any familiar
feature. All around us was bush of precisely the same character.
Perhaps even more remarkable was the power of finding next day the
carcase of a buck killed during the course of the previous day, perhaps
ten miles from camp, and covered where it lay with a few branches to
keep off the vultures and jackals. We ourselves, I admit, sometimes
failed in this, but G. never; nor did a Boer called B. who guided our
party to the Waterberg. Yet how strange it is that men who have been on
the veldt more years than we spent months, and who year after year have
been doing as I have described, have yet been lost hopelessly and died
miserably of thirst! In a word, however practised the instinct, it must
not be trusted always. The golden rule, I have been told, to follow when
lost is to sit down, light a fire, discharge your rifle from time to
time, if you can spare the cartridges, and there wait until some of your
party find you. To advance, once you have ceased to feel certain that
you are going the right way, is fatal. To attempt walking in the dark
when not absolutely sure of the direction almost always ends in
wandering in a circle.
South Africa in the seventies was not a bad place for sport, but what
must it have been in the fifties! A certain Colonel B., late of the 45th
Regiment, told us, in Maritzburg in 1876, that twenty years before he
had shot _elephants_ within a day’s ride of Durban. In our day there was
just one elephant south of the Zambesi; it was in Zululand, and poor Guy
Dawnay, one of the best fellows and one of the best sportsmen that ever
lived, killed it in 1875 or 1876—I cannot remember which. Ten years
later poor Dawnay was himself killed by a wounded buffalo. This rather
disjointed yarn has now reached the useful limit, and must therefore
end.
A Song of Homage.
Along the country lanes I bear her gaily,
Between deep hedgerows where the wild flowers spring,
Where hawthorn blooms, where trees grow greener daily,
And mounting skylarks sing.
Nature thus decked in glorious robes, forgetting
The sombre weeds of winter laid aside,
Makes for my mistress but a proper setting
When she goes forth to ride.
For she so young and fair, yet never thinking
How fair, gives promise of more wondrous grace,
With kind grey eyes from wells of sunshine drinking,
Set in a perfect face.
I, Blacky, am her slave, well-groomed and sightly,
Who loves—nay life without it were a blank—
The feeling of her habit flapping lightly
Against my shining flank.
I am her willing slave; in doing blindly
Her smallest pleasure lies my pleasure too,
Content because she ever treats me kindly
As friend and comrade true.
How could I be a rogue with her or idle?
Nay, how could horse do aught except rejoice
To feel a hand so gentle on the bridle,
To hear so sweet a voice?
And often when I stand at leisure feeding,
Shut in my box, from all excitement barred,
I catch the sound of welcome footsteps speeding
Across the stable-yard.
“Blacky,” she calls; I whinny as she presses
Her face to mine with words I understand,
While, mingling with the sweets of her caresses,
Comes sugar from her hand.