Snake stories are proverbially an `uncommercial risk' for those who
value a reputation for truthfulness. Hailstorms are scarcely less
disastrous; hence these notes!
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Mamba.--This is believed to be the largest and swiftest of the deadly
snakes, and one of the most wantonly vicious. The late Dr Colenso
(Bishop of Zululand) in his Zulu dictionary describes them as attaining
a length of twelve feet, and capable of chasing a man on horseback. The
writer has seen several of this length, and has heard of measurements up
to fourteen feet (which, however, were not sufficiently verified); he
has also often heard stories of men on horseback being chased by black
mambas, but has never met the man himself, nor succeeded in eliciting
the important facts as to pace and distance. However that may be, the
movements of a mamba, even on open ground, are, as the writer has
several times observed, so incredibly swift as to leave no other
impression on the mind than that of having witnessed a magical
disappearance. How often and how far they `travel on their tails,'
whether it is a continuous movement or merely a momentary uprising to
command a view, and what length or what proportion of the body is on the
ground for support or propulsion, the writer has no means of knowing:
during the Zulu war an Imperial officer was bitten by a mamba _while on
horseback_ and died immediately.
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Hailstorms.--Bad hailstorms occur every year in South Africa, but they
do not last long (ten minutes is enough to destroy everything that
stands). The distances are immense, and the area of disturbance is
usually a narrow strip; hence, except when one strikes a town, very few
people ever witness them. This summer hailstorms were more general and
more severe in the Transvaal than for some time past. A bad storm
baffles description. The size of the hailstones is only one of the
factors--a strong wind enormously increases the destructiveness; yet
some idea may be gathered from the size of the stones. The writer took
a plaster cast of one picked up at Zuurfontein (near Johannesburg), in
November 1906, which measured 4.5 inches long, 3.5 wide and 1.125 inches
thick--a slab of white ice. In the Hekpoort Valley (near Johannesburg)
and in Barberton, about the same date, the veld was like a glacier; the
hail lay like snow, inches deep, and during the worst spells the general
run of the hailstones varied in size from pigeons' eggs to hens' eggs;
but the big ones, the crash of whose individual blows was distinctly
heard through the general roar, are described as `bigger than cricket
balls' and `the size of breakfast cups,' generally with an elongation or
tail--like a balloon. Sheep and buck were killed, and full-grown cattle
so battered that some were useless and others died of the injuries;
wooden doors were broken in, the panels being completely shattered;
corrugated iron roofs were perforated, and in some cases the hailstones
drove completely through them. The writer photographed a portion of a
roof in Barberton which had suffered thus, and saw plaster casts--formed
by pouring plaster of Paris into the indentations which two hailstones
had made in a flower bed--in diameter equalling, respectively, tennis
and cricket balls.
Near Harrismith, O.R.C., in 1903, two herd boys with a troop of about a
hundred goats and calves were caught by the hail. The boys and all the
stock, except one old goat, were killed.