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" (a kind of coarse
but exceedingly palatable rusk). 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" ("quiver-trees,"--so called because the Bushmen
used pithed sections of the boughs as receptacles for their arrows.)
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.
A pallid gleam shot through the eastern sky; the stars grew faint; over
the blue firmament stole, as it were, a sheen of pearl. Soon the rising
moon touched the horizon's rim; as we gazed she soared above it. By the
first touch of her level beam-wand, fairy-land was created; the plains,
sombre since daylight had departed, became ivory-white to eastward;
across their immensity extended a broad strip of silver. This was due
to the sheen of the new moonlight on the dew-wet plumes arising from the
"toa" tussocks.
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?