MORNING IN THE GORGE--DEPARTURE FROM PELLA--JOURNEY TO BRABIES--
PROTECTION OF THE ORYX--ITS PECULIARITIES--ANTELOPES OF THE DESERT AND
THE FOREST--CAMPING AT BRABIES.
Daybreak,--and the chill sea-wind was still surging up the gorge. It
was delightful; nevertheless, even among the sheltering trees, a fire
was very comforting. The pageant of growing day was a wonder and a
delight. The upper tiers of that titanic rock-city became glorious
"under the opening eyelids of the morn." They were refulgent with
hitherto unsuspected beauty. Those acre-large splashes of vermilion,
blue and amber-brown must have been due to lichen. It was strange that
on the previous evening we had not noticed these. Perhaps they paled
under the flames of day and only revived when the cool, moist sea-wind
bathed them.
After a hurried dip in the still-tepid water, followed by breakfast, we
started on our journey back to Pella. The wind sank momentarily, but
the air was still deliciously cool, for the bow of the sun-archer could
not yet be depressed enough to send its searching arrows into the depths
of the cleft through which our course lay. Soon the sea-wind folded its
wings; not a breath stirred. From their eyries in the towering rock
bastions the brown eagles swooped down as though to rend us, uttering
wild and menacing cries.
The relentless sunbeams searched ever lower upon the western face of the
chasm. From the crannies gorgeous-hued lizards crept forth to bask.
Their lovely colours--vivid crimson or deep, gentian blue seemed
incongruous with their ungainly form and ferocious expression. Here and
there rock-rabbits darted from ledge to ledge. Crossing our sandy
pathway we occasionally noticed the spoor of a leopard, a badger or a
snake. For such creatures night is the season of activity; by day they
could choose the climate best suited to them,--among the deep, dark
cavern-clefts with which this tumbled chaos is honeycombed.
We were now beyond the area of shade; no longer did the cliff protect
us. For an hour we laboured up the widening gorge, over the yielding
sand,--in the glaring, unmitigated sunshine. It was with a grateful
sense of relief that we reached Pella, somewhat breathless, but none the
worse for our adventure.
The teams were soon inspanned, so after thanking Father Simon and the
nuns for their kind entertainment, and paying a farewell visit to the
student of Aquinas in his dingy hut, we made a start for Brabies,--"the
place of the withered flower," as the Bushmen named it. At Brabies it
was that we had decided to pitch our hunting camp, for we heard good
reports as to the water in the vley there. No one, so far as we knew,
had been there lately, but a heavy thunderstorm had been observed to
pass over the vicinity of Brabies about a week previously. Our
objective was about thirty miles away. There was a slight improvement
in the weather. The cool spell of the distant sea, owing to last
night's wind, still lay upon the grateful desert.
We pushed on steadily but could not travel fast, for the sand was heavy
and the angular limestone fragments lay thick upon our course. However,
we reached our destination just as the sun was going down. Brabies had
no rock-saucer; its water was held in a vley, or shallow depression with
a hard clay bottom. This vley was several hundred yards in
circumference. It lay on an almost imperceptible rise; nevertheless
this circumstance enabled anyone camping on its margin to gain a view
over an immense area of desert. Usually, we had been told, at least one
heavy thunderstorm broke over Brabies early in each season, and then the
vley held water for about three weeks.
With the exception of a few small troops of ostriches, immensely far
off, no game was in sight. However, a long, low ridge--rising so
slightly above the general level that the eye had difficulty in
recognising it as an elevation at all--lay to the northward, some six
miles away. We knew that the tract just on the other side of that ridge
was one of the favourite feeding-grounds of the oryx. And it was oryx
and nothing else that we were just then interested in. Judging by the
amount of spoor, some of it quite fresh, our game could not be very far
off.
This more or less central area of Bushmanland,--a tract from ten to
twelve hundred square miles in extent--was practically the last refuge
of the oryx south of the Orange River. It is almost absolutely flat,--
except on its northern and eastern margins, where the dunes intrude for
an inconsiderable distance over its bounds. The tract is quite arid,
but occasionally, in perhaps half-a-dozen spots, the underground
rock-saucers hold water for from three to five weeks. So far as I had
been able to ascertain, Brabies and one other, but nameless, vley were
the only places in the whole enormous northern section of the desert
where water ever lay on the surface. Brabies, as has been stated,
usually contained water once, at least, during each season, but the
other vley sometimes remained dry for years at a stretch. As might be
imagined, the region was of no economic value.
Owing to the circumstance that a measure of informal police protection
had been afforded to the vicinity of Brabies during the previous two
years, practically all the oryx in the desert had there congregated. I
estimated their number at about twelve hundred. There was no reason why
those animals should not have increased and multiplied. Andries was a
Field Cornet,--an office combining the functions of a constable with
those of a justice of the peace. I had appointed him Warden of the
Desert Marches and Chief Protector of the Oryx and the Ostrich. Between
us, we managed to protect these animals more or less effectively.
But--"thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn."
The oryx evinces several interesting peculiarities. I have mentioned in
a previous chapter the remarkable formation of its foot,--the membrane
connecting the wide-spreading toes, which enables it to gallop scathless
over the Kanya stones which cripple all other animals. Another
abnormality is shewn in the way the hair lies. If one wished to stroke
the back of an oryx one would have to do so from back to front, as the
hair slopes in a reverse direction as compared with all other antelopes.
The oryx fawn is born with horns about four inches long, but the points
are capped with a plug-like mass of horny substance. This falls off
when the animal is about three weeks old.
An oryx fawn, until it has reached the age of from three to four months,
is a most extraordinary object. Its neck, chest and flanks are covered
with long hair, vivid red in hue. It has a shaggy red mane and a big,
black, muzzle; its ears are of enormous size. The first time I saw
these creatures I almost mistook them for lions. Three of them stood up
suddenly at a distance of about sixty yards and gazed at me. My horse
was terrified to such an extent that he became unmanageable. It was
only with difficulty that Andries was able to persuade me as to the true
nature of the animals.
The male and female oryx are identical in the matter of marking and are
of approximately the same height, but the male is the heavier in build.
The horns of the female are longer and straighter than those of the
male, but are not so thick.
Occasionally, in the cool season of the year, one used dogs in hunting
the oryx. But unless a dog had been specially trained to the business,
it was speedily killed. Under ordinary circumstances a dog most
effectively attacks an animal behind or on the flank, but the oryx,
without breaking his stride, can give a lightning-quick sweep with his
formidable horns and impale anything within four feet of his heels or on
either side. The dog that knows its business runs in front of the oryx,
for the latter cannot depress his head sufficiently forward to make the
horns effective against anything before it which is low on the ground.
A trained dog can thus easily bring an oryx to bay, and hold him engaged
until the hunter comes to close quarters.
Here may be noted a contrast between the habits of the larger desert
antelopes and of those antelopes which live in the forest. In the
desert it is the males which head the flight, leaving the females and
the weaklings to fend for themselves. But in the forest the male covers
the retreat of his family and is always the last to flee. There is
probably some connexion between the foregoing rule and the circumstance
that the female of the antelope of the desert,--the oryx, the hartebeest
and the blesbuck--is horned more or less as the male is, whereas the
females of the forest dwellers,--the bushbuck, the koodoo and the
impala--are hornless.
The horses had been watered, fed and picketed; we had eaten our supper
and finished our pipes. I took my kaross and wandered away for a few
hundred yards so as to be alone and undisturbed by snoring men or
snorting horses. The only possible cause of anxiety was in respect of
snakes. We killed a large yellow cobra just at dusk. The spoor of the
cobra,--the hooded yellow death,--could be seen among the tussocks in
every direction. The previous year one of my men had had a horse killed
by a snake close to where the wagon then stood; the skeleton of the
animal was still in evidence.
In the vicinity of the Brabies vley the sand was rather firmer than in
most other parts of the desert; consequently cities of the desert mice
abounded. Where mice were plentiful, so were snakes; they seemed to
live together underground on the best of terms. In summer it was only
at night that the snakes emerged and wandered abroad. However, cobras
or no cobras, I intended to camp by myself.
And then--once more the unutterable peace, the sumptuous palace of the
night,--the purple curtains of infinity excluding all that made for
discord,--the music of the whispering tongues that filled the void. How
the limitless, made manifest in the throbbing universe of stars,
responds to the infinite which the most insignificant human soul
contains. These are the transcendent wonders which the mighty Kant
bracketed together.
An utterance of Shakespeare--embodying one of those cosmic imaginings
only he or Goethe could have expressed, came to my mind--"the prophetic
soul of the wide world dreaming on things to come." If there be a
spirit proper to our globe--a thinking and informing spirit--surely the
desert should be its habitation. If such ever dwelt where men
congregate, it does so no longer, for men have no longer leisure to
think; they spend their strength in continuous futile labour, the fruits
of which are ashes and dust. Leisure, opportunity to collate experience
and appraise its results,--surely that is necessary to balanced
thought,--towards being able to see things in their true proportions.
But so-called progress has killed leisure.
Where, to-day, is the voice of Truth to be heard? Not in the frantic
and contradictory shoutings of the forum or the market place, nor in the
groans of those doomed to unrequited and unleisured toil,--but I think
that an attentive ear may sometimes hear her voice whispering in the
wilderness. And this I know: that when a spent and wounded soul steals
out and sinks humbly at the feet of Solitude, some kind and bountiful
hand holds out to it the cup of Peace,--and often the pearl of Wisdom is
dissolved in that cup for the spirit's refreshment.