Kanu arose from his hard couch on the floor of the cavern wherein he
dwelt with his followers and clambered to the top of the rocky ridge
which capped the krantz at the foot of which the cavern was situated.
It was hunger and thirst which drove him forth thus restlessly under the
midnight stars. Every night for more than a month he had sat for hours
at this spot. Rain had not fallen for nearly two years and the little
brackish fountain in the kloof below, on which these Bushmen were solely
dependent for water to keep body and soul together, had shrunk and
shrunk until it was reduced to a mere trickle. As the fountain shrank
it became more and more brackish; so much so that after his long day of
unsuccessful hunting Kanu had been unable to quench his thirst at it.
When he reached the top of the ridge the Bushman instinctively turned
his gaze to the north-east. The sky was absolutely cloudless and the
stars were shining and throbbing as they only shine and throb over the
desert. He sat long motionless and was about to return, sick at soul,
to the cave, when he caught his breath short, and his heart gave a great
throb, for a faint flash lit up the horizon for a instant. Another
flash, brighter than the first, soon followed. Kanu clambered swiftly
down the steep hill-side, wakened the other cave-dwellers and informed
them of what he had seen. In a few seconds the cave was the scene of
bustling activity, preparatory to an immediate migration.
These distant flashes of lightning had for the little clan--or rather
family of Bushmen, an all-important significance, for they meant that in
some distant region beyond the north-eastern horizon a thunderstorm was
raging and thus the long drought had broken on the vast plains sloping
northward to the mighty, mysterious Gariep.
The cave was situated in a spur of that rugged range of iron-black hills
known as the Kamiesbergen, and which were now, after the long-protracted
drought, covered with blackened stumps marking the spots where, after
rain, the graceful sheaves of the "twa" grass grow. The Bushmen knew
there was no chance of rain falling where they were, for their moisture
came in the winter season in the form of wet mists from the sea. These
never passed the limit of the hills. On the other hand, the only rains
which visited the plains were those which swept down with the
thunderstorms from the torrid north, when the great clouds advanced with
roarings as though to smite the hills asunder but, within the compass of
a vulture's swoop, would be stopped as though by a wall of invisible
adamant and sent reeling to the eastward.
It was now midsummer and the Bushmen well knew that they would never be
able to survive in their present situation until midwinter, before which
season no rain from the southward was to be expected. For some time
they had realised that their only chance of escaping a death of terrible
suffering lay in cutting the track of the first thunder shower which
would, as they were well aware, be the track of the others soon
following. Should they succeed in doing this they would revel in a belt
of desert turned as though by magic into a smiling garden, full of game,
and with many a rock-bottomed, sand-filled depression in which good
water could be easily reached by burrowing.
Already the herds of famished game would be on the move, apprised by the
lightning-sign of the falling of that rain which was to be their
salvation:--springbucks,--flitting like ghosts under the late-risen
moon; gemsbucks,--sore-footed from digging out with their hoofs the
large tap-roots from which they get that supply of moisture that serves
them in lieu of water to drink; hartebeests lumbering along with swift,
ungainly stride, and other desert denizens in bewildering variety.
Hanging on the flanks of the horde might be seen the gaunt, hungry
lions, seeking in vain to quench their raging thirst in the blood of
their emaciated victims.
When Kanu found that Elsie had disappeared from where he had left her
among the rocks and bushes at the foot of Table Mountain, he took to the
veldt with the intention of getting as far from the dwellings of
civilised men as possible. He knew that if he returned to Elandsfontein
and told the van der Walts his remarkable story he would never be
believed, and that the consequences would be distinctly unpleasant, if
not fatal, to him. So he exercised the utmost wariness, taking great
precautions against the possibility of being observed by day when
seeking food. It will, of course, be understood that he travelled only
by night. Being a Bushman of intelligence Kanu reflected upon many
things in the course of his exciting and wearisome journey. In his
untutored ignorance he classified the Caucasian race arbitrarily into
two categories,--the good and the bad. Elsie comprised within her own
person the one category; all other Europeans fell into the other.
Cautiously feeling his way northward, Kanu made a wide detour to avoid
passing anywhere near the Tanqua Valley, and then wandered vaguely on in
the hope of falling in with some of his own race. This hope was
realised one morning in a somewhat startling manner. Following some
tracks which he had discovered leading up the stony side of a very steep
mountain, he suddenly found himself confronted by a number of pygmies
such as himself; each, however, with a drawn bow and an arrow which Kanu
knew was most certainly poisoned, trained upon him at point-blank range.
Kanu at once did what was the only proper thing to do under the
circumstances,--he cried out in the Bushman tongue that he was a friend
and a brother, and then fell flat on his face and lay, with extended
arms, awaiting death or the signal to arise. Then he heard the warriors
consulting together as to whether they should summarily despatch him or
lead him captive to the cave in which they dwelt and kill him there for
the amusement of the non-combatant members of the little community.
They decided in favour of the latter alternative and then Kanu knew that
most probably his life would be spared.
But as yet he was not by any means out of the wood His vestiges of
European clothing caused him to be suspected and, in the savage mind,
suspicion and condemnation are not very far apart. Cases were familiar
to all in which renegade sons of the desert had betrayed the
hiding-places of their compatriots to their deadly enemies, the Boers,
and it was quite possible that Kanu might turn out to be a traitor. But
when the captive showed the unhealed stripes with which his back was
still scored, the captors began to feel more kindly disposed towards
him, and they eventually came to the conclusion that he was not a spy.
Later, when Kanu told his father's name, and related the circumstances
of the raid which swept his family from the face of the earth and made
him a bondman to the hated Boer,--and when it turned out that old Nalb,
the patriarch of the party, had once seen a picture painted by Kanu's
father who, though he had died comparatively young, had been a somewhat
celebrated artist, the new arrival was accepted into full fellowship and
made free of the cave and all its contents.
The Bushman acknowledged no chieftain, nor was he bound by any tribal
ties. Each family was independent of every other family and hunted on
its own account. The little community into which Kanu found himself
adopted consisted of eight men, seven women and fourteen children of
various ages. They lived after the manner of their kind,--absolutely
from hand to mouth, taking no thought for the morrow. Their movements
about the country were determined by accidents of weather and the chase,
but they retired from time to time to their cave in the Kamiesbergen,
whenever the adventitious rains made the locality habitable. When they,
or any of them, killed a large animal, they would not attempt to remove
the meat, but would camp alongside the carcase and gorge until
everything but the hair and the pulverised bones was finished. The
family cave, besides being endeared by many associations, had the
advantage of being in the vicinity of a spring which, although its water
was rather brackish, had never been known to give out completely in the
severest drought.
The cave had another great advantage,--that of being surrounded on all
sides by a wide belt of desert, so the pygmies were not at all likely to
be disturbed by inconvenient callers. It was spacious, and its walls
were well adapted for the exercise of that remarkable art which the
Bushman practised,--the art of painting. Here, on the wide natural
panels were frescoed counterfeit presentments of men and all other
animals with which the Bushmen were familiar, in more or less skilful
outline. There was no attempt at anything like perspective, but some of
the figures were drawn with spirit and showed considerable skill as well
as an evident natural artistic faculty. The animals most frequently
represented were the eland, the hartebeeste, the gemsbok and the baboon.
One picture was a battle-piece and represented a number of men being
hurled over a cliff. This was old Nalb's handiwork, and was executed in
commemoration of an attack by some strangers upon the ancestral cave,
which was repulsed with great slaughter.
A few of the paintings were the work of itinerant artists, who
sometimes, in seasons of plenty, wandered from cave to cave,--possibly
in the interests of art,--even as Royal Academicians have found it
necessary to visit the schools of Rome and Paris. Such paintings could
be distinguished among the others by the hand-print of the artist in
paint below each. They were usually somewhat better executed than the
others, and often represented animals not common in the neighbourhood,
but with whose proportions the artist had evidently familiarised himself
in other and, perhaps, distant parts.
The paints used were ochres of different tints,--from white, ranging
through several reds and browns, up to black. These were mixed with fat
and with some vegetable substance to make the colours bite into the
rock. Some of the most vivid tints were taken from those fossils known
as coprolites, in which small kernels of ochreous substance are found to
exist. The brush was made of the pinion feathers of small birds.
It was not long before Kanu rose to a position of eminence in the little
clan. He took unto himself, as wife, Ksoa, a daughter of old Nalb and,
when that venerable leader's physical vigour began to decline, Kanu
gradually came to be looked upon as his probable successor. His sojourn
among the Boers, whilst it had told against his skill as a hunter, had
sharpened his wits generally. Soon he became as expert as any in the
tracking of game. Then he introduced a slight improvement in the matter
of fixing an arrow-head to the shaft, which was immediately recognised
by the superstitious Bushmen as an evidence of more than human ability.
Thus, when old Nalb met his death from thirst, after finding that the
store of water-filled ostrich-eggshells which he had cached a long time
previously had been broached, Kanu was at once looked upon as the
leader.
For a few seasons peace and plenty reigned. The locusts appeared year
after year, on their way to devastate the cultivated portions of the
Colony, and the Bushmen thanked their gods for the boon, with elaborate
sacrifices in which Kanu officiated as high priest. Then came the
drought, which was attributed to the fact of one of their number having
allowed his shadow to fall upon a dying ostrich in the afternoon. Had
this happened in the morning, it would not have mattered so much but,
happening when the sun was going home to rest, and thus preventing the
luminary from taking his lawful dues in the matter of supper, it was
looked upon as likely to prove a deadly affront to all the spirits of
the sky, who were the sun's subjects. These spirits, who sent or
withheld run as pleased their capricious minds, the Bushmen feared and
constantly endeavoured to propitiate. The man guilty of this heinous
offence was looked at askance by all, but was forgiven after elaborate
and painful rites had been solemnised over him. Nevertheless, when the
drought increased in intensity, and the children began to sicken from
drinking the salt-charged water from the failing spring, the offender
found it judicious to disappear.
As soon as the women had returned from the spring, bearing their bark
nets full of ostrich-eggshells containing water,--the shells being
closed with a wooden peg at each end, a start was made. The skins were
rolled up into bundles and upon these were bound the earthen pots and
the bags containing the very scanty store of grain. This grain was the
seed of the "twa" grass, plundered from the store-houses of ants. The
women and children were loaded to their utmost capacity of draught,
whilst the men carried nothing but their bows and arrows, and their
digging sticks. These last were pointed pegs of very hard wood, about
eighteen inches long, stuck through round stones four or five inches in
diameter, which had been pierced for the purpose. The object of the
stone was to give the sticks weight in the digging.
The oldest of the women was charged with the important duty of carrying
fire. The Bushman knew no metal and, consequently, had no tinderbox, so
his only way of kindling fire was by the long and laborious process of
twirling a stick with the point inserted in a log, between the palms of
the hands. Thus whenever a move was made from one place to another, one
of the party was appointed fire-carrier. When the two sticks which
invariably were carried had nearly burnt out, a halt was called and a
fire lit from twigs; in this two fresh sticks were lighted; these would
then be carried forward another stage. As a matter of fact Kanu had
learnt the use of tinder from the Hottentots, and had, as a great
miracle, kindled some dry and pulverised bark from a spark generated by
striking a fragment of iron which he picked up at the spot where some
European hunters had camped, upon a flake of quartz. But, after the
principle enunciated by a modern philosopher, that it is a mistake to
call down fire from Heaven whenever you cannot lay your hand upon the
matchbox, Kanu rightly judged that his miracle would lose some of its
most important advantages if repeated too often, so he reserved it for
great emergencies, and allowed the time-honoured plan of fire-carrying
from place to place to continue. In this Kanu showed a very sound
political instinct, and his example might be profitably followed by many
reformers whose impatience to put the whole world straight all at once,
often defeats its own ends.
Consider, for a moment, what the result of a popularising of the
tinderbox would have been:--In the first place what was looked upon as a
miracle would have ceased to be regarded as such and, with the
miraculous, a good deal of Kanu's influence would have gone. Then,--the
old woman whose function it was to carry fire-sticks would not alone
have lost her importance, but would have had to carry heavy loads like
the other women.
Not only she, but her immediate relations, might have resented this,
and, accordingly, Kanu would probably have weakened the allegiance of at
least one-fourth of his subjects. There is nothing, in the humble
opinion of the writer, which proves Kanu's natural fitness for
leadership so much as his having decided against the popularising of the
tinderbox.
Now that the lightning-sign, which had been so long and so anxiously
waited for, had come, the black despair which Kanu and his companions
had been the prey of during the last few months, gave way to sanguine
hope. They knew that the ordeal which had to be endured,--the crossing
of the black belt of scorched desert which lay between them and the
track of the thunder shower, would strain their endurance to the utmost,
but such experiences are but incidents in the life of the Bushman--and
he takes them as they come, without repining at Fate. In their
different hunting trips they had exhausted all the caches of
water-filled eggshells within a distance of two days' march, but there
was one cache far away on the edge of the great dune-region to the
north-eastward which, if they could manage to hold out for four days on
the brackish liquid which they were carrying and,--if the treasure
should prove not to have been broached, would relieve their necessities
for the moment, and enable them to make a successful dash for the deep
and precipitous gorge through which the great Gariep winds on its
mysterious course to the ocean.
After descending the mountain the Bushmen struck across the plain in
single file, heading due north-east. The men stalked ahead, trusting
that their dread of prowling beasts of prey would keep the women and
children, heavily laden as they were, close behind. Soon the liquid
beams of the Morning Star warned them that the friendly night was nearly
over, and they quickened their paces so as to reach a long, low ridge
dotted with _karee_ bushes and large arboreal aloes, which lay some
distance ahead, and on the side of which some protection might be
afforded from the raging sun. When day broke this ridge loomed large
before them in the midst of the oceanlike plain, but before they reached
it the day was well on towards noon. Then water was dealt out in
sparing quantities to human beings and dogs alike, and the weary
wayfarers scattered about seeking shade under rock, tree and shrub.
In several directions could be seen clouds of dust arising,--indications
of the migrating herds of game; far and near the silent sand-spouts
glided about in stately rhythm, like spectres of the daytime threading
some mysterious dance-measure. Early in the afternoon the clean-cut
margin of a snow-white cloud projected slightly above the north-eastern
horizon. This turned the expectation of rain falling upon the plains
before them to a certainty, but the track of the storm-cloud was an
appalling distance ahead.
When the sun had somewhat declined another start was made. The women
now kept together, while the men scattered out on other side of the
course with digging-picks in readiness to unearth roots and tubers
should the drought have left any indication of their existence above
ground. Each warrior wore a skin fillet around his head, into which his
supply of poisoned arrows was stuck by the points, the shafts standing
straight up in a circle reaching high above him. This served the double
purpose of having the arrows where they could be easily got at when
required, and making the braves look fierce and formidable in the event
of an enemy being met with.
The unbroken plain now lay before them in all its solitary horror; their
only hope of relief lay a three-days agony in front. The sand,--so hot
in Summer on the plains of Bushmanland that one can cook an egg in it
several inches below the surface,--scorched their feet; it even caused
the dogs to roll over and lie on their backs, howling from the pain they
suffered.
As night fell the men closed in, bringing the scanty supply of lizards,
striped-faced desert mice with long, bushy tails, roots and other desert
produce which they had succeeded in capturing or unearthing. The little
band pressed on silently over the sand which had now begun somewhat to
cool down, and beneath the stars which seemed so close above them in the
purple vault. Some of the men now remained behind to assist the weaker
of the women, who were lagging, by relieving them of portions of their
heavy loads.
At each halt which was made for the purpose of rekindling the
fire-sticks, all but the one charged with the duty of kindling the fire
lay down and sank at once into deep sleep. When the sticks were once
more properly alight the sleepers would be wakened by a touch and, once
more, the party would steal, ghost-like, across the velvet-like sand.
Day broke, and when the party halted a little shade was obtained by
stretching skins over sticks stuck into the ground. Then a fire was
soon kindled and the food obtained on the previous day cooked and eaten.
Another sparing ration of water was issued and, in spite of its
scarcity, and of the fact that every drop was as it were their
life-blood, a small libation was poured out on the sand to propitiate
the spirits of the sky who so greedily drank up moisture from the
thirsty earth.
It was late in the afternoon of the third day when they reached the spot
where the water-filled eggshells lay buried. Some of the women and
children had been left half a day's march behind, where they had dropped
from thirst and exhaustion. Fortunately the cache was found to be
intact. During the night a supply of water was sent back to those left
behind, and early in the forenoon of next day the whole party was once
more together. Their only loss was that of their best dog; the animal
went mad while they were digging for the water, and rushed away to meet
its death alone among the dunes.
They rested all that day as well as the next night, and it was on the
following day that Kanu made the great discovery which more than ever
convinced his followers of their leader's supernatural powers. Before
dawn Kanu left the encampment on a solitary hunting expedition.
Skirting the edge of the dune-tract he went on and on, wondering sorely
at the absence of game of every description. Then he noticed a number
of tracks of jackals, all converging towards one point. Following one
of these he was led to a narrow opening in a low, overhanging ledge of
rock. Entering the opening and groping about, he found himself in a
small, oblong cave. His heart beat fast, for he distinctly smelt water.
Feeling along the walls of the cavern he came to an inner opening, of
size just sufficient to admit the body of a man. This proved to be the
mouth of a passage which dipped inward at a steep angle. Kanu held his
bow by one end and tried to find the bottom of the shaft, but
unsuccessfully. Then he carefully let himself down, feet first. Soon
he found himself standing,--or rather half-reclining,--with his feet in
icy cold water, but the passage was so narrow that he could not stoop
sufficiently to reach the water even with his hands.
With some difficulty he managed to extricate himself, and then he turned
and let himself down head first, having previously placed his bow across
the opening and fastened a thong to it, so as to enable him to work his
way back again. He drank his fill of water more delicious than anything
he had tasted for years past and then hastened back to where he had left
his companions.
Great were the rejoicings over what to all appearances was a permanent
spring, the water of which was absolutely perfect in quality. The
little community at once decided to make the cave their head quarters.
Food was plentiful and easy to obtain. On account of the general
drought no water was to be found anywhere else in the neighbourhood;
consequently, numbers of jackals visited the spot every night. Of
these, the flesh of which is looked upon by the Bushman as being a
special delicacy, as many as were required for consumption were slain.
Later, when the rains came, the herds of game returned; moreover, the
vicinity proved to be rich in "veldkost," which is the name by which the
edible bulbs and tubers with which the desert sometimes abounds, are
known by.
The years went by and these Bushmen, isolated as they were from the rest
of mankind, led a life of absolutely ideal happiness from their own
point of view. They had no want ungratified; to them the desert and
what it contained were all-sufficing. There were no other human
creatures anywhere near them, so they had nothing to fear.
It is a mistake to suppose that the life of the Bushmen was solely that
of animals. Besides painting, they possessed the art of mimicry to a
high degree and were, moreover, excellent actors. Their plays were
hunting scenes, the characters being the different animals they were
accustomed to hunt. The cries, movements and peculiarities of such were
imitated as accurately as was possible by human beings, and a curious
tincture of humour,--humour of a kind almost unintelligible to the
civilised mind, was imported into the personifications. For instance:
the shifts and stratagems by means of which a trio of ostriches will
endeavour to lead an enemy away from their nest,--the simulated alarm of
the birds when the enemy takes a wrong direction and the comparative
absence of any sign of uneasiness if he takes the right one, were hit
off to the life and accentuated with an amount of drollery one might
think the subject incapable of sustaining.
The favourite episode for dramatic representation was the robbing of the
lion of his prey. The lion's favourite time for killing is just before
daybreak. After he has killed he loves to drain, at his ease, every
drop of blood from the carcase of his quarry. The act of killing by the
king-killer of the wilderness is a noisy affair and, if it happened
within a radius of several miles, and the wind were not unfavourable,
the sound was almost sure to reach the keen ears of the pygmies. Then
all would turn out, each being armed with a firebrand and carrying a
bundle of dry, inflammable grass and twigs.
Approaching the spot where the kill had taken place, from different
directions, the Bushmen would begin to shout and jeer at the lion and
call him by all sorts of ridiculous and insulting terms. If he
attempted to attack, some of the inflammable stuff would at once be
ignited, and the lion, no matter how enraged, would always turn tail and
retreat from the blaze. All this time the circle would be gradually
closing in, leaving a gap through which the baffled and furious animal
could beat a retreat, snarling and showing his teeth.
In the Bushman's moonlit theatre this scene would be acted with
astonishing skill and realism. In regions where the clans were thickly
distributed, a good actor of the lion's part in this popular play would
be as sure of a welcome as if he were a great painter, and thus could
pick and choose his society among the different communities.
Kanu had much to tell his fellows about his varied experiences, and the
relation of these was always more than half acted. The old, bald-headed
man with the white beard who had sentenced him to be whipped, would have
felt his dignity to be seriously compromised if he had seen his former
victim perched on a rock mimicking him, and declaiming gibberish to a
group of convulsed admirers; accentuating in a most preposterous manner
every one of His Worshipful peculiarities.
It was in the hunting-field that the true potency of the Bushman was
shown. Inside a wicker framework covered with the skin of an ostrich,
the hunter would stalk in among an unsuspecting flock of feeding birds.
With slow, swaying stride,--the long neck bent down and the beak bobbing
as though pecking at the green beetles on the bushes, the counterfeit
presentment of a stately, full-plumaged male would edge its way in,
making the characteristic by-play which the male adopts when he wants to
attract the females by an affective display of his beauties. Then, one
by one, the members of the doomed flock would bite the dust, and the
slayer, doffing his disguise, would proceed to cut up the carcases into
pieces convenient for roasting,--or else collect fuel pending the
arrival of his friends with the fire-stick.
Thus passed the halcyon days. Kanu and his men became muscular and
wiry; the women and children fat and sleek. Kanu was venerated by his
subjects as a powerful but beneficent magician, who had gone to some
wonderful "other" world and returned laden with gifts of useful
knowledge. Ksoa, Delilah-like, tried to get him to reveal to her the
secret of his power, so he told her that he had been taken captive once
by a monstrous being which was about to eat him,--when a blind lioness
of wonderful size, strength and beauty had set him free and destroyed
his enemy. This lioness had given him as a charm a hair out of her own
splendid mane. So long, he said, as this hair were not stolen from him,
or lost, all would go well with him and his. If, however, the hair were
to be stolen,--not alone would good fortune depart from Kanu and his
clan, but dire disaster would fall upon the stealer.
One day, after much persuasion, Kanu consented to show his wife the
talisman. It had been carefully rolled around a dry leaf; Ksoa
marvelled greatly as she saw its length uncoiled and saw how it glinted
in the sun. She did not dare to touch it, but begged of her lord to put
the precious thing safely away at once, lest anything should happen to
it.
"What a great and wonderful lioness that must have been.--And a lioness
with a mane," she commented, in an awed whisper.
"Yes," answered Kanu, with a sigh.