Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer Part 11

[In "By Veld and Kopje."] I cannot deal with the episode here, in detail.

Quite recently I came across a reminiscence of this trip in an unexpected quarter. In his "Recollections" Mr. David Christie Murray relates how, when dining at the Hotel Misseri, in Constantinople, at the time of the Russo Turkish War, he witnessed a meeting between a French officer, Captain Tiburce Morisot, and Archibald Campbell afterwards known as "Schipka" Campbell. These men recognized each other as having met in South Africa, the occasion being a visit of Campbell to Morisot's camp, and the roasting of a giraffe's heart at the camp-fire.

I happened to be present at the occurrence evidently referred to; the episode took place on the very expedition which I mentioned above. But the detail as given to Mr. Murray is quite wrong. The party was not composed of "Frenchmen cutting a military road," nor was Morisot in charge of it. He was, as a matter of fact, merely one of the gang, the same as I was. We were on convoy duty near the Komati River. It was a marrow-bone and not the heart that was roasted. I have a very clear recollection of the incident. The skin of the giraffe was the largest I have ever seen; it had been found necessary to cut it in two before it could be removed.

Morisot, by the way, had a startling adventure with a lion. We were camped at the Crocodile River Drift; lions were more plentiful in the neighborhood than I have ever known them elsewhere; all night long they growled or gruntled around our encampment. The river bank, close to the water, was very sandy, and the spoor on the sand strip, which lay about two hundred yards from the wagons, showed that many lions used to pa.s.s to and fro over it every night. It was our habit to light six large fires as soon as the sun went down.

Morisot said he wanted to shoot a lion, so one day he dug a shallow pit in the sand, within about twenty yards of the water. Just before nightfall he took his rifle and went away in the direction of the drift. Nothing happened for a couple of hours; then we heard the sound of approaching footsteps evidently of some one running and husky gasps.

Shortly afterwards Morisot, minus his rifle and hat, rushed into camp.

He was in a condition of ghastly terror; his jaw had dropped, his face was ashen, his eyes were glazed. He tottered to his sleeping place and crept under the blankets.

Morisot could never be induced to tell us what had happened to him.

Next morning, however, we found the spoor of a very large lion at the edge of the pit. My own idea is that Morisot went to sleep and was awakened by the lion growling within a few inches of his face. One could hardly blame him for being demoralized under such circ.u.mstances.

Those who nowadays travel by rail through the denuded tract between Delagoa Bay and the Drakensberg can form no idea as to the marvelous richness of animal life on those plains in the early seventies. More especially was this the case in the level wooded area extending from the inland slope of the Lebomba Range to Ship Mountain. Blue wildebeeste and quagga were so plentiful that we seldom wasted ammunition on them. Buffalo abounded, sometimes in very large herds.

Waterbuck were always to be found near the rivers. Elephants existed, but were very wild and usually were scarce. Giraffe were numerous, but difficult to approach on foot.

The Komati and the Crocodile were then wide, swiftly flowing streams; in winter their water was crystal clear. Along their banks the dense, evergreen boskage lay soft and rich as velvet. In these enchanted thickets koodoo, sable, and other beautiful antelopes of the rarer varieties were always to be found. Impala were as numerous in the areas lying along the river courses as were springbucks on the upland southern plains.

Shooting stories are proverbially as unreliable as fishing ones. I have hitherto avoided relating my own slaying experiences. They do not, I suppose, differ from those of other men who followed big game in the days when rifles had not reached anything like their present pitch of deadly perfection. I think, however, that every old hunter might tell of things he has seen which would be interesting enough if he only could get people to believe them. Personally I could relate some which, although literally true, are so grossly improbable that I candidly confess I would not believe them myself had I not seen them happen.

I will give a specimen of these Munchausen-like anecdotes, just to show the reader how well-advised I have been in suppressing the series. On one occasion, when camped about ten miles from Ship Mountain, one of my friends among the Balala [Landless and weaponless waifs who wander over uninhabited tracts. Lit., "people who are dead."] came in to report that a very fine tsessaby bull was to be found in a kloof some four miles away. The meat of the tsessaby is more delicious than that of any other game, so I went forth without delay. My gun was a double-barreled one, the left barrel taking a Snider cartridge and the right a cartridge with a round bullet, only to be used at close quarters.

Before I had gone five hundred yards from the camp I noticed two very large blue wildebeest bulls on my left. They were not more than two hundred and fifty yards away. According to all precedent they should have decamped at once. Instead of doing this, however, they kept a course more or less parallel to mine. Suddenly, however, they turned and came towards me in a most threatening manner, so much so that my Balala companion climbed into a tree and I laid myself p.r.o.ne behind an ant-hill, covering the leading animal with my rifle. They, stood at a distance of about eighty yards. I fired, hitting the leader just where the neck sank into the chest; he fell dead.

The other wildebeest ran away for about fifty yards; then he wheeled round and stood facing me. Just as I was about to fire he turned and stood broadside on, gazing at the carca.s.s of his mate. I fired, aiming just behind the shoulder. The bullet "klopped" hard. The animal reeled, ran about fifty yards to my right, and once more stood, again broadside on. Again I fired, and once more the bullet "klopped." Then the wildebeest made a swift rush for about sixty yards and collapsed. After falling it lay perfectly still.

I found that my bullets had struck within two inches of each other. I cut the carca.s.s open and found that both bullets had pierced the heart, not alone pierced it, but torn it to literal ribbons of flesh.

The critical reader, especially if he has ever hunted big game, will find that the foregoing tale contains three improbabilities and a manifest impossibility. Although the circ.u.mstances happened exactly as related, I do not expect to be believed.

About four miles to the north of our camp, near Ship Mountain, was a leegte several miles long and of varying breadth. It was more or less full of reeds; it also contained several extensive patches of low, dense jungle. This leegte was the main refuge for lions which ranged over a large extent of surrounding country; every morning their fresh spoors could be traced to it. But owing to the density of the cover they were seldom seen. On one occasion a hunt was organized by our people acting in conjunction with a party of hunters who were camped about fifteen miles away, and who had lost some oxen through lions, whose spoor had been followed to one of the jungle-patches.

The marauders had been traced to one end of the cover, so we put in some beaters between where we supposed them to be and the rest of the reed-jungle area. The beaters lit a row of small fires along the line they occupied. Eventually a lion broke to the open, like a driven buck, close to where one of the hunters was standing. The latter fired, and hit the lion in the tail.

The effect of the wound was very startling. No longer was the lion a shrinking fugitive, disgusted at having been disturbed before his meal of the previous night had been digested, and only anxious to get to some other hiding place. Now he was a tornado of fury with flaming eyes, gleaming teeth, and erect mane. Emitting short, coughing thunder-growls of wrath, he charged straight for the one who had fired the shot.

The man dropped down his rifle and sprang into the branches of a tree.

The latter was too small to afford complete safety. The lion began springing at the demoralized hunter, trying to claw him from his insecure refuge. However, a skilful shot from another member of the party brought the furious brute to the dust. A surprising sequel to the incident was this: the man who had fled up the tree claimed the lion's skin, on the score that he had drawn first blood.

About fifteen miles away from one of our camps was that of the Barbers and c.u.mmings, old Kaffrarian friends of mine. I once walked over to see them. A sort of kraal-fence of horns around their encampment was evidence of the splendid sport they had enjoyed. Mr. Hilton Barber had had a narrow escape a few days previously. When on horseback he had been charged by a wounded buffalo. Mr. Barber was flung off. His horse was killed, but the buffalo fell to a well-directed bullet fired from the fallen rider while the poor horse was still impaled on the cruel horns.

The Barber party had encountered few, if any, lions up to the time of my visit. A few days afterwards, however, a remarkable thing occurred.

The encampment being outside the tsetse fly area, the party had brought both cattle and horses with them. One day all the hunters were away on horseback. The oxen, in charge of a native herd, were grazing hi the immediate vicinity of the wagons. In the middle of the forenoon a troop of lions came up openly and deliberately, and attacked the cattle, killing several. One or two were pulled down on the very edge of the camp. This was an almost unprecedented occurrence.

One very important incident of my visit was the gift to me of a pair of boots by Mr. Hilton Barber. I had, for weeks previously, been using sandals of buffalo hide, and my feet used to get terribly scarred by thorns. I shall never forget the comfort of that pair of boots.

Our camp, some ten miles to the westward of Ship Mountain, was almost on the edge of a donga, with sheer sides about ten feet deep. At the bottom was a water-hole the only one within a radius of many miles. On pitch-dark nights the lions would often come up this donga to drink. It was eerie, indeed, to lie in the flimsy tent listening to the growls and gulps of the great brutes within less than ten yards of where we lay. I often tried to muster up courage to light a flare, creep to the edge of the donga, and try a shot. By daylight the idea seemed feasible enough, and not very dangerous. But I never got so far as to translate this idea into action. There is, I think, nothing so calculated to imbue one with a sense of personal insignificance as the knowledge, on a dark night, that lions are in one's immediate vicinity.

Leaving the brazen toned roar, which is but seldom heard, out of the question, the lion's ordinary voice seems to be emitted by some being of incalculable immensity. It resembles a series of deep, half-smothered detonations linked together by querulous gruntle. It is difficult to realize that the sound originates from anything less huge than a mammoth.

Three times only have I heard a lion roar wrathfully. The sound is harsh and shattering, and is pitched in a higher key than that of the growl. To me the growl was far more awe-inspiring than the roar; it carried a suggestion of stealth combined with latent ferocity and unimaginable force in reserve. The adjective "thunderous" does not fit the roar at all; the latter suggests, more than anything else, the tones of a mighty, cavernous bra.s.s trumpet. Most terrifying, however, is the suspicion that a lion is silently padding round your camp just before daybreak, debating with himself as to whether he will or will not attack.

Yes, it was "when the phantom of false morning died" that I always dreaded the lion. Indeed, in the early part of the night, when the awesome voices were audible often in several directions at once, there was little or no danger. But just before dawn the silence suggested sinister possibilities. An examination of the ground after day had broken would occasionally show that a lion had circled round the camp over and over again, apparently unable to key up his courage to the attacking pitch. But experience shows that the lion sometimes does attack, and when this happens it is almost invariably in the dark interval just before the east begins to pale.

The reason for this is easily discovered if one looks at the thing from the lion's point of view. I am convinced that leaving out the cases in which a lion is a confirmed man-eater, is wounded, or is cornered this animal never attacks man unless (1) when it is too old or stiff to catch and pull down game, or (2) when game of every description simultaneously vacates a given area and stampedes to a great distance, a thing which not infrequently happens.

Here, then, we have a desperately hungry brute; he may, possibly, have gone several days without food. He winds a camp of human beings, creatures he knows to be edible but which, I firmly believe, he hates the idea of eating as much as the ordinary man would hate the idea of eating a monkey. But the lion has been prowling all night, has perhaps prowled for a succession of hungry nights, and he knows that day is at hand. Moreover, he knows that at dawn the last chance of his having a meal will have gone.

Accordingly a conflict is set up in his mind. His dislike of human flesh plus that dread of the human species which he shares with the whole brute creation is on the one side, his ravening hunger on the other. Increase the hunger-pressure to a certain pitch, and the lion will attack. I have not forgotten that "The Man-Eaters of Tsavo" used to take their human toll early in the evening, but not alone had they deliberately adopted man-eating, so to say, as a profession, but long impunity had made them careless.

I knew a man who once lay sleeping in a patrol tent near Pretorius Kop on the Delagoa road. The night was chill, so he folded a gunny bag over his feet to keep them warm. In the morning, at the critical time, something seized him by the foot and pulled him out of the tent. He knew at once what had happened, a lion had caught hold of him. Close to where he lay stood a billy half full of cold tea. He grasped this in pa.s.sing, and, as soon as he was clear of the tent, belabored the lion over the face with it. The brute dropped him and made off. The man's ankle was slightly bruised, but the skin was not broken. This proved clearly that the lion was an old one with teeth worn down to mere stumps.

The first time I heard a lion roar was when two of them had pulled down a sick ox about a hundred yards from my tent. Another lion approached, and the two in possession roared apparently to warn off the intruder.

It was from the spoors, which I examined after day had broken, that I inferred the details. To judge by the tracks the last-comer was a very old animal.

The next occasion was when a donkey, which was tied to a tree within four paces of where I was sitting over a very small fire, was carried off. Two lions sprang on the poor animal simultaneously; they made no sound until they had dragged their prey into the bush, a distance of about twenty yards. Then they roared together, their raucous voices mingling in a most peculiar and awe-inspiring duet. Very soon they dragged the carca.s.s to a spot about forty yards farther on, where they ate it. They roared at intervals during the repast probably as a warning to me not to interfere with them. The third instance happened when a lioness was shot through the spine and thus disabled. Her voice was the most terrible of all.

There are many instances recorded among the natives of lions becoming habitual man-eaters. I have heard of whole communities being broken up by the brutes. It was useless for the unfortunate people to move from one spot to another, as the man-eaters invariably followed them. The Amangwane horde wandered for eight years mostly over the plains of the Orange Free State after having been driven out by Tshaka. It was related to me by some of the few survivors of that awful pilgrimage with whom I have foregathered, that for years man-eating lions followed them, taking toll of the unhappy stragglers. After a time this was taken quite as a matter of course.

I have often seen it stated that lions will not eat carrion. This is quite erroneous; I am inclined to think that they occasionally prefer meat that is tainted. I have known them gorge at the carca.s.s of an ox which had died of tsetse bite, and which had lain putrefying for several days, when there were sick oxen in the immediate vicinity to be had for the mere trouble of killing.

I was one of those who, in 1874, rescued the fever stricken Alexandre party from their ghastly camp on the seaward slope of the Lebomba. Of the original eight members, three were dead, and the survivors were so weak and spent that they were unable to do more in the matter of interment than scoop shallow trenches within a few yards of the shelter, lay the bodies of their dead companions therein, and cover them up with sand. Yet these were unearthed several times by lions, which grew so fearless that the firing of a shot would not always scare them away. Once the lions came up and regarded the unfortunate beings in broad daylight, and then, as though they had deliberately made a choice, proceeded to unearth a corpse.

Most of this took place during the absence of the one member of the party who was still able to move about, but as he had to fetch water every day in a demijohn from a spot eight miles distant, he was usually away. However, the account of their experiences given by the sick men was amply corroborated by awful but quite indescribable evidence.

The rencontre of Morisot and Campbell at Constantinople reminds me of a somewhat similar experience. When I was camped near Ship Mountain, a messenger arrived one night from the camp of the hunters recently alluded to, asking whether we had, by any chance, a man among us possessing any surgical knowledge. One of the party, a man named Tyrer, had been gored by a buffalo and badly hurt. Unfortunately we could give no a.s.sistance such as was needed.

The accident had been a peculiar one; not alone was the nature of the injury unusual, but so were the circ.u.mstances under which it had been inflicted. Tyrer, on his way to the camp late in the afternoon, had wounded a very large buffalo. On the following morning he went to the locality where the animal had disappeared, with the intention of taking up the spoor. Here the jungle was very dense. Suddenly he came face to face with the creature he was seeking. It charged, and was upon him before he had time even to lift his rifle. Tyrer dropped the latter, and, with the strength of desperation, grasped the horns of the monster close to their tips.

Then began a terrible wrestling match. The buffalo was exceptionally large, probably it was old and correspondingly stiff, for on no other grounds can one account for Tyrer having been able to save his life.

Gross and unwieldy as it looks, the buffalo in its prime is as active as a cat. But Tyrer's antagonist was apparently unable to bend its neck, and get its head beneath its chest, so Tyrer was for a time able to hold on. His native bearer had dropped the spare gun and climbed into a tree.

At length Tyrer was shaken off and flung in a heap on the ground. In an instant the buffalo picked him up on one of its horns, flung him into the air and rushed away. The result to poor Tyrer was a terrible injury one which I do not care to describe. Some weeks later the injured man was carried past our camp on a litter. He was afterwards conveyed to Natal, and thence to Europe, where a skilful operation set him right.

In 1889 I went to Johannesburg. While there I met an old friend, Charles Currey, then head of the Department of Lands and Mines, in the Cape Civil Service. We arranged to take a trip together to a place called Struben's Mill, which lay behind some hills on the right-hand side of the Main Reef to westward of the Golden City. Currey was bent on sketching; I on collecting ferns. The afternoon grew hot, and we longed for a cup of tea. Seeing a house high up on the hillside, with smoke issuing from its chimney, we decided to call there and try our luck.

We were hospitably received by the man in charge; he at once provided the desired refreshment. He and I found that we knew a great deal of the same country, so we began exchanging reminiscences. I told the story about Tyrer, and added that I had often wondered as to what had become of him. Our host, who had listened to my long relation with an impa.s.sive face, then remarked

"Yes; you have got the yarn pretty right. My name is Tyrer."

I shall never forget Currey's look of astonishment.

Veld fires were occasionally things to be reckoned with in the Low Country. Looking from the cliff-crest of the mountain range over the immense plains, one was apt to think that these were covered with dense, continuous forest. But a closer acquaintance corrected this impression. There was little jungle, but there were many large trees and these usually stood somewhat far apart. When among them it was, as a rule, possible to get a clear view over a radius of about two hundred yards. Now and then one reached an area in which the trees were very high indeed, with clean boles running to a height of thirty to forty feet. But the ground was covered with long, coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, which was tinted a soft green in summer, but in winter was yellow and dry. At all seasons the haulms were so hard that the toes of one's boots wore out with distressing quickness. It was in winter that the gra.s.s fire became a real danger.

Great tracts perhaps hundreds of square miles in extent might be swept by a conflagration. If, during the course of one of these, the wind happened to be blowing towards you from the direction of the fire, the danger was apt to become real and imminent. There was only one alternative; you had either at once to find some spot comparatively clear of gra.s.s and there wait until the flame-storm had swept past, or else to set the gra.s.s alight where you were and then take refuge on the burnt area.

Occasionally the trees caught alight and afforded striking spectacles at night. I think that when this happened the tree was very old, and a considerable portion of the trunk, from the ground upwards, was decayed. I remember once noticing an extremely large tree which had caught alight from a gra.s.s fire that had swept past. I returned along the same track more than six weeks afterwards. The gra.s.s was springing up luxuriantly, it had reached a height of several inches. But the tree was still burning. I camped near it; the tall, ma.s.sive trunk, glowing on the windward side like a column of ignited charcoal and sending out a great tress of flame to leeward, was a sight never to be forgotten.