After directing them to our camp we proceeded on our way. That is to say Mike did. For myself, I was completely lost, and if left to myself should have been quite unable to return to camp.
While galloping along, revelling in the sunshinein the love of which I will not yield to catswe came suddenly on the largest snake I had yet seen. It was, I believe, a cobra, must have been fully six feet long, if not more, and was gliding with an easy sinuous motion over the plain as fast apparently, as a mans ordinary running-pace. I observed that it did not get out of the way of small bushes, but went straight through them without the smallest check to its speed. It suddenly dived into a hole and disappeared. It is said that when snakes take to a hole to escape pursuit, some of them have a habit of causing their heads to stop abruptly at the entrance, and allowing their bodies and tails to flip past like the lash of a whip, so that if the pursuer were to thrust in his hand to grasp the tail he would be met by the fangs! As the bite of most South African snakes means death, if the part be not cut out, or otherwise effectually treated, handling them is carefully avoided. Nevertheless my friend Jonathanwhen a younger man, let us hope!was in the habit of occasionally catching deadly snakes by the tail, swinging them round his head, and dashing out their brains on a stone or tree!
Soon we perceived two of our comrades driving a flock of springboks towards the river. Mike at once diverged towards a clump of bushes which it seemed probable they would pass. In ten minutes we were down in a hollow, with the horses hid behind a mimosa-thorn. The boks had not seen us, being too much taken up with their pursuers; they came straight towards us.
Now, sar, whispered Mike once again, while his eyes glared with glee, nows you chance!
I went down on one knee, carefully sighted the rifle, and looked up. The foremost bok was within good range. I fired and missed! Desolation! said I, cramming in another cartridge while the flock diverged to the left.
There was no hope now of anything but a running shot. I aimed carefully. The smoke cleared off, the flock dashed on, butone bok lay prone upon the earth. Bang! went my second barrel, and another bok, leaping into the air, fell, rose, fell again, then rose and ran on.
Mike was now jubilant. The whole internal structure of his mouth was disclosed to view in his satisfaction, as he viewed the prostrate animal. I may add that although we did not find the wounded bok that evening, we found him next day.
With our prize strapped behind Mikes saddle we rode in triumph into camp, a little before sunset, and found most of our companions assembled, busy preparing supper and making other arrangements for camping out on the veldtas they call the plain. Some had been successful, some had failed, but a good many springboks had been killed, and all were hearty as crickets and hungry as hyenas.
To kindle fires, boil tea, roast venison steaks, spread blankets on the ground, and otherwise attend to the duties of the bivouac, was now the order of the hour. The moon rose while we were thus engaged, and mingled her pale light with the ruddy blaze of camp-fires. We spoke little and ate much. Then followed the inevitable pipe and the pleasant chat, but we were all too ready for rest to care about keeping it up long. I was constrained to take the bed of honour in the cart. The others stretched their limbs on the Karroo, and in ten minutes every man was in the land of nod.
Next day we mounted at daybreak and renewed the hunt, but I will say no more about it than that we bagged twenty-six springboks amongst us, and that Six-foot Johnny, having killed the greatest number of animals, returned home King of the hunt, with a scrap of ostrich feather in his cap.
Letter 3.
SomersetThe British SettlersOriginal OwnersNative Church-Going
On my way to the Karroo I had to pass through Somerset East, and it so fell out that I fell in with a countryman from Edinburgh, who chanced to be going to Somerset in the same passenger-cart with myself. His name must have been a novelty once, though much of its freshness is worn off nowit was Brown.
Our cart had a hood; the roads were very bad, and the behaviour of that hood was stupendous! Its attachment to the cart was, so to speak, partial; therefore it possessed a semi-independent motion which was perplexing. You could not count on its actions. A sudden lurch of the cart to right or left did, of course, carry the hood with it, and, counting on that, you laid your sudden plans to avoid collision; but the elasticity of the hood enabled it to give you a slap on the face before obeying its proper impulse. So, too, it would come down on your head unexpectedly, or, without the slightest provocation, would hit you on the neck behind. I learned with painful certainty in that cart that I had a small to my back! It seemed to me that it grew large before the journey was over.
Brown was an intelligent man,not an unusual state of things with the Browns. He had two pretty daughters with him, aged eight and twelve respectively. We got on well together, and crossed the Zuurberg range in company on the last day of the year.
It was over passes in this range that the settlers of 1820 went in long trains of Cape wagons, with wives and little ones, and household goods, and civilised implements of husbandry, and weapons of defence, with high hopes and strong courage, and with their lives in their hands, to subdue the wilderness. It was from these heights that they looked over the beautiful and bush-clad plains of Albany, which lay before them as the lot of their inheritance.
The breaking up and scattering of the various parties was most eloquently and graphically told by the Reverend H.H. Dugmore in a lecture delivered at Grahamstown, on the occasion of the British Settlers Jubilee, in May 1870fifty years after the arrival of the fathers.4 I quote one passage, which gives a good idea of the manner in which the land was taken up.
And now the Sundays River is crossed, and the terrible old Ado Hill is climbed, and Quaggas Flat is passed, and the Bushmans river heights are scaled. The points of divergence are reached, and the long column breaks into divisions. Baillies party made their way to the mouth of the Fish River, where, it was said, the Head had been allowed to choose a territory, and where he hoped to realise imaginations of commercial wealth by founding a seaport town. And the Duke of Newcastles protégés from Nottingham took possession of the beautiful vale of Clumber, naming it in honour of their noble patron. And Wilsons party settled between the plains of Waay-plaats and the Kowie bush, right across the path of the elephants, some of which they tried to shoot with fowling-pieces. And Seftons party founded the village of Salem, the religious importance of which to the early progress of the settlement, is not to be estimated by its present size and population. These four were the large parties. The smaller ones filled up the intervening spaces between them. Behind the thicket-clad sandhills of the Kowie and Green Fountain, and extending over the low plains beyond Bathurst, were the locations of Cocks, Thornhills, Ostlers, Smiths, and Richardsons parties. Skirting the wooded Kloofs from Bathurst towards the banks of the Klienemonden, were ranged the parties of James and Hyman. It was the latter who gravely announced to Captain Trapps, the Bathurst magistrate, the discovery of precious stones on his location; and which the angry gentleman, jealous of the reserved rights of Government, found, on further inquiry, were only precious big ones! The rich valley of Lushington afforded a resting-place to Dyasons party. Holders people called their location New Bristol; which never, however, acquired any resemblance to Old Bristol. Passing on towards the front, there were Mounceys party, Hayhursts party, Bradshaws party, Southeys party, stretching along the edge of the wide plains of the Round Hill, and drinking their Western waters. The post of honour and of danger was the line of the Kap River. This was occupied by the party of Scott below Kafir Drift, and by the Irish party above it. The forlorn hope of the entire settlement was Mahonys party at the clay pits, who had to bear the first brunt of every Kafir depredation in the Lower Albany direction. Names thicken as we proceed from Waay-plaats towards Grahamstown. Passing Greatheads location, we come among the men of Dalgairns at Blauw Krantz. Then those of Liversage about Manlys Flats. John Stanley, Head of all Parties, as he styled himself, belonged to the same neighbourhood. Turveys party were in Grobblaars Kloof; William Smiths at Stony Vale, Dr Clarkes at Collingham. Howards, Morgans, and Carlisles, bring us by successive steps to the neighbourhood of Grahamstown.