Chapter Thirty.
With a slight feeling of nervousness we turned our horses’ heads to the water, and hearing our friend’s voice calling “Let him have his head,” we shut our eyes, and one after another went at it—oh! Our horses were over and galloping up the opposite slope, we hardly believing that we had actually “jumped a river.” So soon as we were over we looked back to see how it fared with the rest, and were almost disappointed to see that every one cleared the stream. We had half hoped to see something like the familiar pictures, in which half the men are in the water, some of the horses balking, others just dragging themselves out on the bank, while in the distance we, the triumphant leaders, were skimming along with the strength of the wind. Our friend laughed, and said that if we “lasted” long enough we should see plenty of them spilled before the end of the hunt.
The pace had told on the horses, and before we had reached the top of the hill most of us were willing to comply with the silent advice of our grey-headed cavalier, and pull up our panting horses for a breather. What a delicious gallop it had been, but it was not over yet. After resting for a few minutes at the top of the rise we started off again with fresh enthusiasm, a little steadier, perhaps, than when we left home. One of our party had a fall over his horse’s head, the animal putting his foot into an ant-bear hole, one of the little treacherous caves which we seemed to find everywhere.
Our little party, however, remained intact, and we soon reached the timber, in which considerable caution was necessary in following the scent through the straggling bushes. Our escort dismounted to find the likeliest and clearest path through, our quarry, with the true foxy cunning, having laid the trail in just those places best calculated to bother a horseman. Fortunately the obstruction was not very wide, and we emerged on the other side, where we were cheered by a sight of the fox, nearly two miles off.
A yell from our party, intended to be a view halloo, greeted him, and brought the stragglers crashing through the bushes at a great rate of speed. Off we started again, now leaping a ditch or scrambling through a sluit, now crashing through bushes and stumbling over ant-hills. At last, however, we were forced to give up all hope of again sighting the fox, and philosophically jogged along the trail until we found our quarry lying in the shade of two gigantic gum trees, which, being a well-known landmark, had been fixed upon as the goal.
Feeling very tired after the excitement of the long race, we were glad to jump off our horses and find comfortable seats on the grass. Soon the roadsters began to arrive singly, and in twos and threes, and after a while our picnic basket was unpacked. We were glad to be able to prove the truth of the saying, “as hungry as a hunter.” We spent the remainder of the day under the trees, listening to the stories our military friends had to tell us of their experience in the neighbourhood during the late Kafir war. We were in the Perie bush, which had been a stronghold of Sandillis’ men for months in 1878, and many a colonist was killed before the savages were dislodged. We rode home quietly in the cool of the evening, very stiff from our morning scamper, but feeling that we had laid in a stock of ozone which would last a long while.
There are some very fine botanical gardens in King Williamstown, always kept in order and most delightfully placed along the banks of the Buffalo River, beside which the town is built. On returning at sunset one afternoon from these gardens, we were walking in front of four well-dressed Kafirs, evidently living in domestic service in the town. They were two men and two women. Suddenly they struck up a wild melody which thrilled us as we listened; one voice took up the melody, then the second voice joined in, then the third and fourth, until the song swelled into a triumphant hymn; the soprano seemed to be singing an octave higher than an ordinary soprano voice, but it was merely the peculiar timbre of the voice which made it sound so. The bass rolled out like an organ peal, and when the singers turned away from us to go up the hill, keeping on in their wild “hallelujahs,” we could scarcely keep from following them.
The only music that can give an idea of it is to be heard in some of the strains “Aida” has to sing. Verdi seems to have thoroughly caught the spirit of these dusky-coloured people, which is a closed book to most of the white race.
Perhaps one of the reasons of the failure of many of the missionaries in their work among this peculiar people is, that it takes a many-sided man to comprehend a race whose traits are entirely different from his own. As a rule, the men sent out to Africa as missionaries are not many-sided, nor do they possess that to them most necessary of all gifts, a practical knowledge of human nature.
