Chapter Twenty Eight.
Notes.
Snake stories are proverbially an ‘uncommercial risk’ for those who value a reputation for truthfulness. Hailstorms are scarcely less disastrous; hence these notes!
Mamba.—This is believed to be the largest and swiftest of the deadly snakes, and one of the most wantonly vicious. The late Dr Colenso (Bishop of Zululand) in his Zulu dictionary describes them as attaining a length of twelve feet, and capable of chasing a man on horseback. The writer has seen several of this length, and has heard of measurements up to fourteen feet (which, however, were not sufficiently verified); he has also often heard stories of men on horseback being chased by black mambas, but has never met the man himself, nor succeeded in eliciting the important facts as to pace and distance. However that may be, the movements of a mamba, even on open ground, are, as the writer has several times observed, so incredibly swift as to leave no other impression on the mind than that of having witnessed a magical disappearance. How often and how far they ‘travel on their tails,’ whether it is a continuous movement or merely a momentary uprising to command a view, and what length or what proportion of the body is on the ground for support or propulsion, the writer has no means of knowing: during the Zulu war an Imperial officer was bitten by a mamba while on horseback and died immediately.
Hailstorms.—Bad hailstorms occur every year in South Africa, but they do not last long (ten minutes is enough to destroy everything that stands). The distances are immense, and the area of disturbance is usually a narrow strip; hence, except when one strikes a town, very few people ever witness them. This summer hailstorms were more general and more severe in the Transvaal than for some time past. A bad storm baffles description. The size of the hailstones is only one of the factors—a strong wind enormously increases the destructiveness; yet some idea may be gathered from the size of the stones. The writer took a plaster cast of one picked up at Zuurfontein (near Johannesburg), in November 1906, which measured 4.5 inches long, 3.5 wide and 1.125 inches thick—a slab of white ice. In the Hekpoort Valley (near Johannesburg) and in Barberton, about the same date, the veld was like a glacier; the hail lay like snow, inches deep, and during the worst spells the general run of the hailstones varied in size from pigeons’ eggs to hens’ eggs; but the big ones, the crash of whose individual blows was distinctly heard through the general roar, are described as ‘bigger than cricket balls’ and ‘the size of breakfast cups,’ generally with an elongation or tail—like a balloon. Sheep and buck were killed, and full-grown cattle so battered that some were useless and others died of the injuries; wooden doors were broken in, the panels being completely shattered; corrugated iron roofs were perforated, and in some cases the hailstones drove completely through them. The writer photographed a portion of a roof in Barberton which had suffered thus, and saw plaster casts—formed by pouring plaster of Paris into the indentations which two hailstones had made in a flower bed—in diameter equalling, respectively, tennis and cricket balls.
Near Harrismith, O.R.C., in 1903, two herd boys with a troop of about a hundred goats and calves were caught by the hail. The boys and all the stock, except one old goat, were killed.