Tired Out
Prince Alexander of Teck (from Life).
The Prince never spared himself when there was work to be done, and after a heavy spell of night–work he would just lie down on the ground and recuperate himself with a good sleep—too tired to be disturbed by the flies playing about his bare legs or by the ants entering through the gaping slits in his boots.
At sundown we off–saddle and bivouac for the night where the gorge opens out a little. High above us towers the rocky Mount Ingona, on the top of which we see the kraal of chief Masunda. At dusk voices can be heard in all the rocks around us. It looks as though we were in for an attack—but the niggers vanish like smoke when a patrol goes out to investigate. Lights are seen flitting about Masunda’s kraal, so we shout to them not to disturb themselves, that if they like to come and talk, we will not fight them. No reply.
Consequently, after coffee at 3 a. m. this morning, we started on foot to clamber up the mountain. The path was steep and the boulders slippery, but we are getting fit at mountain–climbing—still it took us nearly an hour to reach the top. An ordinary kraal, with stone and stockade defences, all abandoned. And such a glorious view of the wooded mountains of this Belingwe district, with the many blue ribbons of streams between, so different from the usual South African scenery.
We helped ourselves to all the corn that we could carry, as well as to some little bits of loot, such as a Kaffir piano and some tambourines—the piano being a small flat board on which is fixed a row of iron tongues, and these when struck give each a different note of soft, metallic sound. We also found some small hard–wood tablets, which are the “cards” by which witch–doctors tell one’s fortune.
Then we set the village in a blaze, and made our way down from the breezy height to our tiny laager by the stream below. Got our horses, saddled–up, and after clambering and lugging them over a rocky ridge, we got into the lower valley of the Sabi—a wooded plain, in the centre of which there stood a fine acropolis with another kraal on top. Surrounded it. As usual, no one there, but lots of fresh spoor—people evidently gone to earth in the caves below. So we sat down to bathe, breakfast, and sleep (for which the heat, flies, and ants were too much), while the horses grazed. We had already done a pretty good day’s work, but at 2 p. m. we paraded for the koppies, in three parties to take the different villages, and in half an hour three fine bonfires were raging, and with more corn in our nosebags and a few chickens at our “saddle–bows,” we rode away to the part of the valley that belongs to our old friend Wedza. Here he had his Counting–house–i.e. his residential and farming kraals. The former was a fine, well–built kraal, very neat and clean, but so well concealed among the rocks that it took our patrol some time to find it. In this kraal, as in many others we had visited, there was a forge for making nominally hoes, but really assegais. The sharpening–stones lying about proved the latter.
The furnace, which is of clay, is in every instance built on this model, which is a very ancient one. Doesn’t Bent say Phœnician?
