On our way back from our morning ramble we met the farmer. In answer to my inquiry how we ought to proceed to get at the baboons on the hills, he was extremely communicative. He said that there were two herds in the neighbourhood, the smaller and wilder of which generally went in the morning to drink in an adjoining glen, but the other was not so shy, and ventured every day to the second pool beyond where we were standing. He complained of them as a great and perpetual nuisance. They were always on the look-out, and no sooner was a field or a garden left unguarded, than they would be down at once, break through the hedges, and devour the crops. They were likewise very destructive amongst the sheep. If a shepherd happened to leave his post for ever so short a time, or even to fall asleep, the baboons, who had been watching their chance from the heights, would be down upon the flock in the valley, and seizing the lambs, and ripping up their stomachs with their teeth, would feast upon the milk they contained; then leaving the poor mangled victim writhing on the ground, would lose no time in repeating the terrible operation upon another. This was a statement that I have since often had confirmed.
So pitiable was the farmer’s account of the losses he had in various ways sustained through the baboons, that we could quite understand the grin of satisfaction with which he learnt our object. He became more and more loquacious in his desire to render information; and when I further explained to him that we were anxious to get some of their skins to stuff, and to carry off some of their skulls, he was quite astounded; he had never heard of such a thing, and exclaiming, “Allmachtag, wat will ye dun?” he walked off, shaking his head, to tell his wife of the doctor’s “wonderlijke” proposal to shoot a “babuin,” and to send its skin and its skull all the way to “Duitsland.”[2]
Many of the Free State farmers are simple and thoroughly good-hearted people, requiring only a little more culture to make them most agreeable companions. Among all my patients I never found any more grateful.
About the middle of the morning we left Kuudu Place and started eastwards, in the hope that we might be in time to catch the smaller herd at their drinking-place. We passed several huts occupied by Basutos and Korannas employed as labourers on the farm. The Basutos come from their homes in the east, with their wives, to hire themselves to the farmers; in return for which they receive their food, and an annual payment of a stipulated number of sheep, or occasionally one or two oxen, or a mare and foal, being moreover allotted a certain portion of land, where they may grow sorghum, maize, gourds, or tobacco.
During my subsequent travels, I learnt that many of the better class of farmers are really owners of small Basuto villages, from which they hire the population in this way. Mynheer Wessels, the proprietor of the canteen we had passed the day before, was a type of this class; his farm had a circumference of many miles, although he did not cultivate a thirty-sixth part of it. To provide himself with labourers, he had obtained the ownership of a district where the harvest had been lost through drought, and had found the residents only too glad to leave their homes on the Caledon River, and to migrate to more favourable quarters.
One very marked ethnographical distinction exists between the tribes of the Basutos and the Korannas in the way they build their huts; those of the Basutos being made of boughs in a cylindrical form, about three feet in diameter, and protected by conical roofs of reeds and dry grass, while the Korannas usually adopt the form of a hemisphere, and construct them of dead branches loosely covered with mats.
We had the honour of being surveyed by one of the black ladies; she wore nothing but a short petticoat of grey calico, and her forehead, cheeks, and breasts were tattooed in dark-blue ochre with a complication of wavy lines. She only looked at us from the boundary of her own domain.
Outside one of the Koranna huts my attention was caught by a man shabbily dressed in European costume, towards whom an old woman, also in dirty European dress, was hastening, brandishing a huge firebrand, from which a volume of smoke was pouring into the air. I was curious to know what the enormous firebrand could be wanted for, and could hardly believe that it was merely to light the man’s short pipe; he did not move a muscle of his countenance, but lowering it steadily with his hand, brought it into its due position and completed his object. I advanced towards the phlegmatic smoker, and found him courteous enough to answer a few inquiries as to what was the best route we could take to the hills.
It took little more than half an hour to reach the top of the hill, which proved to be an undulating plain, covered with bushes and blocks of stone. When we had advanced some distance along it, we found ourselves approaching the pool of which the farmer told us, and could distinctly hear the hoarse barking of the baboons. Looking across to the opposite side, about 300 yards away, we caught sight of a herd of seven, only four of them full grown, that seemed to pause and scan us carefully before they decamped to a glen on the right. With all speed we followed them for a little way, observing how the wet footprints showed that they were just returning from their drinking-place.
We did not, however, go very far in pursuit, being more desirous of falling in with the other and larger herd. Having knocked over another brace or two of doves, as a further contribution to our larder, we sat down to enjoy a mid-day repast, keeping up a careful scrutiny of the slopes all around us. We seemed to be watching all in vain, when suddenly, in the direction of the farm, there was to be heard an outcry, which as suddenly again died away. Some tall mimosas prevented us seeing to any great distance one way towards the farmhouse, and a stone wall, some twelve feet high, hindered us the other way from getting a view of the bottom of the hills, so that we really had not the chance of ascertaining the cause of the commotion. By way of a joke, I said that perhaps the baboons had taken advantage of our dinner-hour to go and pay the farmer a visit. Scarcely had I said the words when a big baboon came springing up, not much more than 200 yards away, to the left; then another, then another and another, until there was a whole herd of them, going leisurely enough, and squatting down ever and again upon the stones. The farmer, with a bevy of servants, was in full chase; they were armed with sticks and stones, and kept shouting vehemently. Here we thought was a good chance for us; we would mount the hill across the line of the retreat, without diverting the attention of the baboons from the noisy crowd that was following them; and thus I hoped we might be able to get within gunshot unobserved.