The country now sank gradually toward the Harts River, and the valley lay broad and open, bounded on the far north by the N’Kaap, the rocky and wooded slope of the highland. The scenery at the confluence of the rivers had always been described to me as pretty, but I found that the term was only comparative, the district of Griqualand West appearing to me singularly deficient in natural beauty.
After rushing on their way from the south in numerous rapids, the waters of the Vaal here subside into a broad muddy channel, and flow peacefully on to the mouth of the Harts River, which comes from the north-east. Just before the streams unite, the Vaal makes a sudden turn to the west, and so flows on for a little distance, when it bends away in a south-south-west direction. Where it makes this last bend, the bank of the river is swampy and overgrown by trees, and is the haunt of wild cats, lynxes, and other beasts of prey, besides herds of wild swine.
The southern portion of the right-hand bank is a fertile plain, though it is only close to the river-mouth that trees grow to any considerable size. The upper layer is loam upon a substratum of clay. The opposite shore of the Harts River is much higher, rising in a rocky cliff composed of stratified schist, underlying chalk-beds poor in fossils, and forming the table-land connected with the N’Kaap. This highland descends abruptly to the Vaal River, just above the bend, and is intersected by a glen which lies above 300 yards from the mouth of the Harts River, but which must not be confounded with the Klippdachs grotto, discovered by Hübner. Formerly both shores on the lower part of the river were in the possession of the Batlapin chief, Yantje, who resides at Likatlong, three miles from the right bank, and now receives an annual payment of 200l., as a dependent of the British Government.
BATLAPIN.
Beneath some fine spreading trees at the bottom of the glen our eyes were refreshed by the verdure of a luxuriant sward, whereon we could watch the gambols of the jumping-hares, gazelles, rock-badgers, and wild ducks. The cackle of a chenalopex, a kind of goose, could be heard as it roosted in the foliage above our heads; and the rushing sound of a waterfall in the upper part of the glen enhanced the charm of this retired nook. The stream was almost hidden by the bushes, laden with berries, with which it was overhung; and its banks, which were of sandstone, with an upper stratum of limestone, were hollowed out into little grottoes. In the winter season, no doubt, it would be quite dried up, but now it contributed a beautiful feature to the landscape. My delight in finding this charming spot was complete when, at the bottom of the ravine, I discovered a thick layer of fossils of the latest alluvial period, amongst which I picked out a species of tiger-snail.
On one of the trees that overhung the glen I noticed an enormous nest, which at first I imagined must be an ape’s; but I subsequently learnt that it belonged to the hammerhead (Scopus umbretta), one of the largest nest-builders of the feathered tribe. The bird is about eighteen inches high, and is distinguished by its fine brown plumage, and a long tuft at the back of its head. It generally builds in the forks of trees that overhang precipices or rivers, although it not unfrequently makes selection of the clefts of a rock. The nest may be described as a truncated cone, inverted. It varies very much in height, being sometimes a yard, although sometimes only half as much, from its lower circumference to its upper, which is often as much as six or seven feet. It is a structure equally commodious and substantial; it is entered by an aperture in the side, something less than a foot square, and its interior is generally found to contain a number of bones. Twigs are the chief material of its construction.
This exquisite little spot, so contrasted in its character with its surroundings, might almost fairly be compared to a diamond hidden in rubble. It must be owned, however, that it was a paradise infested with snakes. I found no less than seven different species, amongst which were two of the cobras that are common throughout South Africa. The first of these I encountered as I was lifting a great stone in search of insects. I did not observe it for some moments, my attention being drawn to a mouse’s nest that I had uncovered; but a sunbeam glanced through the foliage, and revealed to me the glistening body of the venomous reptile. Having no weapon at hand, it seemed to me that my most prudent course was to wait quietly for the cobra to make an escape, before I began rummaging the mouse’s nest for insects. I had not to wait long, as, aroused by the warmth of the sun’s rays thus suddenly admitted, it begun to uncoil itself, displaying a body some four feet in length. It quickly caught sight of me, and, in the well-known cobra fashion, having erected about a third of its length it began to hiss violently, the dark neck all the while becoming greatly inflated, and the forked tongue quivering with ominous menace. However, it did not attack me; and something in my attitude, I suppose, making it forebode danger to itself, it presently turned away, and disappeared in the bushes.
Of all the poisonous snakes in South Africa I consider three of the cobras—a green sort, a black, and a yellowish—to be the most venomous. Instances have been known of the first two of these species making an unprovoked attack upon human beings. One case happened within my own knowledge. A party of Kaffir children were playing near some bushes, about a hundred yards from the huts where they lived, when they caught sight of a cobra creeping towards them. Being aware of its venomous character, they ran away from the bushes with all speed into the road, where, thinking themselves secure, they slackened their speed. Suddenly one of the children uttered a piercing scream. Unperceived, the cobra had followed him, and bitten his heel; in a quarter of an hour the child was dead.
The dingy yellow cobra of the warmer and more northerly parts of Central South Africa, often to be seen in the mapani-woods of the Sibanani plains, exhibits the murderous propensity of its race in another fashion.[3] It will choose a spot where two mapani-trees with their bushy tops over-arch a track by which the wild cattle pass on their way to drink, and rolling its tail firmly round a bough, will let its body hang suspended, straight as an assegai, ready to make its attack at the proper instant. Unlike the green or the black species, its colour is so nearly identical with the tints of the foliage that it is very likely to be unobserved, and, consequently, Europeans may be exposed to a danger against which it is difficult to guard.