STARTLED BY LIONS.
Theunissen was fortunately unhurt; and, while we were releasing him from his critical position, the two bullocks that had escaped came back of their own accord. After seeing the whole of the oxen securely fastened to the waggon, I had five large fires lighted, and, late as it was, felled several mapani-trees, with which to raise the height of the fence.
In spite of the heavy rain, we proceeded as soon as we could upon our journey. The downpour, however, had the effect of making the travelling less toilsome, by binding the sand together; though it was not without much difficulty that the bullocks pulled through the deep sand-drifts at the ford where we crossed the spruit. On the farther side we found a deserted encampment, containing the remnants of a broken-down Boer waggon. We saw comparatively little game—only two gnus, a few zebras, and an occasional guinea-fowl or two, of which I brought down one.
During the after-part of the day we were quite out of the woods, and upon a plain where the mapanis stood only singly or in detached clumps with the mimosas. Though reluctant to do so, we were obliged to unfasten the bullocks and allow them to graze awhile in the evening; but we took every precaution to make them safe, so that there should be no repetition of the lion panic. They had hardly been freed from the yokes, when they were startled by an animal dashing wildly at no great distance across the plain. It was a hyæna, which Pit and Theunissen, with my good Niger’s aid, managed to knock over; but it was far from being a single specimen of its kind, as all night long our sleep was interrupted by the incessant music of a regular hyæna-chorus.
Throughout the next morning the journey was very similar to that of the previous day; but in the afternoon we passed along an extensive glade, surrounded with underwood and full of game. A heavy shower provided us with the drinking-water which the soil failed to supply. We saw some ostriches, duykerbocks, and striped gnus on the plain, and, in the distance, some lions on the look-out for zebras. Coming to a wood that seemed a suitable resting-place, I determined to spend the night there.
Before the following evening we arrived at a great forest, stretching nearly 100 miles to the north, and forming a part of the sandy-pool plateau. With the exception of a few glades containing water, the soil is entirely of sand, and is the western portion of the district to which Mohr has given the name of “the land of a thousand pools.” I only apply the term to the region without any appreciable slope, where the rain can have no downfall to the rivers. The pools are almost all fed solely by the rain, and are generally small and overgrown with grass; they retain their supply of water very differently, sometimes for eight months in the year, sometimes only for two. A comparatively small number are fed by springs, and such of them as are perennial have special names given to them by the Madenassanas who live in the underwood; whilst others, full only a part of the year, have been named on various occasions by Dutch or English hunters and ivory-traders. The boundaries of this pool plateau are the Nata and Soa salt-lake on the south, the Zambesi on the north, the Mababi veldt on the west, and the Nata and Uguay rivers on the east. It is the district of Central South Africa where the larger mammalia, such as elephants, rhinoceroses, and giraffes begin to be more abundant; thence extending eastwards and westwards, as well as northwards beyond the Zambesi. In the winter, owing to the deficiency of water, it is always difficult to cross it, and even in the beginning of summer the transit is always a matter of some anxiety, as a poisonous plant which sprouts up amongst the grass from October to December is very injurious to cattle; the evil is so great as very often to induce the traders on their way to do business with the tribes on the Zambesi, to choose the eastern route through the Matabele and Makalaka district; but this proceeding has the disadvantage of exposing them to the dishonesty and untrustworthiness of the natives.
While we were crossing the last glade before entering the forest, Meriko, who was walking on in front with the bullocks, pointed suddenly to the left, and called out something that I did not understand; he was evidently rather excited, and both I and Theunissen, who was sitting with me on the box, were curious to know what had disturbed him. He soon managed to make us comprehend that he had caught sight of two ostriches about 250 yards from the road, and, on looking again, I saw one of them standing near a high bush. Although I was quite aware that, as matter of right, they really belonged to the king of the Bamangwatos, my sportsman’s instinct was far too keen to permit me to go my way without having a chase; accordingly, a very few minutes elapsed before I was stalking them in the grass. Almost directly I discovered the second ostrich, which I had not seen before, squatting on the ground and peeping at me; it did not wait long before it took to running off, but an intervening bush prevented my getting a proper aim at it. I followed on to the more open plain, and just as the two birds together were entering the underwood about 400 yards in front of me, I fired; but my bullet struck a tree, quite close to them, without touching them. Meriko had the laugh of me; he could not refrain from expressing his satisfaction that the property of his liege lord had been uninjured, and pledged himself to report the circumstance to the king on his return to Shoshong.
The bullocks had not a drop of water all day long. It was consequently of the most urgent importance that we should get on to the next spring, and we agreed that there was no alternative but to travel on all night, if need be, in defiance of the difficulties we might encounter. Niger, unbidden, took the lead, followed by Pit carrying a breech-loader; Meriko led the foremost oxen by the bridle, which he held in his left hand, whilst he held up a flaming torch in the other; Theunissen took the reins, and I sat on the box with one loaded gun in my hand, and another behind me ready to be used in any emergency. By eleven o’clock, however, we reached some springs; they proved to be the most southerly of those known to the neighbouring Madenassanas as the Klamaklenyana springs, and here we came across several elephant-hunters whom I had seen before, some of them a few weeks previously, and others at the Soa lake. They were all full of complaints at the bad luck they had experienced.
As implied by their name “four, one behind another,” the Klamaklenyana springs consist of four separate marshy pieces of water, between which, on either hand, are numerous rain-pools, full at various periods of the year. Close to the spring by which we were halting there was a waggon-track, made by the Dutch hunters, which branched off towards the Mababi-veldt.
At this place, too, I fell in with one of Anderson’s servants, named Saul; he was travelling with a Makalahari who had four children, whom he had met at the Nataspruit and invited to join him; he told me he was sure that his master would not disapprove of what he had done, as the man would be very serviceable to him in helping to hunt ostriches.