THE HUGE NESTS OF THE “SOCIAL BIRDS.”
These birds, although only the size of sparrows, build in colonies, and the resultant nests are often so huge that the limbs break with their weight.
I was more than sorry to lose his cheery company, and toiled on through the terrible loneliness of the dunes, feeling rather down in the mouth. I had about six hours’ walk before me, and knew the route, and there was no hurry, so, finding a few t’samma, I sat down and ate some and chewed a bit of biltong. Now, for a long time I had been on the lookout for a variety of “truffle” which grows in the Kalahari after rain, and which not only the Bushmen eat, but which white people esteem a great delicacy. It is called by the Bushmen name naba, and though I had never seen it, I had often had it described to me. It does not appear above ground at all, but is detected by a slight swelling and cracking of the soil under which it is growing. Enthusiastic friends had told me that it was not only a true truffle, but that it knocked spots off anything ever produced in Perigord. Well, as I sat in the dunes munching t’samma and biltong of the consistency of an old boot, and thinking of all the nice things I would have when once I got into a town again, I noticed that the earth quite close to me had several of these little, gentle swellings, and, scraping away the sand, I found about half a dozen little fungi about the size of a small potato—which could be nothing but naba. I had no means of cooking them then, and put them in my haversack, resolving to test them the moment I reached a frying-pan. However, about an hour later, still trudging along, I took one out to have a better look at it. It certainly smelt nice, just like a young, fresh button mushroom. Perhaps it would be nice raw? I nibbled a bit—it was! So I ate it, and two others followed.... I got no farther, for quite suddenly the dunes began to spin round, a deadly nausea seized me, and I realised that I had been poisoned. There was nothing to be done—I could not even find a t’samma to eat, and within a few yards the Kalahari seemed to get up and smite me violently, and down I went, the whole universe swaying round me in a most unpleasant manner.
However, after about an hour of excitement I got the better of it, and was able to walk again, though I felt like a chewed rag, and did not get out of the desert and into the old Molopo till well after dark. I have tasted naba since then, and enjoyed it—but cooked!
Turning south, I plodded on till about nine, when a tiny glimmer told me that I was again in the vicinity of human beings. It proved to be a canvas huis about 10 feet square, in which were living two white men, a woman, and several children. They were smoking and drinking coffee when I turned up out of the desert half dead with fatigue, but they made no offer of the coffee (usually proffered even by the least hospitable in these lonely regions), and I had to ask for water twice before I got a cup of even that. They wanted to know whether I had found diamonds, however, but feeling hipped at their boorishness, I said “Good night” and walked about another hour, when I struck a tiny border farm called “Wit Puts,” belonging to a Boer named Engelbrecht, where I found an elderly man and a youth still awake and reading the Bible aloud. Here I was given a very kind reception, plenty of real bread and warm milk, and for the first time for months slept under a roof.
I could get no horse, however, and the next day had to walk on to Witkop, a distance of nearly thirty miles, to rejoin my companions, who, I heard, were anxiously awaiting me, as I was some days overdue. I did not get in till almost midnight, thoroughly knocked up.
Our time was now getting short, and we had still a great desire to reach a pan in the southern portion of the Reserve, where several diamonds had been picked up, so after a bare breathing-space, we again turned into the desert at a place called “Zwart Puts,” this time with a strong Scotch cart and eight oxen, and two Bastards who knew the district. Two days’ trek eastward we struck both t’samma in abundance, and most steep and difficult dunes, amongst which we came upon a small tribe of Bushmen, who had not time to get out of our way. Their tiny shelters of branches were extremely rudimentary, mere windbreaks without roof, and they had seen no water for over eight weeks, living entirely upon the abundant t’samma, roasting it for water, mixing its pulp with the blood of animals as a tit-bit, grinding the dried pips between two stones and making a most palatable meal of them, or parching them in the fire first, and making a beverage not unlike coffee. With the exception of a very highly prized and badly battered old oil-can, their utensils were all of earthenware made by themselves, their arrow-heads were of chipped flint and agate, and their t’samma knives of the hard, ivory-like shin-bone of the ostrich.
They had digging-sticks of fire-hardened wood, near the point of which was fixed the kiwe, a heavy, rounded, perforated stone, of which I had often seen specimens in museums, and had myself found in shell middens along the beach near Cape Voltas, but had never before seen in actual use.
The men spent a good deal of their time in hunting, which they did principally by pursuing the quarry—jackal, wild-cat, and especially the rooi kat (lynx)—till they got it surrounded or “cornered,” and killing it with knobkerries. They “bray” these skins to perfection, using the fat of the animal, and rubbing and working it into the hide till it becomes as soft as silk. These skins they bartered eagerly for tobacco or coffee, for either of which they have an inordinate liking. They are the most omniverous of beings, for not only do they eat the flesh of every animal they kill, cats, jackals, and baboons not excepted, but lizards, locusts, ants’ eggs, larvæ, and carrion and insects of the most loathsome description.