FEEDING THE HUNGRY AT THE STEINKOPF NATIVE MISSION STATION, LITTLE NAMAQUALAND.
HARD PULLING IN THE HALGHAT RIVER KLEIN, NAMAQUALAND.
They were frowsy and filthy and poverty-stricken to a degree, and in a weak moment, having pity on one poor old bundle of rags who was carrying a baby and seemed hardly able to get along, I motioned her to get up on the waggon box, and later, when two or three pot-bellied little imps clambered up beside her, I hadn’t the heart to turn them off. Then—it being late afternoon of a terrifically hot day, and the waggon going smoothly through the soft sand—I stretched out and fell asleep for a bit.
My dreams were interrupted by a terrific blow on the nose, and I awoke with a yell to find a small but extremely odoriferous youngster sprawling across my face, having fallen from a perch which he had evidently taken up on our piled-up belongings behind us; each box or bag or sieve was occupied by others: one of them had on my new pith helmet and nothing else—the whole waggon, in fact, was filled and festooned and overflowing with them. On the box-seat now sat four frowsy old hags smoking, spitting, and clucking like a barnyard full of hens, whilst the atmosphere...! A sudden jolt of the waggon threw another youngster across Ransson’s embonpoint—much to my gratification—but he merely snored a bit louder. I, however, felt myself quite unequal to the occasion or the odour, and scrambling out of the waggon, I gave them best and walked. We outspanned in the middle of the track, the native drivers on these lonely treks seldom troubling to draw aside from the beaten path. Glorious are these Namaqualand nights, the soft, velvety blackness of the seemingly limitless veldt, above the great solemn blinking stars, looking double the size they appear through the denser atmosphere of the South, and making one feel very small and wormlike.
There is an abundance of fuel in the shape of dry bush almost everywhere in Namaqualand, and that first night of our trek our fire blazed brightly nearly the whole night, the natives huddling near it and clucking and cackling in their extraordinary “click” language, men, women, and quite small children passing from mouth to mouth the native-made soapstone pipes, filled with their loved tabaki. These pipes are peculiarly shaped, being a straight tube like a very large cigar-holder, and often the more primitive natives simply use the hollow shin-bone of buck or sheep.
We slept in the waggon, or rather tried to, and as we turned in Ransson commented on the extraordinary monotony and lifelessness of the country so far. “No life,” said he, “no game, nothing to shoot at, neither buck nor bird, no snakes, no insects even!” He was still grumbling when I fell asleep—but he was wrong! I have a sleeping-bag, and usually, when I am once inside it, it needs a cyclone to wake me before daybreak; but that night the paucity of insect life in the surrounding country was accounted for by the fact that they had all got inside my bed, and appeared, moreover, to resent my presence. For a few minutes I dreamed that I was being used as a garden roller over a bed of stinging-nettles, then I woke to find myself squirming and writhing in an absolute bagful of fleas; not the decent educated variety, mind, but Namaqualand fleas, belonging to a land of famine and bent on making up for it while the chance lasted. I was out of that bag in quick time, but the whole waggon was phosphorescent with fleas, and through it all the other chap snored. He afterwards said that I was the best man he’d ever been out with; whilst I was around every flea in the vicinity left their homes to follow me, and he could sleep in peace, but personally I think they knew what they were up to when they left him alone....
I finished the night outside, my only idea in sleeping in the waggon having been to avoid the dew, which on the coast-belt is often extremely heavy, and which accounts for the dense belt of low bush. A tramp through it in the early morning on the lookout for a shot means being saturated, every bush and plant being soaked with brilliant dew-drops. Doubtless this helps the animals that feed there to exist so long without water, sheep in particular; indeed, I have been assured that in certain parts of the veldt thereabouts lambs often go for the first six months of their lives without ever seeing water, and have no notion as to how to drink it when first brought to a pool.
The end of the second day’s wearisome trek brought us to Daberass, where, in a wild, rocky ravine amongst rugged kopjes, we hoped to find water for the oxen; but the deep hole scooped in the sand was scarcely damp at the bottom, and we thanked our lucky stars that our own water-barrels were holding out well.
The hills bordering the ravine (which is the dry bed of the Halghat River) were soon passed, and another wide expanse of bush-covered plain came in sight, on the far side of which, as far as the eye could reach, extended a range of bold and fantastic peaks.