“That is a very extraordinary story, Mapela,” said I. “Did you believe it; or do you think that the man who told you had a sick brain and imagined things that were not?”
“Nay, who can say?” returned Mapela. “As I have told you, the man was very sick when he reached Mashonaland; but I think his sickness was of the body, not of the mind: and he told me these things many times before he died, therefore I believed him.”
I spent the best part of the afternoon in cross-questioning Mapela upon the exceedingly interesting and remarkable story which he had told me; but the old fellow stuck to his text so perfectly that at length I was forced to the conclusion that what he had told me was substantially what he had himself been told, and that if there was any falsehood or exaggeration in the yarn it was not he who was responsible for it. We outspanned that night at a distance of twelve good miles north-east of Gwanda, in a most beautiful valley full of lush grass, and beside the stream, now much diminished in volume, which we had been following ever since our passage of the Limpopo; and, I having shot an elephant about an hour before our arrival at the outspan, we all feasted royally that night, the impi building an enormous watch fire and squatting round it, stuffing themselves with elephant meat until they could eat no more.
Early in the forenoon of the eleventh day after our departure from Gwanda we reached the Zambezi, at a point where, by a stroke of good luck, the river chanced to be fordable; and, having got the wagon and all my other belongings safely across to the left bank, I immediately outspanned, and then proceeded to distribute liberal largesse among the subordinate officers of the impi, gave Mapela a specially handsome present, and so parted upon excellent terms from my Mashona friends, not without a qualm of regret and of wistful surmise as to my chances of ever again seeing them. Later on, after a meal and a rest, we again inspanned, and, trekking a few miles upstream, rounded the shoulder of a range of low hills and plunged into a valley stretching northward, with a small southward-flowing stream running through its centre and discharging into the Zambezi, upon which splendid river we now turned our backs. ’Mfuni, the man who had fought me by command of Lomalindela, and had afterwards attached himself to my train, exhibited some slight symptoms of regret at parting from his friends in the returning impi; but he quickly recovered from his fit of the blues, and, evidently being very fond of animals, devoted himself with zest to the task of making friends with the horses and dogs. Also the poor fellow speedily developed a most devoted attachment to myself, so arousing in Piet a feeling of profound jealousy and disgust which I only succeeded in dissipating with difficulty after the occurrence of several more or less serious quarrels between the pair.
During the three weeks that immediately followed our passage of the Zambezi, our route lay through a wilderness in which for days together we never saw a solitary human being. But this did not very greatly matter, for the country, consisting for the most part of low, rolling hills, was well watered by streams which, flowing generally in a direction more or less north and south, we were able to follow day after day, while the grass was plentiful and of very good quality. Moreover, there was not much bush, which would have been to some extent a disadvantage but for the fact that, as we advanced, the game became so tame that we had very little difficulty in stalking it through the long grass. During this particular period of our journey we encountered very few elephants or big game of any kind, but antelope of various descriptions were abundant, so that we always had plenty of buck meat in the larder. Then, one day, scouting far ahead of the wagon, accompanied by Piet, ’Mfuni, and the dogs, I discovered that we were approaching a vast open plain, where the grass was not nearly so good. I therefore rode back a few miles, and, upon meeting the wagon, gave orders for a prolonged outspan at a suitable spot, so that the oxen, which were becoming thin from constant work, might have a few days’ rest, and recover flesh in preparation for the journey across the plain.
We remained at that outspan five days, and when we resumed our journey I had every reason to regard the time as well spent; for as we pushed forward across the open plain the grass became so poor that, but for the period of rest and recuperation which I had allowed them, I am convinced that the oxen would never have accomplished the journey at all. Luckily for us, when we had lost three oxen, and the remainder had become little better than walking skeletons, we reached the other side of the plain, and once more came to good grass and water; and here we rested again for a week.
On the second day after the resumption of our trek, two mountains of almost perfect pyramidal form were sighted right ahead and apparently about fifty miles apart; and on the following day the flat, open plain gave place to undulating country, which gradually grew more rugged and park-like as we advanced, with good grass, small, detached patches of bush, and a few trees, singly or in clumps, scattered thinly here and there. But we soon noticed that, apart from the grass, the vegetation generally was new and strange, of a kind that none of us had ever before seen; the trees in particular being very curious and grotesque in shape, both as to their trunks and branches, and their foliage being of almost any other colour than green. In some cases the trees, notwithstanding their strange and abnormal configuration, were very beautiful, the large, heart-shaped leaves being of almost every conceivable tint of red, ranging from palest pink to a very deep, rich crimson, with great bunches of snow-white blossom; while at the opposite end of the scale, as it were, there occurred examples in which the trunks and branches were swollen, knotted, and twisted into the most extraordinary and uncouth shapes, while the foliage consisted of long, flat, ribbon-like streamers of a dirty brownish-grey hue, coated with an exudation the odour of which was offensive beyond the power of words to express. Fortunately for us, these last were comparatively rare, and we soon learned to give them plenty of room and to pass them to windward, where possible.
And here, too, we saw the first of several new and strange forms of animal life. As Piet and I were, as usual, riding forward some distance ahead of the wagon, we suddenly came upon a small herd of seven curious-looking animals, which we at first mistook for young giraffes; but as they stood gazing at us curiously, thus permitting us to approach within less than a hundred yards of them, we observed that while the creatures bore a certain general resemblance to giraffes, there were differences, the most important of which was that of size. For these creatures stood, at the shoulders, only about as high as an eland; the neck, although abnormally long, was not proportionately as long as that of a giraffe; the head was hornless, and of quite different shape from a giraffe’s head; and, lastly, their colour was a deep, rich, ruddy brown on the head, shading gradually away along the body and legs until, about the fetlock, it became quite a pale buff. I shot one of them, and have the skin to this day, which has been a source of great interest and also a bit of a puzzle to several naturalists who have seen it, and who all declare it to have belonged to an animal of which they had no knowledge whatever. The flesh of the creature proved to be very tender and juicy, and my “boys” ate of it freely; but after trying a mouthful I decided that I did not care for it, the meat having a very strong and peculiar musky flavour which I found much the reverse of appetising.
And then, as an appropriate wind-up to a day that had been rich in surprises, while we were looking about for a suitable spot at which to outspan for the night, we came upon the first of the Bandokolo people, or rather, she—for it was a woman—came upon us. We were, at the moment, riding through a shallow depression, about half a mile wide, bordered on either side by rising, bush-clad ground that was scarcely high enough to be worthy of the name of hills, with a narrow, shallow rivulet on our right; and we had about decided that the spot where we had reined up would answer our purpose quite well, when the two dogs, Thunder and Juno, who had been following quietly enough at our horses’ heels, suddenly ran forward a few paces and then stood pointing, uttering low, half-yelping, half-whining noises the while, as was their wont when they were puzzled. For a few moments I could see nothing to account for their excitement, and I was about to speak to them, when, looking forward, I suddenly saw something raise itself in the grass, remain visible for perhaps half a dozen seconds, and then sink down again. It was about a hundred yards from the spot where we had pulled up, and from the brief glimpse which I had obtained I almost thought that, strange as it might be, I had seen a child! To satisfy myself, therefore, I called to Piet, and, accompanied by the dogs, cantered forward toward the place where the strange apparition had appeared.