CHAPTER XXXII.
LEAVE BARBERTON.—STEYNSDORP.—KOMATI RIVER.—KING UMBANDINI’S KRAAL.—SWAZILAND.—THE DRINK CURSE AND ITS INEVITABLE RESULT.—INTERVIEW OF DR. CLARK, M. P., TRANSVAAL CONSUL-GENERAL IN ENGLAND, WITH UMBANDINI.—NATIONAL DANCE OF SWAZIES.—THE TEMBI.—DELAGOA BAY.
New Year’s day, 1887, found me for the first time for twenty-two years devoid of all care, whether business or professional, and imbued with one thought only, that of getting a thorough rest and change in Europe. Wishing before leaving the country to gain as intimate a knowledge as possible of the different railway routes to the coast, of which I had now seen all but one, I made up my mind to walk to Delagoa Bay, through Swaziland, see Steynsdorp, the headquarters of the Komati diggers, glance in passing at the formation of the country and the gold reefs, which Umbandini, the Swazi king, was so liberally giving away in concessions, and witness, if possible, the yearly dance of the Swazis, which is a red-letter day throughout the whole of their country. I chose eight natives to accompany me, mixing their nationality so as to avoid the chance of any collision on their part. I was especially fortunate in my induna (head man and guide), who was a tall, fine, strapping Swazi and knew every inch of the country from Barberton to Delagoa Bay, both main roads and bye-paths. Many tried to dissuade me from going, telling me that the journey, which round by the King’s kraal was about 200 miles, was too long and fatiguing, and that I should not find sufficient compensation for the risk of fever. But in answer to inquiries I made, I learned that there was no danger of fever except between the top of the Lebombo ridge and Delagoa Bay, and as the proprietor of the tug on the Tembi had proffered to carry me from the drift where the tug lay to Delagoa Bay, a distance of sixty miles by the river, I calculated that I should be exposed one day only to malarial poison. How I was disappointed in this promise I will tell in the next chapter. I allowed my natives to divide my luggage and provisions as they deemed best, one long headed fellow to my astonishment choosing the heaviest burden, saying, with a knowing look as he did so, “It is food, it will grow lighter every day.”
All being ready, we formed in procession (natives never walking in any way together except in single file), I myself bringing up the rear to prevent any of them lagging behind; and so we started from the Market Square, Barberton, at eight o’clock, A. M., on Monday, January 10th. Our road lay over the Makoujwa range, which we crossed a few miles from Barberton, at the Ivy Reef, feeling, when we had made this steep climb of 1,600 feet, that we had surmounted the first obstacle in our journey. We walked along all day, with short intervals of rest, traversing a bold and magnificently mountainous country, interspersed with stretches of fine forest, and watered by innumerable streams, which roll down through the large, deep dongas. I had hoped to reach the roadside accommodation house at the Komati River on my first night, but darkness coming on, we stayed at a Kafir kraal six miles on this side, and rising early got there to breakfast. Here the Komati, fifty yards wide, runs rapidly down its sloping bed, but with a wire rope thrown over to guide the wooden pontoon the passage across can nearly always be made. After crossing this river, we passed the ruins of hundreds of deserted stone kraals which extended for miles, and were the standing witnesses of the teeming population which years ago inhabited these valleys, before Umzilikatze made his murderous raids through Swaziland. Pushing on, we arrived at Steynsdorp in the mid-day. This little village, which is the centre of a population of 500 souls, lay at the end of a long valley through which the Umhbondisi Creek runs, and was increasing so rapidly that, at the time I passed, a government surveyor was busy laying out a township. Dotting the hills all round could be seen the tents of prospectors, some of whom had discovered valuable properties—in fact this district, where gold had been more or less sought for during the past eighteen months, was then just beginning to answer the expectations of its pioneers. After leaving Steynsdorp the country assumed a wilder aspect. The narrow and rugged paths, up and down which I had to clamber, in many places on the verge of precipitous krantzes, ran over the most picturesque country I had yet seen in South Africa, while the loud splash and hurrying dash of the mountain stream
“As some bright river, that, from fall to fall,
In many a maze descending,”
rushed down the hillsides, and debouched through the gorges, chanting incessantly one of Nature’s most melodious of lays. Suddenly a large tract of open country appeared to our view, and in front, but at least twenty miles away, we could see the large kraal to which we were bound. Journeying on with refreshed vigor we finished our seven hours’ weary walk about an hour or so before the sun went down, which left me time enough to become master of the whole situation. A most able and correct account of Swaziland, and the state of affairs then existing, lately appeared in one of the London papers, which I cannot do better than quote here:
KAFIR HUT.
“Swaziland is a small native state bounded on the north and west by the Transvaal; from its eastern border to the sea stretches the Portuguese territory of Delagoa Bay, and to the south lie the land of the Zulus and the colony of Natal. The Swazi King rules over a realm of about 9,000 square miles, containing a population of 50,000. His people are of the same Zulu race whose prowess has been proved on more than one ‘well foughten field,’ but of finer physique, and 15,000 warriors are at his beck and call. The country itself is mountainous and picturesque—a sort of East African Tyrol, with a genial climate, a fertile soil, and rich in undeveloped mineral treasures—gold, silver, copper, and coal. The coal measures extend over a large area, are found within forty miles of Delagoa Bay, and are connected with the sea by the Tembi, which, though not a large river, is navigable for small craft and might be utilized for an extensive trade in black diamonds. Swaziland is, moreover, well wooded and well watered, and altogether a most desirable possession, a fact of which Umbandini, its King, an intelligent savage of dark complexion and stalwart proportions, is fully aware.
