The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont

by Louis de Rougemont

I have also seen remarkable combats between snakes of various species and sizes. A small snake will always respond to the challenge of a much larger one, this challenge taking the form of rearing up and hissing. The little snake will then advance slowly towards its opponent and attempt to strike, but, as a rule, the big one crushes it before it can do any harm. I had often heard of the joke about two snakes of equal size trying to swallow one another, and was, therefore, the more interested when I came across this identical situation in real life. One day, right in my track, lay two very large snakes which had evidently been engaged in a very serious encounter; and the victor had commenced swallowing his exhausted adversary. He had disposed of some three or four feet of that adversary’s length when I arrived on the scene, and was evidently resting before taking in the rest. I easily made prisoners of both.

Not long after this incident a delusive hope was held out to me that I might be able to return to civilisation. News was brought one day that the tracks of some strange and hitherto unknown animals had been found to the north, and, accompanied by Yamba, I went off to inspect them. I found that they were camel tracks—for the second time; and as Yamba informed me that, from the appearance of the trail, there was no one with them, I concluded that in all probability the creatures were wild, having long ago belonged to some exploring party which had come to grief.

“Here at length,” I thought, “is the means of returning to civilisation. If I can only reach these creatures—and why should I not with so much assistance at my disposal?—I will break them in, and then strike south across the deserts with my wife and family.” I returned to the camp, and taking with me a party of the most intelligent tribesmen, set off after the wild camels. When we had been several days continuously tracking we came up with the beasts. There were four of them altogether, and right wild and vicious-looking brutes they were. They marched close together in a band, and never parted company. The moment I and my men tried to separate and head them off, the leader would swoop down upon us with open mouth, and the result of this appalling apparition was that my black assistants fled precipitately. Alone I followed the camels for several days in the hope of being able ultimately to drive them into some ravine, where I thought I might possibly bring them into a state of subjection by systematic starvation. But it was a vain effort on my part. They kept in the track of water-holes, and wandered on from one to the other at considerable speed.

At length I abandoned hope altogether, though not without a feeling of sore disappointment, as I watched the curious, ungainly creatures disappearing over the ridge of a sand-hill. Of course I took good care not to tell any of the natives the real reason of my desire to possess a camel,—though I did try to explain to them some of the uses to which people in other parts of the world put these wonderful animals.

I never lost an opportunity of leaving records wherever I could. As I have said before, I was constantly blazing trees and even making drawings upon them; and I would have left records in cairns had I been able to make any writing material. Talking about this, I was for a long time possessed with the desire to make myself a kind of paper, and I frequently experimented with the fibres of a certain kind of tree. This material I reduced to a pulp, and then endeavoured to roll into sheets. Here again, however, I had to confess failure. I found the ordinary sheets of bark much more suitable for my purpose.

Pens I had in thousands from the quills of the wild swan and goose; and I made ink from the juice of a certain dark-coloured berry, mixed with soot, which I collected on the bottom of my gold cooking-kettle. I also thought it advisable to make myself plates from which to eat my food—not because of any fastidiousness on my part, but from that ever-present desire to impress the blacks, which was now my strongest instinct. In the course of my ramblings in the northern regions I came across quantities of silver-lead, which I smelted with the object of obtaining lead to beat out into plates. I also went some hundreds of miles for the sake of getting copper, and found great quantities of ores of different kinds in the Kimberley district.

A very strange experience befell Yamba not long after I had settled down among the blacks in my mountain home; and it serves to illustrate the strictness with which the laws against poaching are observed. The incident I am about to relate concerned me very nearly, and might have cost me my life as well as my wife. Well, it happened that Yamba and I were one day returning from one of the many “walkabouts” which we were constantly undertaking alone and with natives, and which sometimes extended over several weeks and even months. We had pitched our camp for the afternoon, and Yamba went off, as usual, in search of roots and game for the evening meal. She had been gone some little time when I suddenly heard her well-known “coo-eey” and knowing that she must be in trouble of some kind, I immediately grasped my weapons and went off to her rescue, guiding myself by her tracks.

A quarter of a mile away I came upon a scene that filled me with amazement. There was Yamba—surely the most devoted wife a man, civilised or savage, ever had—struggling in the midst of quite a crowd of blacks, who were yelling and trying forcibly to drag her away. At once I saw what had happened. Yamba had been hunting for roots over the boundary of territory belonging to a tribe with whom we had not yet made friends; and as she had plainly been guilty of the great crime of trespass, she was, according to inviolable native law, confiscated by those who had detected her. I rushed up to the blacks and began to remonstrate with them in their own tongue, but they were both truculent and obstinate, and refused to release my now weeping and terrified Yamba. At last we effected a compromise,—I agreeing to accompany the party, with their captive, back to their encampment, and there have the matter settled by the chief. Fortunately we had not many miles to march, but, as I anticipated, the chief took the side of his own warriors, and promptly declared that he would appropriate Yamba for himself. I explained to him, but in vain, that my wife’s trespass was committed all unknowingly, and that had I known his tribe were encamped in the district, I would have come immediately and stayed with them a few nights.

As showing what a remarkable person I was, I went through part of my acrobatic repertoire; and even my poor eager Bruno, who evidently scented trouble, began on his own account to give a hurried and imperfect show. He stood on his head and tumbled backwards and forwards in a lamentably loose and unscientific manner, barking and yelling all the time.

I do not know whether the wily chief had made up his mind to see more of us or not; but at any rate he looked at me very fiercely as though determined to carry his point, and then replied that there was but one law—which was that Yamba should be confiscated for poaching, whether the crime was intentional on her part or not. So emphatically was this said that I began to think I had really lost my faithful companion for ever. As this awful thought grew upon me, and I pondered over the terrible past, I made up my mind that if necessary I would lose my own life in her defence, and to this end I adopted a very haughty attitude, which caused the chief suddenly to discover a kind of by-law to the effect that in such cases as this one the nearest relative of the prisoner might win her back by fighting for her. This, of course, was what I wanted, above all things—particularly as the old chief had not as yet seen me use my wonderful weapons. And as I felt certain he would choose throwing spears, I knew that victory was mine. He selected, with a critical eye, three well-made spears, whilst I chose three arrows, which I purposely brandished aloft, so as to give my opponent the impression that they were actually small spears, and were to be thrown, as such, javelin-fashion. The old chief and his blacks laughed heartily and pityingly at this exhibition, and ridiculed the idea that I could do any damage with such toy weapons.