Note 5. The “jambok,” or “schambok,” is an elastic whip, all stock and no lash, or if you like, vice versâ. Some six feet long, it tapers from a butt of about an inch in diameter to the tiniest tip; and, when forcibly laid on, will make weals on the skin of a horse, and cut that of a man clean through. It is a cruel instrument of torture, and, I regret to say, not exclusively employed to punish animals, as the natives of South Africa too well know. To threaten a disobedient servant with the jambok—be he Hottentot, Fingo, or Caffre—is to bring him back to kneeling obeisance. The best jamboks are made of hippopotamus hide.
Chapter Two.
A Weird Spectacle.
Going at a slow crawl in profound silence, the huge vehicles, with their dark bodies and white tilts, the long serried line of yoked oxen extended in advance of them, would have presented a strange mystifying spectacle to one not knowing what it was. Weird and ghostlike under the silvery light of the moon, a native of the country, where such had never been seen before, viewing it from a distance, might have imagined it some monster of a world unknown.
But before morning came, the travellers were themselves witnesses of a spectacle common enough in that same district, yet, in seeming, quite as strange and mysterious as that of the waggon-train.
Proceeding in the opposite direction, and at no great distance off, appeared a number of dark forms, one following the other in single file. Immense creatures they were; each nearly as large as any of the waggons, but, unlike these, living and breathing. For they were elephants—a troop on the march—nigh threescore in number, their line extending for hundreds and hundreds of yards across the karoo. They were passing on silent as spectres, the tread of the ponderous pachyderm being noiseless as that of a cat. Even on stony ground it is scarce distinguishable at the shortest distance, and on that sand-bestrewed plain it made not the slightest sound to betray their presence.
Adding to their spectral appearance were the long, withered grass-tufts and karoo bushes, white as if coated with hoar frost. These concealing their stride, they seemed to glide along as boats upon water, propelled by some invisible agency, acting underneath.