What I Saw in Kaffir-Land

by Stephen Lakeman

How long I remained I never knew, but it must have been a long time, for I was getting intensely cold lying on the ground covered with a heavy dew,—when, more by sound than by sight, I felt the gradual creeping of something towards me. However unmoved I might have remained until now, the loud thumping of my heart against the ground at this juncture became intolerable; so, with a loud shout, I jumped up, and, with an ominous growl, the animal bounded into the bush a few yards on my right. I at once sent a shot in that direction, which caused a fearful uproar and scattering of bushes. Without stopping to consider, I at once sent another shot towards the same spot, and suddenly all was silent. This not being reassuring, and as I had now no positive sign to show where the brute was, I fell back, loading, towards the farm. Here I met the men coming towards me; and after hastily explaining to them the position of affairs, we proceeded, torches in hand, towards the spot, to make a fuller investigation of what had taken place.

Here we found a fine male leopard lying dead. The first bullet I fired had broken the spine, near his hind quarters; and the second shot, composed of slugs, had taken effect in the head, and proved a speedy quietus. I believe this to have been the only leopard in the district, as neither the men nor I ever saw the spoor of one afterwards.

My experience of wild-boar shooting was more profitable in the shape of hams and chine than as to actual enjoyment of what is called real sport. I could never get them to charge home; and although I have shot little porkers that have raised an awful amount of squealing, yet even the sow-mother, and the rest of the herd, would start off in the opposite direction. Once or twice it happened that they came towards me within about twenty yards, but then they would invariably be off to the right or the left. If, however, they showed so little pluck when facing the gun, they had plenty of it when opposed to dogs alone.

I have often seen them chasing mine (and they were a stout pack) for a long distance. Upon one occasion a “souzer” of pigs chased my dogs almost into the camp, and the men had to turn out to drive them off.

I never took any pleasure in shooting baboons or monkeys; and, except to defend myself on two different occasions, never fired a shot at them. On the first occasion, I had been gathering bulbs of those red-pennoned, lance-shaped flowers, which are much admired in some parts of South Africa. I had been so intent on my task that I had forgotten my dogs, that always accompanied me, now the war was virtually over, in my strolls through the country.

The dogs were a very scratched pack. They were in all about twenty, mostly of Kaffir origin, of various sizes, from a huge Danish mastiff, called Woden, to my little Sussex spaniel Dash. The ruling spirits were four Scotch deer-hounds, three of which I had purchased from Mr Andersen, my Norwegian friend at Cape Town. The other had been given to me by P——r of the Commissariat. Dhula, the biggest and bravest of Andersen’s Scotch leash, would not only pull down the largest bush-buck, but would also keep guard afterwards, and prevent my Kaffir dogs eating it. Many an antelope had he thus saved to grace our frugal board, and to afford a display of Dix’s culinary art. Poor Dhula! his life was embittered by his jealousy of Woden. The latter, although a heavy dog, ran well; and often, while chasing, when the chance offered, he would run at Dhula, and, striking him under the shoulder as he would a deer, bowl the astonished Scotch giant over and over, much to the latter’s disgust.

Woden evidently could never quite understand the humour of his Scotch congener. He generally gave in to Dhula, but often after several sharp bouts, in which he always carried off the worst of the biting in the heavy folds of his shaggy throat. My Kaffir greyhounds would run anything and eat anything they caught, from a startled quail to a porcupine. They were as crafty as they were cruel and fleet, and in the woods ran as much by scent as by sight. They were not, however, equal in speed to my English dogs. My plucky little friend Dash was (considering his small offensive powers) the bravest of the brave; for his winning way of bringing stones or anything else he could pick up to you, whenever he wanted a caress, or some little tit-bit to eat, had completely ground down his teeth to an unbrushable size. If it came to a regular go-in with some struggling beast brought to bay, Dash would lie down, and, twisting his knowing head about as the various ups and downs of the fight took place, looked like an old amateur boxer observing professional gluttons at work. Dash was buried on Blakeway’s kloof, which had so often echoed to his lively tongue. A blue-faced baboon, as I am now going to relate, was the malevolent spirit which loosened all his worldly ties between his much-attached master and his love for all sports—for Dash was as much alive to the pleasure of hunting rats at a farm-rick in Old England as in chasing jackals and hyenas round our camp at the Cape.

To resume my narrative, however. As above stated, in the ardour of digging bulbs, I had forgotten my dogs, when Napoleon called my attention to their baying far down in the recesses of the kloof. Hastily picking up my gun, lying close at hand, and he hurriedly cramming without mercy into a sack my green-grocery-looking bunches of roots, we started off in hot haste to the spot to which the dogs were calling our attention. On our way we met them coming back; they were, however, eagerly enough disposed to return, so that we knew by that sign the object of their late rencontre was not supposed by them to be very far off.

And so it was, for we soon found ourselves amidst a grinning lot of large, brown, Cape baboons. They were clinging up aloft to the graceful creepers that festoon so beautifully the trees in South African woods, and looking like so many hideous, hairy-bellied spiders on a beautiful lace-work of Nature’s weaving. I felt inclined to give some of them, who looked particularly out of place in that sylvan retreat, a peppering of shot; but their wonderful performances on the tight-ropes around them soon smoothed the wrinkles of my indignation. These acrobats performed extraordinary feats. They shot from branch to branch, from wave to wave, like flying-fish, or as pantless Zazel shoots from the cannon’s mouth to her swinging rope.

This performance created intense excitement, and the barking of the dogs seemed to applaud this aerial description of St Vitus’s Dance. It was really affecting to see the solicitude of the parents as their little progeny hopped from tree to tree after them, now holding out their arms to receive them as they landed, now thrusting back a creeper to bring it nearer within their reach. It was a real exhibition of baboon agility, of which we see but a faint parody in the Westminster Aquarium, by the Darwinian selections among the human bipeds.