Huntschaw, Sept. 20, 1819.
THE BECHUANA BOY.
I sat at noontide in my tent,
And looked across the desert dun,
Beneath the cloudless firmament
Far gleaming in the sun,
When from the bosom of the waste
A swarthy stripling came in haste,
With foot unshod and naked limb;
And a tame springbok followed him.
With open aspect, frank yet bland,
And with a modest mien he stood,
Caressing with a gentle hand
That beast of gentle brood;
Then, meekly gazing in my face,
Said in the language of his race,
With smiling look yet pensive tone,
“Stranger—I’m in the world alone!”
“Poor boy,” I said, “thy native home
Lies far beyond the Stormberg blue:
Why hast thou left it, boy! to roam
This desolate Karroo?”
His face grew sadder while I spoke;
The smile forsook it; and he broke
Short silence with a sob-like sigh,
And told his hapless history.
“I have no home!” replied the boy;
“The Bergenaars—by night they came,
And raised their wolfish howl of joy,
While o’er our huts the flame
Resistless rushed; and aye their yell
Pealed louder as our warriors fell
In helpless heaps beneath their shot:
—One living man they left us not!
“The slaughter o’er, they gave the slain
To feast the foul-beaked birds of prey,
And with our herds across the plain
They hurried us away—
The widowed mothers and their brood.
Oft, in despair, for drink or food
We vainly cried; they heeded not,
But with sharp lash the captive smote.
“Three days we tracked that dreary wild,
Where thirst and anguish pressed us sore;
And many a mother and her child
Lay down to rise no more.
Behind us, on the desert brown,
We saw the vultures swooping down;
And heard, as the grim night was falling,
The wolf to his gorged comrade calling.
“At length was heard a river sounding
’Midst that dry and dismal land,
And, like a troop of wild deer bounding,
We hurried to its strand—
Among the maddened cattle rushing,
The crowd behind still forward pushing,
Till in the flood our limbs were drenched
And the fierce rage of thirst was quenched.