Between Sun and Sand: A Tale of an African Desert

by W. C. Scully

As the wagons approached the immense drove the dust began to die down, for the tired bucks had paused for their regular rest during the heat of the day. Far away could be seen dense white masses, between which light-coloured dots were thickly sprinkled.

The springbuck is pure white on the belly and flanks, and has a mane of long, white, hair extending from the root of the tail to the shoulders. This mane is usually concealed to a great extent by the fawn-coloured ridges of hair between which it lies. It can, however, be erected at will to about five inches in height, and extended to about six inches in breadth. The sides of the animal are a light fawn colour, upon which lies a horizontal stripe of dark brown about two and a half inches in width and extending from the shoulder to the flank. The horns, shaped like the classic lyre, are about eight inches in length, and are ringed to within a couples of inches of the tip. The animal stands about two feet nine inches in height at the shoulder, and weighs about ninety pounds when fully grown.

Seen at a distance, or when the sun is shining against them, the springbucks appear to be white all over. It is in the early morning, or when running away from or in circles around a bewildered dog—deceived into the idea that it is about to succeed in catching the lissom quarry—that the springbucks are seen at their best, and in their most characteristic attitudes and movements. Then the spine becomes arched until the nose almost touches the ground, the mane of long, stiff, white hair expands laterally, whilst every fibre stands erect and apart. As the animal careers along with the appearance of a bounding disc, its feet are drawn together and it sways, like a skater, first to one side and then to the other—some times to an angle of thirty degrees from the vertical.

There is something inexpressibly sad about the fate of these hapless creatures. Beautiful as anything that breathes, destructive as locusts, they are preyed upon by man and brute in the illimitable wilderness—even as the great shoals of fish are preyed upon by their enemies in the illimitable ocean. The unbounded Desert spaces, apparently meant for their inheritance, hold for them no sanctuary; the hyaena and the jackal hang and batten on the skirts of their helpless host; the vultures wheel above its rear and tear the eyes out of the less vigorous which lag behind. Sportsman and pot-hunter, Boer, half-breed and Bushman, beast of the burrow and bird of the air, slaughter their myriads; but still the mighty mass assembles every year and surges across the Desert like a tempest in its travail of torture. Why should all this loveliness and symmetry have been created in such lavish prodigality only to be extinguished by a slow process of agony and violent death?

For if there be any design anywhere in Nature’s so-called “Plan,” the Desert was meant to be the inheritance of these animals. They were developed under its conditions, its sparse and tardy products are for them all-sufficing; they were in harmony with their ungracious environment until man came to disturb the balance. The semi-civilised human beings who are superseding the springbucks are, physically, and, pari passu mentally, deteriorating under the conditions subject to which the latter flourished.

Within a measurable time the lyre-shaped horns strewn thickly over the veld will be the sole remaining sign of a vanished race, for the springbuck will inevitably become extinct in Bushmanland, as the bison has become extinct in the North American prairies.

The “trek” is due to the instinct which impels the does to drop their young somewhere upon the eastern fringe of the Desert, which extends, north and south, for several hundred miles. This fringe is the limit of the western rains. These fall between April and September, when the Desert is at its driest, and bring out the green herbage necessary for the new-born fawns.

As the area over which the bucks range becomes more and more circumscribed, the trek, although the number of bucks is rapidly diminishing, becomes more and more destructive, owing to its greater concentration. The fawning season over, the herd melts slowly and flows gradually westward, until some night distant flashes of lightning on the cloudless horizon indicate where—perhaps hundreds of miles away—the first thunderstorm of the season is labouring down from where its bolts were forged in the far, tropical north. Next morning not a single buck will be visible—all will have vanished like ghosts, making for the distant track of the rain.

The wagons were drawn for some little distance into the course of the drove, and halted a few miles apart. Then the oxen were unyoked and driven back towards Namies.

Immediately there began a great and ruthless slaughter. Whilst trekking the bucks are very easy to shoot; in fact, if the trek be a large one there is no sport involved in killing them, for they press blindly on, only sheering off slightly to avoid an enemy. They become bewildered in strange surroundings; their only impulse is to surge forward in a flood-tide of destruction and beauty.