By Veldt and Kopje

by W. C. Scully

We cached our cargo at Ship Mountain, having dug a pit for it in the dry sand. The wagons were at once sent back to Delagoa with the fresh spans. The cattle which had been through the fly country were left at the cache. Six men of our party were put in charge. I happened to be one of these.

Almost immediately the unhappy cattle began to die. Soon they lay in heaps at a spot about a mile from the camp. Thither we used to drive them when signs of collapse set in. It would, of course, have been far more merciful to shoot them all at once, but this we were not permitted to do.

At this bovine Golgotha congregated all the carnivora of the neighbourhood. Lions, hyenas and jackals were always to be found. It is popularly believed that lions will not eat carrion. This is a mistake; I have seen them doing so and apparently enjoying themselves.

Our nights were made hideous by the hyenas, whose yell is surely one of the most atrocious sounds in Nature’s repertoire. Lions worried us considerably. On dark nights they used to drink at, and befoul, a pool within ten yards of our tent. There was no other water for many miles around. One evening a runner with letters from Lydenburg was driven up a tree by a lion within a couple of miles of our camp and kept a prisoner until about eleven next forenoon.

I recall one trifling incident which left a very weird impression. One very dark night we heard a far-off halloo. The surrounding country was absolutely uninhabited—so far as human beings were concerned. The source of the noise drew nearer and nearer, the halloo sounding at short intervals. It was unmistakably a human voice. We made a roaring blaze, shouted, waved firebrands and discharged guns. But the creature with the human voice passed, I should say, about three hundred yards from us, uttering its gruesome cry at intervals. Then the cry grew fainter and fainter, until it died away in the distance. None of us slept a wink that night.

In our charge were thirty donkeys. For these we built a high corral. The country being full of game—and sick oxen—the lions never interfered with these donkeys, although the spoors showed that they used to prowl around the enclosure nearly every night, evidently meditating a spring.

One day we saw a vast cloud of dust steadily approaching from the distant south-west. There was not a breath of wind stirring. Then came a sound like that of the sea. This swelled to a thunderous roar, and soon we were surrounded by a mighty host of stampeding big game. Buffalo, quagga, wildebeest, koodoo, hartebeest, and many other varieties were jostling together and rushing wildly on. Occasionally the long, swaying necks of a troop of giraffe would loom dimly above the thronging mass. Had it not been for the fact that three big trees shielded our tent, I firmly believe we would have been overwhelmed.

It took about twenty minutes for this hurricane to pass. Our thirty donkeys had disappeared, carried along by the resistless flood. I found two of these a couple of days afterwards, about ten miles away. The others were seen no more. After the stampede not a single head of game was to be found in the neighbourhood, so we were reduced for some time to a diet of dried peas.

In due course the second convoy arrived from the Bay, and four wagons, drawn by such of the oxen as were still fit to travel, were sent on to Lydenburg. I accompanied these.

When we began to ascend the mountain spurs the nights turned bitterly cold. We had desperately hard work, for the cattle became so weak that we had to unload at nearly every donga. Being, as we thought, out of the lion country, our vigilance at night was somewhat relaxed. We posted only one sentry at a time, nor were large fires around the camp any longer compulsory. Very early on the morning before we reached the summit of the range I was on guard. Mine was the third watch, and my two predecessors had so faked our only time-piece that my vigil had lasted nearer six than the regulation three hours. One of the recovered donkeys was tied to a bush about twelve feet from where I sat, vainly endeavouring to warm my hands over a few dying embers. Just before daybreak two lions sprang on the unhappy donkey. I heard the wretched animal’s bones crack. The lions dragged the carcase about fifty yards away—into a thick bush—and there breakfasted at their leisure.