Lodges in the Wilderness

by W. C. Scully

In spite of the jolting I managed to get a few hours’ sleep. We outspanned for an hour at midnight and made coffee. Now we had some heavy sand-tracts to cross,—with jolty stretches lying between them. But we reached the camp of the half-breeds just at dawn, as had been intended.

They were caught—if not exactly red-handed, yet with ample proof of their guilt. In the mat-houses of the suspected men we found boxes and bags packed full of feathers. These were of all kinds—from the long white plumes and the short blacks of the male bird, to the browns of the hens and chicks. The culprits pleaded guilty; retributive justice was forthwith satisfied at the wagon-wheel.

The camp was quite a large one; I should say it contained over sixty souls, men, women and children included. These people were all of the same colour, light-yellow; they even seemed to shew signs of type-inception. Lean, sinewy and tough, they were not beautiful either in form or feature. In neither sex did the sallow skin give any hint of blood beneath. However, anaemic as they were, whatever fluid circulated in their arteries must have been of good quality, for their capacity for physical endurance was considerable.

It was the eyes of those half-breeds that were most distinctive. These were dusky and deep, with an expression—not exactly furtive; rather expressive of haunting apprehension. This was hardly to be wondered at, for they had ceaselessly to watch for every change in the desert’s pitiless visage—to note each alteration in the moods of earth and sky. Their lives were spent in answering a succession of riddles propounded by the terrible sphinx between whose taloned paws they existed as playthings.

Their dwellings—ordinary mat-houses and ramshackle wagons—as well as the furniture thereof, indicated that they must have become habituated to extremes of heat and cold. They were cleanly in their persons; this I knew through having vaccinated them all,—from the patriarch to the youngest baby. Small-pox at the time was reported to be raging among the Bondleswartz Tribe, just beyond the Orange River.

But these people can never develop a type that will persist; the desert they inhabit is too small. Besides, their sons and daughters are continually being enticed away to regions with a kinder soil and a less severe climate. There they further complicate the South African race question. This question will not be confined to South Africa; it will soon be one of worldwide import, and one that is not necessarily to be answered in favour of the Caucasian, whose birth-rate statistics read like Mene Tekel. I am often inclined to think it would have been better in the long run had Charles Martel lost the Battle of Tours. In that case there would at all events have been no colour question.

But those deep, dusky eyes haunted me. They were as enigmatic as the only landscape over which they ranged. If one could only have stripped the scales from them, what wonders might they not have seen? Incalculable potencies might have been in their depths. Others, desert-bred, have caught glimpses of eternal verities which prompted them to utter words that became the hinges of history. However, up to the present, there is no sign of a prophet arising in Bushmanland with a message for a land that sorely needs it.

The half-breeds had heard of the springbuck; a few days previously the latter were credibly reported to be somewhere about thirty miles to the northward, near Kat Vley. And we were assured of the almost incredible fact that Kat Vley contained water. That was certainly an annus mirabilis in the desert.

At midday we took our departure, making for the vicinity where the springbuck were said to be. In the afternoon dense clouds rolled up from the south-westward and a deluge of hail struck us. Within the memory of men no similar thing had happened in Bushmanland. Andries and I were comfortable enough in the wagon; Hendrick and Piet Noona fixed a sail to the windward wheels and lit a big candle-bush fire to leeward. After travelling about twenty miles we had camped for the night, for the hail-clouds had been rolling up at intervals of about half an hour, and there appeared to be no likelihood of the weather clearing. The poor horses,—they were in for a time of misery!

Morning broke with drifting clouds and a high wind from the south-west. We inspanned and altered our course slightly to the westward. The hail showers had been so heavy that all spoor was obliterated; accordingly we could not tell whether game was about or not. The day was bitterly cold; over and over again the hail showers recurred. Several times we got so perished that we halted and lit fires of candle-bush just to thaw our hands at. Night fell with a slight improvement in the weather; the wind dropped and only a thin drizzle was falling. We camped again and gave the horses a liberal feed of corn. They did not appear to suffer much from the cold. Such weather was the very last thing one could have expected. But surely the sky would be clear on the morrow.