Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer

by W. C. Scully

The latter had a varied career. I once hailed a cab in Cape Town and found he was the driver. He told me he had saved 200 at cab driving. But I judge from what I subsequently heard that the money did him no good. He, like so many others of "the legion that never was listed" with whom I have foregathered, has long since closed his earthly account.

One occurrence I heard of among the seaside camps merits relation. It should be mentioned that the extraordinary, story reached me at second-hand. The incident is said to have taken place one season when I did not visit the coast.

At the end of the sixties no zoological garden contained a specimen of the South African anteater. I do not know whether any such institution contains one now. However, a very liberal price was offered for a live specimen. This extraordinary creature is almost strictly nocturnal in its habits, and is consequently extremely difficult to capture. One day a man with whom I was acquainted was riding through the veld a few miles from his camp. To his surprise he noticed a large ant-eater. Mindful of the reward offered, he sprang from his horse and seized the creature by one of its hind-legs.

The ant-eater has hardly any means of defense, its formidable claws being used solely for digging. But its strength and its digging powers are almost beyond belief. In sandy soil one will bury itself in a few seconds. In this instance the captor had to exert all his strength merely to keep the animal above ground. He was, in fact, only able to do this by means of continually shifting his position, a process involving constant and exhausting effort. He bethought him of the rein fastened to his pony's halter. With great difficulty he loosened this, and tied it in a noose around the ant-bear's loins. But matters were not improved; the digging went on more vigorously than ever.

At length he realized that it was impossible to prevent the animal from burrowing out of sight. One expedient remained. The pony, had a long and bushy tail. He doubled the end of this, and securely fastened the rein to it. Then he hastened to his camp for the purpose of fetching a spade and calling people to assist him.

On returning a strange spectacle met his view. The pony was sitting on the ground, erect, after the manner of a biped. Its head was in the air, its hind-legs were extended horizontally, its fore-legs were waving impotently up and down'. The ant-bear had carved its way deep into the bowels of the earth, gradually but relentlessly dragging the hapless pony down until its posterior parts hermetically sealed up the burrow. It was, in fact, only the smallness of the latter which prevented the animal from being completely buried. Eventually, however, the rein snapped, and the pony was thus released from a durance probably unique in equine experience. But I wish to make it quite clear that I guarantee nothing in connection with the foregoing remarkable tale, except that I have related it as it was told to me.

I often picture the rounded sandhills stretching from the Gonubie Mouth to the Nahoon, with the dark, olive-green boskage that clothed their curves with beauty, and the veil of orange tinted mystery that at dawn hung like a curtain across that region where sea and sky awaited, breathless, the advent of day. I suppose the placid lagoons still mirror the drifting pageants of cloudland, while the purple kingfishers flit from rock to rock, or poise, fluttering in the air, before they, plunge into the crystal water.

I imagine that at windless nightfall the rich, throbbing organ-tones of the Indian Ocean surf toll all the darkling glades. I wonder do the green, flame-winged loories today call hoarsely through the aisles of greenery, and the bushbucks bark their angry challenges from the deep and tangled hollows. I wonder do the monkeys, when the forenoon waxes sultry, swing chattering from bough to bough down the hillside, seeking their daily drink in the coolest depths of the kloof, and do the great Nymphalis butterflies, with wings of ochre and pearl, flit among the tree tops!

But so much I know that a part of my youth which in some strange way seems to have acquired an individuality, of its own dwells, and will for ever dwell, among these scenes. And I shall never be so ill-advised as to seek it, for the wraith, like a mocking dryad, would flit from tree to tree, as beautiful and as elusive as the rainbow.

While living at Sunny Slope I paid my first visit to East London, the occasion being an agricultural show. I accompanied the Norton family. We traveled in an ox-wagon through the loveliest imaginable country. Our course lay mainly down the valley of the Nahoon River, in which the vegetation was then much richer than it is today. The little town of East London was confined to the west bank of the Buffalo River mouth. Where the town now stands, on the east bank, there was not a single house in 1868. So far as I can recollect, Tapson's Hotel was the only building between Cambridge and the sea. This building was still in existence a few years ago. The Buffalo River had to be crossed by means of a pontoon; the road to this was cut through dense jungle. Judging by the spoors crossing the road this jungle must have been full of game.