Between Sun and Sand: a tale of an African desert

Front matter

BY THE SAME AUTHOR POEMS KAFFIR STORIES MR. BLOXAM's CHOICE THE WHITE HECATOMB A TALE OF AN AFRICAN DESERT by WILLIAM CHARLES SCULLY METHUEN & CO. 36, ESSEX STREET, W.C. LONDON INSCRIBED TO JOHN XAVIER MERRIMAN NOTE LEST the account given in this book of the " trekking " springbucks should be con sidered an exaggeration, it may be mentioned that in 1892, when the author held the appoint ments of Civil Commissioner for Namaqualand and Special Magistrate for the Northern Border of the Cape Colony, he was obliged to issue a hundred stand of Government arms to the Boers for the purpose of driving back the game which threatened to overrun those parts of Namaqualand where ground is cultivated. As it was, there was some difficulty in re pelling the invasion. The term " Bushman," strictly speaking, only applies to the diminutive former inhabi tants of the Desert, who are now practically extinct to the south of the Orange River.

The Trek-Boer, however, usually calls every Hottentot of low stature a Bushman. CONTENTS BETWEEN SUN AND SAND CHAP. PAGE I. THE LAND OF THE TREK-BOER ... I II. THE PATRIARCH OF NAMIES . . . I 8 III. MAX ........ 26 > IV. SPRING S IDYLL . . . . . 3 I V. GERT GEMSBOK ...... 40 VI. TOO GENERAL TO BE SPECIFIED . . 56 VII. HOW JAN ROSTER WAS TWICE INTERRUPTED . 83 VIII. THE " TREK-BOKKEN " .... 99 IX. THE LAST OF THE " OLD WOMAN " . .Ill X. NATHAN THE TEMPTER . . . . II9 XI. THE BROKEN RAMKEE ..... I44. XII. THE BONDAGE OF KOOS BESTER . . I 56 XIII. " WHOSO DIGGETH A PIT ..." . . . I CONTENTS X CHAP. PAGE XIV. THE NACHTMAAL, AND AFTER . . . 201 XV. "WHOSO BREAKETH A FENCE ..." . . 21 5 XVI. A CONVERSION, A WEDDING, AND SEVERAL OTHER THINGS .... 227 NOQUALA'S CATTLE I. A KAFFIR AT HOME ..... 239 II.

Chapter I The Land Of The Trek-boer Immediately

to the south of the great Orange River for three hundred arid miles of its course before it sinks through the thirsty sands, or spooms in resistless torrent into the Atlantic Ocean, lies a region of which little is known, in which dwell people unlike any others in South Africa, or possibly in the world. This region is known as Bushmanland — the name having reference to its former inhabi tants who, proving themselves " unfit," were abolished from the face of the earth. Bush manland is at present intermittently inhabited by a nomadic population of Europeans of Dutch descent, who are known as " Trek-Boers." To " trek " means, literally, to " pull," but its colloquial significance is — to move about from place to place. The Trek-Boers are, so to say, poor relations of the sturdy Dutchmen who have done so much towards reclaiming South Africa from savagery.

The conditions under which they live are not favourable to moral or physical improvement. These people are dwellers in tents and bee hive-shaped structures known as " mat-houses," a form of architecture adopted from the Hot tentots. The latter are constructed of large mats made of rushes strung upon strands of bark or other vegetable fibre, and are stretched over wattles stuck by the larger end into the ground in a circle, the diameter of which may vary from fifteen to twenty-five feet, and which have the thin ends drawn down over each other until a dome is formed. Such structures are lighter and more portable than the lodges of the North American Indians — in fact one may easily be erected and pulled down within five minutes. Strange to say they are almost completely water-tight. A wagon and a couple of tents or mat-houses constitutes the camp and castle of the Trek- Boer.

He has never known anything else in the shape of a dwelling ; it satisfies all his architectural aspirations, it fulfils his ideal of comfort in a tenement, and he harbours con tempt for any structure which cannot be moved about to suit the convenience or caprice of its owner. The Trek-Boer owns no land. He wanders with his flocks and herds over the vast, unsur veyed tract which is all the world to him, following the uncertain courses of thunder storms which happen to have been deflected from their ordinary beat and strayed across the desert. The rain from these intermit tently fills the shallow, cup-like depressions in the underlying rock with water. Such depres sions are invariably choked with sand, but by digging at certain known spots a scanty supply of water may sometimes be obtained.

The Trek-Boer occasionally becomes rich in flocks and herds, but every eight or ten years the inevitable drought occurs. Then his stock dies off from thirst and starvation, and he has to begin the world again, a poor man. The Trek-Boer is a being sui generis. He is usually ignorant to a degree unknown among men called civilised. He is untruthful, pre judiced, superstitious, cunning, lazy, and dirty. On the other hand he is extremely hospitable. Simple as a child in many things, and as trust ing where his confidence has once been given, he cannot be known without being loved, for all his peculiarities. The desert life, which has filled the Arab with poetry and a sense of the higher mysteries, has sapped the last remnant of idealism from the Trek-Boer's nature, and left him without an aspiration or a dream.

The usual lack of fresh meat and the absence of green vegetables as an item in his diet, has reacted upon his physique and made him list less and slouching in gait and deportment, as well as anæmic and prone to disease. This is especially true of his womankind, who, besides being extremely short-lived have, as a rule, lost nearly all pretensions to beauty of face or form. Bushmanland might be described as a desert, the aridity of which is tempered by occasional thunderstorms. Its bounds begin immediately to the eastward of the rugged mountain chain which runs parallel with the coast-line, about eighty miles inland, and it stretches on for hundreds of miles until merged with the central Karoo plains. These also form its indefinite boundary to the southward. It is, for the most part, almost absolutely level.

To the northward, however, a chain of mountains, occasionally very lofty, arises. For stern, uncompromising aridity, for stark, grotesque, naked horror, these mountains stand probably unsurpassed on the face of the globe. Composed of deep brown granite, with here and there immense veins, or patches many miles in extent, of jet-black, shining ironstone, they absorb the torrid sunshine all day, becoming almost red-hot in the process. At night this heat is radiated rapidly at high sunlight power, until the furnace of midnight becomes like an ice-house at dawn. The only vegetation to be found among these mountains is a species of deadly Euphorbia — formerly much used by the Bushmen in poisoning their arrows — and a few stunted shrubs which are rooted deep down in the crannies, and which put forth a little timid foliage in the cooler season.

The only animals are " klipspringers " — antelopes very like the chamois in form and habit ; leopards which prey upon these ; badgers, wild cats, jackals of several kinds, an occasional hyæna, desert mice, snakes, gorgeously hued lizards and fierce tarantulas. A few large brown hawks hover above the gloomy gorges and wake weird and depressing echoes with their shrill screams. To the north of this almost impenetrable region the great " Gariep " — the " Yellow River " of the Hottentots — now called the " Orange " in honour of a former Stadtholder of the Netherlands, has carved out a gorge for its devious course, thousands of feet in depth. Allowing for its many and abrupt windings, this gorge, from the point at which the river hurtles into it over an obstinate stratum of rock at what is known as the Augrabies Falls, must be over four hundred miles in length.

The greater part of this gorge is unexplored, being totally inaccessible. Like the Nile, the Orange River drains an immense area of fertile country which is subject to heavy summer rains. It flows down in a raging, brimming flood, which is charged with rich alluvium, during several months of the year. Unlike the Nile, it has carved for itself a deep and narrow channel, through which it hurls its fertilising load with resistless momentum into the ocean which needs it not. Under different circumstances its valley might have been the cradle of another civilisation, and another Sphinx, of Hottentot or Bantu physiognomy, might have stood, gazing through forgotten centuries, across the waste of Bushmanland. No more dreary prospect can be imagined than that afforded by Bushmanland in its normal condition of drought.

After rain, however, it turns for a few short weeks into a smiling garden. This is especially the case around the northern and western margins where, among the rocky kopjes forming the fringe of the plain, gorgeous flowers cover the ground with vivid patches of colour, and climb and trail over the grey stones. This combination always suggests to the traveller a skull crowned with flowers. The stark rocks, blasted by æons of burning sunshine, are always in evidence, and the wanton luxuriance of the garlands seem to mock at and accentuate their death-like rigour. The grass with which the greater part of the plain is covered grows in thick shocks some thirty inches in height, from raised tussocks about six feet apart. In dry weather the fibre of the grass crumbles away in dust and the tus sock turns black.

After rain, however, the new blades shoot out with marvellous rapidity, and the Desert becomes a sea of waving plumes, which are tinted a beautifully delicate green. Between the tussocks spring up flowers of marvellous colour, scent, and form. It has been libellously affirmed that the flowers of the Desert have no scent. It is true that in the hot, midday glare all are more or less scentless, but in the early morning or when the afternoon cools the heliophilas, the pelargoniums, the many species of lily, and others too numerous to particularise, often make the Desert a veri table " scented garden." The great plain is almost absolutely treeless. Only in one or two localities are a few acacias found. These are of very large size. They are called " Camelthorns," for the reason that the camelopard was fond of browsing upon their foliage.

Amongst the branches are often found the enormous nests of the sociable grosbeaks, sometimes ten feet in diameter. These nests are veritable cities — inhabited by countless numbers of birds. Woe betide the exhausted hunter who seeks the deceitful shade of these trees, for the ground beneath is full of the dreaded " sampans," which bury themselves in the flesh and cause serious injury. In the fringe of kopjes grow immense aloes {Aloe dichotoma — probably closely allied botanically to the almost extinct " Dragon Tree " of Teneriffe). These sometimes reach a height of sixty feet, and may measure twenty feet around their ridged and gnarled trunks. This tree is locally known as the " koekerboom," or " quiver-tree," a remi niscence of the fact that the Bushmen used to remove the fibrous wood from a section of a bough and utilise the cylinder of tough bark as a quiver for their poisoned arrows.

The koekerbooms are believed to be of immense age ; the oldest Trek-Boers will point to small trees growing close to their favourite camping places, and tell you that they have not sensibly increased in size in upwards of half a century. Their appearance is extremely belated and archaic. Running through Bushmanland from north east to south-west is a curved ridge which is known as the " Jacht Bult," or " hunt-ridge," from the plentifulness of game upon it. This ridge rises so gradually from each side that its very existence is not apparent except for a few minutes at morning and evening — and then only if one happens to be on the top of it. Here occurs a curious phenomenon ; for, just as the sun is touching the western horizon, if one looks eastward he will be startled at seeing half of the immense plain shrouded in almost complete darkness.

The illusion is due to the western plain being flooded with sunlight whilst from the other the sunlight is suddenly and completely cut off. When the sun sinks the illusion vanishes and the eastern plain appears to be no darker than the western. At sunrise these conditions are, of course, reversed. This region is the home of the " springbuck," which still survives in countless myriads. After a large " trek," as the annual migration of these animals across the Desert is called, has taken place, the wake of the host looks like an irregularly-ploughed field. Every vestige of vegetation is beaten out by the small, sharp, strong hoofs. It seems at such times as if all the springbucks in the Desert were suddenly smitten by a mad desire to collect and dash towards a certain point. The springbucks as a rule live without drinking.

Sometimes, however — perhaps once in ten years — they develop a raging thirst, and rush madly forward until they find water. It is not many years ago since millions of them crossed the mountain range and made for the n sea. They dashed into the waves, drank the salt water, and died. Their bodies lay in one continuous pile along the shore for over thirty miles, and the stench drove the Trek-Boers who were camped near the coast far inland. The oryx, or, as it is called in South Africa, the "gemsbok," is still to be found in considerable numbers in the vicinity of the great and almost inaccessible sand-dunes which encroach into the desert at several points along its north western margin. The gemsbok manages to live without drinking water, finding a substitute in a large, succulent root which grows in the driest parts of the dunes, and which the animal digs up from deep in the sand with its hoofs.

A few hartebeests are also to be found. Im mense wild bustards, or, as they are called, " paauws," come over from the Kalihari Desert in large flocks. From the same place the desert grouse, which strongly resembles the sand grouse of Central Asia, throng over in countless myriads. These collect around the open water places every morning when the sun begins to sting. One dip of water they must have. If the sportsman is hard-hearted enough to remain close to the water-hole, they circle round and round uttering their plaintive cry in a myriadvoiced chorus of strange twitterings. Should the day be hot and no other water obtainable in the neighbourhood — as is often the case — they will drink at one's very feet. From their cry the colloquial name of " kalkivain " is derived. In hot weather one may trace the zigzag spoor of many a yellow cobra across the sands.

By day these creatures remain underground among the mouse-burrows — for they could not live upon the scorching sand — but at night they wander far and near. The horned adder identical in species with the " worm of old Nile " with which Cleopatra eased herself of her burthen of life — abounds at the roots of the small shrubs and grass-tussocks, where it burrows into the sand to escape the heat, or when hibernating. Above all, however, Bushmanland is the home of the wild ostrich. Here, in spite of the number of their enemies, human or other, these noble birds are still to be found in con siderable numbers. Their booming note heard at night across the waste strongly suggests the distant roar of a hungry lion. When one thinks of the number and ingenuity of the ostrich's enemies one wonders that any still exist.

Around every nest that one finds are sure to be several jackals and white crows. The jackal rolls the eggs about by butting them with his nose, and thus dashes them against each other until they break ; the white crow carries stones up into the air and drops them from a height among the eggs, smashing them and befouling the nest with what it is unable to gorge of the contents of the shell ; the prowling Hottentot, or half-breed, will follow for days on the spoor until he finds the nest and rifles it. This region was once the favourite haunt osthe Bushman, and long after that unhappy race had disappeared from other parts it here maintained itself. At every water-place may still be seen the polished grooves in the rocks wherein they sharpened their arrows and bone skinning knives ; fragments of their rude pottery lie thickly strewn around.

Mixed with the latter may be found, sometimes in considerable quan tities, the broken weapons of stone which be longed to a still older race, and which, perhaps, was driven from the face of the land by the Bushmen, as we have driven the latter, and as we ourselves may be driven by some race de veloping a "fitness" superior to our own. These water-places would thus seem to be of immense antiquity, and the inference suggests that the climatic conditions of this end of the African continent have not changed appreciably for ages. The names of a few of these places in the Bushman tongue still survive. Some are very suggestive, and indicate that the Bushman was not totally devoid of sentiment. The following are specimens of local Bushman topography : " Place of Bleeding," " Withered Flower," "Eggshell Cheeks," "Reed-Possessor," "Take away-from-me-what-I-have-gained," " Place where - you - may - dig - out - a - little - pot - of water."

The Bushman used poisoned arrows. He obtained the poison usually from three distinct sources, namely, the poison gland of the puff-adder, the black tarantula, and the deadly euphorbia which grows in the river gorge. These he mixed in a paste and smeared upon the sides of his arrow blade. This poison is extremely deadly in its effects, but it works far more rapidly in the system of a ruminating animal than in that of a man. The Bushman could also, however, run game down by sheer fleetness of foot — running until blown and then handing the chase over to another hunter who had posted himself upon the course which, by instinct, he had known the animal would most likely take. The ostrich was the Bushman's favourite and most profitable quarry. Dressed in the plumes of a former victim he would stalk into the midst of a troop and lay its members low one by one.

When he found a nest he would pierce the ends of each egg and blow out the contents. Then, after carefully washing out the shell, he would fill it with water and close up each aperture with a wooden peg. The shell would be buried deep in the sand against contingencies of drought. By some secret sign the members of each clan would know the exact spots where water had thus been buried by their friends, and thus often avoid death by thirst when travelling or hunting. The Bushman was the true Ishmaelite ; he was bound to be eliminated. As a matter of fact there is no room for a Bushman and any one else in any given area, no matter how large. In the region described the Bushmen have left no record in the shape of paintings on the rocks, which are so common in other parts. This may perhaps be accounted for by the porous nature of many of the low krantzes in which the caves they occupied are situated.

It may be, however, that the plants from which their pigments were obtained do not grow in this arid region. When rain has fallen freely, as it occasionally does, the Trek-Boers flock into Bushmanland from its fringe, upon which they are always hanging. A few weeks of dry weather, how ever, suffices to dry up the moisture from the shallow, sand-clogged basins, and the country once more becomes a solitude. For some natures this region possesses a deep and abiding charm. The fresh, crisp air of early morning ; the peace which sinks like a benediction upon the wearied earth when the scorching sun has fallen from the sky, and the sand gives off its heat in rapid radiation ; the sense of immensity made manifest in the wide, wide plains by day, and in the almost super naturally bright skies at night ; the booming of the ostriches, the bellowing of the rutting springbucks ; the queer, snarling yelp of the jackals and the " tshok-tshok " of the paauw as it shakes out its plumes to the rising sun — and who can define the vivid delight which these have brought ?

Who that has ever been fortunate enough to experience it can recall without a quickening pulse the mad gallop for miles across the plains after a herd of gemsbok, or the fierce rapture of meeting the noble brute at bay, and slaying the only animal of the antelope tribe that has heart enough to face a lion ? It is among the dwellers of this region that the scene of the following tale is laid. These people have but few ideas, and a vocabulary of little more than three hundred words to express these ideas in. The Bible is the only book they ever read, and of that they do not understand more than half the sense. In all essentials, how ever, they are of the same mould as other men. They live and love, hate and die, in very much the same manner as do other human creatures. It is in the incidentals that the reader may find some difference between these people and the dwellers in more fortunate climes.

Chapter II The Patriarch Of Namies

: THERE was only one camp at Namies, for all the wells but one had run dry. It was somewhat early in summer, and as yet no thunderstorms had visited the immediate neigh bourhood. The camp consisted of a wagon with a fore-and-aft canvas hood, or, as it is called in South Africa, a " tent." On either side of it stood, respectively, a mat-house and a square tent. The particular Trek-Boer who was the owner of this establishment was a somewhat distinguished specimen of his class. Old Schalk Hattingh had, like his father before him, lived his life upon the fringes of the Bushmanland Desert. Tall and corpulent, with a long, silvery-white beard, he spent his days sitting in a big, cushionless, wooden chair. 1 Pronounced " Namees." This chair would, according to the weather, be placed either just inside or just outside the mat-house.

His legs had become too weak to sustain his large body, so he was only able to walk with the assistance of a long, strong stick, which never was out of the reach of his hand. In the coldest weather he wore no warmer clothing than a shirt of unbleached calico — always open at the throat, and thus revealing a large area of red skin — a cheap and very thin corduroy coat, a pair of breeches, much too short for him, of tanned sheepskin, and a jackal-skin cap. These clothes he in variably slept in ; in fact, the tradition as to when he had last taken them off had been long since lost. On his extremely large feet he wore "veldschoens" of his own make. Socks he would have looked upon as a criminal luxury ; pocket-handkerchiefs he had never used in the whole course of his life. Winter and summer he sat, drinking weak coffee all day long, smoking strong tobacco at intervals, and con tinually expectorating in all directions.

Namies was his headquarters, and had been so for nearly forty years. His well was the best there. Even that, however, ran dry during the early part of summer about once in three years, and he would then shift his camp to some more fortunate spot. But he was always the last to leave and the first to return. No one ever dreamt of camping upon Old Schalk's favourite spot or taking possession of his well, yet to these he had no special right which could be legally enforced. Old Schalk was a well-known character, and was looked upon as a patriarch and an oracle by the Trek-Boers for hundreds of miles around. He had been a famous man in his day, and could tell interesting, semi-veracious anecdotes of adventures with Bushmen, lions, and other things — predatory or preyed upon. He had never seen a village in his life, excepting the adventitious assemblages of the Trek-Boers.

He was known to be a hard man at a bargain, and extremely avaricious ; nevertheless he was poor. A few years previous to the period at which this tale opens he had been rich in flocks and herds. Then came the inevitably recurring drought, this time one of exceptional severity. The sheep and goats became thinner and thinner, until they were too weak to go abroad and seek for pasturage. They lay on the sand all day long, eyeing piteously the troughs to which their diminishing dole of water was lifted from the well by the creaking derrick. At last the maddened cattle flung themselves down the well, and their ruined owners were hardly able to drag themselves to the arid banks of the Orange River down the sand-choked gorge at Pella. Here was at least water to drink. Old Schalk, like most of his neighbours, found himself a poor man.

Since the famine he had managed to get a little stock together again, but he was in debt to several Jew hawkers, and had some difficulty in keeping his head above water. He held the appointment under Government of Assistant Field Cornet. It was his duty in this capacity to report all crimes to the Special Magistrate, to arrest criminals, and to hold in quests in cases of deaths by violence in regard to which there was no suspicion of foul play. This office gave him a certain position among the Trek-Boers and added considerably to his influence. Old Schalk's wife was only a few years younger than himself, but, as is especially the case with Boer women, she looked much older. His special grievance against Providence was that Mrs. Hattingh had lived so long, and thus kept him out of the enjoyment of the charms of younger women.

" There is my brother Gert," he would say in moments of confidence, and without considering whether his wife were present or not, " he has now married his third wife ; Willem onlv the other day lost his second ; Jan, who is fifteen years younger than I, buried his first wife only five months ago and is going to marry a fine young girl at the next Nachtmaal — and here I am still sitting with my old " Bogh " (a word which may be freely translated as " frump "). From Old Schalk's point of view he un doubtedly had a grievance, for one rarely meets an old Boer — and more especially a Trek-Boer — who has not been married several times. Mrs. Hattingh never appeared to be hurt by such outbursts against unpropitious Fate. She had no intention of dying just yet ; senti ment was to her unknown, and she had always taken life philosophically.

" Ja," she would sometimes rejoin, " it is true that I am an old ' Bogh,' but there's not a woman in Bushmanland who can sew karosses as well as I ; and if it had not been for the money you got from the Jews for those I made from the skins of the sheep that died in the drought, you would not have any stock to-day." " Ja ; that is true," Old Schalk would grudg ingly admit. *- And you would be a fine one to follow a young wife about and keep her in order ; with those legs you could not walk the length of the trek-chain." Old Schalk always resented any reference to his unserviceable legs, so his wife usually had the last word at these discussions. The junior members of the Hattingh family consisted of two granddaughters and a grand niece. The sons and daughters of the camp had married and were scattered over the fringe of the Desert.

The three girls were orphans. The two granddaughters were tall, listless-looking girls, with dark hair and eyes, and that trans parent and unhealthy complexion which some times gives a fugacious beauty and is often found in young women whose diet does not embrace a sufficiency of green vegetable food. Their chests were hollow, their shoulders drooped, and they looked incapable of taking much interest in anything. Their ages were respectively, eighteen and nineteen ; their names Maria and Petronella. Their cousin, Susannah, was a girl of a different type. She was small of stature, well built, and had a keen and alert look. Her features were strongly marked, her eyes and hair were black, and the redness of her lips was rendered more striking by the pallor of the rest of her face. Her movements were distinguished by an energy which was in striking contrast to the listlessness of the other girls.

She suggested a well-favoured squirrel among a family of moles. Her features had a strongly Jewish cast. Although not much admired by the young Boers with whom she came in contact — probably because she did not reach their standard of stoutness — she would have been in other surroundings considered a very pretty girl. There was some mystery in connection with her parentage which gave rise to whisper ings among the women. It was, however, certain that she was the daughter of one of Old Schalk's nieces. The spot known as Namies is marked by a few stony, irregular kopjes which lie like a small archipelago in the ocean-like waste of the Bushmanland Desert, not far from its northern margin. The highest of these kopjes is less than four hundred feet above the general level of the plains ; a circle two miles in circum ference would enclose them all. They are formed of piles of granite boulders, between which grow a few hardy shrubs and koekerbooms.