Sporting Scenes amongst the Kaffirs of South AfricaDrayson, Alfred W. (Alfred Wilks)
History
Sporting Scenes amongst the Kaffirs of South Africa
Drayson, Alfred W. (Alfred Wilks)
Hunting -- South Africa; South Africa -- Description and travel
I asked Inkau at what animal I had fired. He said, "Don't you know?" I
told him that I was not certain, but fancied it might be the lion. He
acknowledged that he saw so little of the animal that he really could
not say: thus we had fired at a something, but neither of us, although
by no means novices, could tell what this was.
We were most particular in our approach to the spot, and threw several
stones in advance, but saw nothing until we came right on the body of a
hyaena lying dead. The shot had been a very lucky one, for, aiming well
forward at the moving grass, I had struck the hyaena with the bullet
under the ear, and it had passed through the skull, dropping him dead in
his track. We looked round the top of the kloof for spoor by which to
trace the lion; none was to be found, and we had to return without even
the satisfaction of a shot.
I won an old lady's heart by a present of tobacco on my return to
Inkau's kraal. She had been frequently looking at me very attentively,
and paid me some neat compliments; had she been young, and more like
Peshauna, I should have been flattered; but unfortunately her appearance
was not one that would be at all likely to inspire the tender passion.
Her face was thin and wrinkled, while her whole body looked as though it
were covered with a skin that had been originally intended for a very
much larger person. She had also suffered from sickness, as was shown
by the scars all over her body,--signs of the cupping and bleeding that
had been performed on her by some Kaffir doctor, with an assagy in lieu
of a lancet. Still she did not seem to be much displeased with
herself,--a circumstance for which I can only account by the absence of
looking-glasses in this village.
I did not feel much inclined to move after my long walk this day, so I
took a seat near the door of the hut, and watched the old lady turn my
tobacco into snuff. She first cut it up into little bits with an
assagy, and brought two large stones to the hut; into the lower stone,
which had a well-worn hollow, she put all the bits of tobacco, and with
the other, which was nearly circular, and about the size of an
ostrich-egg, she commenced grinding the tobacco: it seemed very hard
work, as she pressed heavily on the stone during the operation. After a
time she added some water, which made the mess into a sort of paste,
something like a child's dirt-pie. After a great deal of grinding and
scraping, the composition began really to look like a snuff-powder. She
then got a wooden spoon nearly full of white wood-ashes, and mixed them
with the tobacco. More grinding seemed to amalgamate the two
compositions, when she tried a pinch herself, and pronounced that it
wanted drying in the sun, and would then be good.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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