Twenty-Five Years in a Waggon in South Africa: Sport and Travel in South AfricaAnderson, Andrew A.
History
Twenty-Five Years in a Waggon in South Africa: Sport and Travel in South Africa
Anderson, Andrew A.
Africa, Southern -- Description and travel; Anderson, Andrew A. -- Travel -- Africa, Southern
until it got dark, and he wandered about looking for water, so that he
lost the direction he came. Hearing several lions, he selected a nice
tree and climbed up, where he spent the night, and shot two large
wolves. At daybreak he climbed down and found five Bushmen looking
about; when they saw him they came up. He asked for water, but they
said there was none, which Dirk believes was not true. They wanted to
look at the gun, but he was wise enough to keep it from them; seeing he
was alone, they might have kept it. However, he left them by the two
dead wolves, and managed to strike the road, and saw the spoor of my
waggon, and followed it down to where I was outspanned. When I told him
of the forelooper and the oxen he said he would go at once and follow
their spoor, otherwise we should never see them again, and asked for a
little brandy to wash his mouth out, for he, as well as myself, could
not articulate plainly, and then started after them about 5 p.m. I was
again left alone to pass another sleepless night, and the fifth day
without water or food. I frequently rinsed my mouth out with brandy,
which kept my tongue from swelling. It was a lovely moonlight night,
and, under other circumstances, I should have enjoyed it amazingly, for
the country round was peculiar for the many stone koptjies, 150 feet in
height, large masses of granite, piled up in most grotesque forms, with
flowering plants growing between them. To pass away this anxious time I
took my rifles to inspect them; on my return I found my poor little
terrier dog on the point of death. I took him up in my lap; and with a
piteous shriek he fell dead. Poor little thing, he must have suffered
acutely. My other dog, "Bull," died on Sunday, so here I am alone, 150
miles from any white man. Once more passed the night smoking on my
waggon-box, the only thing that I could do, and about 11 a.m., on
Tuesday 23rd, as I was lying down in my waggon, I caught the sound of
oxen's feet on the road, which proved to be mine, with my driver and
forelooper bringing them on, and holding up a can to show me they had
water. What a relief! we are saved!--for I was far too weak to walk
alone 150 miles, and carry a rifle and food for so long a journey. My
driver told me after he left yesterday to follow up the spoor of the
oxen, he found my boy asleep under a bush, about a mile from the waggon,
and took him with him, and after six hours' walk came upon the oxen,
where they had been drinking at a kind of swamp in a valley, and some
twelve miles from the road we had travelled a few days before. Five
Bushmen were driving them over the brow of the hill to be out of sight
of any one looking after them.--Dirk fired his rifle to give them notice
that some one was near, when the Bushmen dispersed out of sight, and he
brought back the oxen as before stated. Five minutes later, and it
might have been too late. It was a most fortunate recovery for us all,
and for me in particular.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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