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
During my two days' journey from the Vaal river large herds of game were
seen in all directions, keeping me in the saddle all day to provide food
for the road. Lions, wolves, and jackals were heard nightly, and came
prowling round our camp at no great distance, but never came
sufficiently close to be seen. A few miles beyond the bone hill, if I
may so call it, we crossed the Harts river, a bad and muddy drift, where
there were many Kaffir huts. Ascending the hill beyond, I came to
"Great Boetsass," where the chief would not allow me to outspan, as he
said I had come for no good, being sent by the Boers of the Transvaal to
take down on paper all the watering-places; therefore I was detained
whilst he and his head-men held a kind of "raad" over me, to decide what
they should do. Finally they decided to send me out of the country in
the direction of Mahura's kraal at Taungs, the head chief of the
Bechuanas, with a guard of six men to see me clear, and put me in the
road, following me up for several miles; they then left me in the middle
of the veldt, without a road or anything to guide me. The chief would
not believe my statement. To have resisted would have been folly, as I
could do very little against a hundred Kaffirs. All the women and
children kept to their huts, the men assembled quite in a nude state,
except a small cloth in front, and were armed with assagais and
knobkerries. When I was leaving, they came demanding some tobacco; I
told them they should have none; if they had behaved well, I would have
given them plenty.
Finding these Kaffirs had been so badly used by the Boers, and not
knowing the English, they insulted every white man that came into their
country; and having heard very bad accounts of the people at Taung and
the villages around from the same cause, I determined, when the guard
left me, to strike across the country and give them a wide berth,
otherwise I might be detained again. Two years after, when visiting
this kraal, the chief, when he found out who I was, told me he was very
sorry he had turned me away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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