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
_May 5th, Sunday_.--Attended Mr. Moffat's church; the service is held in
the Bechuana language. About 400 natives present. The singing is as
well performed as it is in any English church at home. The Kaffirs, who
are Bechuanas, have fine clear voices, and the women are well known to
have sweet, musical voices. The service is well-conducted, and the
natives as attentive as any white congregation in a civilised country.
I first attended at this church in February 1868, when the Rev. Robert
Moffat was living there, previous to his finally leaving for England.
On 29th December, 1869, I was again there, detained for many weeks with
a severe illness, and through the kind nursing of Mr. and Mrs. John
Moffat, Mr. and Mrs. Levy, and other English residents, soon recovered.
I remember well before leaving at that time they got up a little picnic
party, to visit some ancient Bushmen caves, a few miles from the mission
station towards the hills, taking a cart with provisions, the party
riding, and a very enjoyable day we had. As we approached the hills the
country became covered with bush and long grass, where I may safely say,
several hundreds of baboons were busy seeking roots. The old men were
very large, and to see the whole troop scuttle towards the hills with
the babies on their mothers' backs, with their little arms clinging
round their necks, was a pretty and novel sight. Arriving at the caves,
we found a long sand cliff projecting many yards over the lower part,
affording shelter for several hundred families, perfectly secure and a
safe retreat--but its ancient inhabitants are passed away and forgotten.
We procured some very beautiful specimens of the trap-door spider; the
workmanship of the door and its hinge, and the lining of the passage
down to their nest is something marvellous. So far as I have
discovered, there are three kinds of this species, distinguished by
their size. The largest is a black spider, the body nearly an inch in
length; the opening, or passage, and the door to their nest is the size
of our English florin; the hole to the nest is perpendicular for from a
foot to two feet, when an open space is beyond. The coating of this
opening and the under side of the door is of a greyish white, and as
soft and smooth as satin, and when the door is shut it fits so exactly
as to be quite watertight. The top of the door is made to represent the
ground round about, to be undistinguishable by an enemy. The second
size trap-door is the size of a shilling, and the third the size of a
fourpenny-bit. But the spiders are of the same type; where one kind is
found in a district the others are not, showing they occupy separate
localities. I have frequently found the door open and thrown back,
showing the spider is abroad hunting up game to supply his larder. On
several occasions when finding these doors open I have watched the
return of the spider, sitting down a few feet from the door, and waited
sometimes nearly half an hour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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