Chapter One.

The Bushmanland Desert—Its Nature and Extent—Desert Travelling—The “Toa.”

The world moves rapidly and with increasing momentum. Even regions remote from those communities which the stress of increasing population and the curse of unleisured industrialism send spinning “down the ringing grooves of change,” are often so disturbed or overwhelmed by the overflow of what threatens to be an almost worldwide current of morbid energy, that within a strangely short period their character is apt completely to alter and their individuality to become utterly destroyed.

I do not know how the Great Bushmanland Desert has fared in this respect—not having visited it for several years—but if some unlikely combination of circumstances were to take me once more to Aroegas or Koisabies,—to the tiny spring of living water that trickles from the depths and lies like a precious jewel hidden in the dark, narrow cavern at Inkruip,—or to where the flaming, red-belted cone of Bantom Berg glares over the dragon-folds of the dune-devil sprawling at its feet, I should go in fear of finding empty sardine-tins and broken bottles lying among the fragments of prehistoric pottery and flint implements which were but recently the only traces of man to be found in those abodes of solitude.

The Bushmanland Desert is but little-known. A few nomads—some of European and some of mixed descent—hang on its fringe. Here and there ephemeral mat-house villages, whose dwellers are dependent on the sparse and uncertain bounty of the sky, will, perhaps, be found for a season. But when the greedy sun has reclaimed the last drop of moisture from shallow “pan” or sand-choked rock-saucer, the mat-houses are folded up and, like the Arabs, these dwellers steal silently away from the blighting visage of the Thirst King. But the greater portion of Bushmanland may be ranked among the most complete solitudes of the earth. The lion, the rhinoceros, and, in fact, most of the larger indigenous fauna have disappeared from it—with the autochthonous pygmy human inhabitants; nevertheless it is a region full of varied and distinctive interest. The landscape consists either of vast plains, mirage-haunted and as level as the sea,—arid mountain ranges—usually mere piles of naked rock, or immense sand-dunes, massed and convoluted. The latter often change their form and occasionally their location under stress of the violent winds which sweep down from the torrid north.

The tract is an extensive one, probably upwards of 50,000 square miles lie within its limits. It is bounded on the north by the Gariep or Orange River—but as that flows and eddies at the bottom of a tremendous gorge which is cut off from the plains by a lofty, stark range of mountains,—coal-black in colour for their greater extent and glowing hot throughout the long, cloudless day, the traveller seldom sees it. The western boundary is the Atlantic Ocean; the eastern an imaginary line drawn approximately south from the Great Aughrabies Falls to the Kat Kop Range. If we bisect this line with another drawn due east from the coast to the Lange Berg, we shall get a sufficiently recognisable boundary on the south. From the tract so defined must be deducted the small area surrounding the Copper Mines, and a narrow strip of mountain land running parallel with, and about sixty miles from the coast. This strip is sparsely inhabited by European farmers.

The occasional traversing of this vast tract lay within the scope of my official duties. My invariable travelling companion was Field Cornet Andries Esterhuizen (of whom more anon) and a small retinue of police, drivers, and after-riders. We never escaped hardship; the sun scorched fiercely and the sand over which we tramped was often hot enough to cook an egg in. Water, excepting the supply we carried with us, was as a rule unobtainable; consequently we had to eschew washing completely. We often had to travel by night so as to spare the oxen, and as the water-casks usually almost filled the wagon, we then had to tramp, vainly longing for sleep, through long, weary hours, from sunset to sunrise. And after the sun had arisen the heat, as a rule, made sleep impossible.

It was to the more inaccessible—and therefore comparatively inviolate—expanses of this wilderness that I was always tempted to penetrate. Therein were to be found a scanty flora and a fauna—each unusual and distinctive,—composed of hardy organisms, which an apprenticeship from days unthinkably ancient had habituated to their most difficult conditions of existence. If, somewhere near the margin of the great central plain, we happened to cross the track of a vagrant thunderstorm, we would see myriads of delicately-petalled blossoms miraculously surviving, like the Faithful Rulers of Babylon in the Fiery Furnace. On the flank of some flaming sand-dune we would find the tulip-like blooms of the Gethyllis flourishing in leafless splendour. Their corollas were of crystalline white splashed with vivid crimson; deep in each goblet lay the clustered anthers,—a convoluted mass of glowing gold. Is this flower a grail, bearing beauty too ineffable to die, through an arid aeon from one cycle of fertility to another?

Sometimes our course led over tracts of sand—sand so light and powdery that the foot sank into it ankle-deep at every step. Occasionally we crossed high, abrupt ridges of black or chocolate-hued rock, separated from each other by gorges so deep that except at noontide, no sunbeam penetrated them. But usually our course lay across plains, infinite in extent. In the Summer season such were covered with heavy-headed shocks of “toa” grass,—yellow or light green in hue, according to the more or less scanty rainfall. But in Winter all the waving plumes crumbled away, leaving the bases of the tussocks as black as pitch. Where the hills and the plains met, stood groves of immense dragon aloes—some cumbered with nests of the sociable grossbeak—each as large as a hayrick.

The lordly oryx crossed our path; the ungainly hartebeest lumbered away to windward at a pace which made pursuit hopeless; the gazelles of the desert fled before us like thistledown borne on an eddying wind. The roofs of many a city of desert mice sank beneath our footsteps and the horned adder hissed defiance at our caravan from his home at the tussock’s base. We crossed the zig-zag track made by the yellow cobra when prowling in the darkness. The plumed ostrich scudded away at our approach, the great bustard of the Kalihari spread his powerful wings and flew forth heavily until he almost crossed the horizon, and the “kapok vogeltje,” no bigger than a wren, twittered at us from his seat of cunning on the outside of the simulated snowball which is his nest.

We did not fear the poisoned arrows of the Bushmen, for that strange race which formerly occupied the scenes of our wanderings had long since disappeared from the face of the earth. Within the wide bounds of that tract to which the Bushman gave his name, there existed but two individuals of his race,—an old, withered, toothless man, and a bent and ancient crone. These wraiths, who subsisted on roots, reptiles and insects, still haunted the mountains near Dabienoras, and levied a kind of toll on the very occasional traveller. This took the form of a trifling contribution of tobacco and sugar.