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Page 16
Next day we went ashore, and I put up Sir Henry and Captain Good at
the little shanty I have built on the Berea, and which I call my home.
There are only three rooms and a kitchen in it, and it is constructed
of green brick with a galvanised iron roof, but there is a good garden
with the best loquot trees in it that I know, and some nice young
mangoes, of which I hope great things. The curator of the botanical
gardens gave them to me. It is looked after by an old hunter of mine
named Jack, whose thigh was so badly broken by a buffalo cow in
Sikukunis country that he will never hunt again. But he can potter
about and garden, being a Griqua by birth. You will never persuade a
Zulu to take much interest in gardening. It is a peaceful art, and
peaceful arts are not in his line.
Sir Henry and Good slept in a tent pitched in my little grove of
orange trees at the end of the garden, for there was no room for them
in the house, and what with the smell of the bloom, and the sight of
the green and golden fruit--in Durban you will see all three on the
tree together--I daresay it is a pleasant place enough, for we have
few mosquitos here on the Berea, unless there happens to come an
unusually heavy rain.
Well, to get on--for if I do not, Harry, you will be tired of my story
before ever we fetch up at Suliman's Mountains--having once made up my
mind to go I set about making the necessary preparations. First I
secured the deed from Sir Henry, providing for you, my boy, in case of
accidents. There was some difficulty about its legal execution, as Sir
Henry was a stranger here, and the property to be charged is over the
water; but it was ultimately got over with the help of a lawyer, who
charged �20 for the job--a price that I thought outrageous. Then I
pocketed my cheque for �500.
Having paid this tribute to my bump of caution, I purchased a wagon
and a span of oxen on Sir Henry's behalf, and beauties they were. It
was a twenty-two-foot wagon with iron axles, very strong, very light,
and built throughout of stink wood; not quite a new one, having been
to the Diamond Fields and back, but, in my opinion, all the better for
that, for I could see that the wood was well seasoned. If anything is
going to give in a wagon, or if there is green wood in it, it will
show out on the first trip. This particular vehicle was what we call a
"half-tented" wagon, that is to say, only covered in over the after
twelve feet, leaving all the front part free for the necessaries we
had to carry with us. In this after part were a hide "cartle," or bed,
on which two people could sleep, also racks for rifles, and many other
little conveniences. I gave �125 for it, and think that it was cheap
at the price.
Then I bought a beautiful team of twenty Zulu oxen, which I had kept
my eye on for a year or two. Sixteen oxen is the usual number for a
team, but I took four extra to allow for casualties. These Zulu cattle
are small and light, not more than half the size of the Africander
oxen, which are generally used for transport purposes; but they will
live where the Africanders would starve, and with a moderate load can
make five miles a day better going, being quicker and not so liable to
become footsore. What is more, this lot were thoroughly "salted," that
is, they had worked all over South Africa, and so had become proof,
comparatively speaking, against red water, which so frequently
destroys whole teams of oxen when they get on to strange "veldt" or
grass country. As for "lung sick," which is a dreadful form of
pneumonia, very prevalent in this country, they had all been
inoculated against it. This is done by cutting a slit in the tail of
an ox, and binding in a piece of the diseased lung of an animal which
has died of the sickness. The result is that the ox sickens, takes the
disease in a mild form, which causes its tail to drop off, as a rule
about a foot from the root, and becomes proof against future attacks.
It seems cruel to rob the animal of his tail, especially in a country
where there are so many flies, but it is better to sacrifice the tail
and keep the ox than to lose both tail and ox, for a tail without an
ox is not much good, except to dust with. Still it does look odd to
trek along behind twenty stumps, where there ought to be tails. It
seems as though Nature made a trifling mistake, and stuck the stern
ornaments of a lot of prize bull-dogs on to the rumps of the oxen.
Next came the question of provisioning and medicines, one which
required the most careful consideration, for what we had to do was to
avoid lumbering the wagon, and yet to take everything absolutely
necessary. Fortunately, it turned out that Good is a bit of a doctor,
having at some point in his previous career managed to pass through a
course of medical and surgical instruction, which he has more or less
kept up. He is not, of course, qualified, but he knows more about it
than many a man who can write M.D. after his name, as we found out
afterwards, and he had a splendid travelling medicine chest and a set
of instruments. Whilst we were at Durban he cut off a Kafir's big toe
in a way which it was a pleasure to see. But he was quite nonplussed
when the Kafir, who had sat stolidly watching the operation, asked him
to put on another, saying that a "white one" would do at a pinch.
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