lash, usually of giraffe hide, fixed to the end of a bamboo
pole some twelve to fifteen feet long, walks alongside.
Each ox has a name, corresponding usually to some
physical peculiarity, and after a little time becomes quite
familiar with i t ; each has also his allotted place in the
team, into which he drops quite naturally. To start his
beasts or to urge them to an extra strong pull, the
driver yells and shrieks in the weirdest manner; to
stop them he utters only one or two prolonged calls,
followed by a peculiar whistling sound.
My first halt was near a pond a few miles from the
town. A trek of a couple of hours enabled us to reach
the spot, and near a farm—a kind of hut built of mud
—I had the oxen outspanned and the ponies hobbled ; the
donkeys I left at liberty. I had the tent unfurled when a
storm burst upon us, accompanied by a deluge of rain. I
fixed the tent as well as I could, and profiting by a lull in
the storm my men started a fire and prepared their dinner
of meal boiled in an iron pot. For the first, but, alas ! not
the last time I sat before a tin of “ bouillie-beef,” washed
down with tea. We had hardly finished when the storm
began anew, worse than ever, my tent threatening to come
to the ground every minute. Everything was so dark that
it was impossible to go forward a single step without
knocking against some stone or tumbling into some hole.
The flashes of lightning followed one another incessantly,
illuminating the whole horizon ; and the noise was awful.
I rushed out to see if the waggons were well covered over,
when to my dismay I saw by the light of a vivid flash that
the large piece of sailcloth used to cover the waggons and
their contents was scudding away, leaving all the packages
to the mercy of the tempest. I called the men
together, and we set to work to cover the waggons up
again. The job was a stiff one, as the saturated sails
weighed tremendously heavy, and over and over again
were blown out of our hands. The wind and the rain
extinguished the lanterns, so it was in utter darkness and
10
not until ■ we had got wet to the skin that we managed
to fix the wretched things. All night long the rain fell
in torrents, and my bunk under the awning, although
covered with one of the sails, let in the water, which
literally poured over me. I soon found out that the sails
before being used must be saturated with melted fat, or
else they let the water through them. I expected to see
at least three-quarters of the provisions spoilt—the meal
and flour a paste, the sugar a syrup, and the tobacco a
pulp. What was my delight then, when the morning came,
to find that the rain had stopped and that no serious harm
had been done to the goods. The sugar was a little wet,
and one or two sacks of meal were slightly damp, but
nothing had been really spoilt. It was Sunday, June 28th,
before I started again, the waggon in which I rode leading
the procession. I had hardly gone a couple of miles when
news was brought me that my second waggon had got
stuck. I outspanned my team and started to the assistance
of the waggon, which I found sunk up to the axles
in sand. The two teams, consisting of thirty-four oxen,
tugged for more than an hour, but without the slightest
result. We then tried digging out the wheels with our
spades, without better success; there only remained one
thing to do, and that was to unload the waggon. If it is
remembered that this means undoing all the ropes, and
shifting more than 4000 lbs. weight of things on to
the ground, and then replacing them on the waggon,
and all this with only eight men to help, it must be
admitted that such a job was no easy business. However,
we all lent a hand, and it. was only after we had removed
everything that we succeeded in getting free. We loaded
up once more and started again, having wasted five hours
over this incident. I had no time to lose, for night comes
on very quickly in these parts, and as soon as I came to
a "v le y ” (the South African name for a pool), where I
could water my beasts, I halted. It was icy cold, and
after a light meal I turned in, fervently praying that I
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