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THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
BV THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE NORTHWARD 
 TREK 
 
 A Story of the Making 
 of Rhodesia. 
 
 Cloth. Gilt top. 10/6 net. 
 
 "A book evidently written by one 
 who has a wide knowledge of Africa." 
 Daily Mail. 
 
 "His volume cannot fail to be of 
 profound interest." The Outlook. 
 
;" 
 
 
THE OLD 
 TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 By 
 STANLEY PORTAL HYATT 
 
 fi 
 
 Author of 
 
 "Eiffel, a Trek Ox" ; "The Northward 
 Trek " ; " Black Sheep," etc 
 
 LONDON: ANDREW MELROSE, LTD 
 
 3 YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C 
 
 1914 
 
Dedication 
 To MY MOTHER 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I THE FIRST TREK 9 
 
 II ON THE ROAD AT LAST . . . .19 
 
 III THE GOOD DAYS OF BULAWAYO . . . 29. 
 
 IV MY FIRST LOAD ...... 43 
 
 V ON THE HIGH VELD ..... 55 
 
 VI FORT VICTORIA 67 
 
 VII AMONGST THE KOPJES 81 
 
 VIII BUYING CATTLE 99 
 
 IX ODD JOURNEYS 121 
 
 X OUR CATTLE ...... 139 
 
 XI THROUGH THE LION COUNTRY . . . 163 
 
 XII PETER GOAT AND WHITE MAN . . .189 
 
 XIII ENEMIES OF THE ROAD . . . .213 
 
 XIV SUMMER TREKKING 229 
 
 XV THE TECHNICAL SIDE OF TRANSPORT WORK . 261 
 
 XVI CATTLE-DEALING AND CATTLE-STEALING . . 279 
 
 XVII THE END OF THE ROAD .... 293, 
 
 419983 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 On the Grim Grey Veld . . . Frontispiece 
 
 In the Great Days of Transport. .... 34 
 
 When the Trek-ox was All-important . . 50 
 
 When the Great Mud Flats are Dry . . . . 62 
 
 Just Possible to Cross ...... 68 
 
 The Beginning of a Township ..... 74 
 
 Outspanned ........ 94 
 
 A Mixed Span ........ 112 
 
 Six Miles a Day !....... 176 
 
 On the Farm ........ 192 
 
 A Heavy Pull ........ 234 
 
 Latter Day Transport . . . . . -294 
 
THE FIRST TREK 
 
CHAPTER I 
 THE FIRST TREK 
 
 THE Great Transport Roads of South Africa were 
 different from any other highways in the world. 
 When, if ever, there arises some one capable of putting 
 the whole Romance of Africa into a book which will live, 
 he must, of necessity, devote nearly half of his pages to the 
 Road and the life of the men of the Road. 
 
 True, nowadays, they tell me that the Great Northern 
 Road is abandoned, washed away, well-nigh obliterated 
 in many places ; that the Railway has killed all real 
 Transport as we knew it, the strings of twenty, thirty, 
 fifty wagons, even ; that only small by-roads remain, 
 mere off-shoots of the Railway, and that the latter-day 
 transport rider reckons a journey of a week's duration 
 a long one. 
 
 The Old Road was the forerunner of the Railway ; it 
 made the Railway possible ; the new roads exist because 
 of the Railway a totally different matter. 
 
 The fascination of the Transport Road was immense, 
 overpowering at least to those who had any imagination, 
 any love of Nature, any desire for personal freedom, any 
 ideal beyond the mere sordid business of money-getting. 
 It did not lead to places, to Palapye, to Bulawayo, to the 
 Victoria Falls. It led through them, past them. It went 
 on ; it was always going on, into the very heart of the 
 
 9 
 
xo ' : ' : TfiE' OL1) 'TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 Dark Continent, which was to the Nineteenth century 
 what the Spanish Main had been to the Sixteenth and 
 Seventeenth, what the South Seas had been to the 
 Eighteenth. One year, a district would be a blank on the 
 map, a mere name at best ; the next year, you would 
 find that the Road had reached it, had passed through 
 it, and, in the new edition of the map, there would be 
 scores of names, of mountains, of rivers, of townships 
 even, on that space. 
 
 It was the Road, and not the Railway, which brought 
 civilization to Africa. The Railway has merely meant 
 conveniences and luxuries, such as cold storage meat and 
 increased facilities for the making of money, mainly by 
 people who have never been in the country. It would 
 have been impossible to have constructed the Railway 
 without the Road. 
 
 There is no Romance about the Line. It is crudely 
 commercial in inception, an eyesore in all its details, 
 authorized by the State, backed up by practically un- 
 limited capital, protected by the armed forces of the 
 State, its completion a certainty from the outset. The 
 men who built it were mere servants, working for a wage ; 
 and, if they failed in their duty or died, there were 
 hundreds more, ready and capable of filling their places. 
 It was a soulless and impersonal thing, right through, 
 resolving itself in the end into so much per cent, for share- 
 holders six thousand miles away, men who would have 
 sold their holdings instantly, could they have found an 
 investment yielding a fraction higher dividend. 
 
 The Road was utterly different. It was all Romance, 
 the finest form of Romance, because it had a practical 
 side, resulting in the accomplishment of solid benefit to 
 humanity. Moreover, its making was the work of men 
 
THE FIRST TREK n 
 
 fighting for their own hands, of pioneers in the fullest 
 sense of the term. There was no company, no capital, 
 no armed force behind them, whilst against them were the 
 wild beasts, the natives, the manifold diseases, all the 
 terrors and dangers of the Unknown Land. Yet, in most 
 cases, it was the very fascination of the Unknown, rather 
 than any definite hope of gain, which spurred them on into 
 the wilderness. It must have been so, for the possible 
 profits were infinitesimal, compared with the certain risks. 
 
 The Road began when the first Dutchman left the 
 shelter of the forts at Cape Town, and made his way to 
 the back of Table Mountain. It went on slowly at first, 
 very slowly, creeping stage by stage up the mountains, 
 across the horrible desolation of the great plateau, into 
 the dreary veld of Bechuanaland, gradually gathering 
 speed for the final rush, which, in twenty years, carried 
 it as far as it had gone in the last two hundred, right up 
 to that Mecca of all those who had helped in the making 
 of it the Sources of the Nile. 
 
 From the very first day I set foot on it, the Road 
 appealed to me as nothing had ever done before, as nothing 
 has ever done since. It was, to me, what the sea is to 
 other born wanderers ; but I knew the sea already, fairly 
 well, having been round the world in a windjammer, and 
 it seemed as nothing in comparison to that dusty, narrow 
 track which ran from Railhead towards the heart of 
 Africa. 
 
 When I was on a sheep station in the back blocks of 
 New South Wales, I had seen other transport roads, with 
 the great wool-laden drays rumbling along them, but, 
 somehow, they had been totally different from the 
 African highway. Wherein lay the difference, I cannot 
 explain ; but it did exist ; it struck you instantly. 
 
12 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 Probably, it was only a part of the essential difference 
 in spirit between the two continents, between the land 
 where Romance has seldom risen above the crime of the 
 bush-ranger, and the land where almost every kind 
 of adventure was possible, where you never knew, from 
 one moment to the next, what new peril you might 
 encounter, where you always carried your life in your 
 hands, where the risks were often so great that you 
 quickly ceased to think of them at all, because they had 
 become part of the daily round. 
 
 There was a fascination about the very phrase " trans- 
 port rider." It suggested, perfectly rightly, as I soon 
 discovered, a man who was free to go where he listed, who 
 was controlled by no limited liability company, who 
 worked for his own hand. 
 
 I myself was not free, unfortunately at least, I thought 
 then that it was unfortunate. I had a two years' agree- 
 ment with a mining company as electrical engineer, and 
 I could not get out of it. Still, I made up my mind that, 
 if the fever of Matabeleland spared me which was by 
 no means certain, as I had phthisis already weakening 
 me and the death-rate, even amongst normally strong 
 men, was appallingly high north of the Crocodile River 
 I would go on the Road at the end of my time. 
 
 Really, it was an extremely good thing that I had those 
 two years in which to become acclimatized, to learn 
 something of the language, and of the ways of the veld. 
 Moreover, there was the fact that I had not a cent in the 
 world, and that it was necessary to save, or at least to 
 acquire, some capital before transport-riding became pos- 
 sible. Also, of course, I had not the slightest idea of 
 how to handle cattle ; but when one is still under one and 
 twenty, future difficulties seldom seem very serious. 
 
THE FIRST TREK 13 
 
 In those days, Railhead was at Palapye Siding, a for- 
 saken spot, some eleven miles from Palapye Stad, the 
 capital. The most important point about the Siding was 
 that, like the majority of places in Bechuanaland, it had 
 no water supply. Dirt, dust and discomfort those are 
 the salient characteristics of most South African settle- 
 ments, but you found them in an exaggerated degree at 
 Palapye Siding. 
 
 Those were the days immediately following the Rinder- 
 pest. From eight-five to ninety per cent, of the cattle 
 had been wiped out, and, as a result, transport rates were 
 enormously high at least, the mining companies called 
 them high, though, personally, I think that, in the cir- 
 cumstances, they were moderate. It was merely a case of 
 supply and demand. The companies were in a desperate 
 hurry to make a show, to be able to assure their share- 
 holders that the machinery was being erected later on, 
 some of them were by no means so anxious to use that 
 machinery to crush their alleged gold-bearing quartz 
 and they had to pay for their haste. 
 
 After all, twenty-five shillings per hundred pounds weight 
 for a journey of over two hundred miles along an almost 
 inconceivably bad road, with long, dry stretches, and the 
 possibility of lions at every outspan, was not an extrava- 
 gant price, considering that " Salted " cattle, animals 
 which had recovered from the Rinderpest, were worth at 
 least forty pounds each over six hundred pounds a span- 
 The wagons were almost negligible factors, hundreds 
 having been abandoned by the roadside ; in fact, you could 
 buy wagons which had cost from eighty to a hundred 
 pounds each at the Coast, for two or three sovereigns 
 or you could just take them and trust to luck not to meet 
 the former owner later on. 
 
14 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 After a delay of some ten days, during which we camped 
 in the forwarding agent's yard, and were driven half mad 
 by fleas, flies and thirst, the wagons on which we were to 
 be passengers arrived, and loaded up in leisurely fashion. 
 Really, it was an insult to every decent man on the Road 
 to call those " transport wagons." To begin with, they 
 were owned by natives, Bamangwatu from one of Khama's 
 villages. The gear was bad, even for Kaffir owners; 
 whilst the cattle were unspeakable, the very riff-raff of 
 the scherms, a mixture of aged oxen, young bulls, breed- 
 ing cows, and heifers. None seemed to be properly 
 trained, and all were deadly thin I suppose from having 
 gone through the " salting " process, as it certainly was 
 not through work in the yoke. 
 
 We saw our kit put on board, and watched the great, 
 eighteen-foot-long vehicles jolt out of the yard. Our 
 first trek on the Road-that-always-went-on had begun. 
 
 Ten minutes later, the driver of our wagon halted his 
 cattle, and yelled to a fellow-tribesman, who was sitting 
 on a three-legged stool beside a smoky fire, wheezing out 
 a hymn tune on a concertina. A few shouts were 
 exchanged, the other drivers strolled up and joined in ; 
 then, to our intense disgust, the wagons were drawn up 
 just off the road, in a patch of dung-and-offal-littered 
 sand, and the cattle were outspanned. 
 
 Our first trek on the Road had come to an end, after 
 we had covered a little over four hundred yards. The 
 concertina-playing savage was, it appeared, a friend of 
 our first driver, and the latter had cheerfully given up 
 half a day's work for the pleasure of spending an evening 
 in his society. 
 
 It was a miserable night at least for us. Neither my 
 brother nor myself had ever slept on the ground in the 
 
THE FIRST TREK 15 
 
 open before. It was bitterly cold there was a sharp 
 frost just before dawn ; the sand was in a horrible state, 
 literally alive with insects ; there was a score or so of 
 other wagons outspanned there, which meant at least 
 half-a-dozen more concertinas were going till after mid- 
 night ; whilst every animal belonging to the wagon 
 seemed possessed with a devil of restlessness, especially 
 the donkeys in the spans next to us, who never ceased 
 kicking, biting, and chewing each other's necks from 
 sunset till dawn. 
 
 I remember vividly several things about that night, 
 outstanding impressions. One was the feeling that my 
 new blankets they were extremely good ones were get- 
 ting full of that hateful, germ-laden sand ; another was a 
 kind of nervousness, a feeling that the oxen might break 
 loose and trample us, that a lion might put in an appear- 
 ance, or that the natives might take it into their heads to 
 do to us as the Matabele had been doing a few months 
 previously to the white men up North ; and yet another, 
 the strongest of all, perhaps, was the sense of cold, the 
 feeling that you could not keep warm, that you would 
 never really get warm again. 
 
 A week later, I looked back on my fears of that night 
 with amusement ; a month later, I seemed to have for- 
 gotten them entirely. It is only now, when I can view 
 my days on the Road as a whole, as a closed chapter of 
 the Past, that the memory of them comes back to me 
 clearly. 
 
 I slept for an hour or so, at last, waking up just before 
 dawn, to find the cook-boy, a tattered rag of blanket 
 round his shivering body, offering me a cup of tea. It 
 had no milk and infinitely too much sugar, as is usua 
 in So -ith Africa ; yet it seemed then one of the finest 
 drinks I have ever had. 
 
16 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 At sunrise, our native transport-riders began to inspan, 
 at least a couple of hours too late. Then they went 
 across for coffee with the concertina-player, and, after that, 
 the driver of our wagon remembered that he was short of 
 tobacco, and made a tour round the outspan, endeavouring 
 to borrow some. Meanwhile, the unfortunate cattle, 
 hungry, thirsty they had had no water for over twenty- 
 four hours weary, even before they had started to 
 plough through the eleven miles of heavy sand ahead of 
 them, stood with heads hanging down, as though the 
 mere weight of the yokes was too much for them, appar- 
 ently too listless even to try and flick off the loathsome 
 flies which swarmed round them in thousands. 
 
 The sun was well above the trees when we finally 
 trekked away from that unwholesome spot. Within 
 the first half mile, every one of our wagons had stuck in 
 the sand, and had had to be hooked out by the other 
 spans ; and, raw though we were, we had already dis- 
 covered that, not only were the cattle leg-weary and 
 hungry, but their lack of training made them practically 
 valueless at the moment. 
 
 It was not a pleasant introduction to the Transport 
 Road. 
 
ON THE ROAD AT LAST 
 
CHAPTER II 
 ON THE ROAD AT LAST 
 
 THE first lot of wagons only carried us on as far as 
 Palapye Stad. Then we had to wait about a 
 fortnight before another lot, every whit as bad in every 
 way, turned up to take us on. 
 
 The trip up to the Geelong Mine, our destination, was 
 far from being a pleasant one. The cattle were in diffi- 
 culties all the time ; the road was appallingly bad, and 
 the drivers were hopeless. Still, the experience was 
 valuable later on we learnt how things ought not to be 
 done. Altogether, we were over six weeks doing about 
 two hundred miles, with less than half-loads. 
 
 At last, however, we reached the mine, and began our 
 two years of servitude there, a truly miserable time, which 
 seemed to drag by with deadly slowness. 
 
 Once during those two years, towards the end of them, 
 I found myself on the Road again, bound for Bulawayo. 
 I had been very ill with a mixture of enteric and malarial 
 fevers I had already been down with malaria some forty 
 times and, as there had been too many deaths in the 
 mine already, they sent me away, as a last chance of 
 saving me. 
 
 I believe I slept most of the way up I was a shy, 
 overgrown boy of one and twenty, deadly tired, with a 
 
 19 
 
20 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 piece gone out of my left lung, and yellow as a Dago from 
 fever and dysentery but the change pulled me together. 
 In Bulawayo I bought half-a-dozen donkeys, the first 
 transport animals I ever owned, then started to tramp 
 back across the veld to the mine. My brother, Malcolm, 
 and I had fixed things already. As soon as we had 
 finished our contract, we were going down to Eastern 
 Mashonaland, to shoot, and to buy cattle from the 
 natives. 
 
 In any other part of the world it would have been 
 called a crazy enterprise. There was a traders' camp 
 some forty miles east of the mine, but that was the end 
 of all things civilized. Several hundred miles further 
 on, you would find the sea, the intervening space being 
 unknown territory, with a well-deserved reputation for 
 fever. 
 
 But, in those days, in Matabeleland and Mashonaland 
 the word Rhodesia, a term I detest, was barely invented 
 then men did crazy things in[a sane spirit. The Colonials 
 and the Afrikanders kept to the townships, the mining 
 camps, and the canteens, where they could find audiences 
 ready to listen to the tale of their mighty deeds of the 
 Past, and their splendid schemes for the future ; but 
 the Home-born Public- school man went out into the veld 
 as we did, just to see what he could find in the immediate 
 Present ; though, more often than not, all he found, in 
 the end, was a grave, whilst some one who had risked 
 nothing more than the money of certain trusting share- 
 holders, secured all the profits. But the game was worth 
 it, always. It was a fine game, playing against Death, 
 even though you knew that Death had loaded the dice. 
 I have played it since in other parts of the world, the last 
 time being in the Philippines, during that ghastly Pulajan 
 
ON THE ROAD AT LAST 21 
 
 Rebellion, when we lost fifty per cent, of our white men 
 in six months, and its fascination never seemed to grow 
 less. It is one of the two or three things really worth 
 doing. 
 
 We shook the dust of the mine off our feet thankfully, 
 more than thankfully how I had hated the place, how I 
 still hate the memory of it ! and trekked out with our 
 six pack donkeys and our four savages. 
 
 The story of that trip has nothing to do with the Road, 
 save in so far as the buying of our first span of cattle was 
 concerned. We were out of touch of civilization for 
 over three months ; we wandered down almost to the 
 Portuguese border ; we shot a good deal of game, and, 
 until Malcolm became depressed in consequence of a 
 touch of fever, we enjoyed ourselves greatly ; but the 
 most important fact, so far as the future was concerned, 
 was that we bought sixteen young cattle. 
 
 They cost us sixty-four pounds ten shillings in cash, 
 and we were inordinately proud of them. True, most of 
 them were very small, at least, judged by the standard 
 of the ordinary Colonial trek-ox, but they were all clean 
 and well-built, and there was not one of them that did 
 not ultimately develop into a fine beast. Three years 
 later, I could have sold them a dozen times over for 
 four hundred pounds. 
 
 Even now, I can remember every one of them. Like 
 all native cattle, who, as calves, spend their first few 
 months in their owner's huts, they were tame, friendly 
 creatures. True, they made an immense fuss when they 
 met a strange herd, bellowing, pawing the ground, tossing 
 great tufts of grass into the air with their horns ; but all 
 that meant very little. It was only part of the etiquette 
 of the bullock world, and, in a very few minutes, those 
 
22 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 who had been roaring defiance would be rubbing noses. 
 Though we had many hundred cattle through our hands 
 in the course of the next three years, we always held on to 
 the original sixteen. Somehow, they seemed different 
 from the others. Our luck began when we purchased 
 them, and, so far as Africa was concerned, it died with 
 them. 
 
 On our return from the Eastern districts, we gave our 
 cattle to a young Boer to train, and tried to settle down 
 to mining work again for a few months, intending to start 
 trading and riding transport after the wet season was over. 
 Malcolm did fairly well he did not hate galvanized- 
 iron quarters as bitterly as I did, and could be happy 
 on a mine ; but, so far as I was concerned, the experiment 
 ended in utter failure. I had been trained as an engineer, 
 and, at times, I had been sufficiently keen on my pro- 
 fession to pay cash for a technical book ; but the three 
 months on the veld had finally opened my eyes. There 
 were better things than engineering. Practically any one 
 could be as good an engineer as I was that is not saying 
 much and most could be better. Anyway, I was quite 
 ready to give up my place on the greasy ladder of engineer- 
 ing fame to any one who wanted it. For over two years, 
 the Road had been calling me, and now I could wait no 
 longer. 
 
 I know that normal people, as well as the Good People 
 in books, stick to the profession in which they were 
 brought up, become rich, acquire houses in sedate suburbs, 
 bring normal and sedate children into the world, die 
 decently of zymotic diseases, and, finally, have their 
 wills quoted in the local papers. I can never have been 
 normal my relations have told me so with rather irrita- 
 ting frequency for I never wanted to stick to anything, 
 
ON THE ROAD AT LAST 23 
 
 save the Road, for long, and I never had the least sym- 
 pathy with people who want to live settled lives. It 
 must be so horribly dull always to do the same thing, 
 always to meet the same people, socially, or in business. 
 I have fought honestly against the so-called curse of 
 Ishmael. Once, I even went to the length of taking a 
 house on a ten years' agreement ; but, as I got rid of it 
 at the end of eight months, no great harm was done, 
 except to my banking account for the expenses of moving. 
 
 It was one of the best days of my life when I finally 
 quitted the mines and became a Transport Rider. I only 
 did one wiser thing, and that was when I got married. 
 
 The young Boer, in whose charge I had left my sixteen 
 cattle, had tried to train them, according to his lights. 
 He had inspanned them amongst his own bullocks, had 
 knocked them about horribly, and had made them very 
 thin. But, though they were both terrified and hungry, 
 they certainly did not know how to pull, as I quickly 
 discovered. 
 
 The first thing to do was to buy a wagon. Luckily, I 
 managed to get hold of the very thing I wanted, almost 
 at once. It was useless to think of a full-sized wagon, a 
 huge eighteen-foot-long vehicle, for my little oxen. Even 
 a sixteen-foot mule wagon would have been too heavy, 
 so I bought a light, fourteen-foot donkey wagon, and 
 adapted it for oxen. Wagons had gone up in price since 
 the days of the Rinderpest, and I had to pay twenty- 
 five pounds for the one I bought. Still, as it was in good 
 condition, and had a very decent haft-tent it is only in 
 pictures of the South African veld, or " veldt " as sub- 
 editors and politicians insist on spelling it, that you see the 
 whole tent wagon it suited my purpose admirably. 
 
 At the Geelong Store, I engaged an alleged driver, a 
 
24 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 Zulu by birth, and a piccanin as voorloeper. It took 
 over two hours to inspan the cattle, and then, when we 
 tried to trek off, half of them lay down in the yoke. 
 Taken all round, it was not a very encouraging start, 
 especially as all the Colonials and Afrikanders on the 
 mine came down to the canteen, and, leaning over the 
 rail, jeered at the Home-born man who dared to think he 
 could make a success as a transport-rider. Later on, 
 when I had made a success, a good many of them tried 
 to borrow money from me ; but fortunately, my memory 
 is a good one. 
 
 At last, sufficient cattle pulled together to induce the 
 rest to get up and move too, and we jolted off, towards 
 Bulawayo. As the wagon was empty, I had decided to 
 take a new track across the veld, which not only cut off 
 some twenty miles, but also led through some very decent 
 game country. 
 
 Once we had started, we managed to keep going fairly 
 well, though it soon became only too obvious that my 
 driver knew absolutely nothing about his work. 
 
 He was a useless creature, like most of his tribe. The 
 virtues of the Zulu exist mainly in certain works of fiction ; 
 his vices are only too real. Generally speaking, he is a 
 boastful, dissolute fraud. 
 
 I spent my first night as a transport-rider amongst 
 M'Gwala's Kopjes, some ten miles from the Geelong Mine. 
 I had often camped there, whilst out shooting for the 
 week-end ; but never before had I really appreciated the 
 place. And yet, outwardly, nothing had changed. 
 
 The sun was just setting. The tiny village, a dozen huts 
 with smoke-grimed roofs at the foot of a huge boulder- 
 strewn kopje, was the same as ever. As usual, at that 
 time of day, the calves in the kraal were bellowing for their 
 
ON THE ROAD AT LAST 25 
 
 mothers, and the latter were answering from the vlei by 
 the water-hole ; in the mealie-lands, the guinea fowl 
 were screeching lustily, as they hurried to roost amongst 
 the trees ; half-a-dozen of M'Gwala's men, old acquaint- 
 ances of mine, were squatting beside the fire, taking snuff 
 solemnly, and endeavouring to find out if I were likely 
 to go shooting in the morning. They knew of a fresh 
 troop of Roan Antelope, and some Koodoo, down by 
 Inyamimi, the big, bald hill at the junction of the 
 Umsingwani and Insiza Rivers, where, a year before, the 
 party of Colonial " sportsmen " had rounded up the troop 
 of Eland, killed seven out of eight of them and taken 
 the hind quarter of one ! 
 
 I suppose I had changed ; that was the difference. I 
 was my own boss now, working for myself. I could trek 
 or not, just as I liked. There was the whole veld in 
 front of me, and no one to give me orders. The mine, 
 with its dreariness, its monotony, its petty jealousies, 
 its futility you knew that, however hard you worked, 
 the end of it all would be failure was now but an evil 
 memory. 
 
 Although the wet season had begun, there had been no 
 rain for over a week, and the weather was perfect. After 
 supper, I sat on an upturned bucket and smoked until long 
 after every one else had gone to sleep. A hundred feet 
 up, amongst the granite boulders, almost sheer above me 
 a leopard was growling ; once or twice, from the open 
 country outside the kopjes, a lion raised his abominable 
 voice, driving the game down to his silent partner ; 
 whilst, in the vlei, a hysena was, as usual, cursing the 
 whole of living creation. 
 
 And still it was peaceful amongst those hills, and I 
 turned in at last, beside the wagon, feeling that, after all, 
 
26 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 it was a very good world, that it was a splendid thing to 
 be only twenty-two and your own master. 
 
 I remember now, as vividly as though it were yesterday, 
 that, just as I lay down, a gust of wind, eddying in through 
 the poort, bore up the roar of the Geelong stamp mill. 
 
 When that mill first started, a man who knew a good 
 deal about the mine and its prospects, remarked in the 
 canteen that every mill gave out a certain rhythm, telling 
 you what the ore was going to yield. 
 
 " Eight penny- weights to the ton, and not a penny- 
 weight more, and not a penny- weight more " that was 
 what he declared the Geelong stamps said. 
 
 " And not a penny- weight more, and not a penny- 
 weight more " those were the last sounds I heard as I 
 went off to sleep on my first night on the Road, as a real 
 transport-rider. 
 
 I was more than ever thankful that I had finished with 
 the mines. 
 
THE GOOD DAYS OF BULAWAYO 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE GOOD DAYS OF BULAWAYO 
 
 FOUR days after leaving the Geelong, I reached the 
 Alice Mine, where Malcolm was then working. I 
 spent a couple of days there, talking over plans for the 
 future. It was the middle of December the first De- 
 cember of the Boer War and we decided that, in the 
 following February, we would trek up to Fort Victoria 
 in Mashonaland, find a road down from there to the dis- 
 trict in which we had managed to buy our cattle so cheaply, 
 and start regularly as cattle-traders and transport-riders, 
 breaking in the pick of the oxen for our own use, and 
 selling the poor ones to the butchers. 
 
 It was a big scheme, considering that we had only been 
 two and a half years in Africa, two of which had been 
 spent in the one mining camp. Moreover, for some 
 unknown reason, transport work was always supposed to 
 be the domain of the Colonial and the Afrikander, and 
 very few Home-born men ever ventured into it. I be- 
 lieve they were afraid of making a mess of it, although, 
 when they did tackle it, they invariably did better 
 than the African-born. 
 
 There were other difficulties, however, beyond our 
 lack of experience. It may sound absurd to the ears of 
 those who have never done any exploring work, but we 
 were by no means certain how long it would take us to 
 
 29 
 
30 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 find our cattle-buying district again. No other white 
 man knew it. We had wandered thither from Matabele- 
 land, heading about east-north-east most of the time. As 
 there was no possibility of getting a wagon road through 
 that way, we proposed, now, to go to Fort Victoria, and 
 strike south-east from there. The area of the country 
 to be traversed, in one way or another, was larger than 
 that of Ireland ; there were no maps of any sort to guide 
 us, and we could not hope for much assistance from the 
 savages we met, for one seldom finds a native whose local 
 knowledge extends more than twenty miles from his own 
 kraal. 
 
 Still, we were determined to go through with it. There 
 was an irresponsibility and uncertainty about it, which 
 were extremely fascinating. The possible profits were, 
 of course, large, but I do not think that consideration 
 weighed very greatly with us. The chief thing was at 
 least with me that we were going to live on the Road, 
 to make a road of our own, to be the actual pioneers of a 
 vast tract of country. 
 
 Malcolm decided to stay on at the " Alice " until we 
 could start for Mashonaland it would have been ridiculous 
 to leave during the wet season, when half the country is 
 a bog and I was to go on to Bulawayo, to get a light 
 load for the wagon, and, whilst earning money, train the 
 cattle. 
 
 Those were the great days of transport, the good days. 
 Bulawayo was still Railhead, and practically the whole 
 country was supplied from there. Scores of wagons left 
 the town every day, loaded with stores of every conceivable 
 kind, from boilers weighing eight thousand pounds to 
 parcels of millinery. The town was flourishing as it had 
 never flourished before, and will certainly never flourish 
 
THE GOOD DAYS OF BULAWAYO 31 
 
 again. Only whilst it remained Railhead, was its exist- 
 ence justified ; but the memory of those splendid days 
 atones in some measure for its utter failure since. At 
 least, it has a past, and none of the other Rhodesian towns, 
 save Fort Victoria, can even boast of that. They have 
 been drab, semi-insolvent, wholly-uninteresting, all 
 through. 
 
 There were scores of wagons on the big public outspan 
 on the Tuli Road, close to the Racecourse, when my little 
 wagon, and span of sixteen more or less wild little bulls, 
 arrived there. The turnout created a good deal of 
 interest, more interest than I liked. The cattle in general 
 use were the huge, slow, ungainly, Colonial oxen, beasts 
 for which I afterwards entertained a whole-hearted con- 
 tempt, and very few transport riders in Bulawayo had 
 ever seen a Mashona ox in the yoke. White men and 
 Kaffirs alike laughed at mine, and, to make it worse, they 
 stuck hopelessly, stuck with an empty wagon, in a ditch 
 but a few inches deep. 
 
 The Tuli Road outspan was even more filthy than that 
 one outside Palapye Siding, on which I spent my first 
 night in the open. Hundreds of wagons, thousands of 
 cattle, had stopped there, sometimes for weeks on end. 
 It was the ideal breeding place for flies, and there were 
 half-a-dozen empty tins to every square yard. There were 
 no trees, of course Bulawayo stands in the barren 
 dreariness of the high veld, the bleak, wind-swept central 
 plateau but there was plenty of low scrub, just suffi- 
 ciently high to furnish cover for a sneak-thief. Fire-wood 
 was unobtainable, so, when it was sufficiently dry, you 
 burnt cow-dung, and were half-choked by the acrid 
 smoke. 
 
 A mile away was the Location, a collection of hovels, 
 
32 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 many of them built of flattened-out paraffin tins, inhabited 
 by Kaffirs from down country Cape half-breeds, Fingoes, 
 Zulu and a few Basutu, a choice collection of rascality. 
 Most of them claimed to be wagon drivers, but, as a great 
 many could read and write, the principal industry was, 
 naturally, the forging of white men's names to liquor 
 passes, which is practically the only use to which a native 
 ever puts his education. 
 
 When there was no forgery to be done, the Location 
 Kaffirs hung round the wagons, and stole anything they 
 could, from a bullock to a pair of boots. Somehow, the 
 Bulawayo police never seemed able to catch them, though 
 one butcher in the town, a product of the Fatherland, was 
 generally known to buy all his beef from the Location 
 thieves. In the end, however, the transport-riders took 
 the matter into their own hands ; the Teutonic person 
 was told plainly that, though he might have a host of 
 friends in high places, as in fact he had, that would not 
 save his skin if he were caught red-handed ; whilst a round 
 up with sjamboks in the Location itself resulted in two- 
 thirds of its population starting back on the long and 
 weary journey to Cape Colony, where the savage has a 
 vote, and can buy liquor openly and cheaply. 
 
 I left the wagon at the outspan, and walked into Bula- 
 wayo. Within an hour, I had a load, just what I wanted, 
 about two thousand five hundred pounds' weight of 
 trading stuff for a store in the M'Patane district. 
 
 Of course, a full summer load for a properly-trained 
 span of big cattle is eight thousand pounds ; but my 
 beasts were very far from being trained, whilst there 
 would have been no second span handy if I stuck. In the 
 circumstances, the load was amply large, almost too large, 
 as I discovered later. 
 
THE GOOD DAYS OF BULAWAYO 33 
 
 Bulawayo was and must still be typical of the re- 
 sults of the system of government-by company. Men of 
 the type who built up our Empire, the real Empire makers, 
 adventurers risking their own lives, and not merely the 
 lives of the employes and the money of shareholders, would 
 never have dreamed of founding a township on that for- 
 saken stretch of veld, in an out-of-the-way corner of the 
 country, with the Kalahari Desert to the West, the dry 
 bush veld to the South, the dreariness of the high veld to 
 the North. A private individual who had thought of 
 placing the principal town of a new colony in such a loca- 
 lity would, rightly, have been considered a lunatic ; but 
 the Chartered Company has, always, to think of the 
 Market at home ; and the price of Rhodesian Shares is 
 regulated, not by practical considerations few of them 
 are really worth the stamp duty on them but by senti- 
 ment. It was a great thing to found the new settlement, 
 the outward and visible sign of the white man's rule, on the 
 ruins, or just by the ruins, of Lobengula's old kraal. 
 When a new company was floated, the promoters could 
 point to that fact, and add a few thousands more to the 
 purchase money. 
 
 The one good point about Bulawayo is that the streets 
 are so wide that you can turn a full span of bullocks in 
 most of them. Beyond this, it has no merits whatsoever. 
 When the ground is dry, the red dust is abominable, chok- 
 ing everything ; whilst a single shower of rain changes 
 that dust into slimy red mud. 
 
 Many of the buildings are quite pretentious impres- 
 sive even, to the new-comer who does not happen to know 
 the real financial history of the companies that built 
 them. The Market Square is a fine one, and, up to the 
 second year of the Boer War, the Saturday market was a 
 
 c 
 
34 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 thing well worth seeing. Tens of thousands of pounds' 
 worth of stuff would change hands in the morning ; in 
 the busiest hours, the white men could be counted by 
 hundreds ; the harvest of I.O.U.'s in the neighbouring 
 bars would run to hundreds, too ; yet the last time I was 
 there, one Saturday in 1904, though Rhodesia was being 
 boomed more vigorously than ever in the Home Press, 
 there were but three real white men at the Market, in 
 addition to the auctioneers. The rest of the crowd con- 
 sisted of Greeks, coolies, half-castes, and local savages. 
 The glory of Bulawayo had departed for ever. 
 
 But when I knew it first, Bulawayo was a fascinating 
 place. The transport-riders dominated it. They were 
 the masters of the situation. Without them, the country 
 would have come to a standstill. It was curious to go 
 on the Market Square, and see the difference between 
 them and the men of the town, the government servants 
 and the clerks from the mining companies' offices. 
 
 Generally speaking, the Bulawayo man could neither 
 ride nor shoot ; ,he would have lost his way had he gone 
 alone three miles from the township ; yet he invariably 
 wore riding-breeches, puttee leggings and a hunting 
 stock, whilst a stranger, hearing him talking to a barmaid, 
 would have taken him to have been one of the original 
 band of Pioneers. The transport-rider, on the other 
 hand, wore dungaree trousers, a flannel shirt open at the 
 neck, and a disgraceful sombrero. In his favourite bars 
 there were three or four round the Market Square he 
 liked to be served by a man, and his conversation ran, 
 not on his own mighty deeds, but on those of his oxen, 
 and on the rotten prices the forwarding agents were 
 offering. 
 
 Really, we never made half enough of our chances. We 
 
THE GOOD DAYS OF BULAWAYO 35 
 
 could have squeezed the mining companies dry ; we ought 
 to have squeezed them, knowing that the majority were 
 rank frauds, and that all we left them would ultimately 
 go into the pockets of the directors and the consulting 
 engineers, that the shareholders would never get one 
 penny back ; and yet we let them down lightly. We were 
 content with a profit of a pound a wagon a day when we 
 might easily have got two, or even three, pounds. Con- 
 sequently, they began to despise us, to feel certain that 
 they could break us ultimately, and, two years later, 
 with the aid of Cecil Rhodes and his uncleanly Transvaal 
 refugees, they very nearly succeeded. 
 
 For the time being, however, all seemed well. A good 
 deal of the capital raised in the days of the Boom was 
 still unspent, even though no more was forthcoming, and 
 most of us believed that, despite the amazing misgovern- 
 ment, the country would pull round in the end. I know 
 that our optimism has since been proved to have been 
 unfounded, but I still hold that there was some justifica- 
 tion for it. It was only reasonable for us to expect that 
 the Imperial Government was going to abrogate that 
 fatal Charter, take the country over, clean out the public 
 services, and give it a chance to go ahead in a healthy, 
 steady manner. 
 
 When I got back to the wagon that afternoon, I was 
 met by the news that Joseph, the alleged driver, had gone. 
 
 I was not greatly surprised, nor was I greatly troubled. 
 It was out of the question to goon the Road with him again, 
 and I had fully intended to sack him as soon as I could 
 get hold of a successor. Now, his sudden departure 
 saved me from having to pay him the money which he 
 had not earned. 
 
 That night, Darkie, the cook-boy, and I tied up the 
 
36 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 cattle the piccanin was almost as inefficient as the last 
 driver had been and then I sat down on the water-barrel, 
 and wondered when I should get away from Bulawayo, 
 for I certainly could not drive myself, and several men 
 had already told me that drivers who were any good were 
 very hard to get, the military authorities having secured 
 every decent one they could find, as well as a good many 
 who were not worth finding. 
 
 There was a great deal of growling about this, and the 
 growls were thoroughly justified. Up till the outbreak of 
 the war, the average wage of a good driver had been three 
 pounds a month with " Cape boy rations " a pound of 
 Boer meal a day, a pound of tinned meat a week, coffee, 
 sugar, and as much Kaffir meal as he wanted. The mili- 
 tary authorities paid five pounds a month, and gave a 
 pound of meat a day, a pound of flour or biscuits, tea, 
 coffee, and sugar. A voorloeper, or leader, had received 
 formerly from ten to fifteen shillings a month, and ordinary 
 Kaffir rations meal and salt, with beans or monkey- 
 nuts occasionally. The Army gave him thirty shillings a 
 month, and the same rations as the drivers. 
 
 Needless to say, there was a rush to the military camps. 
 It was only human nature, and an African savage has no 
 sense of gratitude. Men lost drivers who had worked for 
 them faithfully since childhood, and cursed the British 
 Army officer in consequence. It was not so much the 
 extra pay ; it was the extra food which came so heavy. 
 Tinned meat then cost two shillings a pound, and the 
 Army scale of feeding meant an additional food bill of 
 about seven pounds a wagon a month for drivers and 
 voorloeper, say ten pounds a month with the increase 
 in wages. And, even if the transport-rider were prepared 
 to meet this, he could not be sure of obtaining the tinned 
 
THE GOOD DAYS OF BULAWAYO 37 
 
 meat and Boer meal ; whilst the extra food and extra pay 
 rendered most of the boys insufferably impudent. 
 
 Yet the Army officers were not wholly to blame in 
 fact, they were hardly to blame at all. In Rhodesia, 
 they were practically in the hands of the local authorities 
 at least they had to look to the latter for advice and 
 information, and they were deliberately led wrong. Too 
 late, they realized that a very large proportion of the 
 Chartered Company's officials were really working for 
 the other side, that everything had been planned to 
 render the British Army unpopular. 
 
 It all came out later on, when the plot for the seizure of 
 Rhodesia by the Boers was exposed, a plot which, if any 
 other nation had been concerned, any nation which was 
 not infected with the virus of sloppy sentimentality, would 
 have led to half a dozen executions and the dismissal of 
 half the Civil Servants ; but the harm was done then, 
 and the only punishments awarded were the investing 
 of some of the offenders with the C.M.G. 
 
 So far as I was concerned, the outlook at that moment 
 was not very bright. I was bound to load within the next 
 forty-eight hours, and I could not even move the wagon 
 until I had a driver. In the morning, I tramped into the 
 town, searched round the Market Square and other places 
 where drivers were likely to be found, but was told every- 
 where that there was no chance of success. The Army 
 had snapped up every available man. 
 
 Naturally, I was not feeling exactly happy when I 
 reached the outspan again ; but I had hardly sat down 
 and told Darkie to get me some coffee, when a little 
 Basutu strolled up, and asked if I were the White man 
 who wanted some one to train his very little cattle, 
 who were now cheeky, and would not pull, because a 
 
38 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 schelm called Joseph, a useless Zulu, had been spoiling 
 them. 
 
 I wish I had a photograph of him as he appeared then, 
 I wish it for more reasons than one, amongst them 
 being the fact that he was the most efficient servant I 
 ever employed and my most loyal friend. 
 
 I never knew what his age was, but, from things he 
 said afterwards, I fancy he must have been about forty, 
 although his queer wizened face, with horse hair plaited 
 into the ends of his moustache, to make it appear long 
 and fierce, might have been that of a man of sixty-five. 
 He was small and slightly built, though tough as watch- 
 spring, absolutely tireless, and perfectly indifferent to 
 danger or hardship. Wet, cold, hunger, thirst, heat 
 all these seemed to leave him unmoved, the only thing that 
 did affect him being fever, to which, like so many down- 
 country Kaffirs, he was extremely liable. 
 
 His costume was always the same blue dungaree 
 trousers, ragged at the bottoms, a tattered canvas shirt, 
 and a huge sombrero, usually of the Boss of the Plains 
 type, the kind which is now supposed to have some 
 subtle connection with General Baden-Powell, though it 
 was in use, and known as a " B.P.," long before the 
 officer in question had even been heard of in Africa. 
 
 His name was Amous, he explained, adding, quite 
 truthfully as it turned out, that he was the best driver 
 in the country. I engaged him at once, at three pounds 
 for a month. He saluted, borrowed some tobacco, then 
 went oft to inspect the cattle. An hour or two later 
 he returned, informed me that they were " cattle indeed," 
 then set to work to overhaul the wagon and gear, keeping 
 up a running fire of uncomplimentary remarks con- 
 cerning the Zulu character. 
 
THE^GOOD DAYS OF BULAWAYO 39 
 
 That evening, the moment he began to tie up the 
 cattle, I saw that he knew his work, and, in some subtle 
 way, the cattle saw it too. There were no wild chases 
 over the veld, as there had been in Joseph's time. The 
 little chaps huddled closely together, too closely really, 
 but they stood whilst he put the reims on their horns, 
 and came out fairly readily when he pulled them towards 
 the trek chain. 
 
 Afterwards, he came and talked to me for a couple of 
 hours about the splendid span he was going to have. 
 Cattle were an obsession with him ; really, he cared for 
 nothing else, save perhaps tobacco. All his thoughts 
 were of cattle, all his conversation was of matters con- 
 cerning them. I believe he would rather have worked for 
 no wages at all than not have had cattle in his charge. 
 He preferred young beasts, his ambition being, appa- 
 rently, to have broken in and trained a better span than 
 any one else. So, from his point of view, the chance he 
 had with us was an ideal one, even though he was going 
 to get three times as much work as he would have had 
 with an ordinary span of old cattle. 
 
 Personally, I had begun to feel that our little animals 
 were going to prove complete failures ; consequently, 
 Amous' enthusiasm was distinctly refreshing. I turned 
 in, at last, more content with our prospects than I had 
 been for many days past* 
 
 An hour later, I happened to wake up, and, hearing 
 voices, looked out of the end of the wagon tent. 
 
 Amous was sitting beside the fire, with a very sleepy 
 piccanin, and an equally sleepy cook-boy, in front of him, 
 unwilling listeners to a lecture on the beauties of our 
 " very little oxen indeed." 
 
 " Now, Bandom, the black and white one, has eyes 
 
40 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 which tell me he will be a front ox do you hear, 
 
 little child ? whilst Biffel, the big black one, will 
 > 
 
 Then I fell asleep again, feeling I was in luck. 
 
MY FIRST LOAD 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 MY FIRST LOAD 
 
 THE following morning, I watched my new driver a 
 little anxiously when he started to inspan. It 
 was raw and damp, and things did not look quite so 
 bright as they had done over-night. But I soon re- 
 covered. He knew exactly where he was going to put 
 each beast, and we jolted off the outspan in excellent 
 style. Only one of the oxen, Jackalass, was roaring, and 
 there were never more than three trying to hang back 
 at any one time. What was most important of all was 
 that the front oxen were keeping the chain tight. Given 
 good front oxen in a span, and all things are possible, 
 the others will follow them, though, on an average, not 
 one beast in six will consent to go in front. 
 
 Joseph's whip had been tossed aside contemptuously, 
 " Fit only for a Zulu, or a thief from Cape Colony/' the 
 little man had grunted. 
 
 His own whip was always thirty feet in length, ending 
 in a voorshlag thin as a piece of twine, and he liked his 
 whip stick to be fifteen feet. He never touched his bul- 
 locks with the heavy part of the lash, never hit them on 
 the back, never hit them at all, if he could avoid so doingi 
 After a while, the crack of his whip was sufficient, together 
 with his voice, save when the wagon was badly stuck. 
 
 We got to the forwarding agents' yard without 
 
 43 
 
44 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 trouble of any sort, though it was the first time the 
 cattle had ever been in a town ; loaded up with a mis- 
 cellaneous lot of trading stuff, all comparatively light 
 cases, luckily, and trekked out, down the Filabusi Road, 
 which we had to follow for about fifty miles, before turn- 
 ing off on the track which led to MTatane. 
 
 Already, the difference in the cattle was amazing. 
 Though we had the load on board now, they negotiated 
 several small drifts with ease. Amous was in the Seventh 
 Heaven. They were oxen, indeed. By-and-bye, they 
 would pull a full-sized wagon and full loads, pull through 
 anything. Then, in Mashonaland, we should buy more 
 and more spans, until we were the biggest transport- 
 riders in the country. 
 
 Had the Baas not noticed how quickly they fed ? 
 How, instead of doing as the great, foolish Colonial oxen 
 did, walking about all the time, cropping a mouthful here, 
 a mouthful there, they found a little patch of good grass 
 and finished it ? They were soon full, then they could lie 
 down, and rest, and chew the cud. 
 
 He was bubbling over with enthusiasm. I have seldom 
 seen any one so happy as the little man was about his 
 new job, and, as the months went by, his enthusiasm 
 hardened into an article of faith. He held and I held 
 too, and still hold that the Mashona ^cattle, the actual 
 cattle of the country, were far the best for transport work 
 up there. They kept their condition, when bullocks from 
 the South were too thin to trek, much less to pull ; they 
 were not nearly so liable to disease as the others ; and 
 they actually travelled a good deal faster. True, they 
 could not pull more than seven thousand pounds where 
 the big oxen could manage eight thousand ; but, in the 
 twelve months, they usually earned about twenty-five 
 
MY FIRST LOAD 45 
 
 per cent, more than their rivals an argument which was 
 good enough for me, even though, by using " niggers' 
 beasts," I was offending that dread South African fetish, 
 the Custom of the Country. 
 
 There was one thing, however, of which Amous did not 
 approve, and that was the " very little child," otherwise 
 the piccanin. He might lead the cattle well enough 
 for a lying Zulu like Joseph, he explained, but he would 
 have to alter his ways now there was a real driver, a 
 Basutu. Also, the youngster did not take the oxen out 
 to feed in the right places, but merely went a little way, 
 out of sight behind the nearest rise, and sat down to gorge 
 himself on porridge. 
 
 For two days, the wretched piccanin heard a number of 
 home truths concerning himself, and even more specu- 
 lations concerning the morality of his ancestors ; con- 
 sequently, I was not altogether surprised to be told on the 
 third morning that he was missing. 
 
 As a result, Darkie had to act as voorloeper, greatly 
 to his disgust. He had recently grown very lazy, owing 
 to his having begun to smoke Indian Hemp, and any 
 exertion was a weariness to him. How long it would 
 have been before he, too, had bolted, I do not know ; 
 not very long probably ; but my luck still held good, and, 
 that very evening, we got a new piccanin, an extra- 
 ordinarily solemn-faced youngster, who strolled up, 
 apparently from nowhere, and was promptly engaged 
 at fifteen shillings a month. I never heard his real name. 
 It was too long for ordinary use, Amous informed me, 
 so he was christened " Scarmanyorka " for short. 
 
 Until we left the Filabusi Road, the trip was uneventful. 
 Amous made amazing progress with the cattle. In two 
 days, the hind oxen, Biffel, a great black bull at least, 
 
46 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 he grew into a monster later and Fransman, his mate, 
 knew their names perfectly. By the end of the fifth day, 
 the rest of the sixteen had learnt theirs. 
 
 Naturally, we stuck several times ; and, when a wagon 
 is travelling alone with no second span to hook it out, 
 any stoppage may become a serious matter, through the 
 wheels sinking in the mud, for instance ; but, each time, 
 Amous managed to get on again without any very great 
 delay. 
 
 However, on the day we left the main road, our luck 
 seemed to run out. The track, a new one, was quite 
 " unmade " that is, it was merely a spoor, roughly 
 cleared. That very afternoon we struck a bad drift, a 
 really steep one, long too, and we stuck in it till sundown, 
 despite the expenditure of a marvellous amount of energy 
 on Amous' part. 
 
 At the end of three hours of shouting, the cattle were 
 thorough " rattled," the front oxen trying all the time to 
 rush backwards, the rest of the span, with the exception 
 of the hind bullocks, jibbing badly. Moreover, the front 
 wheels had worked regular holes for themselves, whilst the 
 hind wheels were still in the river. To add to the delights 
 of the situation, there had been very heavy rains up 
 country, and the river was beginning to rise. 
 
 I suggested outspanning for a time, and letting the 
 oxen have a rest and a feed ; but Amous would not hear 
 of it. 
 
 " They will be worse than ever then, Baas," he declared. 
 " Because they will be cold. No, we will change the front 
 oxen, put Jonkman and Sixpence there they are cattle 
 with wise eyes then, with our hands, we will run the 
 wagon back a little, to where it is more level, and try 
 again." 
 
MY FIRST LOAD 47 
 
 A quarter of an hour later, we were ready. I took the 
 leading reim in place of the Scarmanyorka, who was 
 pretty well exhausted, whilst Amous stationed himself 
 just in front of the hind oxen. There was not room to 
 crack his great whip, so he doubled his lash and made that 
 whistle. Then he called their names over once, slowly, 
 and after that came a sudden shout of appeal to his new 
 front oxen. 
 
 " Jonkman ! Sixpence, Sixpence ! Ach, mien juckers! 
 Yeck! Yeck!" 
 
 And, almost before I had realized what had happened, 
 I was stopping them on the level. They had come out at 
 a run. 
 
 The little man sat down on a stump, and proceeded very 
 carefully to fill his pipe. It was a triumph for him, and 
 at first he could not trust himself to speak. A minute 
 later he was reviling the Scarmanyorka for being slow 
 over outspanning. 
 
 We gave the cattle a day's rest the grass was very 
 good along that river bank and I went out shooting, 
 returning with a reed-buck bull. I was very lucky all 
 that trip, so far as game was concerned, starting off by 
 securing five buck with five consecutive cartridges, a 
 fact which raised me* immensely in Amous' estimation. 
 After that, whenever I did happen to miss badly, he 
 ascribed it to the rifle, whilst the Scarmanyorka used to 
 try and comfort me by remarking in his dreary way that 
 " the Spirits of the ancestors of the buck did not wish him 
 to die, therefore it had been no use attempting to shoot 
 him." 
 
 " We shan't stick again, Baas," Amous remarked 
 when we trekked away from that river. " Now, these 
 very little cattle are trained. Nothing can stop them," 
 
48 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 But that afternoon we did stop, stopped dead, in the 
 middle of a huge grassy vlei. The ground was literally 
 saturated with rain water ; and, within half a minute, we 
 were up to the front axles in black mud. 
 
 Then began one of the very worst experiences I ever had 
 as a transport rider. At every attempt to move it, the 
 wagon sank yet deeper, whilst the ground on which the 
 cattle were trampling became a pond of black slime. 
 
 Amous did his level best, and the oxen responded 
 splendidly at first, but still they could not move the wagon. 
 Just at sunset, the rain began again, a regular deluge, 
 and of course we had to outspan if you work cattle in 
 the rain, the yokes give them neck-sores. 
 
 We had no firewood in the wagon, and, even if we had 
 had any, we could not have kept a fire alight long enough 
 even to boil the kettle ; so, after tying the cattle up to 
 the trek gear, we made a meal off bully-beef and some 
 very sour bread, and turned in. I had the wagon tent ; 
 consequently, though I was wet through, I was able to 
 change and get fairly comfortable ; but Amous and the 
 two youngsters had to manage as best they could under 
 the wagon. Many times afterwards, when I was travelling 
 without a tent, I slept underneath, in the mud, and con- 
 trived to sleep soundly too, without catching a cold ; 
 but before I actually had to try it, I used to worry a good 
 deal about my boys, quite unnecessarily really. 
 
 It was still raining in the morning, and there was even 
 less chance of lighting a fire. Not until after mid-day 
 did the weather break at all, and then it took us a couple 
 of hours to dig the wheels clear, the fore-carriage itself 
 being now actually in the mud. 
 
 At last we inspanned ; the cattle started off with a 
 splendid swing, pulled the wagon just out of the first 
 
MY FIRST LOAD 49 
 
 hole and stopped dead. We were stuck worse than ever, 
 after having gone exactly far enough to have our hind 
 wheels in the hole where the front wheels had been. 
 
 It rained all that night too, though, by some miracle, 
 Amous had now managed to get a fire going under the fore- 
 carriage, enough to make some coffee. 
 
 Twenty-four hours later, we had not moved more than a 
 couple of inches, and the cattle were actually up to their 
 bellies in liquid mud. On the first day, I had given up 
 trying to wear boots the mud actually dragged them 
 off your feet and I had not a dry rag left. 
 
 Amous was terribly upset, terribly tired too, I fancy. 
 He filled up his tobacco bag from mine in silence, then 
 pushed his old hat backwards, and shook his head. 
 
 " The cattle can't do it, Baas," he said. " We must 
 unload, make a sledge, drag all the goods over the mud 
 on that, then put a long chain on to the empty wagon, and 
 pull it out that way." 
 
 It was the only plan I had thought as much already 
 but there was one difficulty. We could not possibly 
 unload our stuff, perishable trading goods, on to that 
 soaking mud. 
 
 For once, the Scarmanyorka made a suggestion. 
 " There is a mining camp behind those kopjes, Chief," he 
 remarked. " They would have the iron of which white 
 men build huts." 
 
 I imagine he had worked there, for he took me straight to 
 it. It turned out to be the Killarney Mine camp, and the 
 manager at once agreed to lend me some sheets of gal- 
 vanized iron. After we had got those on the ground, it 
 was merely a question of hard work, lifting the stuff. 
 Luckily, the rain had stopped. 
 
 Amous went off early with six cattle in the yoke, and 
 
 D 
 
50 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 returned a couple of hours later with his " Sledge," the 
 fork of a fair-sized tree, about nine inches in diameter 
 in the smallest part. 
 
 We loaded some eight hundred pounds weight of stuff on 
 this, and found that the cattle could pull it over that 
 abominable mud with the greatest ease. Each load in 
 turn was stacked on, and under, galvanized iron ; then, 
 about sixty feet of spare chain was made fast to the end 
 of the diisselboom the wagon-pole of the now-empty 
 wagon, and the span hitched on to that. At the first 
 attempt, the wagon came out of its bed of slime, and, 
 before we turned in that night, it was on firm ground, 
 loaded up again. 
 
 It had taken us just over five days to do half a 
 mile. 
 
 However, it was the last of our real troubles that trip. 
 We never really stuck again during the rest of the journey, 
 and I delivered my first load of transport in good order at 
 the store amongst the M'Patane Kopjes. I forget now 
 what rate per hundred pounds I got, but I know that, 
 though I had only the one little wagon, with what was 
 really only a third of a load, and I had lost those five 
 days in the mud, the journey panned out quite satis- 
 factorily from a financial point of view. 
 
 We stayed a day at the store, then started back for 
 Bulawayo, and it was now that I tasted, for the first time, 
 the real delights of transport-riding, the soft side of it 
 travelling with empty wagons, after you have done your 
 work, and have been paid for it. 
 
 There is a wonderful sense of contentment and relief. 
 You know that you are not going to stick anywhere. 
 Except for the rain, you can plan out your treks before- 
 hand, and say to yourself, " I shall camp at such and 
 
MY FIRST LOAD 51 
 
 such a place. ' ' You are not going to find yourself spending 
 the night in some notorious stretch of lion-country. 
 
 Your oxen are getting over their leg-weariness ; your 
 drivers have practically nothing to do ; whilst you, your- 
 self, can sit on the wagon and smoke, or cut off into the 
 bush in search of a buck, and be sure of picking up the 
 spans again at some pre-arranged spot. 
 
 The worse the outward trip has been, the more you will 
 enjoy the return in search of fresh loads. 
 
ON THE HIGH VELD 
 
CHAPTER V 
 ON THE HIGH VELD 
 
 IT was the end of February when Malcolm and I left 
 Bulawayo on our trading and cattle-buying expedi- 
 tion. Our load came, in all, to about three thousand five 
 hundred pounds weight, quite enough, as it turned out 
 afterwards. In addition to the wagon, we now had a 
 Scotch cart, drawn by four donkeys, and driven by 
 Daniel, a Matabele youngster, who had been installed as 
 cook-boy in the place of Darkie. 
 
 The cart turned out afterwards to be one of the best 
 purchases we had ever made it was simply invaluable 
 to us down in the low-veld for odd trading, shooting, and 
 fetching stuff from Fort Victoria but I must admit that 
 there were times on the Gwelo Road, which was, of 
 course, the great north road of Africa, when I was not 
 proud of it. The donkeys were wretched little creatures 
 belonging to Amous, who had been anxious that they 
 should go up country with him. They went along in 
 approved donkey wagon style, heads down, harness slack, 
 whilst Daniel sat on the front of the cart with his head 
 down too, looking just as mournful as did his team. 
 
 Only those who have seen the high veld of Rhodesia 
 can realize its unutterable dreariness. Words are quite 
 inadequate to describe it, so, instead of trying to do so, 
 
 55 
 
56 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 those who have land to sell there speak of it as the splendid 
 healthy, Central Plateau, and enlarge on its suitability 
 for every sort of pastoral and agricultural purposes. 
 
 I had been on the high veld before we started from 
 Bulawayo to Victoria, via Gwelo, but I had always 
 managed to get off it in one, or, at the most, two treks. 
 Now, we had hundreds of miles of it before us, and ample 
 time in which to study its manifold beauties. 
 
 Vast, rolling plains covered with tall sour grass, barren, 
 wind-swept, devoid of tree or shrub ; in winter yellowish- 
 brown from the drought, or black where the great veld 
 fires had swept over it, dusty, thirsty, bitterly cold at 
 nights, a veritable place of purgatory for the unlucky 
 cattle, who could barely get enough sustenance out of the 
 pasture to keep themselves alive ; green enough in summer, 
 certainly, though the greenness was not that of wholesome 
 land the grass was too tall, too wiry. 
 
 In winter, there was far too little water, and in summer 
 there was too much. True, there were but few rivers 
 capable of holding up the wagons for more than a few 
 days at a time, but there were miles and miles of terrible 
 black mud vleis, heartbreaking mud, inconceivable to 
 any one who has never seen anything of the kind. 
 
 Firewood was practically unobtainable. Thousands of 
 herd-boys had searched every clump of scrub within a 
 mile of the road. There was plenty of cow-dung, though, 
 and if you managed to find some that was dry, you could 
 cook after a fashion, though the acrid smoke half choked 
 and blinded you. When the dung was wet, you, yourself, 
 ate cold tinned stuff, and your boys went hungry, unless 
 they had some porridge left from the last cooking. 
 
 The road itself, though the main highway of Africa, 
 was still the mere Pioneers' track. Very little had ever 
 
ON THE HIGH VELD 57 
 
 been done to it, save by the transport-riders themselves. 
 There always had been a lack of sympathy ill-feeling 
 would, perhaps, be the more correct term on the part 
 of the Government towards the men of the Road, although 
 the latter were absolutely indispensable to the progress of 
 the country. The mining industry was studied in every 
 way, pandered to ; its material came in duty-free, its 
 complaints were attended to immediately, but the trans- 
 port industry had to look out for itself, make its own 
 roads, keep them in repair, protect itself as best it could 
 from its enemies. 
 
 There was a sort of Road Department, certainly, and 
 occasionally parties were sent out, but most of their 
 energies were confined to the immediate neighbourhood 
 of the mines ; and, when we did know they had been 
 at work on a certain place, word was passed along to 
 avoid it, on the assumption that it would be worse than 
 it had been before. 
 
 On the Gwelo Road, you would find places where the 
 track was three-quarters of a mile wide, innumerable 
 spoors through the horrible black mud. When you came 
 to such a spot, the wisest course was to make an entirely 
 new spoor for yourself, if it were possible to do so. 
 
 You never knew when you were going to stumble into 
 some one else's " grave," a hole where another wagon 
 had been dug out. As a rule, these " graves " filled up 
 quickly with liquid mud, and I have seen more than one 
 wagon upset in them, toppling over, practically without 
 a moment's warning. 
 
 Until we left Bulawayo, Malcolm had never travelled 
 with our own oxen. At first, he was a little inclined to 
 be down-hearted. They looked so very tiny compared 
 with the great bullocks in the other wagons we passed, 
 
58 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 and they stuck badly during the second trek, stuck just 
 at nightfall in a huge mud vlei, and it was nearly midnight 
 before Amous got them out. 
 
 Malcolm did not like it at all, I remember. He was new 
 to the wet and muddy side of the life on the Road, and, 
 not unnaturally, he began to think that we had let our- 
 selves in for a thundering bad thing, that we should never 
 get through with our single span. 
 
 We drew out at last on to a firm stretch of ground, and 
 turned in just as the rain began again, without having 
 got a fire alight. Really, I believe that if I had said the 
 word that night, Malcolm would have agreed to throw 
 up the whole trip, and return to prosaic mine work. 
 
 Instead, however, I told him, once more, of our five days 
 in the mud near the Killarney Mine, and of how we finally 
 got out of it. Then, from underneath the wagon, we heard 
 Amous' voice, lecturing Daniel and the Scarmanyorka 
 on the beauties of our cattle, pointing out how no other 
 span in the whole of Africa could have pulled out alone 
 from that mud-hole, partly because they were " cattle 
 indeed/' and partly because they had the very best driver 
 in the country. He was still talking when we went to 
 sleep. 
 
 It was a dreary trip up to Gwelo, really enough to have 
 disgusted most men with their prospects. We stuck 
 badly about a dozen times in all ; and only Amous' 
 splendid driving rendered progress of any sort possible. 
 We had rain on most days, and lived, more or less, in a 
 state of mud. 
 
 Then, the mere appearance of that high veld of Rhodesia 
 is enough to reduce most men to the nadir of depression. 
 It was small wonder that, quite apart from its unproduc- 
 tiveness, no natives ever tried to live on it. About every 
 
ON THE HIGH VELD 59 
 
 twenty miles there was a wayside store, two or three 
 mud huts with a galvanized iron mule stable in the rear, 
 but those were practically the only signs of human habita- 
 tion. In those stores, they provided meals, hashed bully 
 beef, Boer-meal bread, and muddy coffee, for coach 
 passengers, charging five shillings a head ; also, they 
 usually had some grain and meal for the boys' food and 
 a little odd Kaffir truck, though the bar trade, whisky 
 at a shilling a tot, was invariably the most paying part 
 of the business. 
 
 I have seen a good many dreary habitations in various 
 parts of the world, but, as a whole, I remember none to 
 surpass these stores on the high veld, between Gwelo and 
 Bulawayo. So far as position was concerned, the trader 
 had little choice the " hotel " had to be combined with 
 the mule stable, otherwise the coaches would not have 
 stopped at it ; on the other hand, very little had ever 
 been done to get over the natural disadvantages. The 
 buildings were as bleak and comfortless as possible, 
 The huts had mud walls, thatched roofs, and, in most cases, 
 not even a veranda. The largest building, a square one. 
 would be canteen at one end, store at the other, the two 
 being separated by a rough partition. The bar fittings 
 consisted mainly of whisky cases, the bar Itself being 
 made from broken-up boxes. The uneven earthen 
 floor was usually littered with cigarette ends and half- 
 burnt matches. There was an all-pervading smell of 
 stale spirits. 
 
 In the store itself, the Kaffir truck was stacked anyhow, 
 often regardless of the attacks of the rats and the white 
 ants. Shoddy trade blankets were heaped together 
 with condemned uniform jackets ; the Kaffir hoes were in 
 a heap by the door. The tins of bully, salmon, and milk, 
 
60 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 ranged irregularly along the rough shelves, looked as 
 though they had already been in stock far too long ; the 
 sides of bacon were sweating through their muslin cover- 
 ings ; the meal-bags were leaking on to the floor. 
 
 A round hut, innocent of window frames or doors, 
 served as dining-room. The table-cloth, a piece of white 
 limbo, trade calico, remained on from meal to meal, 
 forming a favourite promenade for the flies. The salt 
 was kept in a baking-powder tin, slightly rusted ; the 
 vinegar was still in its original bottle. Table ware was 
 all of enamelled iron, badly chipped, and the food was 
 unspeakable ; still, as one store-keeper remarked to 
 me once " Who the blazes wants to eat when he gets 
 off the coach after twenty-four hours of jolting and dust ? 
 All he cares about is a drink, or as many drinks as he's 
 time for while they're changing the mules. Very few 
 of them ever touch the food." 
 
 I had seen the food provided, and I was not surprised 
 at the reluctance. 
 
 Two or three more round huts for the trader and any 
 possible guests, a shelter to serve as kitchen, and a stable 
 completed the camp. Everywhere, were rusted tins 
 and empty bottles. Litter remained just where it was 
 thrown. Nothing was ever cleaned up. 
 
 The kitchen arrangements were typical of the whole 
 life of those stores a big heap of white ashes with some 
 logs smouldering in the middle of it, two bake-pots for 
 the bread, a kettle, a couple of battered saucepans, and 
 a cook-boy in a loin cloth, squatting on the ground, 
 kneading the bread in an old washing-basin, occasionally 
 pausing to empty some snuff into the palm of his hand, 
 and draw it noisily up his nostrils. 
 
 What wonder that so few of the wayside stores really 
 
ON THE HIGH VELD 61 
 
 paid, and that such a large proportion of their proprietors 
 ultimately died of drink and malaria combined ? 
 
 Generally speaking, the stores in the low-veld were of 
 a much better type. Perhaps the beauty of the kopje 
 scenery had something to do with it, making men hanker 
 after a touch of refinement, which would have seemed 
 almost grotesque on the Great Plateau ; perhaps the fact 
 that conditions were so much better, that timber, grass for 
 thatching, and labour were so much more easily obtained, 
 made the difference. Anyway, down in those districts, 
 you found comfortable huts with verandas, attempts at 
 gardens, even creepers planted up the poles, whilst the 
 bottles and tins were stacked together outside the camp 
 itself. The contrast was a curious one, and I noticed it 
 not once, but scores of times, not only in the case of store- 
 keepers, but of every other class of the population as well 
 The barren dreariness of the high veld seemed to ruin 
 men more rapidly than any other influence with which I 
 ever came into contact. 
 
 Gwelo hardly came up to expectations it proved to be 
 so very, very small. On the other hand, it is clean and 
 well laid out. Of course, it stands in a mud vlei, but the 
 monotony of the high veld is broken by some tree-covered 
 kopjes at the back, and there are a few trees, real trees 
 in the township itself. Really, from its geographical 
 position, it ought to have been the capital of the country, 
 but both Salisbury and Bulawayo combined to keep it 
 back. That was the one point on which the bigger town- 
 ships agreed. 
 
 From Gwelo, we had to pass through the Selukwe, 
 at that time the principal mining district of the country ; 
 then we dropped down to the bush veld, the final eighty- 
 five-mile stage to Fort Victoria. 
 
62 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 All along, Amous had been dreading the twenty-mile 
 stage from Gwelo to Selukwe. 
 
 " There is mud indeed, Baas/' he told me, over and 
 over again somehow, he always considered me as essen- 
 tially his own Baas, my brothers being quite secondary 
 persons when I was about, probably because I had 
 engaged him. " Black mud, without a bottom to it. If 
 we stick there, it will be far worse than at the mine 
 when we made the sledge and didn't have a fire." 
 
 Other men had told us of that mud. It was sheer 
 lunacy to attempt it in the wet season with one span, 
 they declared. Of course, any transport-rider will always 
 hook out a wagon in difficulties, hook out even the 
 wagon of his most deadly enemy. That is the Law of 
 the Road ; but, when the weather is very bad, you may 
 wait days for the other transport-rider to come along. 
 
 We were dreading those Gwelo flats. We had really 
 done fairly well so far, considering the state of the road 
 and the lightness of our cattle, having covered a hundred 
 and ten miles in fourteen days, but now, in all probability, 
 we were going to lower our daily average enormously. 
 And yet, in the end, we went right through to the Sebun- 
 ga Poort, the entrance to the Selukwe Hills, without 
 sticking once. 
 
 It was luck, of course. Two or three hot days without 
 any rain had hardened the surface of that dreaded mud, 
 though twenty-four hours after we had reached the hills 
 the Flats were practically under water again. It was 
 not the only time we had luck there. Two years later, 
 Amyas, my youngest brother, made the record for that 
 wet season with our four wagons, doing the distance, 
 loaded heavily, in three days. The summer had been 
 a truly awful one. Some wagons had taken eight days, 
 
ON THE HIGH VELD 63 
 
 some a fortnight, while some had never arrived at all, 
 having been abandoned until the rains should be over. 
 In one instance, eighty cattle were put into a single wagon. 
 It came out, certainly, in pieces, leaving its load, a large 
 steam boiler, resting on the mud. 
 
 After one or two attempts, the mud became churned 
 up to such a degree, that you could not get the cattle 
 anywhere near it, and somehow, the expedient of a very 
 long chain on to the diisselboom very seldom succeeded. 
 
 Still, as I have said, we crossed the Flats without the 
 least trouble, tumbled down the rocky road from Selukwe 
 to the bush veld, and found ourselves once more in 
 Mashonaland. 
 
FORT VICTORIA 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 FORT VICTORIA 
 
 I ALWAYS liked the bush veld, especiaUy when I 
 came down to it from the top of the great plateau. 
 The trees were such an immense relief to one's eyes, 
 and it was often a positive joy to escape from the bitter 
 cold of the plains. You get sharp frosts at night during 
 the winter in all parts of the country, except the low 
 veld on the eastern border, but these are as nothing 
 by comparison with the wet mists of the high veld in 
 summer, mists which seem to drive clean through you, 
 and send you to your blankets, your teeth chattering 
 with ague. 
 
 Then, too, in the bush country you find native vil- 
 lages, which means you can shoot guinea fowl and buy 
 fresh milk, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and, occasionally, 
 eggs, though, if you are wise, you never pay for the 
 latter until they have been cooked and tried. The Kaffir 
 does not eat them himself, so he sees nothing out of the 
 way in taking them from under a sitting hen, and selling 
 them to you. To him, an egg is an egg, whatever its 
 condition. 
 
 Game is far more plentiful amongst the bush, al- 
 though I believe that, prior to the coming of the Chartered 
 Company, the high plateau was a very much better 
 
 67 
 
68 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 shooting ground than was the case in my day. I never 
 remember shooting a single buck on the Gwelo Road, 
 which means that I never had fresh meat on that road. 
 
 Naturally, there are disadvantages connected with 
 the lower country. You find the rivers much bigger ; 
 consequently, the chances of your being held up by a 
 flood are increased enormously. It was no uncommon 
 thing for a transport -rider to spend a month or even six 
 weeks, waiting for the water to go down ; one of the 
 most maddening experiences which can befall a man, 
 especially when, as always seemed to be the case, had 
 he reached the drift an hour earlier, he would have 
 got through easily. 
 
 When you find you are held up, you drive a small 
 stick into the bank, just at the edge of the flood, and 
 then you go back to the wagon, intending to smoke 
 or to sleep for a full three hours before you go and see 
 if the level has fallen. But it is morally certain that 
 you will be back every hour at least for the first day 
 or two of your enforced idleness. That stick becomes 
 an obsession to you. You find yourself dreaming of it. 
 Your spirits rise or fall with the water. A drop of an 
 inch, and you give all the wagon boys extra sugar ; 
 a rise of half an inch and you throw boots at the cook- 
 boy, who probably deserved it in any case. 
 
 So far as floods were concerned, I was very lucky. 
 The longest time I ever had to wait was a fortnight, 
 though my youngest brother was once over six weeks 
 on the bank of the Tebekwe ; but, as he told me after- 
 wards, it didn't seem so very long. He was too ill with 
 fever to take much notice of anything. 
 
 Another bad point about the bush veld is that, the 
 soil being sandy as a rule, the roads wash out very quickly 
 
FORT VICTORIA 69 
 
 in the rains. Every rut on a slope becomes a miniature 
 river, and you find great trenches, a foot, sometimes 
 even three feet, deep, scooped out in the track. 
 Naturally, that means you dare not travel in the dark, 
 and day-trekking is abhorrent to every transport-rider 
 who studies his cattle to every real transport-rider, 
 that is. 
 
 The Selukwe- Victoria Road was especially bad for 
 wash-outs, and, when we travelled it for the first time, 
 it was at its very worst. 
 
 There are some very nasty drifts on that road. One I 
 remember particularly well. It is where you cross 
 the Tebekwana River, and the pull out is exceedingly 
 steep, and, what is almost as bad, particularly narrow, 
 just a cutting in the river bank. There is no room to 
 swing your span, to give them a start, and it is difficult 
 often to get even the most thoroughly trained span to 
 begin a heavy pull with a dead straight trek-chain. 
 The swing makes an immense difference to them. They 
 feel that something is moving, and they put their whole 
 weight into the yokes at once, all together. 
 
 We groaned when we saw that drift, and decided that, 
 in all probability, it was going to be a question of off- 
 loading. At the best of times, it was a two-span place, 
 and, on this occasion, it was washed out badly. 
 
 The wagon went through the stream it was only 
 about axle-deep and on to the firm ground beyond, 
 then the oxen stuck, hopelessly to all appearance. For 
 an hour, we all shouted and yelled to them, whilst Amous' 
 great whip was cracking like a pistol. 
 
 :< They can't get out," we decided. " It's a mere waste 
 of time going on like this. We must off-load part of 
 the stuff and take it up afterwards in the Scotch cart." 
 
70 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 Amous was horribly upset. It was such a slur on his 
 beloved cattle, and on his own driving at least he 
 thought so, though, in the circumstances, no sane man 
 would have dreamed of blaming either him or the oxen. 
 
 " Once more, Baas/' he pleaded. " Well try once 
 more. Daniel will lead them this time. Perhaps they 
 are tired of seeing the Scarmanyorka, a dirty little hill- 
 savage without trousers." 
 
 He gave the bullocks several minutes' rest, patted 
 his beloved hind-ox, Biffel, on the neck, went to the 
 head of the span, and talked to Jonkman and Bandom, 
 the leaders, then returned to his place, a third of the way 
 up the span, and began to call to them, almost quietly. 
 At about the third shout, the wagon moved, the front 
 wheels jolted out of the wash-out into which they had 
 sunk and the span simply walked up the long straight drift 
 with it, as steadily as if they were pulling on the level. 
 
 That night, the little man kept the two youngsters 
 up for a good four hours after they ought to have turned 
 in, lecturing them on the true and only way to drive 
 cattle. 
 
 A few days later, however, the span did an even greater 
 deed in his estimation broke the trek chain in a heavy 
 place. For days afterwards, he talked of little else. 
 We met several lots of wagons coming down with grain, 
 and outspanned with them ; and on each occasion 
 their drivers had to listen to the whole story, not once, 
 but several times over, rather to their disgust, I fancy. 
 Amous, though invariably respectful where white men 
 were concerned, was a most truculent little devil amongst 
 his own kind, a sort of black Captain Kettle in manner, 
 and insisted on doing most of the talking, and all the 
 boasting, himself. 
 
FORT VICTORIA 71 
 
 So far as our cattle were concerned, however, he had 
 good reasons for boasting. He had literally worked 
 wonders with them. Three months before, they had 
 stuck in a tiny donga with an empty wagon ; now, they 
 could snap the heavy trek chain. It was certainly an 
 amazing change, and the credit was due entirely to him. 
 
 We came gradually from the bush country on to the 
 high veld again ; and, at last, one evening, we caught 
 sight of what appeared then to be half a dozen buildings 
 with galvanized iron roofs, standing on a stretch of open 
 veld, with some low kopjes a little distance away, and a 
 big range of hills, mountains almost, in the background. 
 
 It was the town of Fort Victoria, the Scarmanyorka 
 informed us. 
 
 At sunrise next morning, we left the wagon to out- 
 span at the drift, and walked up into the township. 
 
 I cannot say that I was greatly impressed at first, 
 much though I liked the place afterwards. We had 
 expected something small, but Victoria was tiny. The 
 Geelong camp had been far more imposing. 
 
 The place had been planned out on a splendid scale, 
 so many streets, crossed, at right angles, by so many 
 avenues. Here and there a building had been erected, 
 or, at least, begun, but, as the white population had 
 never exceeded eighty-five, all told, only in the main 
 street, which led from the Drift to the Thatched House 
 Hotel, could you trace a regular road. Elsewhere, you 
 took short cuts across the tin and bottle strewn wastes, 
 which were known officially as " building sites. " 
 
 The Fort, the largest building in the town, consisted 
 of an open space, surrounded by four high walls, with 
 gun platforms at two of the corners, the quarters and 
 stables being along three sides. Really, at first sight, 
 
72 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 from a little distance, the Fort was quite imposing, but 
 when you got nearer, you found that the gate was an 
 extremely crazy affair, made of thin deal planks, and 
 badly in need of both paint and new hinges ; in fact, I 
 believe that it was impossible to get it to close. 
 
 Built on to the Fort were the Magistrates' office, the 
 Court and the Post Office. 
 
 The Thatched House, by far the most important place 
 in the town, was just across the road, a most conveni- 
 ent position for the Officials, and for the Police when 
 they had any money, which was not very often. 
 
 Lower down the principal road were the stores, three 
 or four in number, hideous galvanized iron sheds. 
 
 The remainder of the houses were used for residential 
 purposes. Some were of wattle and dab, some of brick, 
 with galvanized iron roofs. In several cases, the gal- 
 vanized iron had been taken off again, being wanted 
 elsewhere, and the roofless walls, already crumbling away, 
 did not add to the cheerfulness of the landscape. 
 
 The native population lived outside the township, 
 in a filthy collection of hovels called the Location. 
 
 I had known Victoria for nearly two years before I 
 discovered that the refuse-littered open space beyond 
 the Thatched House was really the Market Square, 
 and that the four unfinished walls, with an entrance 
 closed by means of brushwood and poles, was the Pound. 
 So far as its site is concerned, Victoria is far better 
 off than Bulawayo, Salisbury, or Gwelo. The hills 
 behind it break the dead monotony of the high-veld, 
 whilst it is well supplied in the matter of water. Old 
 Victoria, the original township founded by the Pioneer 
 Column, is several miles away, all that remains of it now 
 being the graves of the majority of its first citizens. Still, 
 
FORT VICTORIA 73 
 
 every Rhodesian township has an extensive graveyard, 
 even though the tale of its inhabitants may not be very 
 large. 
 
 The men of Victoria were entirely different from 
 those of the other towns, a superior class altogether. 
 They were, generally speaking, of the right type, the 
 kind of adventurers who built up the British Empire. 
 The Home-born element predominated strongly ; the 
 officials and other Afrikanders counted for very little. 
 The good settler, beloved of emigration agents, was not 
 represented, fortunately. No one had the least desire 
 to settle in the country. The aim of most was to make 
 sufficient money to go home again, to settle down in a 
 White Man's land. You could not insult them more 
 than by calling them Colonists ; in fact, so strong was 
 the feeling on this point, that, whenever it was possible, 
 married men arranged to have their children born out- 
 side the British Colonies, so that they should not be 
 branded as Colonial-born. If a wife could not actually 
 go Home, she was often taken across the border, into 
 Portuguese territory. Personally, I had the very 
 strongest sympathy with this attitude. 
 
 There was one subject of conversation in Fort Victoria 
 which overshadowed all others, the Boom, the great 
 wave of prosperity which was going to sweep over the 
 town, and repay every one for the trials and struggles 
 of the past. To the older inhabitants, the Boom was 
 an article of Faith, and, somehow, even new-comers 
 grew to believe in it after a while, which was the more 
 wonderful, because there was less and less business 
 being done in the place all the time. 
 
 All arrangements for the future were regulated with 
 an eye to the Boom. Men put off taking a trip Home, 
 
74 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 because, immediately after the Boom, as soon as they 
 had sold their mining claims, or the barren stretches of 
 veld which they called farms, they would, of course, 
 be going Home for good. That would be the really 
 splendid part about the Boom it would enable you to 
 leave the country. 
 
 There was something pathetic about it all, the belief 
 in a miracle which would never happen, the holding on 
 to gold claims and land, which would never realize one 
 half of what had already been paid out on them in the 
 shape of fees. Time after time, I have sat on the whisky 
 cases in the corner of the bar, and wondered at the 
 tenacity of the man, who could stay on there year after 
 year, merely in the hope of getting even with Bad Luck 
 in the end. It was not cupidity, far from that. Really, 
 it was a determination not to give in, to fight the thing 
 through. And when you have seen so many of your 
 friends die during the years of waiting, when the Present 
 has practically nothing to give you in the way of enjoy- 
 ment, and you do not know exactly how you are going 
 to find the means to keep yourself in the Future, it does 
 want some grit and determination to stick to it. 
 
 Of course, the town could not live wholly on its hopes 
 for the future. Mining claims merely represented so 
 much in annual expense, whilst the only profit you got 
 out of a farm was the satisfaction of knowing you had 
 an insecure title to so many thousand acres of land. 
 I do not remember ever having seen any sign of cultiva- 
 tion on any one of the farms in the district, though, for 
 that matter, during the seven years I was in Rhodesia, 
 wandering about most of the time, I do not suppose 
 that, altogether, I saw fifty acres in use for agricul- 
 tural purposes by white men. On the one or two occa- 
 
FORT VICTORIA 75 
 
 sions when I did come across a small patch, the locusts 
 had just eaten the crop, or were expected to come and 
 eat it shortly, or else the rains had failed completely. 
 For the farmer who likes to rest during the Autumn, 
 the country is an ideal one. He may sow, but he will 
 not be bothered with getting in any harvest. 
 
 There was only one industry left for Fort Victoria 
 the grain trade ; and, fortunately, that was in a 
 fairly flourishing condition. The Kopje country, the 
 native districts to the east and south-east, are as fertile 
 as the high- veld is barren. As a rule, the natives had 
 an immense quantity of surplus grain for sale to traders, 
 in fact they had begun to grow it for sale, working very 
 hard in their fields during the Summer and Autumn, 
 although, officially, they were, and still are, a wickedly 
 lazy people, who, purely in their own interests, in order 
 that they may learn all about the Dignity of Toil, must 
 be forced, by means of heavy taxation, to go and work 
 on the mines. 
 
 The traders on the out-stations bought the grain, 
 paying for it entirely with goods blankets, limbo, 
 hoes, beads, and salt being the principal articles given. 
 It was then ridden into Victoria, the middleman usually 
 sending out the wagons to fetch it ; and then forwarded 
 as a rule in other wagons, to the Selukwe mines. Alto- 
 gether, quite a number of wagons found constant work, 
 save during the worst part of the wet season, and a 
 transport-rider could generally get loads the day he 
 arrived. 
 
 The traders' roads were mere tracks, extremely rough 
 in the majority of cases ; consequently, the big trans- 
 port-riders would not risk their heavy wagons on them, 
 especially as the middlemen were not always truthful 
 
76 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 concerning the distance to the store and other essential 
 details of that kind. The managers of two of the stores 
 they were never real Victoria men were especially 
 fond of this trick, and, through them, the whole com- 
 munity got a bad name, right long the Road. 
 
 There were all sorts of queer little wagons and spans 
 working between the outside traders' camps and the 
 township. Some were owned by natives, some by 
 coolies, though, in the majority of cases, they belonged 
 to the poorer class of Afrikanders, of whom there were 
 far too many in the district. Donkeys were used largely 
 a donkey wagon averages six miles a day on a good 
 road but a combination of donkeys and oxen in one 
 span was by no means uncommon. I remember, one 
 day, meeting a team consisting of six oxen, six donkeys, 
 a mule, and an old horse. 
 
 The wagons often were as strange as their spans. 
 They were always shedding parts of themselves on the 
 road, and being repaired with something unsuitable. 
 If they had tents, these were usually fashioned by the 
 simple expedient of bending several saplings into the 
 shape of a bow, from one buckrail to the other, and cover- 
 ing the framework with old sacks. 
 
 They were always sticking, always in trouble with 
 the Native Commissioners, or the police, or other trans- 
 port-riders, yet, in the course of the twelve months, 
 they managed to ride an amazing amount of grain, and 
 many of the owners might have been able to buy decent 
 outfits, but for the fact that, in the majority of cases, 
 as soon as they had saved a little money, they purchased 
 a stock of whisky, trekked out to their homesteads 
 all the white men of this type owned farms, with one or 
 two grass huts on them and proceeded to rest, until 
 
FORT VICTORIA 77 
 
 their funds and their credit were both exhausted. Need- 
 less to say, men of this class were not exactly popular on 
 the Road. 
 
 Such was Victoria, and such the conditions existing 
 there when we first struck the place. There was prac- 
 tically no alteration during the three years I knew the 
 township a few more graves, a little more financial 
 depression, that was all. 
 
 I liked the place, and the majority of its inhabitants, 
 from the very first day, and the memory of them is still 
 one of the best of those I have to treasure. 
 
AMONGST THE KOPJES 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 AMONGST THE KOPJES 
 
 /GENERALLY speaking, Victoria shook its head 
 VJ over our plan of going down to our old cattle- 
 buying district to trade. No one knew where that 
 district was. We gave the name of the local headman 
 as " Chivamba " and the Civil Commissioner duly issued 
 us a trading licence, but it would have applied equally 
 well to nine villages out of ten in the low-veld. The 
 vagueness of our destination was urged, in all kindness 
 and good-faith, by several of the oldest inhabitants as a 
 reason for our not going on. No one had ever thought 
 of taking a wagon down the hills to the low-veld before 
 we suggested the mad scheme, and we should not have 
 done so had we not been crazy young Matabelelanders, 
 who, apparently, thought that, because a short-sighted 
 government favoured the Southern Territory, we could 
 come up to Fort Victoria and teach the Mashonalanders 
 their business. 
 
 Then, the climate was awful, absolutely unfit for the 
 white man, even in Winter ; whilst the local heathen 
 were a dangerous lot, always on the verge of revolt. 
 
 We should smash up our wagon ; we should die of fever 
 or be knob-kerried ; we should lose all our trading 
 stuff, and find that the niggers had not got a single beast 
 
 81 F 
 
82 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 to sell such was the sum of the prophecies made con- 
 cerning us in the Thatched House that first night. It had 
 needed a good deal of whisky to aid in their production, 
 but then, every job, from prophecy to poker-playing, was 
 a dry one in Victoria. 
 
 Next morning we were several miles away on the 
 Eastern Road, before the first man in search of a pick-me- 
 up had managed to get the keys of the bar from the 
 canteen-keeper. 
 
 The Eastern Road was a pleasant surprise to us, at 
 least for the first twenty miles. I covered it so often 
 afterwards with the wagons, with the Scotch cart, on 
 foot, that, though it is nine years since I was on it, I can 
 still remember every rise, every drift. Until you got 
 amongst the hills, it was one of the coldest places at night 
 I ever knew. On a Winter's morning, you would wake 
 up to find that your breath had formed a kind of hoar 
 frost on your blankets, whilst your cattle were so stiff, 
 that it was actually a kindness to inspan them and make 
 them move ; otherwise, they would have stood about, 
 rough-coated and utterly wretched, until the sun came 
 to their rescue. 
 
 Perhaps it was because the cold was so intense, and the 
 days so welcome, but the sunrises I saw on that Road 
 seemed finer than any I have seen elsewhere. You woke 
 up at three o'clock you had been sleeping on the ground, 
 because you had left the wagon tent behind, to save 
 weight stirred up the fire, huddled on whatever you 
 had in the way of a jacket, over your sweater, then 
 roused the cook-boy, who crawled out from under the 
 blankets he shared with the piccanin, and, groaning and 
 shivering, began to make the coffee ; then he, in turn, 
 awoke the driver. 
 
AMONGST THE KOPJES 83 
 
 You were shivering in real earnest long before the 
 kettle had boiled. It had been delightfully warm in the 
 blankets, and you could easily have done with another 
 three hours' sleep, instead of turning out into the frosty 
 air ; but the cattle must always come first. There was 
 a long trek, eight weary miles, before you would reach 
 any decent grass, and] the oxen needed every hour of 
 daylight you could spare them for feeding and chewing 
 the cud. 
 
 The piccanin's hands were so cold that he could scarcely 
 pull the oxen into the yokes. Though he would not 
 have admitted it for worlds, the driver was really in very 
 little better case ; whilst the cook-boy lingered by the fire 
 until the last moment, clearing up the cooking things 
 and blankets. 
 
 At last, everything was ready. A hoarse shout to the 
 oxen, a second shout, and a cracking of the whip ; then 
 the wagon jolted on to the road again. 
 
 There was no moon, but so perfectly clear was the sky 
 that, sitting on the top of the load, you could make out 
 every one of the cattle ; could see the piccanin's once- 
 white blanket ahead of the front oxen. 
 
 Something hurried away through the long grass a 
 jackal probably. From the vlei on your left came a 
 curious whistling sound, distinctly eerie. 
 
 " A Reed-buck calling for its mate, Baas," the driver, 
 who had just hitched himself on the front of the wagon 
 and borrowed your tobacco bag, remarked. 
 
 Whew ! How cold it was. Would the dawn never 
 come ? Instead of growing lighter, the darkness ap- 
 peared to increase. You could hardly make out the 
 cattle now. There was that awkward drift a little way 
 ahead, where you shot the steinbok last trip, a nasty place 
 
84 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 to attempt when you couldn't see what you were doing. 
 It seemed hours already since you turned out of those 
 warm blankets, yet you were not half-way to the out- 
 span, at least you thought not. That wretched dawn 
 and then, looking up again, you saw a faint tinge of grey 
 on the eastern horizon. Ten minutes later, the range 
 of kopjes stood out hard and distinct against the sky, 
 and you could identify every one of the cattle. . . . 
 So the driver had done what he had suggested the evening 
 before changed the places of Rooiland and Bosnian. 
 He had thought that Rooiland would be better on the 
 left-hand side of the chain, whereas Bosnian would pull 
 anywhere. 
 
 Ah ! There was the line of Mimosa trees along the 
 bank of the stream, where the drift you had been dread- 
 ing was. It wouldn't be so bad now, in the daylight. 
 The oxen and the piccanin would find the water cold 
 though. 
 
 You, yourself, were cold enough still with an old brown 
 sweater over your flannel shirt, and an even older 
 Norfolk jacket over the sweater. 
 
 If the people who used to know you at Home, people 
 who did not sleep on the ground on a frosty night, and 
 get up at three a.m., men who started for the City at nine, 
 and returned in time to dress for dinner at seven-thirty, 
 and women who went paying calls just after four if 
 they could see you now ! What would they say ? That 
 you must have deteriorated, or you would not be so 
 disgracefully shabby ? Probably. In fact, you might 
 bet on it safely. Why your chin and cheeks were black. 
 You hadn't shaved yet, or washed away the fine ash from 
 the big veld-fire you passed during the evening trek. 
 
 Perhaps they would be right, It was a rotten life 
 
AMONGST THE KOPJES 85 
 
 when you had to get so cold, just through studying the 
 comfort of your oxen. A rotten life why your fingers 
 were too numbed for you to be able to fill your big curved 
 pipe properly. None but a fool 
 
 And then the edge of the kopjes turned suddenly to 
 gold, and, a moment later, there was the red disk of the 
 sun. 
 
 By Jove ! How splendid the veld looked ! It was 
 a fine thing to be your own boss, to have no trains to 
 catch, not to have to wear a stiff collar, a silk hat, and 
 a morning suit. Those poor devils at Home ! They 
 vegetated, that was all. Change places with them ? 
 
 Not for What was the piccanin saying ? That there 
 
 was a duiker standing just by that clump of bush, a 
 bare hundred yards away. . . . An easy shot . . . plenty 
 of fresh meat now, and to-morrow the wagon would be 
 amongst the mealie lands, which would mean plenty of 
 guinea fowl. 
 
 It was going to be another hot day, too hot already 
 for that old Norfolk jacket. . . . 
 
 On the third morning after leaving Victoria, we began 
 to think that, after all, the road was not quite so good. 
 It had split up into several smaller tracks, and the one 
 we had to take was the least used of all ; in fact, all the 
 grain trading stores to which it led had been abandoned, 
 because no one would take his wagons down it to fetch 
 away the mealies. 
 
 I had come prepared for a good deal, but that road 
 staggered me. There were rocks two feet high over 
 which the wheel climbed to drop with a crash on the other 
 side ; there were innumerable dry watercourses, steep 
 and narrow, with a twist in the track on the other side, 
 so that the span never got a straight pull ; there were 
 
86 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 wash-outs in which a big man could have hidden himself 
 easily ; there were huge fallen trees lying across the 
 road, which had to be chopped up and dragged away 
 before you could go on ; there were places where, if you 
 went a couple of yards off the road, there was a drop of 
 a couple of hundred feet, almost sheer ; and finally there 
 was one place where the track actually ran for some thirty 
 yards down the face of a vast mass of rock, smooth, 
 frightfully steep, altogether horrible. The remains of a 
 big red wagon, hopelessly smashed, told us of the fate of 
 the last man who had tried to go down that rock. 
 
 There was no chance of improving the road, except 
 at a cost far beyond our means, no chance of finding a 
 better one, for it was obviously the only possible way 
 down the sides of those giant kopjes. There was no 
 room for another track, and, when you have to descend 
 nearly two thousand feet in twenty miles, you must be 
 thankful if you find any sort of a track down which you 
 can take a buck-wagon and sixteen bullocks. 
 
 It was one of the roughest pieces of country I had ever 
 been through, even on foot. I believe that, if we had 
 not found the road made for the first part of the way, 
 we should not have tried at all there. We should have 
 spent weeks, perhaps months, attempting to find another 
 way down, and should then have given it up in 
 disgust, to be laughed at [by our advisers in Fort 
 Victoria. 
 
 Amous had never done any trekking of that kind before ; 
 in fact, he knew very little about the kopje country ; 
 and, up till then, had never even seen a Mashona village ; 
 but he took it all very calmly. We should get through, 
 somehow, he declared. The cattle were very, very good, 
 oxen indeed, and they would pull out of any drift or 
 
AMONGST THE KOPJES 87 
 
 mud-hole. Had they not broken the trek-chain on the 
 Selukwe Road ? 
 
 That was all very well. At the moment, however, the 
 cattle were not the main cause of anxiety to us. As a 
 last resource, we could always off-load if they stuck ; but 
 if, as was by no means improbable, we smashed up a 
 wheel, we should be in a very awkward fix. Time after 
 time, I thought one of the wheels was bound to go, as we 
 crashed over the boulders, and yet, in the end, we broke 
 nothing, except three diisselbooms, two new ones in a 
 single day once, when we stuck in a very awkward 
 little donga amongst some mealie lands. 
 
 The track ended abruptly at an abandoned trading 
 station, three tumble-down huts on a huge flat rock. 
 Still, we were about a third of the way down the hills, 
 and the country ahead looked as though it might be easier 
 than that through which we had just passed. At any 
 rate, we had about five miles of fairly level mealie lands 
 ahead of us before we started the tumbling-down process 
 again. 
 
 We asked the local heathen about the old store, and 
 they could tell us nothing, except that the owner had 
 died there and the hyaenas had eaten his body. It was a 
 common enough story in those days perhaps it is com- 
 mon enough still but, afterwards, we found out that 
 there were one or two uncommon features connected 
 with it. 
 
 Some years before, an old Irish solicitor had been 
 infected with the gold fever, had thrown up his practice, 
 and came out to Mashonaland to make his fortune. 
 He soon tired of prospecting, however, and turned his 
 attention to grain-trading. For a while, he was very 
 successful, although he was curiously unsuited to the veld, 
 
88 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 both by nature and by training. Before very long, he 
 had several trading stations going, and, having some 
 capital left, he was able to keep clear of the rapacious 
 wholesale companies, which meant that he obtained the 
 market price for his grain ; then, he bought some oxen 
 and a couple of wagons ; and, though he knew not the 
 slightest thing about transport work, and was robbed 
 consistently by his drivers, he made that branch of his 
 business pay too. 
 
 A curious old man, white-haired, precise and courteous 
 in his speech, he was one of the most interesting and 
 least-known men in the district. After a while, his 
 brother, attracted by rumours of his success, came out 
 to join him ; then another brother, then two nephews 
 appeared. 
 
 The brothers soon dissolved partnership. There was 
 a bitter quarrel, how bitter the story of that abandoned 
 trading station on the kopjes showed. The place be- 
 longed to the second brother, who had not been there 
 many months before he went down with an unusually 
 bad dose of fever. Like most traders, he had few stores 
 beyond flour, tea and sugar, the veld or the kraals supply- 
 ing most of his needs. But you cannot pick up strength 
 on guinea fowl and mealie meal porridge as your stan- 
 dard diet, and, feeling frightfully weak, he sent up to 
 his brother, the big trader, for help. The message was 
 received and ignored. A second message produced as 
 little result ; and all the time the man was sinking. 
 Then, seeing he was dying, and fearing that his spirit 
 might haunt them if they remained, his boys ran 
 away. 
 
 From that point onwards there is a blank, until ten 
 days later, when a police trooper, having heard a rumour 
 
AMONGST THE KOPJES 89 
 
 came down to investigate. As he reached the doorway 
 of the hut, a hyaena dashed out. 
 
 After that, there seemed to be a curse on the whole 
 family. The third brother died, then the two nephews, 
 and, finally, the original trader himself. Several years 
 later, in Untali, I met a girl of the same name it was a 
 very uncommon one and I found that she was a niece, 
 the last of the family, she said. 
 
 She had only heard vague stories as to the fate of 
 her relatives, and was very anxious to know the truth. 
 Although it was over two years since the last of her uncles 
 had died, she had not managed to get any sort of account 
 of his estate, and, in all probability, she never did. He 
 must have left a good deal of property of one kind or 
 another, but the Chartered Company appointed the 
 manager of one of the trading companies executor, and, 
 with that, the matter might be considered to have ended, 
 so far as the heirs were concerned. 
 
 I knew of a good many similar cases, where men died 
 in Rhodesia owning mining claims, land, and oxen, and 
 though I have met relatives of theirs afterwards, or had 
 letters from them, asking me for information, in no single 
 instance did I ever hear of an heir receiving anything, 
 not even the dead man's personal kit and rifle. Being 
 appointed executor was one of the many good things which 
 came to you through keeping on good terms with the 
 Officials. 
 
 You knew you would not be prosecuted, whatever 
 you did, for all the law officers and judges were 
 merely servants of the Chartered Company, and the 
 latter could not well be expected to turn on its own friends 
 in the interests of unknown people six thousand miles 
 away. Besides, what did an English mother want with 
 
go THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 her dead son's rifle or clothes ? They would be far more 
 useful to an Afrikander on the spot. 
 
 From that old store, we decided to strike, as far as 
 possible, south-east. We had cross-examined scores of 
 savages, but had not found a single one who knew the 
 way to Chivamba's, who had ever heard of such a village, 
 although it was quite a large one for that country. We 
 reckoned we had come about forty miles from Fort Vic- 
 toria, and that Chivamba's would be about another twenty 
 miles further on, a miscalculation which resulted in a 
 good deal of worry and anxiety during the next fort- 
 night. 
 
 We were well down amongst the kraals now, which 
 meant that we could get plenty of guinea fowl, as well as 
 milk, eggs, and native grains. The guinea fowl, of course, 
 we shot for ourselves ; there was no trouble about secur- 
 ing them ; but, at first, the local heathen asked us out- 
 rageous prices for the stuff we wanted to buy from them. 
 It is the way of the Mashona always to be insolent until 
 he is taught the danger of that course. They held out 
 for cash at first, and when we offered trading goods, 
 demanded a wholly unreasonable measure. 
 
 However, they soon came to their senses. The first 
 few lots not only had to carry their stuff back again, but 
 they also met Amous just outside the camp, and, when 
 he was not actually driving, the little man invariably 
 carried] a four-foot-six hippo-hide sjambok. I made a 
 rule of never asking what the noise meant. He had an 
 excellent sense of discipline and the fitness of things, and 
 he saved us an immense amount of trouble. His repu- 
 tation spread very quickly, or, rather, our reputation with 
 the fear of his sjambok attached to it, and, after a day 
 or so, we had no trouble at all. The Mashona came in 
 
AMONGST THE KOPJES 91 
 
 from miles round to sell to the chiefs who were really 
 chiefs, the white men whom you could not swindle. 
 
 They were not bad at heart, those savages of the 
 Mabouka Hills ; but there was a mission station on the 
 other side of the range, and it had contaminated the 
 whole neighbourhood. There was hardly a village which 
 had not a mission-trained boy in it, which meant that 
 the authority of the old men was being undermined, 
 and that the young men were becoming thieves, merely 
 through the evil example of the one youngster. 
 
 Amous was immensely interested in the Mashona, or, 
 rather, to give them their proper name, the Makalanga 
 Mashona is only the white man's corruption of a Matabele 
 term of contempt " Amaswena," " the dirty people/' 
 He had been used to the comparatively clean kraals 
 down-country, and these villages, rubbish-littered clear- 
 ings with dilapidated huts scattered about them, filled 
 him with amazement and disgust. In the scherms, the 
 cattle stood almost knee deep in mud, the goats shared 
 the huts with their owners, the dogs were mangy, the 
 fowls undersized, every blanket, every rag of clothing 
 seemed stiff with dirt, was more precious when it was 
 stiff. 
 
 " They say they are stronger when they're dirty, Baas," 
 he explained with supreme disgust. " Bah, what a 
 people ! Look at the huts there who but folk who 
 were half baboons would build villages like that ? " 
 and he pointed to a kraal right above us, almost at the 
 top of a huge kopje. 
 
 Daniel, the Matabele, snorted. " They all lived up 
 kopjes like that, before the white man came and spoilt 
 them. In the days of Lobengula, the king of the Mata- 
 bele, all these Amagomo (hill-people) were kept in order. 
 
92 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 They built their kraals high up, so as to escape from us. 
 Now, they are allowed to be cheeky, and they come down." 
 
 Poor Daniel ! The Mashona troubled him greatly. 
 He told me, probably with truth, that his father had 
 killed many of them, and his greatest regret was that he 
 would never have the chance to do likewise. Often, when 
 a Mashona had tried to be impudent, he would come to 
 me quivering with rage. " Chief ! Chief ! Why don't 
 you kill them, instead of merely beating them, and put- 
 ting them to work. . . . Now, you can see why the 
 Matabele used to kill them. It is the only thing they 
 understand, these baboons from the granite hills." 
 
 When we reached the hills, Amous could not speak a 
 word of the Mashona language, but he was a wonderful 
 linguist he spoke Zulu better than any other native I 
 ever had in my service and within a month, he had 
 completely mastered the local tongue. A great many 
 Basutu have the same gift. They can learn any dialect 
 in a surprisingly short time, though other tribes never 
 seem to learn Sesutu. It is one more proof of the superi- 
 ority of the great Southern Tribe. They occupy the 
 same position relatively to the rest of the South and 
 Central African Tribes as the French and ourselves do 
 to the rest of the White nations. 
 
 In course of time, I learnt to speak Zulu fairly well, 
 and to understand a good deal of the Mashona and the 
 M'Hlengwi dialects, though I never troubled to study 
 the two last ; I could always find an interpreter. The 
 Taal, the horrible jargon of the Cape Dutch, I had no 
 wish to speak or to understand, holding that the dominant 
 white race should insist on its language being the only one 
 recognized. 
 
 There is no excuse whatsoever for the official recogni- 
 
AMONGST THE KOPJES 93 
 
 tion of the Taal, whilst to teach it in State schools is an 
 outrageous misuse of public funds. South Africa has 
 been even poorer than the other colonies in the matter 
 of literature and that is saying a great deal, a very 
 great deal but not one single book has ever been written 
 in the Taal. 
 
 Even the two great South African classics, Prinsloo 
 of Prinsloodorp and The Burgher Quixote, the two 
 books written in the sub-continent which will live, are 
 the work of an Englishman, Douglas Blackburn. 
 
 For five miles after passing the old trading station, 
 the making of our new road was a comparatively easy 
 matter, the track leading across old mealie lands. The 
 chief trouble we had, apart from a few ugly little spruits, 
 arose from the ways of the local heathen, who kept on 
 rushing out and demanding compensation for damage 
 to their crops, irrespective of the fact that the crops 
 had already been gathered several weeks. In one way 
 or another, the nuisance continued until we reached 
 Chivamba's, but we soon discovered the best method 
 of dealing with the complainants. We let them follow 
 us until we outspanned, and then we told Amous and 
 Daniel to go and find out what they really wanted. 
 
 The answer brought back was invariably the same 
 that the baboons had made a mistake and were now 
 sorry. As those same baboons were usually back before 
 long, with something to sell, I imagine that there was 
 no ill-feeling, although there might be a little physical 
 soreness. 
 
 In dealing with raw savages, tact is the all-important 
 quality. I never liked to punish any of them formally 
 and solemnly. It was much better for Amous, as our 
 deputy, to smooth matters over with his tongue, and his 
 
94 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 sjambok ; he was of their own colour, and he understood 
 them perfectly. Only as a last resource, did he bring 
 any one before me. 
 
 At the end of the five miles of mealie-lands, we came 
 to the kopjes again, real granite kopjes this time, similar 
 to the Matoppos, though fashioned on a far grander 
 scale. They formed the second stage in the descent. 
 From the edge of them, we could see another plain, about 
 ten miles across, and beyond that, yet another range of 
 hills. 
 
 It was a little depressing. We could not recognize 
 a single feature of the country certainly we had not 
 been there the year before, when we were down buying 
 cattle, which meant that Chivamba's, our destination, 
 must be beyond that third range. 
 
 My recollection of the next five days is very slight. I 
 went down with fever, one of the worst doses I have 
 ever had. I remember jolting about in the wagon tent 
 during the day, remember Amous helping me down 
 when the wagon stopped, and making a bed for me in 
 the shade. Malcolm had heard of some Lichtenstein 
 Hartebeeste in the neighbourhood, and was very keen 
 on securing one, but Amous was a splendid nurse, and, 
 moreover, he worshipped me. 
 
 I recall that little black face, all wrinkled up, bending 
 over me, trying to get me to take some nourishment, 
 and then I would hear him reviling Daniel for not cooking 
 food that the Baas could eat. Yet, in addition to looking 
 after me, and driving the wagon, he had to tramp on 
 ahead from the outspans, and find the road for the next 
 trek. 
 
 In those five days, we got down the second range, 
 a distance of about three miles. Afterwards, when 
 
AMONGST THE KOPJES 95 
 
 I came back with Amous, he told me how long we had 
 been. At first, I did not believe him it seemed to me 
 sometimes like twenty-four hours, sometimes like a month 
 but he pointed out each of our outspans, and I knew 
 he must be right. 
 
BUYING CATTLE 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 BUYING CATTLE 
 
 THE last stage of that journey from the high veld 
 to Chivamba's was much like the other had been, 
 only, if possible, it was a little more dangerous and tiring. 
 
 The drop in level was not so great, but the country 
 generally was rougher. There was a series of horrible 
 little dongas, at each of which we had to dig away part 
 of the banks to form a drift, whilst there was one appalling 
 place where, literally, we went straight down the side of 
 a steep kopje. 
 
 Old transport-riders, who saw the spoor afterwards, 
 told me that they had never known a wagon even attempt 
 such a feat before, especially a loaded wagon. Still, it 
 was, at the time, the only way down we could find, and 
 we^were not going to turn back for anything. 
 
 We cleared the track carefully before we started, then 
 at the crest, we unhooked the span, leaving only the hind 
 oxen, Eiffel and Appel, to steer the wagon. Amous 
 screwed on the brake until the hind wheels were locked, 
 and called softly to his two bullocks. It seemed almost 
 as if the latter understood how much depended on them. 
 Gently, very gently indeed, they started the wagon 
 moving, then they took their weight off the yokes, and 
 simply guided it, answering immediately to Amous' 
 
 99 
 
zoo THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 voice. It was a wonderful instance of sympathy between 
 man and beast. Never once did Amous have to raise his 
 voice, or give an order twice. A mistake on the part of 
 either of the cattle would have meant a complete smash, 
 yet they made not the slightest error. 
 
 It was all over in five minutes. We were at the 
 bottom of the last range ; we had done what every one 
 had declared was impossible ; moreover, when we went to 
 look for a road on ahead, we recognized the country 
 it was a stretch of veld in which we had camped for a night 
 the year before. Chivamba'sj people had induced us to 
 go shooting there, alleging that the game was so plentiful 
 that it had eaten down all the long grass. As a matter of 
 fact, we had seen no game at all, only spoor, most of which 
 were old, but we had heard several lions, and had come 
 across the remains of a waterbuck bull, with the lion's 
 saliva still warm and sticky on the bones. 
 
 Still, we were looking for neither game nor lions just 
 then. The essential point was that we knew for certain 
 where Chivamba's kraal was, a bare eight miles away. 
 
 The sense of relief was tremendous. Only those 
 who have looked for one of those places which seem 
 to get further away every trek, can understand how 
 we felt. 
 
 We had hoped to reach Chivamba's at least ten days 
 earlier, and, latterly, we had begun to fear that we had 
 miscalculated things entirely, that we had headed in the 
 wrong direction. Yet, as a matter of fact, our general 
 course was absolutely right, though in some places we had 
 been forced to go miles off it in order to get round small 
 groups of kopjes. The reason why we had not heard of 
 Chivamba's from any of the natives we questioned was 
 that the belt of lion veld practically cut off the one district 
 
BUYING CATTLE 101 
 
 from the next ; no footpath passed through it, and there 
 was little, if any, intercourse between the villages on either 
 side of it. 
 
 Two long treks and a short one brought us to our goal. 
 We outspanned in an old mealie-field close beside the little 
 kopje in which we intended to build our store, and then, 
 though it was little after sundown, we turned in. I 
 am sure we had earned our rest. 
 
 We had been about eight weeks coming from Bulawayo, 
 and, on the whole, I do not think that was bad. We had 
 only one span, which meant that there was no assistance 
 available if we got stuck, our cattle were young, light, 
 and, at the start, only partially trained ; it was the tail- 
 end of the wet season, and the ground was sodden, the 
 wash-outs at their worst ; we had covered about three 
 hundred and twenty miles, the last sixty of which we had 
 had to find and make for ourselves, through country 
 which every one else had declared to be impossible for 
 wagons ; and we had not had a smash of any sort, save 
 diisselbooms, which do not count, as they can be replaced 
 in a couple of hours. 
 
 So far as shooting was concerned, the trip had not been 
 a success ; in fact, during the first stages, we had been very 
 short, even of tinned meat. A new rifle Malcolm had 
 bought how often I had wished that the money had been 
 spent on food had not produced one single buck, a 
 record it maintained, until Amyas sold it for one-fifth 
 of its cost to a Colonial. 
 
 Still, down in the kopje country, there were guinea- 
 fowl without end, and after all, they are far better for 
 everyday use than buck. You soon tire of the flavour, 
 or lack of flavour, of buck meat. It requires the most 
 careful cooking, and even then as a rule, it barely repays 
 
102 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 for the trouble, except in the case of klipspringer, and, 
 occasionally, sable antelope. You eat it of course, 
 because you are in a hungry country, but you would jib 
 at it in a white man's land. On the other hand, wild pig 
 is excellent, whilst hippo foot is splendid ; but these are 
 the luxuries of the veld. 
 
 The smaller birds, the partridges and the sand grouse, 
 are very good eating, but we seldom shot them on 
 account of the difficulty of obtaining shot gun cartridges. 
 It was not the cost of the latter though twenty-five 
 shillings a hundred was fairly high but the feeling 
 you might not be able to replenish your stock, which 
 made you so careful. 
 
 During the Boer War, the regulations as to the sale of 
 cartridges were very strict, at least on paper. You 
 'had to obtain a permit whenever you purchased any, and 
 the Home-born man found the magistrates most un- 
 willing to grant him more than ten at a time ; but then, 
 the majority of the magistrates were Afrikanders, and 
 feeling ran high during the war. It was a curious situa- 
 tion those who had taken the oath of allegiance were 
 only kept loyal by the fear of what those who had never 
 taken any oaths at all might do. 
 
 However, it was not the question of permits which 
 worried us, but the difficulty of going to Bulawayo to 
 fetch the cartridges. The gun-smiths knew us, and, 
 though every cartridge in the country was supposed to 
 have been counted by Chartered Officials, and the stocks 
 in hand and sales were supposed to balance with the figures 
 on the permits, we could always get two hundred rounds 
 on the strength of a permit for twenty. The explanation 
 was that an enormous amount of ammunition had been 
 imported into the country with a view to the time when, 
 
BUYING CATTLE 103 
 
 after the Boers had taken Ladysmith and Kimberley, 
 Rhodesia was handed over to them, a plot which, fortu- 
 nately, failed rather ignominiously, in spite of the very 
 strongest backing in high quarters. 
 
 The local savages were anxious to start trading the 
 moment the wagon stopped ; but we knew by experience 
 what it meant to open bales and cases before we had any 
 place in which to store them, so, greatly to the disgust 
 of our would-be customers, we set them to work clearing 
 the little kopje of grass and bush, instead of trading with 
 them. 
 
 In a week, we had a couple of fairly decent huts built, 
 whilst Amous had had another gang at work making a 
 scherm for the cattle. 
 
 The little man was more wonderful than ever now. 
 He undertook the superintendence of everything, and, 
 in a couple of days, his fame had spread through every 
 village for miles round. He had boys cutting timber, 
 boys cutting grass, boys actually building the huts, boys 
 clearing the kopje of everything which might feed a 
 veld fire or afford cover to a schelm. Daniel was trusted 
 with six oxen, and sent out to draw in the poles as they 
 were cut, the Scarmanyorka going with him as voorloeper, 
 whilst two kraal piccanins were made into herd 
 boys. 
 
 From dawn to dark, Amous' voice was never still, 
 but, though he talked a great deal about his sjambok, 
 and its terrors, he very seldom used it, realizing that it 
 might offend future customers. We had some twenty or 
 thirty boys working for us at a regular wage, but the 
 number of those who actually worked was much larger. 
 If Amous wanted anything done, and one of the " hill- 
 men " happened to be near, having come in to watch or 
 
104 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 to trade, he was merely told to do the job, and he knew 
 better than to refuse. 
 
 We began to buy live-stock as soon as we possibly 
 could, cattle, goats, sheep, and fowls, and Amous took 
 charge of everything as it was purchased, taking as much 
 pride in it as though it had been his own. The fowls 
 we traded about three hundred in the first month were 
 an abominable nuisance for a time. They insisted on 
 roosting everywhere but in the fowl-house Amous built 
 for them. In the huts, where they drove us nearly crazy 
 and ruined any amount of stuff ; in the trees, where the 
 owls carried them off wholesale ; under the wagon on the 
 Scotch cart, where the wild-cats fetched them at their 
 leisure anywhere but in a place of safety. 
 
 There was only one possible solution of the difficulty 
 to put them all to bed every night, until they learnt to 
 go to bed properly, of their own accord. So, at night, 
 after the cattle had been shut up in the scherm, the goats 
 counted and put in their scherm, every available savage 
 was set to work on the fowls. 
 
 For a quarter of an hour, the noise used to be indescrib- 
 able. There were at least a hundred and fifty fowls to be 
 knocked out of the trees round the huts, which meant 
 about five hundred missiles of various kinds being thrown 
 at them, bits of stick, stones, and mealie cobs, and another 
 hundred and fifty to be rounded up from other places. 
 The wretched birds would rush in every direction but 
 the right one, and really each had to be rounded up 
 separately. However, they learned very quickly, doubt- 
 less to the grief of the owls and wild-cats, who had been 
 taking between them from three to ten every night. 
 
 As soon as all the fowls were in, the door used to be 
 closed, and was not opened again until after dawn. Of 
 
BUYING CATTLE 105 
 
 course, the cocks they formed over a third of the total 
 number began to crow long before that, and during 
 the last half hour of their imprisonment the volume oi 
 the crowing rose almost to a roar, but, after a few days 
 of this, you grew accustomed to it ; any way, it was better 
 than being roused up half-a-dozen times in the night by 
 alarms of lesser schelm carrying off fowls. 
 
 In the daytime, however, the latter had it all their 
 own way. They were everywhere, in the store-hut, the 
 mess-hut, the kitchen. Half-a-dozen hens would be 
 seized with a mad desire to lay their eggs in the hut you 
 were using, and nothing, short of shutting them up, 
 would keep them out. They would return again and 
 again, cackling hideously, until you were almost crazy, 
 especially when, as was usually the case, you had fever, 
 or were just recovering from it. Only when a fowl had 
 to be slaughtered, did you get even with your poultry. 
 As a rule, I had about ten killed every week, mainly for 
 soup. The moment I gave the order, the whole of the 
 camp piccanins would turn out with knobsticks, and for a 
 few moments they were gloriously happy. I don't know 
 whether they were really such bad shots with their 
 knobsticks, or whether they deliberately prolonged the 
 chase, but not one stick in twenty hit the right fowl. 
 Meanwhile, the commotion was unspeakable, every bird 
 was screeching its loudest and running its fastest, and 
 every piccanin was yelling. Usually, too, all the cus- 
 tomers who happened to be on the kopje joined in the 
 sport, in the hope of receiving the heads and intestines 
 as a reward from their exertions, and, more than once, 
 instead of three fowls killed in conventional manner, 
 after being knocked over with the knobkerries, I have 
 had five assegaied ones brought to me. 
 
106 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 As we used to shut up the store entirely during the 
 wet season, we had a new lot of fowls every year, which 
 meant that the whole training process had to be gone 
 through afresh. Sometimes, I used to wonder if they 
 were really worth keeping, but though we could manage 
 without them for the pot, by having more guinea fowl 
 shot, the eggs were an absolute necessity ; and we had 
 to put up with the nuisance for the sake of those. That 
 first season at Chivamba's, we bought altogether a hundred 
 and twenty cattle, and about four hundred sheep and goats. 
 In addition to this, of course, we did a very large and 
 paying cash trade, showing a profit of over a hundred per 
 cent, all through, whilst over the odd things, curios, skins, 
 horns, and tobacco, we cleared about two hundred pounds. 
 Consequently, it was a good season. Had we sold out at 
 the end of it, we should have been about fifteen hundred 
 pounds better off than when we entered Mashonaland 
 seven months previously. But I was fully determined to 
 stick to transport work, and, though Malcolm left me in 
 August or September, I kept to the original plan. 
 
 The sheep and goats paid very well, and, with a little 
 more luck, they would have paid enormously. Of course, 
 compared with sheep and goats of other lands, the South 
 African varieties are pitifully small ; but, then, the whole 
 pastoral industry of the sub-continent is carried on on a 
 very small scale. We had a hundred and thirty-three 
 thousand sheep on the New South Wales station where I 
 was before going to Matabeleland ; consequently, I was 
 rather amused, in Cape Colony, to hear that a man with a 
 thousand sheep was considered a big stock-owner. Still, 
 he would brag far more than did the Australian squatter, 
 and perhaps that made their relative importance more 
 nearly equal. 
 
BUYING CATTLE 107 
 
 The fat-tailed sheep kills, on the average, about thirty- 
 five pounds clean against the seventy pounds of the Austra- 
 lian sheep ; the African goat cleans anything from fifteen 
 to forty pounds, though the latter figure is exceptional. 
 I should say the average runs about twenty-two pounds. 
 As will be seen, African sheep and goats are not supremely 
 useful animals from the butcher's point of view ; but 
 they were very valuable in Rhodesia, where Nature has 
 not provided at all for the coming of the white man, where, 
 judging by the number of diseases she had in reserve, she 
 objected, and still objects, most strongly to anything 
 imported, whether man, or beast, or vegetable. 
 
 When we first started trading at Chivamba's, several of 
 the local headmen paid us a solemn visit, and endea- 
 voured to get us to consent to certain fixed prices for buying 
 and selling. So far as trading goods were concerned, we 
 had agreed at once to their terms. A hoe, a heart-shaped 
 implement weighing two and a half pounds, and costing 
 us about two shillings, was to be five shillings ; limbo, 
 trade calico, was to be a shilling for a " stretch " of a yard 
 and a half ; blankets of certain qualities and patterns 
 were to be five shillings, ten shillings, and a pound ; a 
 two-hundred pound bag of grain was to be a sovereign ; 
 beads were to be a shilling for a certain tin full, and so 
 on ; but, when they began to discuss live-stock, we dis- 
 agreed. A goat, they said, was to be ten shillings, a sheep 
 a pound, a bullock ten pounds, absolutely irrespective 
 of age or size. 
 
 The conference ended rather abruptly. We told them, 
 plainly, that we should never pay cash for sheep or goats, 
 that each animal must be the subject of a separate deal 
 for as much trading stuff as it was worth ; that, though 
 we should always pay for cattle in gold, ten pounds must 
 
loS THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 be considered the price of a cow, and that only the very 
 largest bull would fetch that amount in our camp. 
 
 They said that they were dissatisfied, that the white 
 man was " very dear," and that no one would come 
 in to sell ; but, as a matter of fact, they were really 
 well pleased, and, on the following day, several of them 
 sold us sheep and goats for limbo or blankets, the cost 
 to us working out at from three shillings to eight shillings, 
 according to size. 
 
 We started with quite a small goat scherm, but it was 
 not many days before we had to build a new one. The 
 cattle were down in the old mealie-field, at the foot of the 
 kopje, but, for safety's sake, we put the goats just outside 
 our own camp. The scherm was made of heavy poles, 
 proof against lions and hyaenas, if not against leopards, 
 a big, square enclosure, capable of holding four hundred 
 animals, with a primitive sort of grass roof over it, to pro- 
 tect the stock from the morning dews. 
 
 I often wish I could drive home to people how suscep- 
 tible the goat is to anything in the nature of wet-cold. 
 He suffers most acutely when he cannot get into shelter, 
 and huddle up against others of his own kind. In the 
 majority of cases, it is sheer ignorance which makes 
 people in England who own goats tether their unfortunate 
 victims out in all weathers. It may be customary, I 
 know, but having had a thousand or so goats through my 
 hands, I do not hesitate to say that it is Hell for the goat, 
 that it is so utterly foolish, too, for the goat loses condi- 
 tion, through sheer misery, and goes off milk. 
 
 Probably, it is useless to make any sort of appeal for the 
 goat in England. He is supposed to be a kind of comic 
 animal that smells. Yet he suffers, none the less. The 
 woes of unsavoury aliens, Russian revolutionaries, Arme- 
 
BUYING CATTLE 109 
 
 nian'thieves, Balkan brigands, arouse the deepest sympathy 
 in this country. We are always ready to form a committee, 
 pay a secretary, and raise funds to help them escape from 
 the just penalty of their crimes, and bring them over 
 here to commit fresh crimes ; but an appeal on behalf of 
 the thousands of suffering goats, who cannot appeal for 
 themselves, would be received with jeers. Is not the 
 goat a giddy creature ? 
 
 The African native goats do not smell at least, I 
 never smelt them, and I have had close on four hundred at 
 a time, but twenty yards from my sleeping hut. They 
 are very hardy, except when the scab comes along ; and, 
 if they are usually thin, this is due mainly to the fact that 
 they get too little time for feeding when owned by Kaffirs. 
 In the villages, they seldom go out to pasture before about 
 ten a.m., and they are brought back at sundown, which 
 means that they practically lose their first feed, the meal 
 they should have finished before the sun gets hot . If there 
 is a beer drink on, they very often ^do not go out 
 at all, but cry through the day without either food or 
 water. 
 
 In Mashona villages when there is a possibility of 
 visits from leopards or hyaenas, that is in four villages 
 out of five, the goats sleep in the hut with their owners. 
 The ordinary hut is fourteen feet in diameter, and there 
 is always a fire smouldering in the centre. On an average, 
 five people sleep in it, in addition to at least two dogs and 
 a dozen fowls, consequently the conditions are not alto- 
 gether wholesome, especially as the little goat pen is 
 never cleaned out. If I were a Mashona goat, I would 
 almost prefer to risk the local leopard outside. 
 
 When they are not kept in the huts, the goats are tied 
 to posts, a string being merely put round both the animal's 
 
no THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 neck and the post, fairly tightly very tightly, if the 
 kaffir beer has been strong and, as often as not, he 
 cannot lie down at all. 
 
 There was one village in the same valley as Chivamba's, 
 only about two miles from the store, where the goats used 
 to be tied up in this way. The inhabitants were a 
 particularly lazy crowd, and their stock was invariably 
 thin and scabby. I warned them several times, about the 
 scab and the risk from schelm, but they never took any 
 notice. Then a day came when they remembered a 
 little too late. 
 
 Some one in the village was giving an unusually big beer 
 drink in the fields, and the head-man decided that, 
 though the cattle might go to it, the goats had better 
 remain at home, tied to their posts. It was a very 
 enjoyable day, they told me afterwards. Every soul in 
 the village went. Every dog went, only the goats and 
 the fowls were left behind. At sundown, the people 
 returned home, jodelling cheerfully, to scare the evil 
 spirits off the foot-paths ; but the jodelling stopped 
 suddenly when the head of the procession reached the 
 kraal. 
 
 Two lions had spent a happy day also in the deserted 
 village ; and every single one of the unfortunate sheep 
 and goats had been killed, killed out of sheer devilry, 
 of course, for the lions only ate part of the carcases of four 
 of them. 
 
 Naturally, there was trouble. The head-man came to 
 me for sympathy, and I reviled him for encouraging lions 
 to take up their quarters in the valley. Then he called in 
 the witch doctors, who quickly discovered that they were 
 not lions at all, but men who turned themselves into lions 
 and destroyed goats out of sheer spite. After that, they 
 
BUYING CATTLE in 
 
 threw the bones again, and discovered the names of the 
 two men, who were poisoned shortly afterwards. 
 
 We had several cases of witch-lions in the valley, each 
 ending in a murder, and it was partly owing to these 
 that I became prejudiced against witch-doctors. How- 
 ever, after the local practitioner had committed a murder 
 in my own camp, and had done his very best to murder 
 Amyas, I had him shifted out of the way, and I had no 
 more serious trouble. I never knew exactly what hap- 
 pened to him, and I never inquired. The relatives of the 
 murdered man dealt with the case, and the only report 
 they made was that the M'Tagati had gone on a " very 
 long journey." Anyway, he never came back. 
 
 The goat world is very different from the world of cattle. 
 There is little etiquette in it. There is no boss of a 
 flock, no fighting for leadership, very few friendships 
 and no lasting animosities, no settled places in the 'scherm 
 at night. 
 
 There is always a leader, certainly, to head the proces- 
 sion out to the pasture in the morning and back again at 
 night ; but he is not selected by his size or strength. As 
 a rule, he is a young, thin, restless brute, who appoints 
 himself to the position, and by being invariably on the 
 move, even when he should be chewing the cud, has a bad 
 effect on the rest. Once I knew a young ewe constitute 
 herself leader and keep the post for several weeks. 
 
 Fat-tailed sheep are similar to goats in most of their 
 ways, though more lethargic. They are a dreadful nuis- 
 ance to drive on the roads, as they so quickly become foot- 
 sore ; on the other hand, whilst the goats have to be 
 carried through the streams, the sheep will cross boldly. 
 
 As a rule, the buying of a sheep or goat did not take 
 very long. Your store boy turned him over to make sure 
 
H2 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 that he had not got the scab ; then you remarked that 
 he was very thin and small, and offered two-thirds of 
 what you were prepared to give. The owner answered 
 that he was an immense beast, and would grow even larger, 
 and asked twice what he expected. After that, you pro- 
 ceeded to come to terms. 
 
 But the selling of a bull was a very different affair, one 
 to be undertaken only after the witch doctor had thrown 
 the bones and discovered which day would be auspicious. 
 The deal had to be done on that day, or not at all ; it 
 was most unusual for an owner to agree to continue the 
 discussion on the morrow, if terms had not been arranged 
 overnight. 
 
 Then, even, all sorts of formalities had to be observed, 
 conventional lies to be told; for instance, at the outset, 
 the owner seldom admitted that the beast was his. It 
 belonged to a brother who had gone on a journey, of a 
 month's duration, and had left word that the price was to 
 be something wholly ridiculous. 
 
 A great many white men used, not unnaturally perhaps, 
 to lose their tempers over these cattle deals, and then to 
 lose the bargain altogether. They failed to understand 
 that, whilst the buying of a beast was part of the daily 
 routine to them, to the natives the selling of it was 
 probably the most important event of the year. For 
 days afterwards, the price he got, and the manner in 
 which he carried the affair through, would be the main 
 topics of conversation in his village ; consequently, it was 
 only decent, as well as being good policy, to give him 
 plenty of rope, not to try and hurry him. 
 
 Cows were the least trouble to buy. We had a standing 
 price of ten pounds for them, and, as that was also the 
 nominal value amongst the natives themselves, there was 
 
BUYING CATTLE 113 
 
 seldom any real discussion, save as to the " present " 
 which is always given on every deal. As a rule, we gave 
 a hoe and a stretch of limbo on each beast, but this was 
 increased to two hoes if we came to terms quickly. 
 
 Bulls were much more difficult to buy. Though the 
 Kaffir himself sets a far greater value on a cow, he invari- 
 ably asks ten pounds at the start for any bull over a 
 year old ; in fact, one particularly cheeky youth once 
 demanded ten pounds for a six-months old calf. " It 
 was strong enough to pull the wagon," he shouted. 
 
 I looked round for something heavy usually, I only 
 threw quite light things but he saw my purpose, and 
 hurried down the kopje, leaving his calf tied up to a tree. 
 At the foot of the kopje, he ran right into Amous, who 
 already had a score against him. Daniel, who was in 
 pursuit, explained to the Basutu that the Baboon-man 
 had cheeked the chief. 
 
 " I told him how foolish he had been, and he is very 
 sorry, now," the little man remarked to me, a few 
 minutes later ; then he went over and examined the calf. 
 " It has got wise eyes. It will make a trek-ox indeed, 
 by and by," he declared. " But it is very wrong for 
 hill-men who wear no trousers and beat drums all night 
 to have any cattle at all." 
 
 As I had had several impudent youths in recently from 
 the same village as the one who had just fled, I thought it 
 as well to make an example, so I sent out word that no 
 one at all from that place was to come in and trade at the 
 store. The sentence had the desired effect ; there was 
 very little disposition to be cheeky after that. As to the 
 bull-calf, I bought him the following day from one of 
 the Chivamba's own brothers for three pounds ten. 
 
 In the case of an ordinary bull of about two years old, 
 
 H 
 
H4 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 the owner would ask ten pounds, and I would offer five. 
 He would sit for a while, waiting for me to speak again, 
 then he would sigh, take a big pinch of snuff, and retire 
 to the rocks under one of the trees, to hold a whispered 
 conversation with the friends who had accompanied 
 him. 
 
 A quarter of an hour later, he would come back and 
 squat down again. Then I would raise my offer to six 
 pounds. He would mutter that I was " very dear " 
 and lower his price a pound. 
 
 Perhaps it would be a couple of hours later before we 
 got within half-a-sovereign of the price I was prepared 
 to give seven pounds ten. 
 
 His friends there were generally a couple of them 
 would come and squat beside him now. Then I would 
 count out the seven sovereigns, arrange them on a hoe, 
 and put the latter down on the ground, in front of the 
 seller. Usually the temptation was too much for him. 
 The moment I added the half-sovereign to the other gold, 
 he would draw the hoe towards him, and the deal was 
 complete. 
 
 I have often had the discussion over the price of an 
 animal drag out from sunrise till dusk ; but it very seldom 
 happened that we did not arrive at a satisfactory settle- 
 ment in the end. In nine cases out of ten, they knew 
 before they came in exactly how much they were going to 
 get for their animal, and they always went away very 
 well pleased with themselves. 
 
 Before we had been at Chivamba's long, we had what 
 was practically a monopoly of cattle-buying throughout 
 the whole of a huge district. I had a curious and rather 
 flattering proof of this during our second season. 
 
 As might have been expected, our success made other 
 
BUYING CATTLE 115 
 
 men anxious to follow our example, and though no one 
 else tried to get a wagon down the hills, several came on 
 foot, with carriers or pack-donkeys. The local natives 
 told me all about them, adding that they had bought 
 practically nothing, as the people refused to sell. Usually, 
 they avoided our valley, but, at last, one of them did turn 
 up at the store. He was quite a decent fellow, and as I 
 had been alone for some weeks, I was glad to put him up 
 for the night. 
 
 He had had rotten luck, he told me, had bought practi- 
 cally nothing, certainly not nearly enough to pay his 
 expenses; and he glanced enviously at our big herd of 
 over a hundred. On the following morning, a strange 
 native squatted down at the door of the hut, and 
 announced that he had a bull for sale. My guest recog- 
 nized him at once. 
 
 " Why, he's the chap I saw yesterday," he exclaimed. 
 " I tried to buy the bull from him then." 
 
 " Very well/' I answered ; " you can have another try, 
 if you like." 
 
 He was very grateful for the chance, and did his best, 
 offering as much as ten pounds ; but the owner shook his 
 head. No, he wouldn't take the money. 
 
 Ten minutes later, he had sold the same animal to me 
 for eight pounds ten. He knew who I was, and my money 
 was good money, it brought you luck, he explained after- 
 wards to Daniel. 
 
 After that I constantly came across the same idea. 
 They knew me, and I suppose they did not feel shy with 
 me. I was a great chief, and the others who came down 
 were not chiefs at least, as far as the people knew. 
 They certainly trusted me, to a degree which was little 
 short of amazing, when one remembers the suspicious 
 
n6 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 nature of the savage. I was able to do a thing which I 
 never heard of another white man being able to do buy 
 cattle on credit from the Mashona. 
 
 It'came about in this way. During the War, there was 
 a great scarcity ot gold coin, and the banks in Bulawayo 
 charged even their own customers ten per cent, premium 
 for it, a horrible extortion. All cattle had to be paid 
 for in gold, as the money was wanted primarily for Hut 
 Tax, and, by one of its arbitrary, iniquitous regulations, 
 the Chartered Company would not take paper money or 
 silver from natives, although bank notes were legal tender. 
 Consequently, I needed a good deal of gold, and, not only 
 did I object to the ten per cent, premium, but there was 
 also the expense and risk of having it sent from Bulawayo. 
 It had to come by coach or mule cart to Fort Victoria, 
 entirely at my risk, and I had to send in a runner to fetch 
 it from there. 
 
 In the course of a month, I usually took a good deal of 
 gold for cash sales, but I could never be sure of this ; 
 then there came a time when I ran clean out, and also had 
 quite a rush of cattle for sale. 
 
 The only thing to do was to try and explain matters 
 to the owners of the beasts. I don't suppose for one 
 moment they realized that it was a nuisance to me to 
 send so far for coin, but they evidently came to the con- 
 clusion that my excuse was a valid one, for they suggested 
 at once that I should buy the cattle there and then, and 
 pay for them when the money arrived. 
 
 At first, I could hardly believe they meant it, but they 
 were entirely in earnest. We used to fix the prices ; 
 then I would give them a note which, of course, they 
 could not read saying how much I owed them, and 
 they would depart perfectly content, to return usually 
 
 
BUYING CATTLE 117 
 
 in a month's time for payment. I did this dozens of times, 
 and never once did it lead to a dispute of any kind. It 
 was, really, one of the greatest compliments a native could 
 have paid to a white man. 
 
ODD JOURNEYS 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 ODD JOURNEYS 
 
 THE Scotch cart played a very small part during the 
 journey from Bulawayo to Chivamba's ; in fact, 
 at times, it was rather a nuisance, whilst its team of 
 depressed-looking donkeys was hardly a credit to us. 
 However, after we had reached our journey's end, the 
 cart proved most valuable. 
 
 The donkeys were not required any more ; they had 
 done their work, so far as we were concerned, and, at the 
 end of the oeason, they were to go back to Bulawayo ; but 
 one night, one of them the most lazy and objectionable, 
 luckily happened to stay out too late, and a lion found 
 him. What we found the next day was a hindquarter. 
 We put strychnine in the remains, and set a trap gun over 
 it, greatly to the amusement of the local heathen, who 
 explained that it was one of their rotten witch-lions again, 
 and that, in all probability, the real culprit was standing 
 there, watching, perhaps even helping us. They may 
 have been right. At any rate, the lion kept clear of both 
 trap and poison. 
 
 As a rule, we inspanned six bullocks in the cart, a team 
 capable of pulling it everywhere and over everything. 
 The maximum load was under a thousand pounds, and 
 the cart itself was very light. 
 
 121 
 
122 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 I had many a pleasant trip in it. Of course, it was not 
 altogether a comfortable thing to ride in, and, for the 
 greater part of the trek, one walked beside it, but to set 
 against this was the knowledge that it would not stick, 
 and that it was not likely to smash up, even on those 
 awful hills. 
 
 About six weeks after we opened the store at Chivamba's, 
 I took the Scotch cart into Victoria to fetch some stuff 
 we needed urgently. The journey which had taken over 
 four weeks when we came down with the loaded wagon, 
 we did now in six and a half days. It was very interesting 
 going over the "ground again, especially over that part 
 where I had been so ill. It came back to me vaguely, 
 like fragments of a dream. 
 
 I had six oxen, with Amous as driver and a Chivam- 
 ba piccanin as voorloeper, and we never had a moment's 
 trouble, either going or returning. All along the road, 
 the local savages welcomed us cordially, apparently 
 having forgotten entirely their quarrels with us over the 
 alleged damage to their fields. They were very anxious 
 to show us where the Liechtenstein Hartebeeste were 
 running, and to put us on the best places for guinea-fowl. 
 Also, they were very ready to sell meal and sweet potatoes 
 now, and clamoured for all sorts of trading goods, which, 
 of course, we had not got with us. 
 
 In one place, between the second and third lines of 
 kopjes, the track led for about five miles across open, 
 or fairly open, grassy flats. We inspanned rather 
 late I think the cattle had been taken to the wrong 
 pasture and we were anxious to push on, right to the 
 foot of the second range. As it grew dark, the piccanin 
 had a good deal of trouble in keeping the spoor we had 
 made in coming down with the wagon and cart. Several 
 
ODD JOURNEYS 123 
 
 times, he got off it altogether the ground had been hard 
 and the wheels had sunk in very little and there was 
 some difficulty in picking it up again. At last, Amous 
 grew tired of it. 
 
 " Throw the leading reim on the front oxen's horns/' he 
 shouted; " Bandom will follow the spoor." 
 
 He was quite right. Bandom, a short, sturdy, black 
 and white bullock, one of the best front oxen I ever knew, 
 put his nose close to the ground, and for two hours he 
 followed that spoor perfectly. After a while, it was too 
 dark for us to see it, but Bandom kept it all the time. 
 Really, when one remembered that six months before he 
 had been a wild young bull, who had never even seen a 
 wagon, it was little short of marvellous. 
 
 The second range of kopjes was a great place for baboons. 
 They were their, literally, in thousands. On one immense 
 bald hill, very similar to the Rock of Gibraltar in shape, 
 which we named Mount Peter, after our tame goat it is 
 Mount Peter now, on all the official maps the Mashonas' 
 cousins used to sit in rows, and bark incessantly at us as 
 we went by. 
 
 I never shot at a baboon, and I have the greatest 
 contempt for those who do so. I know that they are 
 destructive at times, and always utterly useless, but so is a 
 large proportion of the enlightened electors of England, 
 and the killing of a baboon will no more save the crops, 
 than the hanging of a Little Englander will preserve 
 the Empire. To accomplish any good, the whole of the 
 breeds must be exterminated an impossible proposition, 
 unfortunately. 
 
 The casual shooting of baboons is mere coarse cruelty. 
 You very seldom found the Home-born man guilty of it, 
 because, in most cases, he had been to a Public School, 
 
124 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 and had learnt what are the things which a fellow can't 
 do ; but the Colonials were very fond of the practice. 
 
 A baboon is so easy to shoot when he is above you on a 
 kopje. He does not run away, being just as brave as you 
 are, and he cannot possibly have his revenge on you. It 
 is " safe sport." When you hit him, he screams like a 
 child, and the others crowd round him and try to staunch 
 the wound. It is really most amusing to those who 
 like that sort of thing. You have the whole difference 
 between the Englishman and the Afrikander there the 
 former goes out and shoots the buck he wants for food, 
 taking the risks of the veld, and the latter shoots baboons 
 from the wagon and does not trouble to finish them off. 
 
 During my seven years in Rhodesia, nine out of the ten 
 of the buck I saw brought into the camp were shot by 
 Home-born men, though the Colonials were veritable 
 William Tells when it came to potting bottles at fifty yards 
 range, whilst the things they had accomplished in the 
 Past were literally marvellous. 
 
 On the way back to Chivamba's, it struck me that, by 
 keeping further to the north, we ought to be able to get a 
 better way through the last range of hills, and, as soon as 
 we reached the store, I sent for the old headman and asked 
 him about it. 
 
 He shook his head. Wagons were things of which he 
 knew nothing, he said ; there had been no wagons and 
 no white men in his days ; also, he had never been so far 
 from home in that direction ; then he went on to tell us 
 of what had happened about sixty years before, when 
 the Matabele first appeared in the district. That was 
 Chivamba's way ; he lived such an unreasonable distance 
 back in the Past. 
 
 Amous, who was listening, grunted. " The head-baboon 
 
ODD JOURNEYS 125 
 
 is a fool indeed, Baas. Why waste words on him ? 
 These folks never go further than the kraal next to their 
 own. It would be better for me to go to look for that 
 road. Then, when I have found it, we will beat all these 
 people for lying and saying there was no way." 
 
 Old Chivamba departed, mumbling rude things about 
 the Basutu race ; whilst two or three of his old men, who 
 had been listening, declared that there was nothing but 
 very rugged hills in the direction I pointed out. But that 
 evening, one of Chivamba's nephews, a great lanky crea- 
 ture named Bungu, a name which, somehow, suited him 
 admirably, squatted down outside the hut, and announced 
 that he could show us a road if we would pay him two 
 pounds. 
 
 We offered him a pound, to be paid if the road proved 
 satisfactory, and he accepted promptly. Really, he 
 earned the money easily, for it was merely a question 
 of guiding us along a certain main foot-path, which 
 led us, by very easy stages, up into the open country 
 where the Lichtenstein Hartebeeste were, entirely avoid- 
 ing that abominable place where we slid down the hill- 
 side. 
 
 I was so grateful for the discovery that I gave Bungu 
 two pounds, rather to the disgust of Amous, who held the 
 theory that Mashonas should work for nothing, and be 
 sjamboked if they did not agree to the idea. The value 
 of that road to us was tremendous. It reduced the dan- 
 gers of the journey to Victoria by fully one-half, besides 
 cutting off some eight miles of the distance. Really, it 
 was a wonderful pass, almost a freak of Nature. In 
 places it narrowed down to a bare twenty yards ; but, 
 throughout its whole length of about five miles, it needed 
 practically no work doing to it, beyond a little clearing. 
 
126 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 Yet no one would ever have expected to find a road 
 through that stretch of broken country. 
 
 It was just about that time, that two of the store- 
 keepers in Fort Victoria, being anxious to start a rival 
 trading station in our district an idea they would have 
 jeered at a couple of months previously sent a Dutchman 
 down to report on the road. There was no spoor on our 
 new track then, and naturally, he struck the old one. 
 He got as far as the place where we went down the kopje, 
 and then he turned back. The report he made in Victoria 
 effectually prevented any one from trying to follow in our 
 tracks. I need hardly say that we kept the news of 
 Bungu's road strictly to ourselves, and left the township 
 to imagine that we were still risking our spans on that 
 awful original spoor. 
 
 During the three years we were trading in South-Eastern 
 Mashonaland, we cut a good many hundred miles of road 
 in South Africa a road is anything along which a wagon 
 has once passed. We ran three trading stations after 
 the first season and were about to start a fourth we had 
 taken out a licence for it and had cut part of the road 
 when the crash came and we lost everything. 
 
 One of the stations was to the north-east of Chivamba's, 
 almost due east from Victoria. It was Malcolm's idea to 
 start it. He reckoned we could trade an immense amount 
 of grain there, and in that he was right ; but what he did 
 not take into consideration was the appalling nature of the 
 road up which the grain had to be ridden. I, myself, 
 never saw the place at all until it was too late, or I should 
 never have consented to the proposal. 
 
 The next store was a little one for cash trade only, down 
 the Lundi River, about sixty miles beyond Chivamba's, 
 on the top of an immense flat-topped kopje called the 
 
ODD JOURNEYS 127 
 
 M'Bendese. As a rule, we knew this camp as " Thomas/' 
 after the village, which was about half a mile away. 
 
 The fourth store was to have been at M'Khati, a very 
 large kraal, actually on the Anglo-Portuguese border, in the 
 fork of the Lundi and Sabi Rivers, a wonderfully beauti- 
 ful spot, more like an immense English park than anything 
 else, but wonderfully unhealthy too. Had the cattle 
 disease not broken out, and paralyzed our business, we 
 should probably have made the M'Khati store pay ex- 
 tremely well. It would have been the only trading 
 station in a country about twice the area of England, 
 inhabited by natives of a very good type, many of whom 
 had been on the Transvaal mines, where they had earned 
 high wages. 
 
 As soon as we saw that the experiment at Chivamba's 
 was going to be a success, we sent Home for our youngest 
 brother, Amyas. He had been for some little time on a 
 farm in Canada, but had quickly found that there was 
 little profit in the game, at least for him. He was seven- 
 teen years of age when he arrived in Africa, but old for 
 his age, sane, cool, and enormously strong. 
 
 In consequence of the War, there was a good deal of 
 uncertainty as to the date of Amyas' arrival ; but he 
 wired from somewhere en route Salisbury, I think 
 and a runner brought the message down to Chivamba's. 
 At once, I had the cart inspanned, with six of our 
 best oxen, and went up to fetch him, doing the journey 
 in five and a half days. It was horribly cold on the high 
 veld, colder than I had ever known it before, and I was 
 distinctly short of clothes the clothes of civilization, 
 that is. I had plenty of warm underclothes, but my 
 flannel shirts, which had the sleeves cut off at the elbows, 
 had long since had all the colour washed out of them, my 
 
128 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 dungaree trousers were stained, and frayed at the bottoms, 
 from tramping through wet grass ; and I did not own a 
 jacket, only a rather ragged, brown sweater, and a fawn- 
 coloured Newmarket coat. My hat had been a good one 
 once, but a whole wet season had not improved it. 
 
 The night before reaching the township I camped at 
 the Nine Mile Water, on a stretch of burnt veld. 
 _J[ got up just before three, and, as it was freezing hard, 
 I did not wash, much less shave ; consequently, the black 
 dust remained amongst the stubble on my chin. 
 
 When I turned up at the Thatched House about eight 
 o'clock, I did not look an entirely prepossessing figure, 
 especially as, in addition to the preventible disadvantages, 
 I was tall, very thin, and a dull yellow from constant 
 fever. 
 
 Even now, I remember Amy as' horror. He was always 
 most particular about his dress. He was wearing a 
 collar,] a tie, r and a very well-cut suit. The contrast 
 between us was weird. At first, he could not get over 
 it, but a couple of days later, when he, himself, had 
 experienced what it means to be on the burnt veld on a 
 cold night, he began to understand. He had no wish to 
 shave before starting on an early morning trek. 
 
 Amyas grasped the principles of transport work more 
 quickly than any one else I ever knew. Although he 
 was raw to Africa, within six months he was fit to take 
 charge of a big train of wagons, to see to repairs, super- 
 vise the training of young cattle, make new roads if 
 necessary, and, most important of all, keep a tight grip 
 on drivers, who, as a class, are about the worst of all 
 natives save, of course, mission-boys. 
 
 Soon after Amyas' arrival at Chivamba's, we decided 
 that Malcolm should take the wagon into Victoria, and 
 
ODD JOURNEYS izg 
 
 endeavour to buy some more trading stuff. It proved 
 to be a most disastrous trip. We had any amount of 
 trained cattle then Amous had not been idle with the 
 new beasts and it was a very fine span of eighteen which 
 Malcolm and Amyas took that time. All the beasts were 
 in good condition, although it was mid-winter, and 
 Amous was certain that he would have no trouble on the 
 road. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, instead of going straight in by 
 the track we knew we had improved it a little each 
 time we covered it with the Scotch cart Malcolm was 
 persuaded to cut across to a trading station to the north, 
 some fifteen miles out of his way, and load up some grain 
 for Victoria. The rates he was getting were far too low 
 and, even had the road been excellent, it would have been 
 barely worth while. We were in a great hurry for stuff 
 down at Chivamba's, the wet season was not so very far 
 off, and every day was of importance. Moreover, though 
 this was a minor point, I suppose, I had been left prac- 
 tically without white man's food, all I possessed being 
 some flour. 
 
 Probably, that trip in with the grain was the worst 
 Amous ever made. The load was too heavy, the road 
 something appalling, a steady grind upwards, with huge 
 rocks, loose sand, and ugly little dongas all the way. 
 The cattle simply could not do it. Time after time, it was 
 necessary to off-load. Malcolm had several of our own 
 savages from Chivamba's district with them, but these all 
 ran away ; and he was unable to get any local help. 
 Amous told me afterwards that, had it not been for 
 Amyas' help, he would never have got the wagon through 
 at all. 
 
 They must have been about three weeks doing twenty 
 
 I 
 
130 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 miles, for they were gone from the store forty days in all, 
 just about three times as long as it would have taken 
 with the Scotch cart. 
 
 Judging from what I heard afterwards, they had a 
 bad time ; but I think I had a worse one. The uncer- 
 tainty told on me so horribly. I had no word from them, 
 no messenger of any sort, and I could not conceive what 
 they could be doing, where they could have got to. 
 
 I was frightfully short of everything, and I had just 
 been through a nasty dose of fever, which had left me 
 very weak and low-spirited. I had no tea or coffee, 
 no sugar, nothing of that kind ; but I think that what I 
 longed for most was some candles. As I grew more 
 anxious, so I became sleepless, and to lie awake the whole 
 night, ten hours of it, in the darkness, is too horrible for 
 words. Trade was very slow, as the Mashona were wait- 
 ing to see what the wagon would bring down, so I had no 
 occupation of any kind, and nothing whatsoever to read. 
 All my own boys had gone with the wagon, and I had only 
 savages who could barely understand me. 
 
 Really, it is not surprising that, when, at last, the 
 wagon did appear, I was almost insane. Malcolm said 
 he had not been able to get a messenger to bring me 
 letters and provisions. Had he delayed a day or two 
 longer, he would probably have found I had ceased to 
 want either news or food. 
 
 Unfortunately, both Malcolm and Amyas were im- 
 pressed with the low price at which grain could be bought 
 at the store where they had loaded that grain, and they 
 were also certain that, with a little dynamite and a good 
 gang of boys, the road might be made quite decent. 
 They were very anxious to start grain trading there the 
 following season the owner had just died and the place 
 
ODD JOURNEYS 131 
 
 was being abandoned and, naturally enough, I gave in. 
 They ought to have been able to judge better than I, who 
 had never been there, could do. 
 
 We duly started the station next year, buying about 
 a couple of hundred pounds worth of goods especially 
 for it. The experiment ended in utter failure. Certainly, 
 we bought grain at a ridiculously low rate, but the road 
 was impossible, even after we had spent a good deal on 
 it. Instead of riding other people's stuff at high rates, 
 earning a clear profit of a pound a day each, our three 
 wagons were getting knocked to pieces, and our cattle 
 were getting hopelessly out of condition, riding less than 
 half loads of our own wretched grain. 
 
 It was not long before Amyas, who was in charge there 
 Malcolrn had left us then decided to stop buying 
 grain. He got rid of most of the grain he had there, 
 sent the wagons up, in charge of Amous, to ride on proper 
 roads, then came down to Chivamba's, tired out and 
 disgusted, leaving a young Mashona named Jim in charge, 
 to sell out the rest of the trading stuff for cash. 
 
 Luck seemed to be against us ah 1 through over that 
 venture. Jim had been with us for some time, and we 
 had never had anything against him. So far as we knew, 
 he was an ordinary kraal native, and the vast majority of 
 these are honest ; consequently, it came as a great sur- 
 prise when we learned that he had fled, and that the store 
 was absolutely empty. He had stolen goods that had 
 actually cost us sixty-five pounds. 
 
 Then, to our great disgust, we found out how we had 
 been hoodwinked. The innocent Jim was really an 
 educated Kaffir, a Christian, from the mission station at 
 Zimbabwe. We traced him, without much trouble, but, 
 though we tried to get the Native Commissioner to move 
 
132 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 in the matter, all we received in the end was one very 
 small bull calf worth, at the outside, four pounds. To- 
 day, if his own people have not put an end to him for 
 causing trouble in the village, Jim is probably a fully 
 fledged " Reverend " of some schismatic body. 
 
 The furthest east we ever took the wagon was down to 
 our store on the M'Bendese kopje. In itself, the journey 
 was not a difficult one, once the bush had been cleared. 
 Some eight miles beyond Chivamba's, you got out of the 
 kopje country altogether, into the low bush veld, which is 
 very different from the other bush veld on the border of 
 the great central plateau. That is fairly open, cheerful, 
 with white sandy soil as a rule, and a considerable variety 
 of trees ; the low bush veld is simply deadly in its mono- 
 tony. Practically the only tree you find in it is the 
 mopani, and, though the soil is red sand and the leaves 
 a rather bright green, the general impression you get is 
 that everything is a horrible, dull grey. 
 
 The kraals are in keeping with the scenery, and the 
 natives, who are mainly the M'Hlengwi, a very low race, 
 suit their surroundings admirably. Most of the villages 
 are very small, ten or a dozen huts, though I know some 
 which have, or used to have, only three. The huts are 
 even more dilapidated than those of the Mashona, and 
 that is saying a very great deal. Apparently, they are 
 never repaired in any way whatsoever, whilst the clearings 
 in which they stand are most certainly never cleaned. 
 The rubbish is just thrown down and left, to rot and 
 fester, or to powder up, according to the season. The 
 water holes are generally a mile or so away, more some- 
 times I know a village in the Portuguese Territory which 
 is ten miles from water and the crops seem invariably 
 to fail. The lions make the keeping of cattle impossible, 
 
ODD JOURNEYS 133 
 
 and, though the goats are larger and fatter than those of 
 the kopje country, owing to the salt nature of the grass, 
 there are very few of them. 
 
 Lions are the curse of existence down in that low bush. 
 Everything is regulated more or less with an eye to them. 
 Even though you may not realize it, the thought of them 
 is always at the back of your mind when you are making 
 any plans. In one village I knew well it was about 
 eight miles from Chivamba's the huts were all built 
 with double walls, a space of about two feet between 
 them, the entrance to the inner one being diametrically 
 opposite the outer one. You shut both entrances at night, 
 and then you were fairly safe. I never heard of a lion 
 breaking into a hut of that kind, though I knew of 
 several cases of very old lions, their sense of caution 
 overmastered by their hunger, forcing their way into 
 ordinary huts, and seizing women. 
 
 In my time, two of the villages down the Lundi were 
 abandoned altogether, because the schelm made life im- 
 possible. From one of them, the lions took sixteen people 
 in six weeks. And in the bush veld, when there is so 
 much clearing to be done before any crops can be raised, 
 it is a very serious matter to start life afresh in a new 
 place. Curiously enough, none of the M'Hlengwi ever 
 seemed to think of fencing their villages. They were too 
 utterly apathetic and depressed to undertake any task 
 which was not absolutely necessary to provide food. Their 
 fatalism was almost akin to that of the Hindu, who 
 takes the evils of life lying down, as things ordained 
 of the gods. 
 
 It was always a very anxious time when we took any of 
 our trek-oxen down the Lundi, though, as it turned out, 
 we never lost a single beast there from lions. 
 
134 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 I remember well one very curious experience Amyas had 
 some ten miles east of Chivamba's on the M'Bendese 
 track. He had shot a couple of Sable Antelope in the 
 morning, and had had the meat cut up for biltong. When 
 he outspanned at night, he stretched reims underneath 
 the red span's wagon, put the meat on them to dry, then 
 turned in under the other wagon, a few feet away. About 
 midnight, he woke up suddenly. Something was moving, 
 pulling down the biltong ; then came a steady noise of 
 chewing. It was undoubtedly a schelm a hyaena, in all 
 probability. 
 
 There was no question of taking aim in the darkness, 
 and, unfortunately, Amyas only had a carbine beside him, 
 not, as was usually the case, a shot gun. He merely picked 
 up the weapon, and, without even putting it to his shoul- 
 der, let drive. A fierce growling told him that the 
 visitor was a leopard. For a moment, Amyas was scared 
 a wounded leopard in the dark is an ugly proposition ; 
 then, to his intense relief, the brute bounded away. 
 
 In the morning, they found a pool of blood, and a 
 fragment of white bone ; but there was no question of 
 following up the blood spoor. The animal had got in 
 amongst the rocks, and only a lunatic would have taken 
 the risk of going after him there. 
 
 That little Scotch cart of ours was very handy for 
 shooting purposes. It would carry all the kit and stores 
 for quite a long expedition ; with a small bucksail over 
 it, we could easily rig up a shelter in case of rain ; whilst 
 we could bring back all our skins, horns, and biltong 
 without having to employ carriers. We almost always 
 inspanned six of the smaller cattle in it. Four would 
 have been ample under ordinary conditions, but the 
 extra pair, and extra length of chain, were invaluable in 
 
ODD JOURNEYS 135 
 
 some of the steep little dongas. I have spent many a 
 happy evening beside that cart the cattle near by in a 
 tiny lion-proof scherm of thorn scrub ; the biltong, and, 
 perhaps, several huge quarters of meat as well, hanging 
 up in the trees, out of reach of hyaenas and leopards ; the 
 natives a score or more usually attached themselves 
 to us on those occasions toasting choice tit-bits in the 
 ashes, whilst waiting for the two great pots of porridge 
 and intestines to boil, our own cook-boy grilling steaks and 
 keeping a watchful eye on the saucepan of guinea-fowl- 
 and-tomato soup ; and we ourselves, stretched out in our 
 blankets, smoking peacefully, with the consciousness that 
 we had not shot so badly. Those were the times when the 
 veld seemed good, when you forgot the mud-holes and the 
 floods, the dysentery and the fever, the drivers who got 
 drunk, and slunk off in the night taking as many of your 
 goods as they could carry with them, and leaving you 
 in the lurch, perhaps a hundred miles from anywhere ; 
 the piccanins who lost the cattle, the cook-boys who 
 spoilt all the food, the wheel which crumpled up at the 
 critical moment, because the blacksmith in Bulawayo 
 had scamped his work, and the dusselboom which smashed 
 on the high veld when there was not a tree suitable for a 
 fresh one within half a day's tramp. You forgot all these, 
 forgot, too, the rain and the frost, and the smoke of the 
 cow-dung fires. You thought only of the marvellously 
 clear, starlit sky above you, the apparent peace of the 
 virgin bush around, the splendid day's sport you had 
 had, and the good meal you were going to have. 
 
 What wonder that sometimes since, when I have been 
 a whole day in London without food, without the means 
 of buying food, that I should have looked back a little 
 regretfully ? 
 
OUR CATTLE 
 
CHAPTER X 
 OUR CATTLE 
 
 WE never kept any record of the number of cattle 
 which actually passed through our hands in 
 the three years we were buying, but I should imagine it 
 ran to nearly four hundred and fifty. To many people, 
 the figure may not seem a large one, yet the net profit 
 on that number was at least three thousand pounds or 
 would have been, had the African Coast Fever not broken 
 out when it did, and wiped out ninety-seven per cent, of 
 the cattle owned by white men. 
 
 With the exception of one cow, which we exchanged 
 for an ox, we kept all our original cattle, those we bought 
 when we went on the shooting trip from the " Geelong," 
 till the end. 
 
 At first, I was inclined to think I had made a bad 
 bargain over the cow I got a big Colonial ox called 
 Witkop for her, a huge framework of a beast but, in 
 the end, thanks to Amyas' astuteness, we came out very 
 well over it. \ 
 
 A good many Dutchmen of the poorer type inspan 
 and work breeding cows. The practice is as senseless 
 as it is cruel. A breeding cow has comparatively little 
 strength ; she loses condition very quickly, and, natur- 
 ally, by working her, the quality of the calves she throws is 
 
 139 
 
140 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 spoilt. What we used to call a barren cow I suppose that , 
 technically, she is a heifer still, even when six years old 
 is a different matter. She will usually work splendidly, 
 and keep her condition better than an ox, but she is al- 
 most certain to become thoroughly vicious in the yoke, 
 and, as often as not, when you have had a great deal of 
 trouble over breaking her in, she will get in calf. 
 
 Once only did we train a barren cow. She was a splen- 
 did beast, jet black, perfectly shaped and a perfect 
 she-devil. She was the only one of our trek-cattle of 
 which I was afraid. Out of the yoke, she was quiet 
 enough, but, once she had been inspanned, she began 
 to look for some one to hurt, and, as she had long, sharp 
 horns, she could give you a nasty prod. She pulled in 
 the first pair, the " next-after," just in front of Eiffel, who 
 detested her heartily. Really, I was by no means sorry 
 when Amous announced that she was in calf. I exchanged 
 her promptly for a large black bull and a bull calf. 
 
 We seldom kept breeding cows very long. There was 
 a ready market for the ordinary Mashona cow at eighteen 
 pounds, whilst it was always possible to exchange them 
 for a bull larger than themselves. It was the same with 
 heifers ; you could invariably get rid of them on most 
 favourable terms, in fact, the cheapest way to secure a 
 big bull was to buy a young heifer. 
 
 One particular heifer I shall never forget. She was a 
 fine creature, about two years old, with very wild eyes. 
 It needed half a dozen of her companions from the village 
 scherm as company before she would agree to come to 
 Chivamba's, and when the deal was complete we gave 
 nine pounds for her she would not be separated from 
 the others. Consequently, we told the owner to stay 
 overnight, and let her get used to our herd, an instruc- 
 
OUR CATTLE 141 
 
 tion he was ready enough to obey, for there was plenty 
 of meal, and beans and monkey nuts, and occasionally 
 biltong as well, for the boys in our camps. 
 
 At sunrise, the strange cattle were cut out they 
 had spent the night fighting ours the heifer was sent 
 off with the herd, and the visitors departed. As our 
 own lot filed down towards the vlei, Amous yelled final 
 instructions to the herd-boys to " boss up the black- 
 heifer- which-runs-a way," accompanying the order with 
 some pointed references to his sjambok. 
 
 Two hours later, a piccanin hurried in, and after a 
 terrified glance at Amous, squatted down and informed 
 me that the heifer-which-runs-away had departed home- 
 wards at a gallop. 
 
 " We threw stones and knobsticks, chief " he added 
 tearfully. " But it was no use. The spirits of her 
 ancestors would not agree to her staying. An evil beast 
 indeed, chief. We could not stop her." Then, once 
 more, he looked at Amous. 
 
 As a matter of fact, although the Basutu talked a great 
 deal about the dreadful things he was going to do to the 
 youngsters with his sjambok, he was really extremely 
 kind to them. Even his lectures on cattle and their 
 ways, homilies which were prolonged to unreasonable 
 hours of the night, were meant to benefit his yawning 
 and unwilling hearers. Consequently, on this occa- 
 sion, the herd-boy had nothing to fear, even when I was 
 not present. At the worst, he would be told, not for the 
 first time probably, that he was the son of a baboon 
 who had lost his tail and had contracted uncleanly habits 
 in consequence. 
 
 "Shall I take two of the old cattle and fetch her, 
 Baas ? " he asked, then turned to the piccanin. " Ho, 
 
142 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 very little child with a dirty body, go and fetch Fransman 
 and Blom. You know them ? Fransman is black, with 
 very little grey marks on his back, and wise eyes. He is 
 the friend of Peter, the chief's tame goat. And Blom is 
 the red and white ox, always very fat. See that you 
 bring the right ones, or my sjambok will make you want 
 never to sit down again. ' Have you not lost the chief's new 
 heifer ? " 
 
 Whilst the two oxen they belonged to the original 
 span, and were amongst the most staid animals we had 
 were being fetched, he picked out half a dozen of the 
 best reims, borrowed the shot gun and some cartridges, 
 and ordered Bungu, the Path-finder, who, as usual, was 
 sitting on the rocks outside the store, to get ready to 
 accompany him. 
 
 It was ten o'clock when they had left, and close on 
 sunset when they returned in triumph. Bungu stalked 
 ahead, with two mangy dogs at his heels, two futile little 
 assegais in his hand ; then came the piccanin, carrying 
 half a dozen freshly killed guinea fowl ; behind him 
 were the cattle, Blom and Fransman, with the runaway 
 heifer between them, lashed horn to horn with Fransman, 
 who appeared to be taking not the slightest notice of 
 her, though, when she jumped about too much, Blom 
 gave her a warning dig in the ribs. Amous brought up 
 the rear. 
 
 Without being told, Fransman solemnly walked the 
 captive into the scherm, waited whilst Amous lashed a 
 length of heavy trek chain on to her neck, then, as soon 
 as he was released, went out to see if he could get any- 
 thing to eat before it was time to be shut up for the night, 
 doing everything with an infinite gravity, as though he 
 knew he had been selected especially for the job, and 
 
OUR CATTLE 143 
 
 was anxious to prove himself worthy of the trust Amous 
 had placed in him. 
 
 The moment the scherm was unbarred in the morning, 
 the heifer made a bolt in the direction of her old home ; 
 but, before she had gone the length of the mealie field, 
 the weight of the length of chain had brought her up. 
 She stopped, angry and winded, pawed the ground once or 
 twice, then gave in with surprising meekness, and allowed 
 the piccanins to drive her off to the vlei. She was beaten. 
 A week later, when the chain was taken off her, she 
 made no attempt to escape. 
 
 After that, she became merely one of a herd of over a 
 hundred, and we hardly noticed her, until some four 
 months later, when she drew attention to herself, in a 
 rather sensational manner. 
 
 We had left Mashonaland for the summer, to escape 
 the wet season there, and, owing to the grass on the main 
 Bulawayo road being so bad, too bad for our young, low- 
 veld cattle, we had taken a little-used road, which had 
 brought us out near the Geelong mine. We had made 
 our midday outspan close to the Umsingwane River, and 
 intended camping at M'Gwala's kraal, where I had spent 
 my first night as a transport-rider ; but when the cattle 
 were brought up for inspanning, we found that they were 
 three short. 
 
 It was a bad stretch of veld for lions ; the bush was 
 fairly thick ; and there remained only two hours of day- 
 light. Consequently, every available boy was sent out 
 in search of the missing animals. Half an hour later, 
 to our intense surprise, one of the piccanins returned, 
 staggering under the weight of a newly-born black calf. 
 The latter was very cold, and shivering violently. He had 
 evidently come into the world a few days too soon, and, 
 
144 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 at first, we had no hope of saving him. Still, we wrapped 
 him up in blankets, forced some warm milk down his 
 throat, and, before long, he revived. But we were still 
 completely in the dark as to his parentage, not having 
 expected any such addition to the herd. It was sundown 
 before we were certain. Then Amous himself returned 
 with the three missing beasts ; they were Blom, a young 
 red bull, and the heifer-which-ran-away. She was 
 the mother, and she had run away from her own calf ! 
 We unwrapped the little fellow, and tried to get her to 
 take charge of it ; but though Blom came up and nosed it 
 in his usual friendly way, the mother never even looked 
 at it, but strolled off to rejoin the herd. She never came 
 near it again, and, in a few days, she was to all outward 
 appearance just as she had been before. But, at the very 
 first opportunity, I exchanged her for a bull with one of 
 the Matabele headmen. 
 
 As for the calf, every one prophesied he would die 
 at once ; in fact, both the natives and the Afrikanders 
 seemed to think there was something almost impious 
 in our trying to keep him alive ; moreover, we had 
 practically no fresh milk. But Amyas took him in hand, 
 used condensed milk when he could get nothing better, 
 and, three weeks later, Michael, as he was christened, 
 was strong and healthy as any ordinary calf ; in fact, 
 whenever he saw an enamelled basin, he would dash at it, 
 imagining it contained milk. 
 
 Of all our cattle, my favourite was Biffel, the left hind- 
 bullock of the black span, the chieftain of the whole 
 herd. Not that I did not love the others, too, but, in 
 some subtle way, Biffel was different. He was the biggest 
 of those we bought during our first trip to the East, and 
 though we bought others almost as big Appel, Basket, 
 
OUR CATTLE 145 
 
 Scotchman, and Dudmaaker none of them quite came 
 up to him. All true Mashona cattle and all really 
 useful trek-cattle for that matter are short in the legs, 
 and long in the body, but Eiffel had both these charac- 
 teristics in an unusual degree ; in fact, many people 
 might have called him ugly on account of them ; but he 
 had a beautiful head, short, rather flat horns, and the 
 kindest, wisest of eyes. He was very fond of strolling 
 up in leisurely style to investigate strangers, with his 
 head down, and, on the mining camps, men who did not 
 understand cattle often drew back hastily, but, really, 
 his was only friendly curiosity. If you went up to him, he 
 would stand whilst you scratched his ears, or put your 
 arm round his great neck. 
 
 I believe Amous loved Biffel better than anything else 
 on earth. After the little man had been with me a year, 
 I suddenly discovered that he had a wife in Bulawayo. 
 We were outspanned at the Racecourse, and one day a 
 pleasant-looking young Basutu woman came to fetch 
 some things he wanted washed. After she had departed, 
 he remarked casually to me that she was his wife, and 
 that they had been married some years. Naturally, 
 I was surprised. He had never even hinted at such a 
 thing before, and I knew he could have sent her no money 
 whilst he was in Mashonaland, because, at his request, 
 I had kept all his money in my own cash-box. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders when I asked him about 
 it. There had been so many other important things to 
 attend to, he explained, cattle to train, camps to build, 
 reims and whips to make, all our affairs to think of. 
 He was very fond of her, I believe, and she was, like most 
 married native women, quite above suspicion ; but 
 she came long after Biffel in his estimation. I often 
 
 K 
 
146 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 wondered whether he ever spoke to her as I have heard him 
 speak to Eiffel, when something had disturbed the great 
 black bull during the night. 
 
 A touch from Amous' hand would always quiet Eiffel. 
 There was the most perfect sympathy between them. 
 If Amous went out to the herd to see that they were on 
 the right grass, his favourite would always lumber up to 
 him, sniff at him for a moment, just to make sure that he 
 was all right, then stroll back to his mates. 
 
 One little incident I can still remember as vividly as 
 though it had happened yesterday. We reached a 
 certain river just at dark, after a very long trek. There 
 had been tremendous rains higher up country that day 
 we had seen the black clouds break, and knew what that 
 meant and unless we got across the drift that night, we 
 might be held up for weeks. 
 
 Amous halted his cattle at the top of the drift, and 
 he and Amyas went into the water. It was waist-deep, 
 they reported, and it was evidently rising rapidly. The 
 drift-wood proved that. 
 
 There'was not a minute to be lost. We went straight in ; 
 the cattle pulled splendidly, despite their weariness ; 
 and the front oxen were on dry ground on the other side, 
 when the front wheel on Eiffel's side struck against a great 
 stone. 
 
 It was an ugly position. Even as we groped at that 
 boulder, trying to move it with our hands, we could 
 feel the water was rising. Any moment, it might 
 come down in a wall, and sweep both wagon and span 
 away. 
 
 The cattle would not, or could not, pull the wagon 
 over it. They could get no start. Really, there was only 
 one chance for Biff el to do it alone, for him to force 
 
OUR CATTLE 147 
 
 the diisselboom over, until the wheel had climbed the 
 rock. Everything rested with him. 
 
 The span was backed, so as to slacken the trek-chain ; 
 Appel, Eiffel's mate, was told to hang back too ; then, 
 very gently, Amous called to the black bull. 
 
 It was dark, but we were just able to see what was 
 happening. Slowly, deliberately, Eiffel went to work, 
 pushing, always pushing at the yoke, until he seemed to 
 rise high out of the flood, his huge body literally hunched 
 up. Amous, his hand on the animal's back, was talking 
 to him all the time ; yet it appeared to me as though he 
 were asking Eiffel to do the impossible. I think the little 
 man himself was of the same opinion, for a new note came 
 into his voice, something very nearly akin to fear. 
 
 And then with a rattle which ended in a crash, the 
 wheel was over the rock ; the dusselboom swung back 
 straight again ; the trek-chain grew suddenly taut as the 
 other cattle put their weight on the yokes, and the wagon 
 never stopped until it was at the top of the drift. Eiffel 
 had saved us. 
 
 Amongst Eiffel's peculiarities and no two bullocks 
 are alike in character was a very strong aversion to the 
 ordinary herd-boys, the naked piccanins from the vil- 
 lages. He refused absolutely to allow them to inspan 
 him, or to come near him when he^was in the yoke. Amous 
 was quick to note this, and used to rage at the young- 
 sters, not at the bull. 
 
 " Ho, dirty-bodied child ! " he would shout. "Why do 
 you come near my hind-ox and let him see that you have 
 never washed ? How often have I told you that he 
 will not have savages without trousers near him ? He 
 is wise indeed. Where is that big sjambok of mine ? " 
 
 It may sound absurd it didn't seem so at the time, 
 
148 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 however but we gave way to Eiffel's prejudices to the 
 extent of making the voorloeper of his span wear an old 
 pair of trousers. The experiment succeeded admirably; 
 Eiffel ceased to get restless, and " turn the yoke," and 
 would consent to be inspanned without poking the 
 youngster in the ribs. 
 
 When the cattle are mustered in line for inspanning, 
 the driver's first task is to put a reim on the horns of 
 each. A well-trained span will stand absolutely still, 
 the reims hanging down, until they are picked out, 
 two by two, and tied to their own yokes. But, after 
 the first season, Eiffel never had a reim on his horns. He 
 would come up with the others, take his place at the end 
 of the line for a minute or so, just to see that everything 
 was right, then stroll round the back of the wagon, and 
 wait there until Amous called to him that he was ready. 
 Then he would come up with a kind of slow dignity, 
 and put his head under the yoke which his driver was 
 holding up for him, a performance which used greatly to 
 disgust his mate Appel, who was invariably inspanned 
 first. 
 
 When we first started as cattle-owners with the one 
 span, there was no possibility of any of the others dis- 
 puting Eiffel's claim to the leadership of the herd ; but, 
 later on, he had a good many stiff fights in support of his 
 dignity. His last year, however, was a peaceful one, no 
 other bull daring to challenge the big chieftain. 
 
 The etiquette of the cattle world is intensely interesting. 
 Really, a bullock's whole life, or a very great part of it, 
 is regulated by certain hard and fast rules of conduct. 
 There are the things he must do, and the things he must 
 avoid doing ; and there is certain punishment for him if 
 he offends against the laws of the herd. 
 
OUR CATTLE 149 
 
 The government is entirely despotic, the rule of the 
 strongest ; but, at the same time, it is a kindly despotism, 
 exercised for the benefit of all, unselfishly, the despot's 
 main concern being the safety and honour of the herd. 
 
 A bull fight a fight between bulls, I mean is not 
 the sanguinary affair which home-staying people might 
 expect it to be. In the vast majority of cases, there is no 
 ferocity about it, no desire to injure the opponent. It is 
 merely a trial of strength, a pushing match, head to head, 
 and the only wounds I have ever seen inflicted have 
 been due to glancing blows from the tip of the horn when 
 one of the combatants has stumbled. 
 
 Every new-comer has to fight for his place in the herd, 
 for his right to feed with the rest, and to lie down in the 
 scherm at night. Scores of times, I have known that 
 cattle were being brought in for sale by hearing one of our 
 own beasts roar out a defiance. If it was Eiffel's deep 
 voice, I was tolerably certain that a big bull, one worthy 
 of the chieftain's personal attention, was coming along 
 the valley. 
 
 When two parties of cattle meet, the procedure is always 
 the same. The strangers halt, clustering together, whilst 
 their champion goes forward alone, slowly, stopping 
 every few yards to bellow. Meanwhile, the chief of the 
 local herd has had time to decide on his course of action. 
 If the new-comer appears worthy of the honour, he, him- 
 self, takes up the challenge ; but if the other is too small, 
 he sends one of his followers, the second, or third, in 
 command, to punish the stranger's presumption, and forth- 
 with appears to lose all interest in the affair, turning 
 away to go on with his feeding with rather ostentatious 
 contempt. 
 
 The preliminaries to a fight are a long business. Any 
 
150 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 one seeing for the first time, might reasonably expect 
 that something really gory and horrible was about to 
 happen. The champions advance a few yards, stop, 
 bellow, paw the ground, drive their horns into the soil 
 and toss great clods of earth into the air, advance again, 
 and repeat the process, until they are within a length of 
 each other. A final pawing and snorting, then they come 
 together, not with the rush one might expect, but very, 
 very slowly, gently almost, locking their horns. 
 
 After that, the real battle, the test of brute strength, 
 begins. It is a shoving-match, pure and simple there is 
 no other phrase for it. With heads down, and backs 
 arched almost to humps, they push, and push, and push, 
 until one gives way, slipping, staggering perhaps, to go 
 down on his knees, then to recover himself and retreat 
 ignominiously. The victor gives a final bellow, tosses 
 one more lump of soil into the air, then returns in 
 leisurely fashion to his admiring subjects. 
 
 The big bull never takes on an unworthy opponent. 
 There is always a second bull, who is not necessarily the 
 next in point of strength, to uphold the honour of the 
 herd against smaller strangers. For some reason or 
 other, although he was about the tamest and mildest of 
 our cattle, Fransman was always the deputy champion. 
 After their first great fights with Eiffel, Basket, Appel and 
 Dudmaaker, seldom, if ever, fought strangers on their 
 first appearance ; and, after being defeated by the chief, 
 a bull who has had the honour of meeting the latter does 
 not try and vanquish the deputy. If you know your herd 
 and I believe all herds are the same you can tell 
 exactly what your cattle are going to do when a fresh 
 bull comes amongst them. 
 
 Quite small cattle are, of course, not expected to fight 
 
OUR CATTLE 151 
 
 at all for a position. They are accepted by the seniors 
 after a preliminary sniffing, though several times I saw 
 Biffel, out of sheer kindness of heart, allow a little fellow 
 to push at his great head for a few minutes. 
 
 Cows and heifers, of course, have no fighting to do. 
 They seldom make friends with their own sex, and, as a 
 rule, hasten to put themselves under the immediate 
 protection of one of the larger bulls. Curiously enough, 
 I never remember having seen two males actually fighting 
 for the possession of a female. 
 
 In the scherm, each animal has its own place. I could 
 go into our cattle kraal at Chivamba's on the darkest 
 night, and be practically certain of finding any par- 
 ticular animal at the first attempt. 
 
 A leader with restless habits, one who is continually 
 on the move when he is feeding, instead of finishing off 
 one patch of grass before he passes on to the next, is an 
 absolute nuisance. In time, he will infect all the other 
 oxen with the same detestable spirit, and you will find 
 them coming home in the evening only partially full. A 
 restless youngster, on the other hand, will quickly be 
 brought to order by a good chieftain. 
 
 Appel, who pulled as Eiffel's mate during the first 
 season, was very different from his yoke companion. 
 In appearance, he was an extraordinary-looking beast 
 immensely thick and heavy, practically round in the 
 middle, hornless, dull-red in colour, and possessing one of 
 the most surly faces I have ever seen on any living crea- 
 ture. He was surly, too, at least with men he did not 
 know, as well as with all other cattle. His strength was 
 prodigious, and, even under the worst conditions, he 
 seldom lost any of his fat. I bought him from a native 
 on the Geelong, after I had ridden my first load down to 
 
152 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 the store at MTatane ; and Amous, whose joy over the 
 purchase knew no bounds, immediately set to work to 
 train him. 
 
 The task was no easy one. The only animal who was 
 his equal in strength was Eiffel, but he was needed in the 
 diisselboom, where he pulled then as mate to Witkop, 
 a Colonial ox ; consequently, he had to be inspanned at 
 first with poor Fransman, who did not appreciate the 
 honour. 
 
 Amous put the big red bull in three yokes up from the 
 wagon ; and the first trek was a distinctly lively one. 
 A hornless bull is always more savage than one with 
 horns. He is full of tricks and deviltry. When he fights, 
 and finds he is getting the worst of it, he tries foul tactics, 
 such as jumping to one side and attempting to strike 
 his opponent in the shoulder. Also, he bites, bites very 
 hard and very skilfully. 
 
 Appel had all the peculiarities of his kind, and his vices 
 were in proportion to his strength. The lack of horns 
 makes it much more difficult to secure a beast in the 
 yoke, and Appel managed to break loose twice during 
 that first trek. Any one who did not understand trek- 
 oxen might have looked on him as a distinctly bad 
 subject ; but Amous knew better. 
 
 " He will make a trek-bullock indeed, Baas," he ex- 
 claimed joyfully, after he had secured Appel anew, and 
 put a " turned yoke " right for the twentieth time. 
 " See how he fights ! The bull who is tame, always tame, 
 never works well. By and by, Appel will be fit to pull 
 even with Biffel, the bull of all bulls." 
 
 Later on, I realized the truth of his words. Once 
 or twice, I did buy tame bulls which turned out well 
 Blom and Fransman for instance but they were all 
 
OUR CATTLE 153 
 
 beasts who had been already trained to pack work by 
 their native owners, and they took to the yoke naturally. 
 On the other hand, the bull with no spirit born in him 
 was no use for work. He would allow you to inspan him, 
 and would walk along in the yoke with perfect amiability, 
 but he would not pull when you wanted him to do so. 
 
 As a general rule, the harder an animal fought, the 
 nearer the head of the span he would pull in the end 
 th faster cattle always go high up the trek-chain and, 
 if he were absolutely wild for a week or so, you might 
 reckon you were going to have a good front-ox. 
 
 Appel was an exception to the latter rule ; but that 
 was due to his surly temper. He was slow by nature, an 
 ideal hind-ox, and, once he was trained, he never pulled 
 anywhere but in the diisselboom. On the second day, 
 we put him there with Biff el. A hind-bullock's duty is, 
 of course, to steer the wagon in obedience to the driver's 
 voice, and actually to work only in a heavy place. Nor- 
 mally, the eight middle cattle are supposed to pull the 
 wagon. Appel had yet to learn this, and when he found 
 himself inspanned as mate to Eiffel, he suddenly deter- 
 mined to have a real trial of strength of a new kind. 
 Eiffel had beaten him fairly easily in an ordinary fight, 
 but the red bull thought he saw a chance of revenge now. 
 Hitherto, in the yoke, he had either fought or hung 
 back ; now, he simply put the whole of his mighty 
 strength in his work, which meant that Eiffel had to do the 
 same, or be forced clean backwards, almost on to the 
 front wheel. 
 
 During the greater part of that trek, the hind bullocks 
 literally pulled the wagon ; but, by the time we reached 
 the out span, Appel had learnt his lesson, learnt that it 
 was no use attempting that sort of trick with Eiffel. 
 
154 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 In a few days, he was a thoroughly trained hind-ox, 
 obedient instantly to Amous' voice ; but his animosity 
 towards his mate remained, and often in a heavy place, 
 as he hunched himself up against the yoke, I used to see 
 him glance maliciously at the other, challenging him to 
 yet another trial of strength. 
 
 Appel had a curious affection for me curious, because 
 his nature was such a surly one. It began when he 
 developed a huge abscess under the skin of the neck, 
 the result of a yoke sore, on which the flies must have 
 settled. It became so bad that I decided to open it. 
 The operation was not an easy one, as his skin was at 
 least half an inch in thickness, and the only instrument 
 I had was a razor. Still, it was entirely successful, and 
 Appel never seemed to forget the relief I had given him 
 on that occasion. Innumerable men wished to buy him 
 off us one breeder offered forty pounds for him but in 
 the end he died in Selukwe with the rest of our oxen. 
 
 Our great pride during the latter part of our life on the 
 Road was in our black span. It was the finest team of 
 native cattle in Rhodesia every one admitted that 
 and every beast in it was one we had bought and trained 
 ourselves. Moreover, it was the only really black span I 
 ever saw. There was not a speck of white on any of the 
 sixteen cattle, which, with the exception of the big hind 
 and next-hind oxen, were all practically the same size. 
 The wagon and gear were relatively as good as the cattle, 
 and our pride in it was thoroughly legitimate. The team 
 pulled together like one beast, and only in the very 
 worst places did it ever stick. The animals were hard 
 as nails, always in the pink of condition, even when the 
 grass was at its worst, and the big Colonial oxen were mere 
 walking skeletons. Needless to say, Amous was the 
 
OUR CATTLE 155 
 
 driver. His delight in the span was unbounded, his only 
 regret being that Appel, who was red, had to be put to 
 work in another team. 
 
 A couple of months before the black span started for 
 Mashonaland for the last time, Amyas refused five hundred 
 and fifty pounds for it without the wagon, probably a 
 record offer for sixteen native cattle. 
 
 Our rule was to buy every beast we could get at a 
 reasonable figure if you pay too much for one bull, you 
 send up the price of the next fifty offered to you, so 
 quickly does the news spread through the kraals and 
 to break in all that seemed likely to make decent trek- 
 oxen. The showy young bulls, with big dewlaps and 
 small hind quarters, the old oxen that were past work, 
 and the half-trained ones that did not shape well, we 
 sold to the butchers, who were usually not very parti- 
 cular as to what they bought. Several times, we sold 
 complete spans, getting very good prices for them, 
 although it was known that we were keeping all the 
 best workers for our own teams, of which we had four 
 during the last season. 
 
 Even now, I can remember three-quarters of the 
 cattle in those spans. The majority of them, of course, 
 had no remarkable characteristics ; but there were one 
 or two which stood out strongly. 
 
 Jackalass, an extremely sturdy red bull, was the 
 very first beast we ever bought, and made one of our 
 best hind bullocks. Bandom, who could follow a cart 
 spoor across the veld on a dark night, would have been 
 an ideal front ox, but for the fact that he always over- 
 worked himself, and we were constantly compelled to let 
 him run loose. Even then, he would round up with the 
 others, and stroll away dejectedly when no reim was put 
 
156 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 on his horns. Sixpence, another of the original team, 
 was perfectly reliable. You could put him to work any- 
 where, on either side of the chain, at either end of the span, 
 and he would adapt himself to the work. Blom, who 
 always wanted to mess round the camp itself, and seemed 
 to consider that he ought to be a kind of pet, was as lazy 
 as he was handsome. 
 
 Basket I could never discover why Amous gave him 
 that name belonged to the second year. He was a 
 magnificent black bull, with no trace of horns, and the 
 fight between him and Eiffel was the greatest we ever had 
 at Chivamba's. It lasted, on and off, for the greater 
 part of the day ; but, in the end, the new-comer was 
 fairly beaten, after he had tried the hornless bull's rather 
 foul tactics of sudden charges at the shoulder. He 
 took his defeat philosophically, but, when he was in- 
 spanned for the first time next day, he proved himself 
 about the toughest customer Amous ever tackled, ending 
 up by being one of the best workers. 
 
 Englishman was one of my failures. He was brought 
 in early one morning. A fine, upstanding red and 
 white bull, far bigger than the average, he came up the 
 little kopje at a run, bellowing with rage. He had smelt 
 the other cattle, who were then away with the wagon, 
 and he was challenging them all. I made up my mind at 
 once that I must buy him, even if I gave an unusually 
 large figure for him. The owner asked a ridiculous price, 
 eighteen pounds, I think. We argued the matter out at 
 intervals all through the day, and, just at dark, I secured 
 him for eleven pounds, the highest price I ever gave for 
 a bull. 
 
 When we came to inspan him, however, we found that 
 he shaped badly, from the very start. He did not fight in 
 
OUR CATTLE 157 
 
 the yoke ; he just hung back. With a great^deal of trouble, 
 Amous got him to pull fairly well ; and then his hoofs gave 
 out. I had not noticed before none of us had noticed 
 really that his feet were unusually small. He went 
 dead lame, lost his condition in an appalling manner, 
 and, though I shod him myself, he was never any good 
 for work. Nor did he pick up again, at least, he never 
 got back to what he had been ; and in the end I was glad 
 to sell him to the butcher for twelve pounds. 
 
 Swartland came into our possession in rather an un- 
 usual way. We were going shooting with the Scotch cart, 
 and were making our way down a long valley, when, 
 all of a sudden, there was a roar, and a large black bull 
 charged out of the scrub. He had never seen cattle 
 at work before, and he had not the least idea why those 
 six oxen should be walking along in orderly fashion, in- 
 stead of answering his challenge. He came straight on, 
 not slowing down in the least, dashed right into the span, 
 without doing the least harm ; but as he emerged from 
 under the trek chain, Amous was ready for him, with his 
 whip doubled. 
 
 The stranger did not wait to discover what had hit 
 him, but went back to the kraal even faster than he had 
 come. However, he had drawn attention to himself as 
 being an unusually fine beast, so we outspanned at the 
 water hole, and, before we went on, we had bought him. 
 
 In a way, Dudmaaker was our most remarkable beast, 
 for he was the one bull in Rhodesia, the one bull in Africa 
 perhaps, who had killed a lion singlehanded. He came 
 from a kraal about ten miles east of Chivamba's. We 
 happened to be shooting in the neighbourhood, and 
 camped at the village. The moment we saw him, we 
 wanted him. He was as big as Biffel, though, like Biffel, 
 
158 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 the shortness of his legs made him look smaller than he 
 really was, but, as a matter of fact, he was a veritable 
 giant, compared with the average Mashona bull. His 
 neck was so thick that, later on, when we came to inspan 
 him, it would hardly go between the yoke-skeys. 
 
 The cattle scherm belonging to the village was a typical 
 one, built of more or less rotten poles of uneven length, 
 with an enormous boulder forming one of its sides. It 
 would only hold a dozen beasts, who had to stand half 
 way up to their knees in mud. At the time of our visit, 
 however, there were but six cattle in it the huge black 
 bull, two cows, and three calves. 
 
 As usual, we reviled the local savages for the state of 
 their scherm, discovered that, in the morning, they would 
 be glad to sell the bull, provided we would agree to let 
 them have a bull calf in part payment the spirits of the 
 ancestors of the owner would insist on that then we 
 turned in, and slept until about two a.m., when we were 
 awakened by a most appalling noise. 
 
 It was quite unnecessary for our boys to shout out that 
 a lion had arrived on the scene. The lion himself was 
 telling us that, though the great bull's roar almost 
 drowned the growls of the visitor. 
 
 A moment later, almost before we could pluck handsful 
 of grass out of the nearest thatch to serve as torches, 
 we realized that the lion was in retreat. He paused for 
 a second or two at the edge of the clearing to snarl out 
 a last defiance ; but when we heard his voice again, he 
 must have been half a mile away, down by the water hole. 
 
 Meanwhile, the bull was frantic with rage. It was 
 quite out of the question to go into the scherm and attempt 
 to discover what had happened. None of the cattle had 
 been killed, our boys reported, but when daylight came, 
 
OUR CATTLE 159 
 
 we saw that one of the cows had been badly mauled on 
 the shoulders ; that, with some dried blood on the bull's 
 horn, and a big patch of blood outside the scherm, 
 explained it all. 
 
 From the top of the big rock, the lion had dropped on 
 to the cow's back. He must have been very hungry, 
 or he would never have attempted such a thing, but 
 would have kept to his usual noble tactics of terrifying 
 the beasts until they broke out of the scherm. He had 
 got his claws into the cow, but there had been time for 
 him to do no more before the bull had driven a horn clean 
 into his intestines, and tossed him over the fence. 
 
 He was an old lion and was very thin some wandering 
 Kaffirs found the remains of his carcase several days later 
 but, even then, he must have weighed several hundred 
 pounds. The physical strength required to toss him 
 was enormous, but the courage of his slayer was more 
 extraordinary still, when one remembers the blind terror 
 which the mere scent of a lion usually inspires in 
 cattle. 
 
 Naturally, we bought the victor, and when he arrived at 
 Chivamba's, the Mashona came in scores to see the bull 
 who had done what no other bull had ever done before 
 in the annals of the Mashona. We had expected a big 
 fight when he met Eiffel in fact, as Eiffel was tired from 
 a couple of months' hard work, I should not have been 
 surprised to see the leadership of the herd wrested from 
 him ; but, instead, the two had a very mild pushing 
 match, a formal affair really, and the new-comer imme- 
 diately settled down as one of the herd. Nor was he any 
 trouble to train. Within a week of killing the lion, he 
 was working quite cheerfully in the diisselboom of the 
 black span's wagon, greatly to the surprise of his former 
 
160 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 owners, who had fully believed him to be possessed of a 
 devil, and had been thankful to get rid of him. 
 
 The stipulation made in this case, that they were to 
 receive a smaller beast in part payment, was a very 
 common one. It was due to the fact that many calves are 
 dedicated to the spirit of some deceased headman ; they 
 are sacrificial beasts, to be slaughtered and made the 
 basis of a huge feast at some future date. The latter is 
 fixed by the witch-doctor, who, by throwing the bones, 
 is always able to discover when the ghost of the departed 
 calls for meat. As a rule, ghosts are able to keep their 
 appetites in check until the sacrificial beast is absolutely 
 full grown, usually until he is on the point of dying of 
 old age. In nine cases out of ten, you will find that the 
 big animal which has aroused your envy is dedicated, 
 and, at first, an offer to buy him is met with a blank re- 
 fusal, but it is generally possible to arrange the matter. 
 With the aid of Kaffir beer, as much as can be made from 
 a two hundred pound sack of grain, the dedication can be 
 transferred to another animal, a two months' old calf 
 even. Consequently, if you are prepared to give a sum 
 in cash, a calf, and a bag of grain, you can often bring 
 off a thoroughly good deal, which is satisfactory both to 
 you and to the former owner, though, possibly, the spirit 
 of the deceased headman does not view it so favourably. 
 Still, that is his affair, not yours. 
 
THROUGH THE LION COUNTRY 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 THROUGH THE LION COUNTRY 
 
 THE end of our first trading season found us in an 
 awkward position. We had a hundred head of 
 cattle of which some fifty were more or less trained. 
 With a little trouble, we could have made up three 
 spans ; but we only had the one light wagon, and there 
 seemed little or no chance of our being able to buy any 
 more until we reached Bulawayo. The military author- 
 ities appeared to have purchased every wagon in the 
 country. Even the old " Rinderpest Wagons " from the 
 Palapye-Tuli Road, those which had been abandoned 
 during the great plague, were fetched up and sold. Before 
 the war very few of them would have realized twenty 
 shillings the sun, the rain, and the white ants had done 
 their work pretty thoroughly but the British officer 
 was not very wise, and his Afrikander adviser, selected 
 by the Chartered Company, was very slim, and the price 
 became whatever was asked, up to a hundred pounds. 
 
 It is curious now to look back on the unutterable 
 ignorance displayed during that Boer War. The wonder 
 is, not that it took us so long and cost us so much to win, 
 but that we ever won at all. It was not only that 
 our officers did not know, but, in nine cases out of ten, 
 they would not learn. In Rhodesia, if an Englishman 
 
 163 
 
164 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 tried to tell them anything, they were usually childishly 
 insulting. They went to the Afrikanders for their 
 information. In the majority of cases, I think the 
 officers realized that the average Englishman up there 
 was of better birth and education than themselves, and 
 that he despised them for their inefficiency and conceit, 
 and, therefore, they tried to keep him at a distance 
 by means of studied rudeness. 
 
 During that campaign in the North Transvaal, the 
 co-operation of the Home-born civilians would have saved 
 the Empire millions of money, hundreds of lives ; but 
 the mere offer of advice usually led to an insulting answer. 
 Perhaps, however, the War Office sent its very worst to 
 Rhodesia. I should like to think it was so. Imagina- 
 tion boggles at the idea of what would happen if it were 
 possible thank Heaven it is not for men of that type 
 to enter the Navy. 
 
 Sometimes, I think it is a curse to have a good memory. 
 I have never forgiven an insult, or forgotten an injury. 
 Recollections which I should be only too glad to wipe 
 out still remain, vivid, in their natural colours. 
 
 In the whole of Rhodesia I do not believe that there 
 was a keener patriot than myself, yet, more than once, 
 when I have seen military transport in difficulties, and, 
 as a man who knew every move in the game, offered to 
 help it out with my own cattle, have been treated almost 
 as a Boer spy. It was a suspicious circumstance that 
 I understood the work, and treated the officer in command 
 as a social equal. 
 
 So I have neither love nor respect for the British Army 
 officer. They say that, since the Boer War, and, perhaps 
 even more since the Russo-Japanese War, that there is 
 a new school growing up, a new school which is, in part, 
 
THROUGH THE LION COUNTRY 165 
 
 a reversion to the old ideal, when an ofiicer had to be a 
 gentleman as well, that the wealthy tradesman's grandson 
 is no longer in the majority, and that the same class of 
 man who is to be found in the Indian Army, and the 
 Indian Civil Service, is now entering the British Army. 
 I trust it is so. The nation could not survive another 
 scandal like that of the South African War. 
 
 A war ! In three years, with a quarter of a million 
 men in the field, we had between twenty and thirty 
 thousand killed and wounded, and grew hysterical over the 
 fact. General Nogi " spent " a hundred thousand lives in 
 taking Port Arthur alone, and his country remained calm. 
 It knew it was getting value for blood. But it knew, too, 
 that the Government would not do what we have done 
 in South Africa, meekly hand back the spoils of victory 
 to the vanquished. 
 
 The worst of writing reminiscences is that one is apt 
 to get away from the main subject. I started this chapter 
 about buying wagons, or being unable to buy them, and 
 I find I have wandered as far away as Port Arthur. 
 
 We were compelled to leave our trading station at 
 Chivamba's in September, and to take our cattle with us. 
 To have remained would have been sheer lunacy. No 
 white man could have lived through a wet season in the 
 low veld. The damp heat would have been appalling ; 
 the rivers would all have been in flood, cutting him off 
 from communication with his kind ; the country would 
 have been one vast swamp of black mud, alive with 
 mosquitoes ; whilst there would have been no trade of 
 any sort doing, for all the natives would have been busy 
 in their fields, sowing the new crops. 
 
 An appalling amount of rubbish has been written 
 concerning the African savage, about his laziness, his 
 
166 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 inability to recognize the Nobility of Toil, his want of 
 appreciation of the privilege of pounding a drill in a mine 
 shaft for eight hours daily. He has been denounced in 
 the Press and in Parliament, he has been prayed over, 
 in churches, chapels, and synagogues. Legislation has 
 been passed to overcome his failings ; special taxes 
 having been devised to prove to him the necessity of 
 earning money ; labour agents have raided his kraals, 
 and have carried off the able-bodied men yet all this 
 strenuous humanitarianism has been wasted. The savage 
 remains a savage, a small cultivator, whose main interests 
 in life are his home, his family, and his crops. He wants 
 to be at home, at least during seed-time and harvest. 
 He may be very black, very crude, and may smell very 
 evilly, but, none the less, he is painfully human, and, 
 knowing him well, I cannot foresee the day when the 
 dividend of a mining company will be more important 
 to him than the filling of that grain bin, in which the food 
 of his wife and children is stored. 
 
 There is no trading to be done in the wet season down 
 amongst the granite kopjes of the low veld. As practi- 
 cally every trader who tried to remain on his station 
 throughout the summer died before he had a chance to 
 tell any one about the horrors of his experience, not much 
 is known of the subject of the weather and conditions 
 generally ; but we were quite ready to assume that these 
 were disgusting. 
 
 We simply cleared everything out of the camp, and 
 left the place to look after itself. Though we fully intended 
 to erect some decent huts when we returned in the autumn, 
 so far we had been content with very crude little hovels, 
 the best of which was not more than fourteen feet 
 across. None of our huts had a proper door even the 
 
THROUGH THE LION COUNTRY 167 
 
 store itself was only closed at night by a reed- screen 
 which meant that the fowls, and anything else which 
 happened to be on the prowl, walked in and out at will. 
 
 Until I lived in that camp, I never knew that it was 
 possible to hate a fowl so greatly, to have such a detesta- 
 tion for an individual bird, such a loathing for chickens 
 in the mass. We used to buy them by the score, almost 
 by the hundred, hardy little birds very little larger than 
 bantams. As a rule, we gave a small measure of white 
 beads for them, but never did we give anything which 
 had cost us more than threepence, a price with which the 
 owners always seemed well content. 
 
 The unfortunate birds used to come in hung by their 
 legs from a stick, gasping for air, for water, their necks 
 screwed round in the most pitiful manner. Often, I 
 found that they had been travelling for a couple of days 
 like this, without even a drink. The heathen in his blind- 
 ness is a pretty cruel^ brute at times, entirely without 
 sympathy for the animal world. 
 
 However, though those fowls might be terribly done 
 when we released them, and all our sympathies might go 
 out to them, they were not long in recovering. Probably, 
 within twenty-four hours we had begun to hate them, as 
 we hated all their comrades. The energy of those 
 Mashona birds was appalling, terrifying. It seemed 
 almost inconceivable that anything created could be so 
 uselessly, so fatuously busy. From dawn till sunset, 
 those fowls never rested. As a rule we had between two or 
 three hundred of them two were killed for the pot every 
 day, and every night the " schelm," owls, or wild cats, 
 had two or three more but out of those two or three 
 hundred one quarter seemed always to be trying to lay 
 eggs in your hut, screaming and screeching at you because 
 
168 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 you turned them out, and coming back within twenty 
 seconds to have another attempt. 
 
 I shall never forget those first huts, and the ways of 
 those fowls. During that season, I had malaria con- 
 stantly, and it is more easy to imagine than to describe the 
 sensation of having a broody hen standing on the end of 
 your bed, cackling violently, whilst you, yourself, are 
 huddled up under the blankets, shivering with ague, 
 half-crazy with headache. 
 
 When the second trading season came, we had proper 
 huts, with doors and windows ; also we made a point of 
 training our new lot of fowls, building them a house of 
 their own lower down the kopje. 
 
 We left nothing in the camp that year. We even took 
 away our enemies the fowls, turning the Scotch cart 
 into a big coop, capable of holding about a hundred 
 and fifty of the birds, who, under Daniel's guidance, 
 quickly learnt to get in and out of it at the outspans. So 
 far as I can remember, we lost none of them on the trip, 
 and in Bulawayo we sold them for half-a-crown a-piece. 
 
 In addition to the fowls, we had a number of pairs of 
 bucks' horns, ranging from an eland's down to a reed- 
 buck, and, more important still, about half a ton weight of 
 selected native tobacco, the very first Rhodesian tobacco 
 ever put on the market, the beginning of the now flourish- 
 ing Rhodesian tobacco industry. 
 
 So far as trading goods were concerned, we even 
 actually sold out, so we had no trouble on that score. 
 
 No rain had fallen when we left the store, yet, so long 
 as we remained in the kopje country, we found plenty of 
 grass and water ; but the moment we got on to that 
 abominable high veld everything was changed. 
 
 Grass ! There seemed not to be a blade of it anywhere. 
 
THROUGH THE LION COUNTRY 169 
 
 We should have been glad enough even of the rank, sour 
 stuff which usually clothes that much-vaunted pastoral 
 country ; but all this had been burnt off. Black ash, 
 swirling round in a bitterly cold wind that was all we 
 found for some twenty-five miles. And the surface of 
 the roads ! Fine, sharp stones which cut the bullocks' 
 feet to pieces. I had always hated the high veld, but I 
 loathed it then, wondering more and more what made us 
 pour out blood and money in wresting it from the Boer 
 and the Kaffir. A forsaken country, a country utterly 
 unsuitable for white occupation, the Bad Debt of the 
 Empire such were my feelings then, such were they 
 when I finally left South Africa. Perhaps, if I went back, 
 I might find reason to change my views, but I doubt it. 
 A country which is wholly dreary and depressing can 
 never produce a happy race. The " Dopper " is the 
 logical result of the scenery of the high veld, and it is the 
 Dopper who will become the dominant type in the sub- 
 continent. He suits the country. His narrow-minded- 
 ness, his immorality, his personal uncleanliness, his 
 bigoted pseudo-piety all these harmonize perfectly 
 with his surroundings. You could not expect to breed 
 normal white men on the high veld of South Africa. 
 
 Our cattle were, of course, all low veld animals. With 
 the exception of the original span, none of them had ever 
 been near those barren, wind-swept uplands. They felt 
 the cold terribly, and felt the lack of grass even more. 
 Huddled together, with rough coats, lowered heads, and 
 sides sunken in, they made a picture of abject misery. 
 We happened to have some bags of mealies on the wagon, 
 and we tried to get them to eat some of these. But it 
 was no use. The only food they would take was that 
 which they cropped for themselves. 
 
170 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 Then, too, they grew footsore. They were used to soft 
 ground, and the sharp little stones of that abominable 
 road cut their hoofs to pieces. I happened to have a 
 few ox-shoes, and I shod several of them, but one was too 
 bad to travel at all. We could not wait for him, because 
 there was no grass, and we could not leave him to die ; 
 so we threw him, lashed his legs together, and then, after 
 infinite exertion, actually loaded him up on the wagon, 
 where he remained for twenty-four hours. When we 
 unloaded him and freed him, on the river bank, he was 
 stiff and shaky, but the soreness had gone out of his feet, 
 and, a few months later, he was one of our best working 
 bullocks. 
 
 In the case of another beast, however, we were not so 
 fortunate. ' ' Shilling ' ' was]the tamest animal we ever had. 
 When he was brought in for sale, a piccanin was riding 
 on his back, and had he not been such a beautiful creature 
 short-legged, long-bodied, black with a white collar 
 I should have hesitated about buying him, because the 
 very quiet bull is seldom a good worker. He is apt to 
 walk along passively in the yoke. 
 
 But Shilling was an exception. A very few days' 
 training, and he was a most excellent hind-bullock, 
 answering to his name, and understanding his work 
 perfectly. He never seemed to resent having to toil in 
 the span. In short, in many ways he was almost unique, 
 and we soon grew to have a very real affection for him. 
 
 He was not particularly fat when we bought him ; but 
 I should never have believed it possible for an animal to 
 get thin so quickly as did Shilling when we reached the 
 high veld. The flesh seemed almost to fall off him. Of 
 course, he was not working ; yet at the end of a trek, he 
 was far more weary than was any of the span. The night 
 
THROUGH THE LION COUNTRY 171 
 
 before we reached Fort Victoria, though we seemed to 
 have done everything possible to save him, he died. 
 
 The loss of Shilling gave us our final distaste for the 
 high veld. They told us that the whole of the two 
 hundred or so miles between Victoria and Bulawayo 
 was almost as bad as the stretch we had just covered, 
 that the season was a record one for badness of grass. 
 Yet, somehow or other, we had to reach Bulawayo. 
 
 To go across the high country with our young low-veld 
 cattle would have been to invite disaster. Half of them 
 would have met the same fate as Shilling, more than half, 
 perhaps. Still, what else could we do ? It was at this 
 moment that some one happened to mention an Old 
 Road, a track which nobody had used for years, leading 
 from Victoria to the Belingwe District. 
 
 We fairly jumped at the imformation. Of necessity, 
 that track must run through fertile, well- watered country ; 
 and, once we got to Belingwe, there would be no difficulty 
 in getting across to Bulawayo. 
 
 There was one drawback there is a drawback to 
 everything in South Africa the track led through a rotten 
 lion country. No district north of the Crocodile River 
 had a worse name in that respect, and with a hundred 
 cattle, most of them more or less wild, we seemed likely 
 to be in for a vivid time. 
 
 However, there was practically no alternative. Every 
 hour we remained on the high veld we were losing heavily 
 through the cattle getting thinner ; so we hurriedly took 
 on some provisions, and trekked away to the south-east. 
 That very evening our course of action seemed to be justi- 
 fied, for we struck a valley in which a shower of rain had 
 fallen a week or so before. 
 
 The great, ungainly Colonial oxen would have died 
 
172 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 from eating that short, sweet green grass. It would have 
 been too much for them, too sudden a change ; but to 
 our native cattle it meant new life. We halted them a 
 couple of days, giving them a chance to pick up, and they 
 made the most of their opportunity. It was delightful 
 to see how they revelled in the place. Although we were 
 hardly over the edge of the plateau, the hills around 
 sheltered us from the bitter winds, whilst there was an 
 ample supply of running water. Then, too, the grass 
 had attracted the game from miles round, and we could 
 have shot ten times as much as we needed. Even the 
 egregious Mr. Roosevelt might have been happy there for 
 a | day or two. 
 
 In Rhodesia, you can never say definitely that you are 
 not going to find lions, or be found by them, because they 
 are always on the wander, seeking a chance of making 
 themselves detestable. On the other hand, that peaceful 
 little valley was not a likely place for them to visit, as the 
 game was only there temporarily. Consequently, we 
 did not worry about them at the moment ; though we 
 did worry very much about their future doings. 
 
 If it were absolutely necessary to do so, we could tie 
 up about half our cattle. That is to say that, after an 
 immense amount of trouble, we could get reims on their 
 horns, and make them fast to the wagon or trek gear. 
 But the others were all unbroken. They had never been 
 tied up in their lives, and they would resent the process 
 most savagely. Besides, we had neither enough boys 
 nor enough reims for the purpose. Consequently, our only 
 plan was to camp down early every evening, build as 
 good a scherm as was possible in the time, keep fires going 
 round it all night, and trust to luck. 
 
 Our chief fear was, not that the lions would get into the 
 
THROUGH THE LION COUNTRY 173 
 
 scherm, but that they would terrify the cattle so greatly 
 that they broke out, and scattered all over the veld. 
 
 The day after leaving that valley we struck a farm, one 
 of the very few in Rhodesia on which I ever saw anything 
 being grown. The owner, whom we had left in Victoria, 
 had told us proudly of his vegetables, and given us per- 
 mission to help ourselves. He himself found it more 
 profitable to act as barman in the hotel during the wet 
 season. When we came to search, the vegetables were 
 reduced down to a large patch of eschalots, which, 
 curiously enough, had thriven exceedingly. We took 
 him at his word, and helped ourselves, gathering a supply 
 which lasted a fortnight. Until you have been four or 
 five years without tasting any vegetables save sweet 
 potatoes, pumpkin, and tomatoes, you cannot understand 
 how keen it is possible to become over a mere onion. 
 
 That same morning we had a typical example of the 
 ways of a Kaffir cook-boy. We were having breakfast 
 beside the wagon, and, the tin of condensed milk being 
 finished, the cook-boy was sent to fetch a new one. As 
 he was rather a long time over his job, Amyas got up to 
 investigate. Going quickly round the end of the wagon, 
 he found the savage with the opened tin, and a spoon, 
 which latter he was putting first into the milk and then 
 into his mouth, gobbling down the sticky mess. 
 
 He gave a yelp or two as he dropped the tin. Amyas 
 only had on a pair of very light shoes, but I suppose 
 that the hint was sufficient. We never saw that cook- 
 boy again. Probably, a sense of his own unworthiness 
 overcame him, or he may have thought that the atmo- 
 sphere of a mission station there was one a few miles 
 away, run by Dutch Reformed preachers, who are by 
 no means Reformed Dutchmen might suit him better. 
 
174 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 I think it was the following day that we came across a 
 Native Commissioner, quite the most efficient Native 
 Commissioner in Mashonaland. Unlike most of his kind, 
 he was not South African born, and, unlike many of his 
 kind, he had never been accused of using his office for his 
 own private profit, of fining natives so many cattle and 
 entering up the fine as having been so many sovereigns. 
 
 He had a huge district, and he managed it wonderfully. 
 Other Native Commissioners most of them were Natal 
 men, suffering from " Natal Fever," chronic tiredness 
 remained all the year in their camp, surrounded by a 
 crowd of native parasites, female and male, and allowed 
 their black police to do much as they liked, to assess the 
 hut-tax, to level blackmail from the whole countryside ; 
 but the methods of this particular N.C. were different. 
 He was always on patrol. So far as possible, he visited 
 every kraal himself, counting the huts, insisting on clean- 
 liness, using his sjambok freely when he found cases of 
 cruelty to animals, bullocks up to their knees in mud 
 and dung, goats left lashed to post throughout the whole 
 day. 
 
 His native name was a rare tribute to his ability. It 
 meant one of those little rock-lizards whose heads appear 
 to be on pivots, who can always keep their eyes on you. 
 
 The amusing part about our meeting was the conversa- 
 tion we had after dinner. A very keen hunter himself, 
 he objected to any one else shooting in his district. He 
 broke all the game laws without the very slightest com- 
 punction we were at one on that point but he objected 
 strongly to any one else doing the same. He waxed 
 quite eloquent on the subject. The year before, he told 
 us, two white men had come out of Matabeleland with half 
 a dozen pack donkeys, and, whilst camped on the Lundi 
 
THROUGH THE LION COUNTRY 175 
 
 River, one of them had shot a bull hippopotamus, which 
 had been lost in the end, owing to its being swept down by 
 the current. He had gone in pursuit of them, he went 
 on, but they had just managed to escape him. 
 
 As I happened to be the white man who had shot that 
 hippo bull, the story had a distinct interest for me. 
 Previously, I had had no idea that Justice had been on 
 my track over the episode. 
 
 There was plenty of grass, plenty of water, on that old 
 road ; though, in many places, the track was so greatly 
 over-grown that it was most difficult to follow. Really, 
 no one had used it since the Pioneer days, and, very likely, 
 no one has used it since we went down it, in that year 1900. 
 
 Every night, we made as strong a scherm as possible, 
 though I do not think we ever succeeded in constructing 
 one out of which the cattle could not have broken, had 
 the lions outside really scared them. It takes days to 
 put up such a scherm. It has to be of thorn bush, and 
 thorn may not be readily available ; it has to be high, 
 so that the lion cannot see in, and, therefore, does not 
 think of trying to jump in ; and, to hold a hundred head of 
 oxen, it has to be of considerable circumference. Conse- 
 quently, it is safe to say that on no occasion during that 
 trip did we have a safe, or anything like a safe, scherm, a 
 fact of which we were only too well aware. Our savages 
 were supposed to take it in turns to keep the watch-fires 
 going, but it was almost impossible to hold them to their 
 work. They would go to sleep, and it always fell to 
 Amyas and myself to do the job. 
 
 The cattle were ours. If the lions ate one, we were so 
 many pounds out of pocket ; whereas the Kaffir could not 
 help thinking of the delightful stews to be made out of the 
 fragments which the lion had left. The points of view 
 
176 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 were so different. I will not say that our boys wanted 
 the lions to succeed certainly, Amous was absolutely 
 loyal but it was absurd to expect them to feel the same 
 interest as ourselves. 
 
 Amous, being a Basutu, belonging to the Premier 
 Race of South Africa, was, of course, a clean feeder. 
 He held in detestation the foul things beloved of inferior 
 races. He was quite impartial in his dislikes, recognizing 
 no degrees of inferiority. To him, a Zulu was no better 
 than a Mashona, both being savages. He would only 
 touch things killed in a cleanly way. The ordinary savage , 
 on the other hand, had no scruples. Meat was meat, no 
 matter how, or when, it had been killed. I have come on 
 the remains of a waterbuck bull with the saliva of the 
 lions still hot on it the killers must have been watching us 
 from the bush and have seen my boys grill those foul 
 fragments, unwashed, and eat them, there and then. 
 I have seen my carriers fight the sated vultures off the 
 carcase of a sable antelope which had died of mortifica- 
 tion from a bullet wound, and have had to turn them and 
 their cooking pots out of camp because of the poisonous 
 smell. 
 
 Verily, I believe that nothing is too foul for the average 
 African savage. I have seen him do almost incredible 
 things in the way of eating, have seen him swallow stuff 
 which would have killed a normal man. Not until 
 you learn to understand the native languages can you 
 grasp, in the least degree, his attitude toward foodstuffs : 
 then, you realize that, to him, the only form of food is 
 grain, usually in the shape of porridge. Everything 
 else meat, beans, vegetables, monkey nuts is merely 
 flavouring for the porridge, the food. The more flavour- 
 ing you have, the more food you need. Ordinarily, 
 
THROUGH THE LION COUNTRY 177 
 
 without meat, you eat two or three pounds of meal a day ; 
 but if you have five pounds of meat, you will want five 
 pounds of meal to go with it. To the man at Home, the 
 statement may seem incredible, but, time after time, I 
 have seen each of my boys eat some ten pounds of half- 
 cooked flesh and six or seven pounds of meal within the 
 twenty-four hours. Once, when I shot a hippo close to 
 a large kraal, when it was possible to trade meat for 
 meal, I am sure these figures were exceeded. I was ill, 
 and could not trek, and I am certain that, for three solid 
 days, the process of cooking and eating never ceased. 
 
 Still, on this occasion, our savages were doomed to dis- 
 appointment. We travelled very slowly I think that 
 we were nearly three weeks in the lion country and 
 every night one or other of us sat up with a shot-gun, 
 watching the fires, and ready to let drive at any prowling 
 schelm. Yet, absurd though it may sound, no schelm 
 put in an appearance. I cannot even recall a hyaena 
 sniffing round, much less a lion. Only on the very last 
 morning, just at dawn, when we were inspanning to 
 trek into the comparative security of Belingwe, did 
 we hear a lion and he was a full two miles away. 
 
 Probably, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred a mob 
 of cattle like ours would have been decimated by lions 
 on that old road. They would have been scattered over 
 the veld, and picked up, one by one. Our luck was simply 
 amazing. Moreover, not only had we got them through 
 whole ; but their hoofs had gradually hardened with the 
 trekking, and they had recovered all the condition they 
 had lost on the high veld. 
 
 Belingwe was not particularly exciting. Probably, 
 to-day, it calls itself a township ; but, at that time, it 
 consisted mainly of a canteen, with a Native Commis- 
 
 M 
 
178 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 sioner's camp, some police huts, and a few odd buildings 
 attached. The canteen was, of course, the important 
 feature. Life in South Africa always revolves round a 
 canteen. Eliminate the whisky, and half the little 
 veld-townships would cease to exist. 
 
 Personally, I blame no man for drinking heavily in 
 South Africa. I did so myself, comparatively speaking. 
 I was only a youngster, really I was about nineteen 
 when I landed there but I was soon able to hold my 
 own fairly well. On the mines, and in those wretched 
 little townships, the canteen was, of necessity, the centre 
 of social life. The white women were so very few that, 
 save in a few rare instances, they had no effect on the 
 community in general. 
 
 Men drank we all drank because there was nothing 
 else to do. The weaklings died quickly, of course ; and 
 some who were not altogether weak died too. Most of 
 the men of those days are dead nine-tenths of them are 
 dead, I suppose which is one of the reasons why, to-day, 
 I am amongst the most lonely of mankind, why because, 
 when I write of those old days, the tears will insist on 
 coming into my eyes. 
 
 Since those days, I have known the Love of Woman, 
 and lost the Woman I loved ; but Love and Friendship 
 are too very different things, and I have made no new 
 friends. How can you be friends'with a man whose grit 
 you have never tested ? You may like him, but that is 
 all. You must be quite certain of his personal courage 
 before you can admit him to intimacy. 
 
 And so I remain a very lonely man, one of the most 
 lonely men imaginable. Amyas, my brother and com- 
 rade of those days, died in Manila ; and I never meet 
 any one else who can talk to me of yoke-skeys and strops, 
 
THROUGH THE LION COUNTRY 179 
 
 of the guinea-fowl calling in the mealie lands and the reed- 
 buck whistling in the long grass just before dawn, of the 
 hyaena reviling all creation and the Go-away bird warning 
 the game of your approach. 
 
 Sometimes, I feel I have been cursed in having been 
 given so good a memory. I cannot forget. I can picture 
 every past scene, remember all the dead men of the 
 past. 
 
 Yet I am not despondent. Love has come to me again, 
 come out of infinite sorrow, infinite travail, and, ahead, I 
 can see the possibilities of a great happiness, and perfect 
 peace, of all those things which, hitherto, I have missed 
 in my ill-regulated life ; but the Past remains, the memory 
 of those old days, and when I have finished this book, I 
 would give much for a drink of the Waters of Lethe, so 
 that I could face the Future, untrammelled by regrets. 
 
 To forget, to forget ! Scenes, conversations, mere 
 phrases even, burn themselves into your brain, at least, 
 if you are a lonely man. I left Home too young I 
 was only seventeen when I went to Australia to know 
 much of conventions, and since I came back at the age of 
 twenty-eight, broken in health and in pocket, to begin 
 life anew, I have troubled little about them. 
 
 The sayings of conventional people, of the dwellers in 
 suburbs, the Good Folk who catch trains, never worry 
 me. I have been a storm centre of scandal, and have 
 remained the only person unmoved by the blast. The 
 Little People, the dwellers in villas, the obvious patrons of 
 local dressmakers, may talk until they are blue in the 
 face about me, and I shall not be disturbed. Being 
 essentially self-satisfied at least, that is my pose 
 I murmur to myself the Arab proverb, " The dog barks, 
 the caravan passes on." But the words and actions of 
 
i8o THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 those who matter, the one or two I love, and the two or 
 three I hate, are different. I forget none of them. 
 
 " The one or two I love " that phrase is wrong. A 
 man only loves one person, The Woman ; though he may 
 like others. 
 
 I wonder, is there a special Valhalla for those who died 
 brave deaths, died in the Empire's cause ? There 
 should be such a place. Certainly there could be no peace 
 if they found themselves quartered in the 'same Mansion 
 as the former stockbroker and the retired grocer. 
 
 I suppose that a scientific observer, having watched 
 the Home-born men in Rhodesia in those days, weighed 
 them up mentally, tabulated their characteristics, would 
 have come to the conclusion that the majority of them 
 consisted of atavisms. They were not normal products 
 of the nineteenth century ; there was no taint of the 
 Victorian Age on them, no smugness, no false sentiment, 
 no fear. The Elizabethan spirit was the strongest, 
 adventure mainly for adventure's sake, the longing to 
 know what was beyond the horizon ; but, now and then, 
 you got the fifteenth century. You might almost imagine 
 that the ghosts of the old Free Companions had once more 
 taken on bodily form. 
 
 There is none of that spirit in South Africa to-day. 
 Most of the men who did the Pioneer work are dead, and 
 the majority of the remainder shook the dust of the 
 country off their feet when the spoils of war were handed 
 back to the Boers. " Civis Romanus sum " is ever the 
 motto of the Pioneer. He comes from Home, and he 
 hopes, when he has made his money, to return Home to 
 spend it. The very idea of Colonial self-government is 
 detestable to him. Being a Public School man, he has 
 been taught, and remembers vaguely, that the Roman 
 
THROUGH THE LION COUNTRY 181 
 
 Empire fell when the Provincials were allowed to become 
 Roman citizens. 
 
 In Belingwe, we had quite a good time, meeting some 
 of our own kind in a canteen where you sat on empty 
 whisky cases, and poisoned yourself with potato spirit, 
 which the Teutonic patriots in Port Elizabeth sent up in 
 the bottles of famous British firms. Then we went on 
 again, the last stage but one on our long journey. 
 
 There was a direct road, of a sort, from Belingwe to 
 Bulawayo ; but we were warned against it. There was 
 not a blade of grass to be found along the last forty miles, 
 we were told. Moreover, not only was game scarce, but 
 an absurd police corporal, a new-comer, duty-struck, was 
 trying to obtain convictions against transport-riders for 
 shooting in the close season. You would never be con- 
 victed, of course, but there would be the worry of having 
 to appear, whilst the corporal was such a miserable little 
 rat of a Colonial that you could not give him a hiding. 
 
 Consequently, we decided to trek on to M'Patane, cross 
 the Umsingwane River near my old mine, the Geelong, 
 and from there take a newly made track up to Bula- 
 wayo. 
 
 Incidentally, we were going to stop and do some shoot- 
 ing on the Flats. 
 
 The Belingwe Flats are a vast expanse of level veld 
 covered with just enough low bush, and a sufficiency of 
 small trees, to render it an ideal hunting country. There 
 was plenty of cover for stalking game, though it was never 
 too thick to see them. We turned off the road it was 
 really only a trader's track for about half a mile, to a 
 water hole, and at once set all hands to work to construct 
 a decent scherm. In all probability we should be there 
 several days we needed biltong and skins for making 
 
i82 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 reims and whips and we were not going to take any 
 unnecessary risks from lions. Up till now, our luck had 
 been so marvellous as far asschelm were concerned that 
 it seemed that, according to the law of averages, it must 
 change soon. 
 
 By evening we had a fairly lion-proof camp, even 
 though the famous Belingwe " pack," said to consist of 
 from ten to fourteen lions, did pay us a visit. This 
 was the same pack that Lord Randolph Churchill en- 
 countered several years previously. When he first wrote of 
 it, the ex-chancellor was, practically speaking, denounced 
 as a liar ; but men in the district knew to their cost that 
 the story was true enough many a transport-rider had 
 lost two or three oxen in a single night down there and 
 though, personally, I never had a glimpse of any of those 
 particular lions, I saw their spoor on several occasions, 
 and I can certainly answer for eight full-grown animals 
 being there. 
 
 We soon found that we had made a very lucky selection 
 so far as the game was concerned, in fact we could hardly 
 have camped at a better spot. Just beyond the water 
 hole was the beginning of a stretch of country, about four 
 miles by five, which had been visited by one of those 
 curious local thunderstorms a few weeks previously. The 
 grass was in perfect condition, sweet, fresh, wonderfully 
 green ; and all the game on the Flats seemed to have con- 
 gregated there. Moreover, no other white men had been 
 down to frighten it. 
 
 Eland, sable, roan, all the big buck, in fact, with the 
 exception of the Tssessebi, were to be found, in addi- 
 tion to the ordinary small ones. But the most striking 
 thing was the number of wild pigs ; never before, or since, 
 have I seen so many. You seemed to put up one every 
 
THROUGH THE LION COUNTRY 183 
 
 half mile, to see him start off with his long, bush-ended 
 tail sticking straight up in the air. 
 
 It did not take us long to get all the meat and skins we 
 needed, then we settled down for several days' well-earned 
 rest whilst the drying process was in progress. Of course, 
 our boys complained. They were gorged with meat ; 
 they had far more than they could eat, infinitely more 
 than was good for them ; yet they could not see why we 
 did not go on killing. Boer and native are alike in that 
 respect. Though the game is such a valuable asset to 
 the country, given the chance, they will always destroy 
 as much as they can. 
 
 Our cattle looked quite an imposing mob when we 
 left that camp. They had all grown considerably 
 they were quite young beasts in every case the regular 
 exercise, to which they were now accustomed, seemed 
 to have given them fresh zest for their food, and a better 
 action in walking, whilst the bad coats, due to the filthy 
 condition of the native scherms, had been replaced by 
 glossy hides. 
 
 When we reached M'Patane, we met several traders, 
 all of whom seemed to be possessed of the idea that, 
 because we were young and had come from Mashonaland 
 MTatane is in Matabeleland we must of necessity 
 be simple. Anyway, all of them offered us the most 
 absurdly small prices for our best beasts, payment in all 
 cases to be made in " Good-fors." 
 
 We declined the offers, knowing the value of our cattle, 
 and having had some " Good-fors " in days gone by ; but 
 we did do one deal at a store amongst the kopjes we 
 bought a mule wagon, a sixteen-foot one, just the thing 
 for our light oxen. It would easily take seven thousand 
 five hundred pounds weight over the worst road it was 
 
184 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 splendidly built, Natal, not Cape Colony, manufacture 
 and it was emphatically a bargain. I think we gave 
 thirty pounds for it, of course without gear. Eighteen 
 months later, we refused a hundred for it and its gear ; 
 and a few months after that, we abandoned it, and its 
 load, on the Selukwe Victoria Road, because the span 
 had died of African Coast Fever. 
 
 It seemed strange to cross the Umsingwane River, and 
 camp beside the Geelong Pumping Station, three miles 
 from the mine. A few hundred yards away, on the top 
 of a small rise, was the River Camp, where I had spent some 
 of the most miserable months of my life. Then, I had 
 been under contract with the Mining Company, worked 
 to the breaking point, generally unable to obtain sufficient 
 food, always putrid with fever, the subject of many 
 petty persecutions and insults from Colonials who had the 
 ear of the manager. Now, I was a free man, absolutely 
 free. The mines were dependent on the transport-riders 
 for their very existence. Moreover, on the mine, still 
 grubbing along in the old way, were those Afrikanders 
 who had scoffed at us when we first talked of going in 
 for cattle, and I knew that the sight of our fine mob 
 would be gall and bitterness to them. 
 
 Once, in 1897, I had very nearly died in that River 
 Camp. It was my first dose of Malarial Fever, but, as 
 I also had phthisis, and had recently had pleurisy, it 
 knocked me up considerably. 
 
 I was practically alone all the time. There was another 
 white man living in the camp ; but he was in charge of a 
 wood-cutting gang, and did not return until the evening, 
 dead tired. We had no house-boys at that period. The 
 company had collared them all. I did manage to get 
 hold of a very tiny piccanin of about five years of age, 
 but he only stayed a day. 
 
THROUGH THE LION COUNTRY 185 
 
 For five days I tossed about my bed if bed it could be 
 called with a temperature of 103, and not a soul within 
 call. Probably, the hyaenas, who always know when a 
 man is near death, were the nearest living things. Up 
 at the mine, three miles away, were hundreds of natives, 
 and some sixty white men, also a doctor ; but the mine, 
 as an entity, had about as much soul as a hyaena. 
 
 To this day, I cannot understand why I did not die. 
 I had no nourishment at all, and my bed consisted of 
 blankets spread on grass, my pillow was a hard water- 
 proof kit-bag. The whole thing is a bad memory, even 
 after all these years ; but I have smitten hip and thigh 
 those who left me to die in those days, so the account 
 is square. 
 
 It was strange to outspan next day at the mine itself, 
 and watch the men dragging wearily to work, to hear that 
 hateful whistle go, and to know that it had nothing to do 
 with yourself, that you were free. 
 
 I had left the Geelong with one wagon, and fourteen 
 small, partially-trained oxen ; I came back, only eight 
 months later, with two trained spans of sixteen each, 
 and some seventy loose cattle. Those who had scoffed at 
 us when we started out showed little inclination to 
 meet me now. 
 
 A week later, we were in Bulawayo, outspanned on the 
 Racecourse. Our luck had held good all through. We 
 had not lost a single animal since leaving Victoria, and all 
 our beasts were in splendid condition. Moreover, the 
 price of cattle was very high just then, and, when we 
 came to sell our surplus beasts, we did extremely well on 
 them. I reckoned that, taken all round, we made a 
 clear profit of ninety per cent, on our purchases. 
 
 We picked out fifty of the best, so as to make three 
 
186 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 spans, and had two beasts in reserve, and sold all the 
 rest. It was a highly satisfactory wind-up to a good 
 season. A few more like that, we told ourselves, and 
 we should be rich men. 
 
PETER GOAT AND WHITE MAN 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 PETER GOAT AND WHITE MAN 
 
 FOR several years, in fact the whole time we were riding 
 transport, Peter was one of the best-known char- 
 acters on the Road. Even men who had never seen him 
 before, appeared to have heard of him, and when he 
 strolled up to their wagons at the outspan, and made free 
 with the contents of their boys' cooking-pots, they did 
 not drive him off. 
 
 Peter was a goat, a little black Mashona goat, extremely 
 sturdily-built, yet, even when full-grown, not so tall as an 
 Airedale terrier. 
 
 His life began in tragedy, continued for over three 
 years in comedy, then ended, as it had begun, tragically. 
 He and his brother were the very first goats born in our 
 camp at Chivamba's. We bought the mother in the 
 morning, and, at sundown, she gave birth to the twins. 
 We had a strong goat kraal, but it was out of the question 
 to put them in there, so the herd boy turned them into 
 the store hut, placing a reed screen in front of the door. 
 Of course, being a Mashona, he did not secure that 
 screen properly, with the result that, about midnight, 
 the mother broke out, to get something to eat, and walked 
 straight into the jaws of a hyaena. She gave just one 
 
 189 
 
TQO THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 cry, but, by the time we could get out with our shot-guns, 
 there was no trace of her left. 
 
 The following morning, when, after docking the herd 
 boy's wages, I suggested that he should get some milk and 
 feed the orphans, he seemed quite shocked at the idea. 
 They were unlucky goats, he explained, and it was far 
 better to let them starve to death, in accordance with 
 Mashona custom. From me, he heard a few home 
 truths concerning his ways and those of his people, 
 whilst Amous afterwards supplemented my remarks. 
 I think he managed to drive the lesson into that thick 
 skull, for, as soon as I had entered the store hut, I heard 
 one or two distinct yelps of pain. 
 
 At the very first attempt, the goats took the milk out of 
 Amous' improvised feeding bottle, greatly to the aston- 
 ishment of our local savages, who had never seen such 
 a thing before. That evening, old Chivamba and all his 
 elders, including his witchdoctor, came up to see the 
 wonderful process, took much snuff out of trembling 
 brown palms, and finally departed, shaking their heads 
 sadly. Both Amous and myself were wizards indeed, 
 they declared ; whilst, as for the goats, those certainly 
 had evil spirits in them. It would have been quite a 
 fine chance for the witchdoctor to do some poisoning ; 
 but, probably, no one was willing to pay him for putting 
 Amous and myself out of the way, and, like so many 
 religious practitioners, he never worked gratuitously. 
 
 At first, the goats were known merely as " The Little 
 Black Thing " and " The Little White Thing." It was 
 not until later, when the Little Black Thing had begun to 
 show such an amazing partiality for dancing about on 
 the rocks, that he received the name of " Peter," the 
 Little White Thing becoming " Paul." Afterwards, by a 
 
PETER GOAT AND WHITE MAN 191 
 
 kind of natural process, when we wanted to speak of 
 them jointly, they were referred to as " The Apostles." 
 
 For the first few days, they spent their whole time in 
 the doorway of the store hut, looking out on life with big, 
 wondering eyes. At night, I had them secured in an 
 empty packing case. The hyaenas were not going to 
 have them also. 
 
 Curiously enough, from the very outset, they took no 
 interest in the other goats, who used to stream past the 
 store hut morning and evening, on their way to and from 
 the big scherm. It was as though those two little fellows 
 were animals apart, a fact which our savages were quick 
 to notice. It confirmed the witchdoctor's words, " They 
 had evil spirits in them." 
 
 As soon as the staggering stage was over, Peter began 
 to feel the joy of life, manifesting it by queer little side- 
 way leaps, and prods at his brother's sides. He always 
 took the lead. He it was who first learnt the delight of 
 getting on to a rock, and tumbling off it at once. He 
 was an amazing goat, even at that age, abnormally strong, 
 active, and intelligent. 
 
 The moment he saw Amous with a cup in his hand, he 
 ran after him, crying for milk. In forty-eight hours, he 
 learnt to do without the feeding bottle, and to drink 
 direct. Paul was much slower in everything, much less 
 interesting in every respect. I do not think that, had he 
 lived, he would ever have made a pet, but would prob- 
 ably have ended by joining the herd, and falling into 
 their ways. 
 
 However, he did not live. A hyaena had killed his 
 mother ; a leopard was responsible for his death. 
 
 The sequence of events was rather curious. For some 
 extraordinary reason, the cattle in South Africa will not 
 
192 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 yield milk, unless the calf has first had a suck. Really, 
 the man is far more to blame than the beast. The custom 
 is a native one, but, as usually happens, the Afrikanders 
 have adopted it slavishly, and now regard it as one of 
 their own. They never try to break through it, in any 
 way, and the cattle, with some sense of the foolish habit 
 bred in them, expect to have it observed. 
 
 We had four cows in milk at the time of the Apostles' 
 birth. That meant four calves in the calf scherm, and 
 about seven or eight pints of milk a day even the best 
 Rhodesian veld does not seem to lend itself to the produc- 
 tion of milk. Then, one night, the local leopard and a 
 friend managed to visit the calf scherm. They took away 
 the smallest of the calves, and ate him ; but they de- 
 stroyed the other three as well, killing them out of sheer 
 wantonness. 
 
 The grief of the bereaved mothers was terrible, pitiable. 
 For days they cried, unceasingly ; and their milk dried 
 up. Within a week, I had not a drain of fresh milk in 
 the camp, and could buy none outside. 
 
 Peter, now a sturdy little black imp, faced the situation 
 bravely. For one day, he fasted ; then he began to eat 
 porridge, green-stuff, anything which took his fancy, and 
 to thrive on it. But Paul was very different. He cried 
 without intermission for milk, refused any other food, 
 save the laces out of my boots, and the dry scabs off 
 Mashonas' legs. I do not know what he died of, whether 
 it was hunger, indigestion, or septic poisoning ; but he 
 only lasted some five days after the milk supply gave out. 
 
 Peter missed him for a few hours, and bleated becom- 
 ingly, but that evening, just as the sun set, he suddenly 
 started off on a wild scamper round the camp, racing 
 his very hardest, pausing only to butt at any native he 
 
PETER GOAT AND WHITE MAN 193 
 
 met, a habit which thenceforward he kept up most reli- 
 giously. That sunset run was an essential part of his 
 day's work. 
 
 It was immediately after Paul's death that he adopted 
 me. I suppose that he must have been lonely : at any 
 rate, he refused any longer to sleep in his packing-case, and 
 took up his quarters in my hut, on my blankets. With 
 one short interval, during the days of Paul the Second, 
 he never slept anywhere else for the rest of his life, at 
 least as long as I was in the country. 
 
 If ever a man welcomed an animal's companionship, 
 I welcomed that of Peter at that time. It was whilst 
 my brothers, instead of going straight into Victoria 
 with the wagon, had turned off on a mad expedition, 
 trying to ride a load of grain up a perfectly impossible 
 road. For six weeks I heard no word of them, for six 
 weeks I had no white man's food, no reading matter, no 
 candles, and, worst of all, practically no sleep. I am 
 certain that, but for the friendship of that queer little 
 black goat, I should have gone quite mad. 
 
 Every hour I expected a runner, and, as each day closed 
 without one appearing, my anxiety grew. They must be 
 dead, I told myself. It never entered into my head that 
 they would not trouble to send. They had expected to 
 be back in sixteen days, and they were away for forty-one. 
 It was the worst time I had ever had in Africa, and when 
 they did return, looking very sleek and well, and having 
 consumed on the road down the greater part of the stores 
 they had bought in Victoria, the extra-special stuff, the 
 three-and-sixpenny tins, I took Peter in my arms, and 
 went with him behind the big rocks, to curse. 
 
 Within a couple of months, Peter was well known 
 locally ; by the end of the trading season, he was famous 
 
 N 
 
194 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 for many miles round. Once only, and then but for a very 
 little while, did he lapse from the high standard he had 
 set himself, and become something approaching a common, 
 ordinary goat. Even then, it was all the fault of the 
 store-boy. 
 
 We had gone away shooting, down to M'Bambo's, 
 the famous lion- village, about eight miles away ; and had, 
 of course, left Peter behind. Daniel, the Matabele, 
 remained in charge, and Daniel prided himself on his 
 cleverness. He argued that, if the white men thought 
 so much of one evil little goat, a goat with an undoubted 
 devil in it, they would think far more of two ; conse- 
 quently, when a heathen came in with a scraggy, dirty- 
 white little creature, with a long beard and restless eyes, 
 he bought it for five shillings' worth of trading stuff, and 
 put it to sleep with Peter. 
 
 As it happened, we were away nearly a week. The 
 game had left M'Bambo's neighbourhood, and shifted 
 off to the south-east, where the salt grass is to be found. 
 
 When we got back to camp, just at nightfall, two scurry- 
 ing, breathless little creatures cannoned against our legs, 
 stayed just long enough to butt at us, then raced on. 
 It was our introduction to the white goat, who was 
 immediately named " Paul the Second." 
 
 I can still remember that night of our return. The 
 goats seemed to regard me as an interloper in my own 
 hut. After the candles had been put out, they spent 
 an hour or two scratching the earthen floor to make 
 sleeping places for themselves, after which they would 
 lie down for a few minutes in a totally different spot. 
 When, at last, they did settle for a while, it was to chew 
 the cud, very noisily and vigorously. I was deadly tired, 
 but it must have been three o'clock in the morning 
 
PETER GOAT AND WHITE MAN 195 
 
 before I got to sleep. A couple of hours later, I awakened 
 suddenly, thinking the roof had fallen in ; but it was 
 merely Paul doing a step dance on my body, whilst 
 Peter, standing on my pillow, was defying him. A 
 moment afterwards, they were doing a wild scamper 
 round the huts, which ended in both of them landing on 
 top of me again, breathless and exhausted. 
 
 To say I was angry is to leave out a good deal. As soon 
 as the early morning jobs had been done, the camp 
 cleared, the cattle and goats sent to pasture, I called 
 Amous, and explained the situation to him. A sleeping- 
 place must be constructed for those goats, without delay. 
 
 The Basutu scratched his wool. He loved Peter, but 
 Paul had not taken his fancy. 
 
 " Better kill the little white one, Chief," he said, eyeing 
 the new-comer with grim disfavour. " He leads Peter 
 astray, and, at least, he will make soup." 
 
 It was, really, sound advice, but I did not want to 
 deprive Peter of his playmate ; so I rejected it, unfortu- 
 nately as it turned out. 
 
 Amous shrugged his shoulders, and set to work, or, 
 rather, set three or four wondering Mashona to work, 
 cutting sticks, making twine out of bark, fetching grass for 
 thatching. His plan was to make a miniature round hut, 
 complete in every detail, for the two goats. 
 
 If anything had been needed to confirm the local 
 savages in their theory of Peter's supernatural character, 
 this filled the want. A hut for a goat to sleep in ! Why 
 the white man himself was admitting that the little black 
 creature had the soul of a human being, probably the 
 soul of a dead white man. It was all uncanny and horri- 
 ble. They made no attempts to disguise their fears. 
 
 Just before sundown, the hut was completed. It was 
 
ig6 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 quite a work of art in its way. Peter strolled up, ex- 
 amined it critically, suddenly pulled a mouthful of grass 
 out of the thatch, and dashed off, followed by his evil 
 genius, Paul. 
 
 It was no easy task to get them into the hut of course 
 it had been named " The Vatican " even after they had 
 been captured. They fought the piccanins most vigor- 
 ously, and, not until Amous himself took a hand in the 
 game, could they be induced to enter. 
 
 That night, and the two or three succeeding nights, I 
 slept peacefully, though during the day I could only 
 secure immunity from attack by stationing a boy at the 
 door of the hut in which I was. Peter was getting worse 
 and worse, every day. He seemed quite to have lost his 
 old affection for me, and to care for nothing but that 
 depraved little white beast with a beard. I was fast coming 
 round to Amous' point of view the proper place for 
 Paul was the stock-pot ; when the question was settled 
 for me. 
 
 It was about one o'clock in the morning when the 
 commotion arose. I was out within a few seconds, shot- 
 gun in hand. The hyaena's howl had been unmistakable 
 so had the cry of a goat. 
 
 Amous tore a handful of grass out of the nearest thatch 
 and fired it. " Look ! " he exclaimed, pointing to the 
 Vatican. " Look what the evil beasts have done ! Oh, 
 Peter ! My Little Black Thing ! " 
 
 The Vatican was demolished. The foul brutes there 
 must have been several of them had managed to tear 
 away the sides, strongly though it had been built. There 
 was no sign of either of the goats. 
 
 I do not know who was the more upset, Amous or 
 myself. All Peter's recent misdeeds were forgotten, and 
 
PETER GOAT AND WHITE MAN 197 
 
 we thought of him only as the dear little chum of the 
 past few months. 
 
 Amous twisted up a couple of fresh grass torches. 
 " We may find the schelm still in the old mealie field," he 
 said. " Perhaps they have stayed to eat the bodies." 
 
 The chance was a very poor one, but, at that moment, 
 I was simply rabid for revenge. I had always loathed 
 
 hyaenas before, but now Suddenly, somewhere below 
 
 us, a goat bleated, vigorously, angrily it seemed. 
 
 Amous sprang forward. " Peter ! " he exclaimed. A 
 couple of minutes later, he was back, with the little fellow 
 in his arms. After such an experience, most goats would 
 have been half dead with terror, but Peter was snorting 
 with rage. He had a nasty bite on the head, and must 
 have escaped death by a miracle, for a hyaena has the 
 strongest jaws of any animal of his size, but, otherwise, 
 he was unhurt. 
 
 He spent the rest of that night on my blankets, very 
 quietly ; and never again did he run the risk of being 
 caught by one of his foes. As for Paul the Second, we 
 never found a trace of him, and, for my part, he went 
 unregretted. I am sure he would have been a failure in 
 the stock-pot, and I had the hope that he was giving the 
 hyaena fierce indigestion. 
 
 Peter took to wagons from the very outset. Even 
 before he had travelled on one, a wagon was one of his 
 favourite playing places. After a little practice, you 
 could jump on to the dusselboom, balance yourself 
 there, and then make a leap to the buck boards. Once 
 you were on it, on an empty wagon, you had a splendid 
 run up and down, your hoofs making a wholly delightful 
 noise on the planks. Then, too, you could show off 
 perfectly, you could rub your sides up against the buck 
 
I 9 8 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 beams, in full view of all the Kaffir women, who could 
 not help seeing what a beautiful goat you were ; and when 
 any of the trek oxen came along, and sniffed round the 
 wagon, as was their habit morning and evening, you could 
 meet them on terms of equality, rubbing noses with them, 
 especially with Fransman and Eiffel, the two hind bul- 
 locks. . . . Yes, a wagon was a fine institution from 
 the point of view of a little black goat with a white man's 
 soul at least, the Mashona were already beginning to 
 say he possessed that doubtful quality or is it a com- 
 modity ? and they ought to have known. 
 
 When we did trek away from Chivamba's at the end 
 of the trading season, Amous took the precaution of 
 tying Peter up in the wagon tent. I never saw the 
 Apostle so indignant before. His hair fairly bristled 
 with wrath it is amazing how eloquent a goat's hair can 
 be and he butted at every native who came near him. 
 But, in the end, he squared up the account against Amous, 
 squared it up vicariously, through me. He found a new 
 natural-wool shirt of mine it had cost fifteen shillings 
 in that unholy country and, by the time we outspanned, 
 he had eaten the whole of the front of it. 
 
 After that, he was allowed to sit anywhere on the wagon 
 he liked, so long as he kept out of the tent. 
 
 An Ishmaelite myself, I have had the good fortune 
 to have as chums animals with the brand of Ishmael on 
 them, born travellers. My companion of to-day, my 
 companion of the last six years, Black Prince, the little 
 dog who has never left me, night or day, during that time, 
 who sits on the table beside me as I write, sleeps beside my 
 bed, goes to town with me always, Black Prince is as 
 perfect a traveller as was his predecessor in my affections. 
 Peter, the goat with a white man's soul. 
 
PETER GOAT AND WHITE MAN 199 
 
 Prince's soul is white too. Sometimes, when he 
 turns those wonderful brown eyes of his on me, I feel 
 that, if only he could tell me how he felt towards me 
 I could put into words what a man should feel towards 
 God. 
 
 The Love of Woman is the Great Thing. It dwarfs, 
 overshadows, all else ; but to be loved by animals is no 
 small matter. The man or woman who does not love 
 animals, and is not loved by animals, should be shunned as 
 amoral leper. The animal who will not make friends is 
 doing what the leper's bell did of old ; it is saying to all 
 the world, " Unclean, unclean." 
 
 Peter loved the wagon-trekking, loved the wagons 
 themselves. Later on, when we had four wagons on the 
 road, he would travel on each in turn, unless, of course, 
 one of them happened to have an uncomfortable load, 
 one on which he could not find a satisfactory resting 
 place. 
 
 Often, he gave us horrible scares. We could not find 
 him anywhere. The drivers would, one and all, declare 
 that he could not be lost, that they were sure he had not 
 strayed ; yet there was not a sign of him. A frenzied 
 search round the outspan, visits to all the other wagons 
 there, would yield no results ; and then, after an hour of 
 anxiety, he would be discovered in the bight of a buck-sail, 
 or tucked down between a couple of sacks, chewing 
 contentedly. 
 
 After a while, we got to know his ways, to feel certain 
 that he would not stray far ; but I cannot say that all 
 other transport-riders appreciated those same ways 
 of his. He grew to be insufferably conceited and 
 " bossy," 
 
 If we outspanned with other wagons, he would descend 
 
200 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 from his own perch, give our own cook-boy a friendly, or 
 pseudo-friendly, butt in the back of the knee-joint, then 
 investigate our cooking-pots, taking all the lids off in 
 turn, either with his little horns or with his wonderful 
 lips. If there were beans cooking, he would eat some ; 
 eat them though they were actually boiling ; if the herd- 
 boys had a fresh pot of porridge, he would push them 
 aside, so as to get the best of it ; and woe betide them 
 if they dared to interfere. 
 
 A frying-pan had a great fascination for him. Time 
 after time, I have seen him make a sudden dash, and 
 take a sizzling rasher actually out of the boiling fat. Is it 
 to be wondered at that the Mashona regarded him as a 
 wholly uncanny beast ? A goat which ate the flesh of 
 pigs! 
 
 If there was nothing particularly interesting at our 
 wagons, he would go over to any others he could find, walk- 
 ing very slowly, in stately fashion. Dogs, strange dogs, 
 were apt to misunderstand him, and to imagine that he 
 was nervous. They were quickly disillusioned. His 
 horns were never more than five inches in length, but 
 they were straight and sharp. When he was only eight 
 months old, I saw him tackle five dogs at once in a store 
 in the Makukukupene District. They were terriers, 
 and the storekeeper thought quite a lot of them. He was 
 a low-down person from Grahamstown, and I fancy he 
 believed that the curs would tear the Rooinek's goat to 
 pieces ; but, within thirty seconds, two had tumbled 
 out of one door and three out of the other. After all, 
 as Amyas remarked, they were Colonial-born, whereas 
 Peter undoubtedly had a white man's soul. 
 
 All wagons belonged to Peter at least, he thought they 
 did. Still, he was wise enough to know that he was not 
 
PETER GOAT AND WHITE MAN 201 
 
 always a welcome guest, and would often take a good 
 deal of trouble to jump up unobserved. He usually found 
 something to interest him, in which case he left palpable 
 proofs of his visit behind him. 
 
 As a rule, the wagon-driver, whose rations include 
 " Boer meal," coarse flour, bakes a large round loaf for 
 himself, cooking it in a " bake-pot," or camp-oven, and 
 then placing it on the wagon to cool. By some kind of 
 uncanny instinct, Peter used to know when there was one 
 of these loaves cooling, and, time after time, I have had 
 to compensate a strange driver, who came to me, quiver- 
 ing with indignation, to show me a mere shell of crust, 
 absolutely the whole of the crumb having been eaten 
 out. Peter, standing by, chewing the cud with the 
 mildest possible look on his face, seemed to understand 
 it all, for, when the driver turned to go, he was certain to 
 get a butt on the shins. 
 
 Peter always got on very well with the trek-oxen. 
 They all knew him, whilst with three of them, Biffel, 
 Fransman, and Blom, he had a close friendship. In the 
 evenings, just before we inspanned, he would always get 
 up on the tailboard of one of the wagons, and wait for 
 his friends to give him a chance of scratching their great 
 heads with his little horns. Then, whilst the process of 
 inspanning was in progress, he would take a wild scamper 
 all round the camp, returning just in time to scramble 
 on to the leading wagon. 
 
 He was never so happy as when he could actually get on 
 top of the wagon tent itself, a feat which, of course, he 
 could only accomplish when the buck-sail was over the 
 tent, and hanging down as far as the fore-carriage. 
 Then, with a wild dash, he would get up the slippery 
 surface, and do a crazy step-dance on top. I shall never 
 
202 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 forget a young Boer, who came to me with solemnly- 
 bulging eyes, and stuttered out 
 
 " I say, man, there's a buck on top of your tent." 
 
 I fancy he wanted to make sure that Peter really did 
 exist, that he was not merely the result of the previous 
 night's Dop. However, I reassured him, and gave him 
 some coffee, most of which Peter, who had now descended 
 from his dancing place, drank for him, the visitor having 
 put the cup on the ground whilst he filled his big pipe. 
 He went away sharing the niggers' views, that that black 
 goat was not a goat at all, but a kind of familiar spirit of 
 mine. 
 
 Peter was a nuisance over the coffee question, especially 
 down at the trading camps. In South Africa, the early 
 morning coffee is an institution, a fetish. You have it 
 everywhere, and it is almost invariably bad in the 
 hotels it seems to be a point of etiquette for it to contain 
 at least three dead flies but you get to expect it, or to 
 accept it as inevitable, although you would prefer tea. 
 
 Your boy brings it to you, entering at dawn on tip-toe. 
 If he is quite raw, he puts the cup on your pillow, so that, 
 when you awaken, you take that muddy liquid externally, 
 and get up in quite a hurry ; but otherwise, he puts it 
 on the floor beside you. It was then that Peter used to 
 get his chance. Constantly, in our big hut at Chivamba's, 
 Amyas and I have both reached down sleepily for our 
 cups, to find them empty, and then looked round, to see 
 Peter, the picture of innocence, chewing the cud in the 
 doorway. 
 
 When we were on the Road, Peter always insisted on 
 sleeping on my blankets. If I had a tent wagon, I did 
 not object to this so much. He was hot, and heavy, but 
 I knew that he was safe from hyaenas and leopards ; when, 
 
PETER -GOAT AND WHITE MAN 203 
 
 however, as was too often the case, I had no wagon tent, 
 and it was a question of sleeping under the wagon, it was 
 very different. Peter would start the night as quite a 
 reasonable little goat, humble, thankful for a corner of 
 the rug to keep him out of the mud ; but, gradually, 
 as the hours wore on, he would work himself into the 
 middle of the blankets, and work you out, until you 
 awoke to find that you were actually lying in the mud, 
 and that he was where you had started, and was chewing 
 contentedly, watching you with great staring eyes. 
 
 On extra cold nights on the high veld, he would often 
 lie beside the fire, waiting for it to die down, then, just 
 as the last glow disappeared, would scratch away the 
 embers, and make his bed on the hot ground, remaining 
 there until it grew cool. As a result of this habit, his 
 little hoofs were always more or less charred, and there 
 were always ugly burnt patches on his coat. Still, he 
 never seemed to mind. 
 
 I am not exaggerating in the least degree when I say 
 that I believe that, on more than one occasion, Peter 
 saved our lives. Personally, down in the native districts 
 where we bought our cattle, Amyas and I were very 
 popular. Few individual natives had grudges against 
 us, and many had reason for being grateful to us ; but 
 the white race, as a whole, was becoming more and more 
 hated, and, when his passions are aroused, the savage 
 loses all sense of individuality. 
 
 The Mashona had good reason for discontent. Labour 
 agents, thinly-disguised slave-raiders, were harrying the 
 kraals, seizing all the able-bodied men, flogging indiscrim- 
 inately, even flogging women ; whilst the air was full of 
 rumours of increased taxation. We were much further 
 out than any other traders there was, actually, no one 
 
204 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 between us and the sea and, if we had been murdered, 
 weeks might have elapsed before any white man even 
 heard a rumour of the fact. 
 
 Several times we had hints, from boys who were 
 undoubtedly faithful to us, that it would be wiser to leave 
 suddenly, in the night ; but that would have meant 
 losing everything, as well as being a confession of fear. 
 So we remained, and, right up to the very last, we never 
 saw anything in the nature of a hostile demonstration, 
 not even at a time when all the kraals were seething with 
 discontent, when all the young men were clamouring for 
 war. 
 
 But, afterwards, we found it was Peter who had pro- 
 tected us, Peter the Wholly-Uncanny Beast, the 
 goat with a white man's soul, Peter who had saved us. 
 If a Mashona had killed an ordinary white man, he had 
 only to fear the white men's law, the white men's ven- 
 geance ; but the Mashona who had killed us, who had 
 killed the Brothers of Peter, would, inevitably, have 
 brought down on himself the vengeance of the entire 
 Spirit World. 
 
 For Peter was not mortal. The Mashona had been quick 
 to discover that. His body was merely a shell which con- 
 cealed a white man's Devil, a most potent and terrible 
 Devil, a Devil which told us of all the wicked things that 
 the local people were plotting, which frustrated all their 
 schemes, and enabled me to punish the guilty. 
 
 What wonder then that, when they came in to trade, 
 they brought little offerings on platters, choice pieces of 
 tobacco, boiled sweet potatoes, special tomatoes, to offer 
 to the little Black Devil who guarded the White Man's 
 camp. Out of the tens of thousands of savages in those 
 districts, the hundreds of thousands almost, there was 
 
PETER GOAT AND WHITE MAN 205 
 
 not one who would have dared to raise a hand against 
 Amyas or myself because we were under the direct 
 protection of the Spirit World, because we had an actual 
 Devil of our own living with us, a goat who was not a goat 
 at all, an animal who was immune even from the attacks 
 of the worst of Evil Things, the Hyaenas. 
 
 Poor little Peter ! He was vain and " bossy " enough 
 anyway ; but he would have been insufferable, had he 
 known of his own supernatural qualities. 
 
 He took his honours lightly. Although, by birth, he 
 was merely a native goat, he loathed all natives. No 
 one with a black skin might touch him ; often, he re- 
 sented a piccanin even looking at him ; and, with him, 
 to resent was to charge. He was very small, it is true, 
 but he was heavy and abnormally strong ; moreover his 
 horns were sharp. I suppose it hurt frightfully when he 
 got you in the back of the knee-joint. At any rate, his 
 victims used to howl. 
 
 One of the greatest offences was to stand between him 
 and the fire. No Kaffir ever did that twice. It was not 
 pleasant to be butted forward, suddenly, into the glowing 
 logs. Yet he never tried any trick of that kind on with 
 white men. They were his equals. He, himself, was a 
 white man. 
 
 Poor little Peter ! I loved you as I have loved few 
 others, loved you as I love my little Black Prince to-day. 
 Not once, from the time when I wrapped you in a blanket, 
 a five-hour-old orphan, till that day when you died with 
 my hand on your head, did you fail to play the game with 
 me. 
 
 Up and down the Great Transport Road, every one 
 grew to know Peter, and to love him. Once, they had 
 objected to his visits, jDut before long they were welcomed. 
 
206 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 He was the Luck-bringer, the Mascot ; and, after he had 
 visited your wagons, it was far easier to manage your 
 Kaffirs. Every savage between the Zambesi and the 
 Crocodile at least every savage along the Transport 
 Road knew of the Goat who was really a White Man's 
 Devil. 
 
 Poor little Peter ! I suppose that, to-day, you and I are 
 more or less on the way to becoming solar myths, you 
 and I and Amyas. Even before I left that forsaken coun- 
 try, they had songs about us, about Isandlwana Amyas, 
 the Little Hand, the boy who had two fingers missing 
 about M'Ziki, the Reed Buck, myself, and about the 
 Goat- who- was-not-a-Goat-at- all. 
 
 They were not pretty songs in fact, some of them had 
 more than a tendency towards lewdness ; but when a 
 savage tribe takes you into its collection of legends, mixes 
 you up with its own heroes and villains and devils, 
 it means that you must have made an impression on it. 
 
 Often and often, when we were working with Chivamba's 
 camp as our base, I have heard a strange native ask one 
 of our own boys what white men were in the place ; 
 and, always, amongst the list of white men would be the 
 name of Peter. 
 
 Of the three, Amyas, Peter and myself, I am the only one 
 left. Amyas died in Manila, died from the bite of a 
 miserable little fly, which had fed previously on the car- 
 case of an anthrax bullock. Yet, physically, he was 
 the strongest man I had ever known, though he had 
 not nearly reached his prime he was only twenty-two 
 whilst I have never met his equal for dare-devil courage. 
 
 I never remember seeing Peter tired. When I was 
 travelling on foot, he would follow me just like a dog. 
 One day, he did over thirty miles, and when we camped 
 
PETER GOAT AND WHITE MAN 207 
 
 down in the evening was still energetic enough to drive 
 off three Kaffirs, who had dared to squat down between 
 himself and the fire. His hatred of anything black-skinned 
 was strange ; strange because he was a Mashona goat 
 by birth, yet quite natural if you regarded him, as I 
 regarded him, in the light of a white man. 
 
 Except for Amous, no one with any trace of coloured 
 blood in his veins could touch Peter with impunity. 
 He was terribly quick, terribly cunning, in his attacks. 
 A large goat is aggressive on the large scale. He gives 
 you warning by getting up on his hind legs before he 
 butts at you ; but Peter's methods were swift and sudden. 
 In his case, there were no preliminaries, no declaration of 
 war. Simply, his head went down, and he flung himself 
 at his adversary. 
 
 He was dainty in all things. He would never eat out of 
 a pot which had been used by a native. Invariably, he 
 wanted, and had, the "first go." Tobacco was one of his 
 favourite articles of diet, yet, though there were usually 
 dozens of rolls, sometimes hundreds of rolls, in the store 
 hut, the only one he would chew was the one which I 
 myself was using. I suppose he assumed it to be the 
 best. 
 
 So far as foodstuffs were concerned, his tastes were 
 catholic in the extreme. He would eat bacon readily ; 
 he would eat any sort of green stuff ; and he would eat 
 medicated cotton wool. I remember once coming back 
 to the wagons at the Bulawayo outspan, and finding him 
 busy with a large new package of cotton wool. I pulled it 
 out of him, literally by the yard ; and, at the end of 
 the process, he was ready to play with me. He liked 
 flannel pyjamas, though he had a veritable passion for 
 Jaegar underwear, if it had been washed recently. The 
 
208 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 clothes of one of my brothers were always immune from 
 him. 
 
 Paper seemed to have irresistible attractions for the little 
 fellow. Time after time, when we were sitting in the 
 shade of the wagon, reading, he would steal up behind, 
 make a sudden dash, and go off triumphant, with a 
 page of the book in his mouth. Amy as always used to 
 declare that he had an excellent discrimination in litera- 
 ture. The three books which accompanied me every- 
 where were Renan's Life of Jesus, Gibbon's Decline and 
 Fall, and Marcus Aurelius. Peter had many pages out 
 of these ; but when somebody sent me sixpenny reprints 
 of some of George Meredith's books, Peter scorned them. 
 Probably, like myself, he was puzzled, as thoroughly 
 puzzled as Gibbon himself, the greatest master of the 
 English language, would have been, had he been set to 
 read those books. 
 
 Peter hated fowls. It was a theologically-minded, 
 and semi-inebriated, police trooper who first drew our 
 attention to the fact, or, at least, to its interesting nature. 
 If a cock crowed near Peter, he charged at it ; and the 
 mounted policeman, who had studied for the Scotch 
 ministry, was deeply impressed. " He lives up to his 
 name," he remarked more than once in fact, we got 
 rather tired of his saying it, and hid the rest of the whisky. 
 
 When I went Home, after the loss of our cattle Peter 
 grieved terribly over them I handed him over to the 
 care of the township of Victoria, as a whole ; and the 
 township accepted the trust, readily. They were sports- 
 men in the clean sense of the word, white men, Home-born 
 Englishmen ; and they welcomed the little chap, recog- 
 nizing that he had a white man's soul. 
 
 Peter had a great time in Victoria. The township 
 
PETER GOAT AND WHITE MAN 209 
 
 adopted him, or he adopted it I do not know which is the 
 better way of stating things. Nominally, his headquar- 
 ters were at the Thatched House Hotel ; really, he slept 
 anywhere, fed out of any one's cooking-pots. Even though 
 some white men and women there were a few Colonials 
 in Victoria behaved churlishly towards him, mainly 
 because he was mine, their boys knew better than to 
 offend the spirit world by being inhospitable to Peter. 
 
 In Victoria, he grew fatter, sleeker, more self-opinionated 
 than ever, more like a white man, at least according to the 
 natives' point of view. 
 
 Afterwards, men told me with bated breath of his 
 depredations, of flowers and vegetables torn up and to 
 produce either of these in Rhodesia represents a miracle 
 of skill and patience of cook-boys assaulted, of meals 
 ruined. They were too well-disposed towards me, or 
 too loyal to Peter, to go into details ; but I gathered that 
 he had not been altogether the " angel in the household." 
 Still, he enjoyed himself and kept himself fit ; and those 
 were the main considerations with me. 
 
 When I returned to Africa, I found myself quartered at 
 Umtali, and, as soon as I had settled down, I sent for 
 Peter. The Native Commissioner told off two old savages, 
 sturdy, sedate old boys, to bring the Apostle up to me. 
 They were told not to hurry, and they respected their 
 instructions, spending over a month on the road. When 
 they arrived, they told me how well they had looked 
 after Peter, how he had had unlimited porridge, and 
 grain, and tobacco. 
 
 I could see, for myself, that he had been well fed; in 
 fact, he had been overfed. He must simply have gorged 
 himself at every stopping-place, every village, being 
 received always as a kind of deity. Probably, he had 
 
 Q 
 
210 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 far too much strong tobacco his guardians dwelt 
 eloquently on the amount he had eaten. At any rate, 
 within a few hours of his arrival, he developed a kind of 
 gastric fever, and, at sunset the following day, his brave, 
 faithful little soul went to its own place. 
 
 Peter, Goat and White Man, lies under a big thorn tree, 
 beside the disused Transport Road, a few hundred yards 
 from the Railway, that new line which has replaced the 
 Road. 
 
 Perhaps the ghosts of the wagons rumble along that 
 Road. I like to think it is so and Peter sees them, 
 and they outspan near his grave, and he goes over, to rub 
 noses with those ghostly cattle, to eat the crumb out of 
 the loaves made by those phantom drivers, and do step 
 dances on the shadowy buckboards. 
 
 Ohe ! Ghosts, the Ghosts of the Dead Past, play so 
 large a part in my Present, that they are realities to me ; 
 and amongst those ghosts there is none I love better than 
 that of the one friend, who, in African days, never went 
 back on me Peter, the Goat. 
 
ENEMIES OF THE ROAD 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 ENEMIES OF THE ROAD 
 
 SOMETIMES when, having nothing more profitable 
 to do, I let my thoughts go back to the Past, to 
 those days on the Transport Road, I find myself wondering 
 what the Road would have been like, had all schelm been 
 eliminated, had the Road been safe, for man and beast. 
 
 The Taal, the jargon used by the Cape Dutch, that 
 hideous, abominable satire on a language which we ought 
 to have crushed out of existence after the last war, the 
 Taal is anathema to every decent Home-born man ; but 
 it contains one good, comprehensive word " schelm." 
 
 A schelm is any noxious creature. As a rule, the word 
 is used for wild animals, from lions down to owls, but, 
 really, it is equally applicable to Colonial politicians and 
 their kind. After all, these are far more noxious, and do 
 infinitely more harm, than all the recognized beasts of 
 prey. 
 
 Perhaps I am a reactionary. I trust I am, because, in 
 the years to come, the reactionaries of to-day will be 
 honoured as having been the Prophets. Nothing will 
 ever convince me that Colonial self-government, especially 
 in the case of South Africa, is justifiable, that to grant it 
 is other than treason. 
 
 We have now an Empire greater even than that over 
 
 213 
 
214 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 which Trajan ruled, but it is an Empire on the verge of 
 dissolution, merely because we have allowed sentiment, 
 sheer sloppiness, to take the place of common sense. 
 
 Up till Trajan's death, Rome's colonies existed for the 
 benefit of Imperial Rome. Rome had conquered them, 
 and, rightly enough, Rome demanded tribute. There 
 was a vast gulf between the Roman citizen and the 
 Provincial. When this gulf was filled in, filled in by 
 the process of casting into it all that had made Rome 
 great, the doom of the Empire was sealed. 
 
 To-day, we are doing much the same thing. It may 
 be heresy to say so I know I am running up against all 
 accepted political creeds but I do not believe in 
 Colonial self-government. If you can no longer run a 
 territory as it should be run, at a profit, you are richer 
 and safer without it. Our principle if principle it can 
 be called of giving everything to the Colonies and asking 
 nothing in return, is simple lunacy. 
 
 We opened up those territories in the first case, usually 
 at an immense cost of blood and money ; to-day, we 
 guarantee their financial credit, we keep an immense fleet 
 to police the Trade Routes for their benefit ; we have 
 an Army always ready to assist them ; and in return 
 we get nothing ! Nothing but insolence ~from loud- 
 tongued politicians, who, in this country, would not even 
 get seats on a Borough Council. 
 
 When a few hundred thousands are voted by one of the 
 Colonies towards the Navy, our Press grovels to that 
 Colony. The gift is " princely," " Imperial " according 
 to Fleet Street ; whereas, in reality, it is but a very small 
 sum on account of a long overdue debt. 
 
 Our attitude towards the Colonies is that of a "crazy 
 merchant, who started branches abroad, and allowed 
 
ENEMIES OF THE ROAD 215 
 
 his managers and clerks in those branches to keep, not 
 only the profits, but the gross takings as well. 
 
 A Colony which cannot pay tribute, definite sums in 
 cash, or fulfil definite purposes like our two most valuable 
 possessions, Singapore and Hongkong, is not worth having. 
 At the end of the Boer War, South Africa should have 
 been charged with the War Debt. Instead, our rulers 
 gave it self-government, lent it money, and we now pay 
 for military and naval protection for it ! 
 
 Indeed, as a nation we must be doomed, by reason of 
 our folly. If a province of the Roman Empire had 
 behaved as Cape Colony did during the Boer War, Trajan, 
 great, and wise, and humane though he was, would have 
 made it so that a crow could fly from end to end of it, 
 and find nothing to eat in the land. 
 
 I never learnt to speak the Taal. Nay, more, I never 
 allowed it to be spoken in my camps. The very sound 
 of it is loathsome. It is in no sense a language, merely the 
 jargon used by a debased form of white man. There is 
 no literature in the Taal ; in fact, its crudity renders such 
 a thing impossible. 
 
 But that word " schelm " I do like. It is wonderfully 
 expressive, completely comprehensive. On the Transport 
 Road, you use it every day, every hour, for the schelm 
 are always with you, an ever-present danger. At first, 
 you are nervous about them, nervous so far as your own 
 personal safety is concerned ; but that stage soon passes. 
 You realize that they greatly prefer your cattle to you. 
 Then you become nervous about your cattle, hardly 
 sleeping, starting up at every alarm ; but, at last, you 
 settle down to a deep, quiet hatred of all night-prowlers, 
 and you get into the way, the only sensible way really, of 
 leaving a very great deal to luck. 
 
216 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 It is almost impossible efficiently to protect cattle 
 against schelm on the road. At the end of a long trek, 
 even though you may find plenty of thorn scrub, there is 
 not the time to make an efficient scherm. You may 
 construct something through which the lion will not 
 penetrate, but it takes heavy timber to prevent the 
 terrified cattle from breaking out when they smell the lion. 
 
 Down at Chivamba's, we had a really lion-proof 
 scherm, one of the best I have ever seen, capable of 
 holding easily a hundred and fifty cattle ; but it took a 
 dozen boys a fortnight to build it, even with the assistance 
 of two wagons to bring in the poles. I cannot remember 
 the schelm ever trying to force their way in there, 
 though, periodically, a lion, or a couple of lions, would 
 take up their quarters in the valley, and levy a heavy 
 toll on the unprotected animals in the villages. 
 
 Whenever I heard of the arrival of a new lion they 
 always seemed to come up from M'Bambo's neighbour- 
 hood I used to send for the local headmen and order them 
 to put their cattle-kraals in order. In nine cases out of 
 ten, these kraals merely consisted of rotten poles, six or 
 seven feet in height, planted so loosely in the ground that 
 the cattle could push them aside, more or less at will. 
 Certainly, there was no suspicion of their being lion-proof. 
 
 Still, all my protests, and threats, and curses were 
 unavailing. The most any of those wretched savages 
 would ever consent to do was to hang charms in the 
 entrances of the scherms. When, next morning, they 
 found a heifer gone, they remarked solemnly that the 
 lion must indeed be a potent wizard. I used to grow 
 very tired of this attitude, and used to tell them so, 
 emphatically. If the lions had not had a chance to get 
 anything to eat in the valley there was very little game 
 
ENEMIES OF THE ROAD 217 
 
 just then they would soon have grown weary of the place, 
 whereas, finding all those unprotected cattle, they must 
 have come to "look on it as a kind of earthly Paradise. 
 I know that they used to stay much too long to please me, 
 especially as they became very cheeky. On two occa- 
 sions, they actually made attempts on my wagon-spans 
 whilst these were feeding in the vlei, and, when the 
 wagons trekked off, there was always a chance of the 
 local schelm following them up. 
 
 What is the best precaution against attacks from lions 
 when you are on the Road ? The usual method is to 
 tie your cattle round the wagon itself, not, as is usually 
 done, to the trek-chain, and to keep large fires going. 
 But, in many cases, sufficient firewood is not obtainable, 
 whilst if a lion is really starving he will often run the 
 risk of making a sudden dash right up to the wagon itself. 
 
 Many old hunters declare that white rags, fluttering in 
 the moonlight, scare the lion more than does anything 
 else ; but of this I have had no practical experience. 
 I have, however, found a small acetylene lamp wonderfully 
 efficient when travelling with pack-donkeys . On one occa- 
 sion, the bush round our camp seemed to be alive with 
 schelm, yet none of them dared to face that flashing 
 lamp. 
 
 Undoubtedly, an old lion is far more dangerous than 
 one in the prime of life. The latter is able to hunt game 
 for himself, to keep away from mankind, whom he both 
 hates and fears. If he does come across men, he generally 
 clears out as quickly as possible, secure of getting food 
 elsewhere, in places where the rifle has never disturbed 
 the game ; but the old lion hangs about the outspans. 
 He has cunning, ferocity, and what he now lacks in 
 strength, he makes up for in patience. Hunger renders 
 
2i8 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 him desperate, and, as a result, he often takes desperate 
 risks. If you chance to learn that there is an old lion in 
 your neighbourhood, probably you will sleep but little 
 until you are sure that he has got tired of watching for a 
 chance at your cattle, and has made his way to a native 
 village, where he will spring out on the women as they 
 go down to the water-holes in the evening. 
 
 One question which I often heard debated amongst 
 transport-riders was what weight a lion can actually 
 carry on his back. Many the majority of the old men, 
 certainly used to hold that he could take a fair-sized 
 bullock in his jaws, fling it on his back, and actually jump 
 a five-foot-high fence with it. Others asserted that a 
 donkey was the most he could carry. 
 
 Personally, I doubt the bullock story ; it seems in- 
 credible, even to one who, like myself, knows how appalling 
 is a lion's strength ; but I have seen what appeared to be 
 conclusive evidence of a lion having sprung out of a 
 scherm with a medium-sized donkey. 
 
 For some strange reason the lion seldom, if ever, eats 
 his kill on the spot where he caught it. He always seems 
 to take it at least four hundred yards. I saw numerous 
 instances of this, and, in almost every case, the dead 
 animal had unquestionably been carried on the lion's 
 back, for the only spoor on the wet grass was that of the 
 slayer himself, and perhaps a trailing hoof or two. Once, 
 when one of my donkeys was killed, there was nothing 
 but the lion's track between the place where the victim had 
 been dragged down, and partially disembowelled, and the 
 clump of bush, nearly half a mile away, under which the 
 carcase had been eaten. What a wonderful picture a 
 flashlight photograph of such a scene would make ! 
 
 No animal is more difficult to get with a trap-gun, or 
 
ENEMIES OF THE ROAD 219 
 
 with poison, than is the lion. I, myself, with the aid of 
 really experienced hunting-boys, have set trap-gun after 
 trap-gun over half -devoured carcases, and have never met 
 with the slightest success. We used to take every pre- 
 caution against rendering him suspicious, disturbing the 
 grass and bush as little as possible, and rubbing rifle, 
 string, and other gear with green leaves, in order to take 
 away any human scent. But the result was always the 
 same. Sometimes, I used to wonder whether the lions 
 did not remain hidden quite close to their kill, and watch 
 all our proceedings. In one instance, I am certain they 
 were doing so, for the carrion crows, of which there were 
 scores in the neighbouring trees, did not dare to descend, 
 even after we had gone. They could see, or smell, the 
 lions, of which there must have been several, as they had 
 eaten at least three hundred pounds weight of meat 
 during the early hours of the morning. 
 
 The vulture is not a schelm, of course ; in fact, he is, 
 at times, a highly valuable scavenger ; but, despite his 
 useful qualities, it is not easy to love or admire him. 
 When one of your favourite cattle has just died, and you 
 are grieving over him, you do not like to look up and see a 
 small black spot away towards the horizon, the first vul- 
 ture coming for his share of the feast, coming apparently 
 from nowhere, the forerunner of perhaps fifty more of his 
 own hideous kind. 
 
 How does the vulture know ? What unholy, ghoulish 
 instinct tells him when the Pale Horse and its dread Rider 
 are about ? He always seems to come from beyond the 
 horizon, therefore it cannot be that he sees the Dead- 
 Does he scent it ? Is it instinct that brings him ? I 
 never yet met any one who could answer those questions, 
 nor did I ever meet any one who could explain why, in 
 
220 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 certain districts, when game was plentiful enough, one 
 saw no vultures. 
 
 The eagle is different. In his way, he is most distinctly 
 a schelm, just as he is not a scavenger. He kills his own 
 food. I know, by experience, that he will take a young 
 goat, and I have heard of him trying to kill a calf. Then, 
 too, he comes down from the sky, not from beyond the 
 horizon. 
 
 Perhaps the very strangest sight I ever witnessed was 
 that of a snake falling, apparently from the clouds, a big 
 black mamba, writhing and squirming as it hurtled down- 
 wards, to be smashed to pulp on a rock. Just above it, 
 dropping also, with wings closed, was the eagle, which had 
 descried it from above, carried it up in its talons, and 
 dropped it to kill it. A hundred feet or so above the earth, 
 the bird opened his wings, and circled downwards gently, 
 to pick up its victim again. The eyesight of those 
 eagles is one of the most marvellous things in Creation. 
 I have seen them as the tiniest speck in the sky, many 
 hundreds of feet up, perhaps over a thousand feet up, 
 suddenly begin to drop, and I never once saw one soar 
 upwards again without his prey in his claws. 
 
 The lion and the eagle never seem to come into conflict 
 with one another. Their tastes are similar, but one is 
 Chief of the Schelm-on-the-ground, the other of the Schelm- 
 in-the-air ; but thousands of vultures fall every year 
 as victims of the lion's wrath. It is the vulture's own 
 fault. He overeats himself so appallingly that, after a 
 while, he cannot fly ; then he reaches the state when he 
 cannot even walk. The lion comes back, to make a 
 second meal off his kill, and finds the horrible, evil- 
 smelling, lethargic birds in his way. Naturally enough, 
 he becomes annoyed. I have seen ten or a dozen dead 
 
ENEMIES OF THE ROAD 221 
 
 vultures stretched out beside the remains of a bullock, 
 each flattened out, reduced almost to pulp, by a single 
 blow from that terrible paw. 
 
 I suppose the leopard ought to rank after the lion in 
 the transport-rider's catalogue of schelm ; but, really, I 
 believe that, so far as human life is concerned, he is the 
 more dangerous beast. I came across far more cases of 
 transport-riders who had been mauled by those horrible 
 slinking brutes than by lions. Of course, it may be 
 argued that most of the lions made a clean job of it 
 at the first attempt ; but I do not think this was so. 
 The leopard tears the flesh horribly, and his teeth have 
 some ghastly septic quality. Two Transvaal Boers, whom 
 I often met on the Road, had their left arms withered 
 almost to nothing from leopard bites. 
 
 The leopard can climb, and the lion cannot therein 
 lies the great difference between the two kinds of schelm. 
 The lion will never venture into any place into which 
 he cannot see ; the leopard will go anywhere, if he is 
 hungry. The lion will always try and avoid a man, the 
 other brute stands his ground ; moreover, being so 
 extremely short in the legs, he is able to crouch more 
 efficiently. 
 
 As a rule, it is the calves which the leopard attacks, 
 presumably because he can carry them away ; but he 
 frequently kills full-grown cattle, out of sheer deviltry, 
 by biting them through the back of the neck. I imagine 
 he severs the spinal cord, for death always appears to 
 have been instantaneous. 
 
 The one good point about the leopard is that he has 
 little of the lion's caution. He will eat poisoned meat, 
 or walk up to a trap-gun, almost as readily as will a 
 hyaena ; whilst often, in broad daylight, he will expose 
 
222 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 himself to be shot at, lying on a boulder up a kopje side, 
 snarling at you, even snarling at bullets which miss him. 
 
 I was never perfectly sure as to the number of distinct 
 varieties of leopard to be found in Matabeleland and 
 Mashonaland. Certainly, there are two, very well de- 
 nned, recognized as being different by all natives, with 
 different names ; but I am inclined to think that there 
 is a third one as well. The one or two skins I had be- 
 longing to this ' variety ' were very poor ones ; but there 
 was a marked difference between them and those of the 
 two ordinary kinds. 
 
 The black leopard is, I suppose, only a freak of nature. 
 I saw one once, and my brother saw it, in practically 
 the same place, the following day ; but neither of us 
 managed to get a shot at it, greatly to our disgust. 
 
 Hyaenas are not the least amongst the enemies of the 
 Road, even though they never actually pull down a bullock 
 for themselves. I have been told, often, of their killing 
 donkeys, whilst occasionally they attack a man who is 
 sleeping beside a wagon, snapping at his face as they go 
 past. 
 
 Really, I believe that the hyaena is the most loathsome 
 thing that goes on four feet. I can certainly think of no 
 creature more horrible, more verminous, more entirely 
 useless. His sole, claim to distinction is that he has a 
 stronger jaw than has any other creature of his size. He 
 can chew up the bones which the lion cannot even crack. 
 
 What wonder is it that the natives hold him in such 
 detestation ? They do not even look on him as an animal, 
 in the ordinary sense of the word. He is an " MTagati," 
 always. He belongs to the Evil Spirits, is an evil spirit 
 himself, the horse of devils. 
 
 No native would ever willingly touch a dead hyaena ; 
 
ENEMIES OF THE ROAD 223 
 
 and, though he is delighted when a white man traps, or 
 poisons, one, he, himself, would never dare to raise a 
 hand against his enemy. 
 
 Hyaenas are very easily destroyed. The crudest form 
 of trap-gun will get them, every time ; whilst pieces of 
 poisoned meat strewn round the outspan are snapped up 
 eagerly. Unfortunately, however, when you kill one of 
 the brutes, three of his kind always seem to come to 
 take his place, and, presumably, to eat his remains. 
 One curious habit of his is that of hiding that portion of 
 his food, which he cannot finish at one meal, in the nearest 
 water-hole. 
 
 The jackal, poor, harmless little fellow, is no schelm at 
 all, unless it be by reason of his mournful cry ; but his 
 cousin, the wild dog, is a veritable prince of schelms. He 
 hunts in packs, usually of about twenty or a dozen, and 
 woe betide anything he attacks. The strongest bullock 
 would go down in a few moments. 
 
 Once, I actually saw a pack of wild dogs at work on a 
 reed-buck. We were trekking through the M'Patane 
 district, sitting on an empty wagon, when we suddenly 
 caught sight of a beautiful reed-buck bull, with about a 
 dozen black animals with white bushy tails in close 
 pursuit. They passed down a vlei about four hundred 
 yards away from us. 
 
 It was only a matter of a few moments to jump down 
 and begin to shoot. Just before I pulled my trigger, I 
 saw the buck go down. We fired simultaneously, and 
 one of us bowled over a wild dog. Then we saw another 
 five or six coming up behind. The first lot was all over 
 the buck at once ; but, incredible though it may sound, 
 the second contingent stopped at once to devour their 
 dead comrade, 
 
224 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 From the time we fired first to the time we finally drove 
 them off can barely have been five minutes ; yet all that 
 remained of the reed-buck was a shoulder and the head 
 and neck. I believe a pack of that size could account for 
 a bullock in a quarter of an hour. 
 
 Fortunately, the wild dog is about the rarest of all 
 schelm ; otherwise, when game is scarce, they would 
 take a heavy toll of human life. As it is, I have little 
 doubt that some of those cases of " mysterious disappear- 
 ance " of men who go out on the veld alone and are 
 never seen again, can be traced to these detestable 
 creatures. 
 
 Of all the schelm, I think that the snakes levied the 
 heaviest toll on our cattle ; and I am sure they made 
 me more furious than any other evil thing of the veld. 
 You can understand a hungry beast of prey seizing a 
 bullock ; and, though you may long for revenge, you 
 cannot but admit to yourself that he is following his 
 natural instinct. He has that excuse. For the snake, 
 however, who wantonly kills two or three of your best 
 oxen, out of sheer deviltry, there is no shadow of an excuse. 
 How can there be ? The animals have not harmed him in 
 any way, and he certainly does not want either to eat 
 their flesh or suck their blood. 
 
 Time after time, a shivering herd boy has come up at 
 dawn and reported, often with a break in his voice, that 
 " A Black Mamba has killed so-and-so." 
 
 On two occasions, the two animals sleeping furthest 
 apart were killed during the night, a loss of from thirty- 
 five to fifty pounds. 
 
 Why does the snake do it ? In those instances, he 
 must have gone deliberately through the herd. 
 
 The Mamba he is the worst offender always seems 
 
 
ENEMIES OF THE ROAD 225 
 
 to strike in the same place, on the hind quarter ; and, 
 curiously enough, the animals never looked as though 
 they had suffered acute pain, and we never once heard 
 them shuffling about, or bellowing. When we came to 
 skin them, however, there would be a large patch, a 
 foot across, of hideous black jelly under the hide. 
 
 The first time I lost a beast from snake-bite, I, naturally 
 enough, gave instructions for the body to be dragged 
 away to the bush, where I could poison it for the benefit 
 of the local leopards and hyaenas ; but at once there arose 
 a chorus of protests from my boys. They were going to 
 eat it ! They assured me, most solemnly, that it could 
 not hurt them, that they knew what they were about, 
 that they had seen bullocks which had died in the same 
 way too often before ; so, finally, I gave in. It was 
 their concern, not mine, so long as they knew the risks. 
 And I suppose that, after all, they were right. Certainly 
 none of them seemed one scrap the worse for that most 
 horrible meat. 
 
 So far as human beings were concerned, I never knew 
 one case of snake-bite on the Road, which is the more 
 strange because three out of four of the people connected 
 with wagons sleep on the ground all the time. Several 
 times, in camps, I saw men have very narrow shaves 
 from puff-adders, those most disgusting of reptiles 
 I had a very narrow escape myself but, on the veld, the 
 bullocks seemed to get all the snake's animosity. 
 
 Looking back on it now, writing in a land where all the 
 schelm go on two legs and wear clothes, often very good 
 clothes, it seems to me that out there we accepted con- 
 ditions very calmly. I suppose that, really, it was the 
 environment, something in the atmosphere, the general 
 tradition. After a very little while, you never gave a 
 
 p 
 
226 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 thought to your own personal safety so far as the wild 
 beasts were concerned. All you troubled about was the 
 safety of your cattle or your donkeys. It may seem a 
 strange notion to those who have never been on the Road, 
 but it was one held by every transport -rider. 
 
 Always your animals first that was one of the great 
 rules of the Old Road. 
 
SUMMER TREKKING 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 SUMMER TREKKING 
 
 MOST transport-riders hated the wet season ; in 
 fact many of them, especially the Boers, tried 
 their best to keep off the Road whilst the rains were on. 
 If they had earned enough money, or, rather, saved 
 enough, during the winter months, they would go out to 
 some " farm," usually a collection of two or three mud- 
 huts with a small mealie patch attached, and loaf the 
 time away there. It was literally asking for a bad dose 
 of fever, a request which was generally granted. You 
 cannot lead a very active, hard life for seven months, and 
 then suddenly exchange it for one of complete idleness, 
 and, perhaps, chronic intoxication as well. Moreover, 
 it was during that season that the malaria-carrying 
 mosquito was most active. 
 
 Others, who could not afford to take a complete " rest- 
 cure," would look for contracts at the mining camps or 
 in the townships, riding cord-wood, or bricks, or some- 
 thing of that sort. 
 
 It was for this reason that you found so few wealthy 
 transport-riders, that, though rates were high, and there 
 had been no bad cattle disease since the Rinderpest, men 
 seemed to become no richer. They had had so many 
 wagons when they started, and they were content with 
 
 229 
 
230 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 that number. As for money, it was just something to 
 be spent. To most of the men on the Road, oxen were 
 the only form of wealth they recognized. It was mainly 
 for this reason that, when the crash did come, the ruin 
 was so thorough and complete. 
 
 We, ourselves, on the other hand, did all our really 
 heavy transport work during the wet season. Through- 
 out the winter, Amyas and I were fully occupied with the 
 stores and the buying and training of new cattle ; and, 
 as we did not want our wagons to go too far away, we 
 usually kept them at work riding grain into Victoria 
 from the various grain-trading stations, Amous being in 
 charge of them. 
 
 Taken all round, this grain-riding showed a net profit 
 of nearly a hundred pounds a month for three large wagons 
 and a small one, which was quite a welcome addition to 
 our income. They would put in about four months this 
 way, the rest of the time being taken up in riding stuff 
 down to our own stores ; whilst we always let the cattle 
 run for a fortnight or three weeks, before closing down 
 for the year, and returning to Bulawayo. 
 
 It was an immense advantage being able to fatten up 
 our cattle again so early in the year. When other men's 
 spans were dead thin, hardly able to pull an empty wagon, 
 ours would be in fine condition, owing to the fact that, 
 even at the end of winter, we could always find good grass 
 down in our trading district. In one part, just by the 
 Lundi River, there was regular " salt veld/' and two or 
 three days on that proved to have the effect of a strong 
 tonic on our beasts. 
 
 Of course, no one can pretend that the Transport Road 
 in summer is the most pleasant of places. Those who 
 have only known the Road under favourable conditions, 
 
SUMMER TREKKING 231 
 
 with a lightly-laden wagon carrying tents and gear for 
 a shooting trip, for instance, can form no idea of what 
 it is like when the rains are at their worst, how very 
 uncomfortable things can become. 
 
 Uncomfortable ! Even with half-a-dozen forcible ad- 
 jectives in front of it, the word would be hopelessly 
 inadequate. An emigrant steamer is uncomfortable, a 
 church pew is uncomfortable ; but the Transport Road 
 in summer can be abominable. 
 
 It is curious how standards vary according to the life 
 one has lived. I know many people, quite excellent, 
 rate-paying citizens, to whom wet boots are a terror, a 
 cold Sunday dinner a tragedy, who would be unspeakably 
 upset did they happen to miss one meal in the day. 
 There are those, again, who take a pleasure in incurring 
 needless discomfort of a mild kind, such as camping on 
 a damp river-bank, and eating the ptomained contents 
 of tins ; and there are those who, like myself, have had 
 to live for so many years amongst crude surroundings that 
 few experiences seem really rough. Yet I believe that, with 
 us,with my kind, despite all we may have gone through, the 
 love for, and the appreciation of, nice things, of good linen, 
 good silver, of a beautiful woman's dress, of well-cooked 
 food and good wines, is far keener than in the case of 
 those who have always been used to comfort, to looking 
 on luxuries as parts of the natural order of existence. 
 
 There were times, however, when life on the Road 
 during the wet season tried the toughest, most patient 
 of men. The only harder thing I have ever struck was 
 in the Philippines, during the Pulajan War, when, in 
 addition to the mud and the rain, we had the constant 
 fear of death at the hands of a horrid little brown savage, 
 a wholly-detestable person, whose one object in life was 
 
232 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 to cleave you in two with his bolo, his two-foot-long 
 knife ; but then, of course, it is never fair to compare 
 the abnormal conditions of warfare with the natural 
 conditions of everyday life. And, unpleasant though 
 they might be, the conditions on the Road during the 
 wet season were natural enough. You could not change 
 them ; your only course was to make the best of them. 
 
 Nothing makes me more angry than to hear men 
 growling against the hardships in a new country. What 
 else do they expect ? Nature never intended those 
 lands for the white man, at any rate not for the ordinary, 
 over-civilized white man. She has set up her barriers, 
 and it needs energy, grit, and endurance to break them 
 down. Moreover, those who do not like facing difficulties 
 can always remain at Home, with a doctor, a sanitary 
 inspector, a curate and a county councillor ever within 
 call, to give them physical or moral comfort. 
 
 In many ways, I suppose, I never had the real " Pioneer 
 spirit " in me at least not in the modern interpretation 
 of the phrase. I was always on the crude side, the 
 unpractical side, far more Elizabethan than Victorian. 
 I wanted to go on, to see what was beyond the horizon ; 
 but I never had the slightest desire to remain in the new 
 land. The Good Colonist, the man who with an axe in 
 his hand, and a high-flown sentiment on his lips at 
 least, he has it in novels carving out a new home for 
 himself in the Wilderness, building log-huts, and alter- 
 nately shooting at, and converting, Lo, the Poor Indian, 
 always seemed to me to be dull and unimaginative. 
 You can so quickly get weary of the woods or the illimit- 
 able veld. 
 
 Personally, my wish was to copy the entirely sane 
 example of the Elizabethans, to get whatever I could 
 
SUMMER TREKKING 233 
 
 out of the Land-beyond-the-Horizon, and then to return 
 Home, and enjoy the fruits of my labour in a White 
 Man's country, a course which would have been far 
 pleasanter for me, as well as for Lo, the Poor Indian, or 
 the Mashona, or whoever else was his local representative. 
 
 To settle in a tropical or sub-tropical land, to cut 
 yourself off, for ever, from all the pleasant things of life, 
 the little things which count, to be forced to have as your 
 mate some woman who was so soulless that she was 
 content just to grub along, or, out of your own utter selfish- 
 ness, to break a good woman's heart by keeping her in 
 such entirely alien surroundings, dragging her down with 
 yourself, to bring into the world children, who, knowing 
 nothing of refinement, nothing of our highly-strung 
 civilization, must inevitably grow up always do grow 
 up dull, narrow-minded, self-assertive is this any sort 
 of ideal for a White Man ? 
 
 Of course, it is treason to-day to write, or speak, against 
 colonization ; but when, in a few decades, Europe realizes 
 the gulf which separates its true children from the pseudo- 
 white of America, Australia or Africa, there will be a 
 strong revulsion of feeling. 
 
 Nature certainly warned us during the wet season. 
 In Rhodesia, amongst other unpleasant peculiarities of 
 the country, the rains are wholly uncertain. They may 
 begin in September, begin in real earnest, or it may be 
 December before they start. Often, those September 
 rains are a veritable disaster to the cattle-owner. Two 
 or three heavy showers on the burnt veld bring up the 
 new grass, green, full of nutriment. At once, the cattle 
 begin to put on flesh ; also they develop a very natural 
 distaste for any old winter grass. But, if those rains 
 are followed, as is often the case, by weeks of scorching 
 
234 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 sun, and not a single shower, that young grass quickly 
 withers, and your cattle are in an infinitely worse state 
 than they were before. 
 
 During the dry season, the Road except of course in 
 the rocky parts becomes hard and smooth. The mud 
 holes dry up rapidly ; the wagon wheels and the hoofs 
 of the oxen soon wear down the ruts ; when there have 
 been bad wash-outs new spoors are made ; each succeed- 
 ing transport-rider does a little towards putting the 
 drifts in order, and by the end of June, trekking is usually 
 comparatively easy. You can travel at night in safety, 
 knowing that you will not stumble into some impossible 
 pitfall. 
 
 But with the coming of the rains everything is changed. 
 Thevleis become mere bogs of foul-smelling black mud, 
 horrible, essentially African in their detestable nature, 
 apparently bottomless. Where the road is sandy, the 
 rain washes out huge gullies, some of which are four feet 
 deep. The rivers, rising suddenly in flood, sweep away 
 all the careful work expended on the drifts, so that, when 
 the torrent has subsided, you may find it a question of 
 practically remaking the crossing-place. 
 
 Of course, the mud is the worst of all. No words could 
 ever describe adequately the mire of Rhodesia during 
 the wet season. It is perhaps for this reason that no 
 official pamphlets, drawn up for the benefit of possible 
 settlers, possible investors in the Chartered Company's 
 land, make any reference to it. The official scribes are, 
 doubtless, conscious of their own limitations, and leave 
 the new-comer to find out for himself. They may be 
 quite certain that he will find out, and, I suppose, manage 
 to salve their consciences with that reflection. 
 
 A single day's rain, and what has been, for months 
 
SUMMER TREKKING 235 
 
 past, a level, treeless stretch of plain becomes a hideous 
 morass, extending sometimes, with short breaks, for miles. 
 
 It is not a case of a muddy surface, such as you get in 
 England, but of apparently bottomless mud, clinging, 
 foul, evil-smelling in the extreme. With every yard, 
 your wheels sink into it more deeply. I have actually 
 had a hind- wheel, four and a half feet in diameter, out 
 of sight in that mud. It is a matter of daily occurrence 
 to have your fore-carriage resting on the mud. 
 
 Naturally, in such circumstances, your cattle are 
 terribly handicapped. How can they pull properly, when 
 even to drag their hoofs clear of that abominable mire 
 requires a great effort. The wonder is, not that the 
 wagons stick so often, but that they ever come out at all. 
 Time after time, I have seen spans practically up to 
 their bellies in mud, still struggling gallantly. 
 
 If you are wise, when you get into a really bad mud 
 hole, you take off your boots. They will hamper you 
 tremendously, if you try and keep them on. Every 
 time you drag them out they will be caked more heavily, 
 until they seem to weigh about twenty pounds each ; 
 and, in the end, the mud will probably win, your boot- 
 laces will give way, and, standing barefooted, you will 
 have to dig out those wretched boots. 
 
 It is all digging in those muddy days, unending digging 
 away of mud from round wheels which sink yet deeper 
 the moment they move. If you can find them, you put 
 branches in the trench in front of your wheels ; if there 
 are no bushes or trees, you try to makeshift with grass. 
 
 Oh, it is a weary job ! That mud sticks so hatefully 
 to everything. I have never found any substance more 
 difficult to dig into. But the worst of all is when, having 
 got your wagon quite free, having let your cattle have 
 
236 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 a rest and a feed, you inspan again to stick afresh 
 before you have gone six feet, to stick more hopelessly 
 than ever. 
 
 After a while, your cattle lose heart, and refuse to 
 make another effort, standing listlessly, miserable, rough- 
 haired, taking not the slightest notice of the driver's 
 cries or of his terrible, forty-foot-long whip. Who can 
 blame them ? They are as tired as you are ; they hate 
 the rain as greatly as you do ; they can find little real 
 sustenance on those high veld vleis ; and they have tried 
 and tried until they are unutterably weary of it all. 
 
 Two spans, three spans, four spans ! I have actually 
 had sixty cattle on one of my own wagons in the mud of 
 Mashonaland, and they have found it a hard job to get 
 it out ; and I have seen close on a hundred fine bullocks 
 on another man's wagon, which came out in pieces. He 
 was so sick of trying that he hooked spans on anywhere, 
 even on to the front wheels ; and, when everything gave 
 way, he did not seem in the least disconcerted, heavy 
 though the loss was. 
 
 " I swore I would have it out, or smash it," he 
 remarked, as he lighted his pipe. 
 
 It was no uncommon thing in one of those big mud 
 holes to have to put a length of trek-chain, perhaps sixty 
 feet, on to the dusselboom, and hook your cattle onto the 
 end of that, because the mud round the wagon itself was 
 so greatly churned up that the oxen had no chance. 
 Naturally, when this was done there was no possibility of 
 steering the wagon ; it just followed the general direc- 
 tion in which the span was pulling ; and, more than once, 
 just as the front wheels reached hard ground, I have seen 
 the whole thing turn turtle. 
 
 A wagon abandoned entirely, at least, abandoned for 
 
SUMMER TREKKING 237 
 
 several months, until the rains were over, abandoned 
 within a few miles of its destination the very idea would 
 sound absurd, impossible, to many at Home, who are used 
 to seeing Carter Paterson's vans pass the house twice a 
 day ; yet I have seen this happen several times. Once, 
 I remember, in the " Gwelo mud " as we used to call it 
 the " Gwelo-Selukwe Road " was the official name a 
 poor wretch of a transport-rider had brought two heavy 
 steam boilers all the way up from Bulawayo, brought 
 them right through the mire, the rivers, and the wash- 
 outs, to within what should have been one short trek of 
 the mine at which he had to deliver them ; then he had 
 stuck, hopelessly, utterly. As it happened, there were 
 plenty of spans near at the moment. He had, I think, 
 three, there were four belonging to a Dutchman, and I 
 myself had three ; but after one try with seventy-two 
 cattle, twenty-four on the diisselboom, and fourteen 
 on each of the buck-beams, we decided it was no good. 
 We could not dig it out it sank deeper every time 
 and more cattle would simply have meant pulling the 
 wagon to pieces. It was exactly the same with the 
 other one. 
 
 Of course, with a load of general stuff, it was always 
 possible to do as I had done some years before when I 
 was trekking with a single wagon through the Filabusi 
 District cut a sledge, unload the stuff onto that, drag 
 it over the mud, and bring the wagon itself out empty. 
 But you cannot unload a boiler weighing nine thousand 
 pounds. 
 
 That Gwelo mud was a byword throughout both Mata- 
 beleland and Mashonaland how much nicer those names 
 sound than the horrible term " Rhodesia " and no one 
 was ever eager to take loads for Selukwe during the wet 
 
238 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 season ; consequently, the rates usually ran fairly high. 
 We loaded for these frequently, however, as our oxen, 
 being Mashonas, were exceptionally good in the mud ; 
 and, on several occasions, we managed to make records. 
 Once we did twenty miles of bad mud in four days, 
 though, for weeks past, no one had done it in less than 
 ten, whilst the average had been somewhere about a 
 fortnight. 
 
 Three experiences in the mud close to Bulawayo remain 
 fixed in my memory. The first was when we trekked 
 out late one afternoon the forwarding agent had been 
 unusually intoxicated, and so had delayed us at the yard 
 and we had only got two or three miles before the 
 leading wagon, the tent wagon in this case, plunged into 
 a mud hole. It was already dusk, and, a few minutes 
 later, it began to rain, a steady, drenching downpour. 
 Of course, you cannot work oxen in the rain if you 
 attempt to do so, you will quickly have yoke-sores on 
 their necks consequently, the only thing to do was to 
 outspan. Meanwhile, the right-hand side of the tent 
 wagon had settled down in the mud, until it was a full 
 foot lower than the other side, a fact which did not seem 
 likely to add to my comfort when I turned in. More- 
 over, there was no sort of possibility of making a fire and 
 cooking anything, even a kettle, and I was drenched to 
 the skin. Yet I can remember vividly it is one of the 
 best of my memories of those African days the sense 
 of comfort, almost of luxury, I experienced when I climbed 
 into that wagon tent, let down the flap, and lit a candle. 
 A few minutes later, I was blissfully happy, thinking of 
 those who were still out in the rain, in the mud and the 
 darkness. I had shed my soaking clothes, wrapped 
 myself up in the blankets, mixed a large mugful of Hoi- 
 
SUMMER TREKKING 239 
 
 lands gin, and filled a dry pipe. Moreover, in Bulawayo, 
 I had found a roll of Home papers which I had not yet 
 opened. 
 
 The wagon was canted over at an unpleasant angle ; 
 the weather outside was abominable ; the mud was 
 getting worse every minute ; and I had the prospect of 
 a foul day in front of me. Yet, for the moment, I was, 
 probably, the most contented man in the two provinces. 
 It was the contrast with the conditions outside. 
 
 The second incident which I remember so vividly 
 occurred near one of the stores on the Gwelo-Bulawayo 
 road. The mud was appalling in fact, at that point, 
 the track was a f ull half mile wide and the night was one 
 of the blackest I had ever known. We had out spanned 
 at dusk we were travelling south with empty wagons 
 and had just finished our evening meal, when we heard 
 a great deal of shouting some two hundred yards away, 
 behind the store. 
 
 Amous put his head into the tent. " It's the coach, 
 Baas," he said. " It's got right off the road, and it's 
 stuck." 
 
 A few minutes later, a Boer came up with a 
 lantern. He confirmed the Basutu's words. The coach 
 had blundered into a very bad mud hole, and the mules 
 could not possibly shift it. Within a few minutes, Amous 
 had the black span in the yoke ; and it did not take those 
 perfectly-trained beasts long to hook out the coach, and 
 bring it round to the front of the store. 
 
 There were some half-dozen men in the vehicle, and 
 I think I have never seen a more utterly exhausted collec- 
 tion. They had been seven days coming down from 
 Salisbury, travelling, or trying to travel, night and day, 
 practically without any chance of sleep, for you cannot 
 
240 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 rest much in a straight-backed coach seat. I think it 
 was nine times that they had been overturned. Their 
 journey was nearly over now. Even with the roads in 
 the condition they were, another two or three hours would 
 see them in Bulawayo ; but one, at least, of them had 
 had enough. He picked up his hand-bag and blankets, 
 staggered across to my wagons, and threw himself down 
 under one of them. 
 
 " Take me on when you trek/' he muttered. " I'm 
 absolutely done." 
 
 A few moments later, he was fast asleep. Several 
 times we hooked the mail-coaches out of bad places, 
 but in none of the other instances were the passengers in 
 such a bad way. 
 
 The third outstanding memory of summer trekking 
 near Bulawayo is of a certain extremely dark night, when 
 we were coming in from the north. The rain had held 
 us up until nearly midnight, about three miles out, but, 
 as I was anxious to be at the Racecourse out span on 
 the Tuli Road the following morning, I had inspanned 
 as soon as the deluge ceased. The wagons were quite 
 empty, the cattle in fine condition ; consequently, for 
 once, the mud did not worry us in the very least degree. 
 
 There was no reason at all for me to sit up. The drivers 
 were perfectly efficient, and there seemed no possibility 
 of trouble, so, as soon as we were off, I turned in, the 
 tent wagon being, on this occasion, the last of the four. 
 
 About an hour later, I awoke, suddenly. The wagons 
 had stopped, and there was a great deal of wrangling 
 and shouting going on. At first, I could make out 
 nothing ; then, gradually, it dawned on me that we were 
 not on the main road at all. The track was quite narrow, 
 and very well-made. Almost before Amous explained, 
 
SUMMER TREKKING 241 
 
 I realized what had happened. The leader of the first 
 wagon, being, probably, half asleep, had made a mistake, 
 and had led his span up the approach of one of Bulawayo's 
 largest private houses ; and, of course, the other spans 
 had followed ! 
 
 When I went forward, I could make the house out 
 plainly, only some twenty yards away. 
 
 There was one course, and one course alone open to 
 us to turn the wagons, and get them out again, though 
 to swing round four spans of sixteen cattle each in that 
 nicely-kept plantation probably meant to ruin everything. 
 
 I do not know to this day whose house it was, and I 
 was careful not to make inquiries, or to return there in 
 the daylight ; but, judging from the scale on which 
 everything had been done, the owner was probably a 
 mining magnate, and so not deserving of sympathy. 
 The wholly-amazing thing was that no one in the house 
 heard us. You cannot swing your spans without a good 
 deal of noise, and, though the owner may have been on 
 a visit to Berlin or Jerusalem, there must have been 
 some sort of caretakers in the place. 
 
 Still, no one appeared, no one questioned us. It is 
 needless to say that I breathed a huge sigh of relief 
 when the last wagon was clear, and we were on the main 
 road once more. 
 
 The road which had the worst reputation in every way 
 was that leading from Bulawayo to the Victoria Falls. 
 In winter, it was quite impossible, owing to lack of water, 
 neither man nor beast could get up it ; whilst in summer, 
 when the few wagons did go up, conditions were very 
 nearly as bad. There was too much water then, wholly- 
 appalling stretches of black mud alternating with terrible 
 stretches of rocky track ; there were unlimited lions to 
 
 9 
 
242 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 eat your cattle, and any amount of " poison veld " to 
 kill those which the lions spared. 
 
 So far as I can remember, the distance was two hundred 
 and twenty miles by road. 
 
 I was offered loads for the Falls one Christmastide. 
 Most transport -riders fought shy of such trips, but we 
 had the reputation of being ready to take on most things, 
 and a forwarding agent sought us out in the Market Bar. 
 He offered us fifty-five shillings a hundred pounds weight 
 to carry some twelve thousand pounds up to a missionary 
 station near the Falls, trading goods, of course, blankets, 
 beads and picks. 
 
 Over sixpence a pound for two hundred odd miles 
 it sounded very tempting ; but it seemed a little curious 
 that the agent should be so very anxious to close the deal 
 at once ; so we hesitated. Within half an hour, we had 
 discovered that the current rate paid by decent folk, 
 ordinary traders and so on, was seventy shillings a hun- 
 dred pounds, though the missionaries, who got their 
 goods for nothing from subscribers, or with subscribers' 
 money, and paid no licence fees, were trying to get them 
 taken up on the cheap. Perhaps, they would have put 
 one of their black evangelists on to pray specially for us. 
 
 Oh, if only the people of England could see the mis- 
 sionary at work, if only they could realize one tenth of 
 the harm he is doing in South Africa alone, if only they 
 could look forward a few years and grasp something of 
 the ghastly horrors of that coming Native War, there 
 would be a fierce revulsion of feeling. At Home, in 
 certain circles, the missionary is a combination of saint 
 and hero ; on the spot, amongst those who know him 
 and his ways, he is a public nuisance. Three-quarters 
 of the troubles in China have been caused by those folk, 
 
SUMMER TREKKING 243 
 
 and at least half the native unrest in Africa can be traced 
 directly to them. They live comfortable, almost luxuri- 
 ous, lives, in good camps, surrounded by native scum 
 only in missionary camps will you find numbers of native 
 women they are well-paid from Home, and, conse- 
 quently, when they enter into competition, as they 
 always do, with the ordinary trader, they have a most 
 unfair advantage, especially as, in very many cases, the 
 trading goods are sent free by the Faithful at Home, to 
 be given to the Heathen in his blindness. But I never 
 yet knew a Kaffir receive any stuff free at a Mission 
 Station. 
 
 I think that a good many missionaries, especially the 
 female ones, are sincere when they go out first, every 
 whit as sincere as those foolish folk out of whose bounty 
 their passage money and salaries are paid ; but a few 
 years' practical experience produces radical changes. 
 Some become fanatics, refusing to face facts, sweeping 
 aside all practical considerations, gorging themselves on 
 formulae ; others, saddened, weary, true Servants of their 
 Master, recognize the essential hollowness of it all, the 
 rottenness which underlies the organization, the gross 
 commercialism, and yet stay on, trying by the goodness 
 of their own lives to atone in part for the evil wrought 
 by their colleagues ; but many, the majority I fear, 
 quickly fall into the ways of their chiefs, and join in the 
 scramble for the shekels. 
 
 The Catholics are, of course, exceptions to the general 
 rule. In South Africa at any rate, no man ever yet 
 knew a Catholic Father who was making money for him- 
 self, or one who was having anything but a good influence 
 on every person, black or white, with whom he came in 
 contact. I am the more glad to be able to say this as I, 
 
244 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 myself, am far removed from belonging to the Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 Our greatest terrors on the mud flats were what we 
 used to call " graves/' the pits formed by the digging 
 out of other wagons. Sometimes, these were of huge 
 size, quite sufficient to contain the whole fore-carriage. 
 The men who had dug them had left them open it was 
 worse than useless to try and fill them in again with soft 
 mud but the recent rain had filled them, and there 
 was nothing to warn you. Even if your cattle managed 
 to avoid them, one of your wheels might plunge in, per- 
 haps resulting in the capsize of the whole wagon. Even 
 when I had plenty of cattle available, I have spent two 
 days getting one wagon out of a " grave." 
 
 Now and then, you came across " graves " which were, 
 literally, large enough to contain a wagon, huge pits 
 dug with infinite labour, and having a gradual " pull- 
 out/' You know, at once, what these mean some one 
 with a load all in one piece, a boiler, a mortar-box, an 
 engine casting, has had a capsize, and the only method 
 of reloading was to sink the wagon to the ground level, 
 and roll, or lever, the load back on to it. 
 
 A man who took a load of that kind during the wet 
 season, unless at a huge rate, might justly be set down 
 as a fool. I myself have done many foolish things, 
 but I never committed that folly. Once, however, there 
 was a forwarding agent perhaps I should call him a 
 Forwarding Agent, for he considered himself quite aris- 
 tocratic who came to me on the Market Square, with 
 unusual civility in his manner, and the price of many 
 drinks in his pocket. 
 
 I allowed him to spend money on refreshment for me 
 in the Market Bar, and, after a while, he came to the 
 
SUMMER TREKKING 245 
 
 point. He had, it appeared, a heavy casting to forward 
 to a mine about thirty-five miles away, and he wanted 
 me to take it. He told me that there was a specially 
 high rate for it, and that, as I was, like him, a Public 
 School man, he was giving me the chance. 
 
 I asked the weight of the casting, and the destina- 
 tion. 
 
 " About ten thousand pounds," he answered, then 
 told me the name of the mine, adding "It's a splendid 
 road." 
 
 The lies were splendid, or, at least, they were audacious. 
 I knew every inch of the road, having ridden it often, 
 knew that, just at the mine, was one of the very steepest 
 and rockiest drifts in the country ; also, I had happened 
 to see that casting on a railway truck, and had noticed 
 the weight marked on it fifteen thousand pounds. 
 
 I declined his offer promptly, so promptly that he 
 went off with an ugly red flush on his clean-shaven face. 
 After that, I forgot all about the matter. We got loads 
 for a short trip, did it in very good time, and returned to 
 our favourite out span on the Racecourse. 
 
 We had hardly sent the cattle off, and settled down 
 to a belated breakfast, when Amous came over and told 
 us that a " very big span indeed " was coming along the 
 road. 
 
 It was a big span, twenty-two fine oxen, and on the 
 wagon behind these was that huge casting. Even on 
 the level, every bullock had to be kept up against the 
 yoke, instead of all the work being done by the centre 
 part of the span, the fore and hind oxen being the reserves 
 for heavy places. 
 
 The transport-rider, a lean weary-looking Dutchman, 
 out spanned close by us, and we asked him over to our 
 
246 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 wagons to have a drink. Already, he was pretty sick 
 about the whole thing. He, also, had been told that 
 the load was " about ten thousand," and not until his 
 wagon was under the crane did he learn that it was half 
 as much again. 
 
 Ten thousand pounds represent an abnormally heavy 
 summer load for a wagon, whilst fifteen thousand sounded 
 impossible. Still, I suppose he had been too greatly 
 astonished, or too shy he was a very simple, back- veld 
 Boer and he had accepted it. Amazing though it may 
 sound, he knew nothing of the road over which he had 
 to travel. We, knowing it well, told him the truth, at 
 the same time trying not to dishearten him. Still, he 
 went away very sad. 
 
 His journey was one long disaster. With ordinary 
 loads, and ordinary luck, he ought to have been back in 
 eight days. Instead of that, he was twenty-eight] days. 
 At the Nine Mile Water, one of his front wheels crumpled 
 up, another at the Fifteen Mile.] A hind wheel went 
 a little later on, whilst in the big drift he nearly lost 
 wagon, cattle, and load. When he came back, his cattle 
 were thin and weary, he himself was a wreck from fever 
 and anxiety, and he was actually out of pocket over the 
 job. 
 
 The mud was the factor which impressed itself on you 
 most during the wet season, because it caused you the 
 greatest degree of misery and hard work ; but the 
 " wash-outs " were almost as bad. You dare not attempt 
 to travel at night during the summer. You never knew 
 into what you were going to stumble. Too often, the 
 road seemed to form a kind of gutter, down which the 
 rain water from the surrounding veld poured in a torrent. 
 A mere two-inch-deep rut would become in a few hours 
 
SUMMER TREKKING 247 
 
 a three-foot-deep gully. To get a wheel in that was 
 either to capsize or to smash an axle. 
 
 Time after time, two or three times a day, perhaps, 
 it would be a question of cutting a new spoor, in order 
 to avoid big wash-outs a very wearisome occupation. 
 
 It was, of course, the drifts which suffered most in 
 this way. I have spent two days in remaking a drift, 
 rendering it crossable, and, just as I was ready to inspan, 
 found that the level of the water was rising so rapidly 
 that I dare not run the risk of trying to cross. There 
 had been a big storm somewhere up country, and the 
 flood was now coming down on us. 
 
 So far as being held up by floods was concerned, we 
 were always fairly lucky. Only once or twice was it a 
 case of over a week ; yet I knew one man who, in three 
 consecutive seasons, had spells of over six weeks on a 
 river bank. It is a dreadful, wearisome job, that waiting. 
 You can settle down to nothing, for any hour the fall 
 may begin, and the falls are often as rapid as the rises. 
 
 You exhaust all your reading matter, and, unless you 
 have been wise enough to foresee the chances of delay, 
 you have soon exhausted your stock of luxuries, white 
 man's food Rhodesian luxuries, I mean, bully beef, tea, 
 coffee, sugar, and tinned milk. 
 
 A weary job ! It is the very nadir of weariness. I 
 have spent two solid months, starving in a stockade in 
 the Philippine Islands, a small party of us cut off from 
 everything and everybody, but, even then, we had a 
 kind of sustaining force in the constant expectation of 
 an attack ; but, on a riverbank in Mashonaland, your 
 only excitement is to watch your gauge stick at the water's 
 edge. 
 
 How do the natives, the drivers and leaders, fare during 
 
248 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 the wet season ? Very badly, one would sa^ at first 
 sight. They have no wagon tent, and usually no spare 
 clothes. Yet, on the other hand, after a long experience, 
 I believe that they feel the discomforts very little ; and 
 I am certain that they prefer the rains to the bitter cold 
 of the winter mornings. Wet is far less terrible to them 
 than frost. 
 
 One wet season, when our wagon tent had been smashed 
 up, and we had been unable to buy another one, Amyas 
 and I used always to sleep under one of the wagons, with 
 Peter for company. We had waterproof sheets, but the 
 ground was usually so saturated that these seemed of little 
 avail. You always felt that your blankets were wet, 
 and, as a rule, such was the case ; but, on the other hand, 
 you rarely got a chill in consequence ; yet, even though 
 there were no bad results, no one could rank damp 
 blankets amongst the pleasant things of life. 
 
 As a rule, the only alcoholic liquor we carried on the 
 wagons was " Squareface," Hollands Gin. This was by far 
 the most valuable of spirits. Whisky merely made you 
 bilious, and left you ready for the ministrations of the 
 malaria-bringing mosquito ; Hollands washed out the 
 organs, and saved you from the risk of Blackwater Fever. 
 I never knew any other man who took the risks we did, 
 who had fever so constantly, and yet escaped Blackwater. 
 I put our immunity down entirely to our use of Hollands. 
 
 Many a night, when Amyas and I have been working, 
 barefooted, drenched to the skin, superintending the 
 digging out of the wagons, worked like that for six or 
 eight hours on end, we have " perished " a bottle of De 
 Kuyper's Hollands the double-sized bottles, not the 
 ordinary ones and have not turned a hair over it. As 
 for our drivers, though the Liquor Laws are severe, 
 
SUMMER TREKKING 249 
 
 rightly severe, we used to break them on those occasions, 
 and serve out Dop by the cupful at a time. Cocoa- folk 
 may say what they like, but human nature was not 
 intended to face such conditions, and cannot face them 
 without stimulants. 
 
 The question of food during the wet season often became 
 a very serious one. We were very careful never to run 
 short so far as raw material was concerned, and our boys 
 never had reason to complain on that score in fact, we 
 always allowed them to help themselves, the drivers to 
 Boer meal, the leaders to Kaffir meal ; but uncooked 
 meal is useless when you can get no fire. And on that 
 abominable high veld in summer firing was an ever- 
 present worry. 
 
 You have to see that much- vaunted High Plateau in 
 order to realize its barrenness. It is the very Abomina- 
 tion of Desolation. In winter, when it is possible to 
 range round a little, and everything is dry, a piccanin 
 can usually manage to keep up a stock of dry twigs, 
 which, eked out with the dry cowdung at the out spans, 
 suffices for ordinary needs ; but in summer the cowdung is 
 merely a semi-liquid breeding ground for flies, whilst the 
 twigs are too wet to burn. To be stuck for a week in a 
 big mud vlei becomes something very nearly akin to a 
 tragedy. 
 
 The white man has his tinned meat, and, if he is wise, 
 a stock of biscuits as well ; but his boys cannot cook 
 their porridge, and, to them, porridge is the sole form of 
 food. You may share your provisions with them, and 
 still they will be as hungry as before. You have merely 
 given them " flavourings/' not " food/' 
 
 I have had many and many a sleepless night, thinking 
 of my hungry retainers, and yet, now, I find myself 
 
250 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 wondering whether they suffered as much, physically, as 
 I did mentally on their behalf. Their feelings, their 
 capacity for suffering, are nothing like so great as our own. 
 
 As a rule, I have a fairly good memory this book is 
 written without the aid of one single note, one single old 
 letter, and it is over ten years since I bade " good-bye " 
 to the Transport Road but some things seem to run 
 into one another, and you cannot pick them out definitely. 
 An example of this is the Christmas Days I spent on the 
 Road. I think there were three of them on the others, 
 I was in some township or camp. I think, too, that on 
 each of them we could not trek because of the weather, 
 and I am certain that on one there was such a bitter, 
 driving ram that I never got out of my blankets. 
 
 Another time Amyas was with me then we had 
 laid in a stock of various Christmas things, the parodies 
 on Christmas cheer which are considered good enough 
 for the Colonies, and, despite the fact that we were on 
 that detestable high-veld, and that it was raining hard, 
 we intended to spend a decent evening in the wagon tent, 
 talking of the things we would do when we shook the 
 dust, or the mud, of South Africa off our feet finally, and 
 returned to a White Man's land. 
 
 The first trouble occurred with the Christmas Pudding. 
 It was in a tin, the very thickest and strongest tin I 
 have ever encountered, and the tin opener broke on it 
 at the first attempt. Then, Amous came to the rescue, 
 with an axe. Certainly he opened that tin of pudding, 
 but, when we had inspected the mess that remained, we 
 suggested that he might like it for himself. The next 
 discovery was that the haunch of steinbok had gone 
 absolutely bad, and that the flies had blown all over our 
 two cold partridges. That reduced us down to bully- 
 
SUMMER TREKKING 251 
 
 beef. . . . And then the crowning tragedy occurred 
 Amyas had put a bottle of whisky and one of brandy, all 
 the liquor we had, on the tailboard of the wagon, prepara- 
 tory to opening them. He was still searching for the 
 corkscrew in the tent-pockets when the back-flap of the 
 tent suddenly blew down. A moment later, the soil of 
 Africa had soaked up both brandy and whisky. 
 
 Another Christmas, we were sitting under the wagon 
 the tent had been smashed up and the bucksail was 
 hanging down, within an inch of the ground. With us 
 was a pointer bitch belonging to a young Afrikander. 
 Like all her kind, she was very affectionate, in a foolish 
 sort of way, and would lay her head on Amyas' knee. 
 After a while, he grew tired of this the heat was pretty 
 bad and pushed her away gently, pushed her against 
 the bucksail. His hand was still on her head when she 
 gave vent to one terrible yelp, and disappeared, back- 
 wards. A leopard had been waiting outside. We never 
 even found a trace of her. 
 
 A wet season with a good wagon tent to shelter you is 
 bad enough ; but without one it becomes abominable. 
 We had to go through one whole summer tentless. It 
 was a driver called Joseph who was to blame. As a 
 rule, I had Basutu drivers, knowing by experience that 
 they are infinitely superior to all others. If I could not 
 get them, I took Zulu, and, failing those, as a last resource, 
 Cape boys. Nothing good ever came out of Cape Colony, 
 at least in the way of coloured men, and very little that 
 was good ever came from Zululand. Joseph was a Zulu. 
 With him, I made my usual bargain five pounds a 
 month and rations if he could drive ; nothing at all if 
 he proved a failure. 
 
 I think he was the worst driver I ever struck. I think 
 
252 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 he was even the most inefficient Zulu I ever struck, and 
 that is saying an enormous lot. Amyas and I took it 
 in turns to drive his wagon, trying, at the same time, to 
 teach him the rudiments of his trade, for we could not 
 well afford to do without him, and there was little chance 
 of picking up a substitute. We even went so far as to 
 promise to give him the five pounds a month still, if he 
 could learn to handle his span. 
 
 Amous loathed him, loathed him both because he could 
 not drive, and because he came of an inferior race to his 
 own ; but he tried loyally to help us, and, every night, 
 at the outspans, we would hear Amous giving his unlucky 
 colleague long and involved lectures on the technical side 
 of wagon driving. 
 
 It was a bad trip, rotten weather, terrible mud. A 
 river held us up for a week ; then we managed to struggle 
 through, and, at our first halting place, met some local 
 savages who told us that the next river, only seven miles 
 ahead, was just crossable, after having been in flood for 
 six weeks. Then they pointed up stream, to a distant 
 range of hills, and remarked that great rains were falling 
 there. 
 
 We needed no second warning. Any moment that 
 river ahead, the M'Gesi, might rise again, and we might 
 be held up between the two floods. Amous roused the 
 piccanins promptly, and it was not long before we were 
 once more jolting amongst the wash-outs in the road. 
 A full hour of daylight remained when we reached the 
 top of the M'Gesi Drift. Taking Amous with us, we went 
 down, and waded across. The stream was very narrow, 
 not more than thirty yards, bank to bank, and was run- 
 ning strong ; but we went through without difficulty, 
 and decided, at once, that the cattle could do it. As a 
 
SUMMER TREKKING 253 
 
 precaution, however, we unhooked one span, the red one, 
 took it through loose, and kept it just at the other side, 
 ready to hook on the moment the team pulling the wagon 
 was well in the stream. It was fortunate we took this 
 precaution, fortunate too that Amyas, who was abnor- 
 mally powerful, acted as leader for the first wagon. The 
 cattle could barely keep their feet in fact, one or two 
 of the smaller ones were swimming and it was with a 
 deep feeling of relief that I saw Amous hook on, and 
 rush the wagon out, right up the Drift, into safety. 
 
 The second and third wagons also got over, and there 
 remained only Joseph's span, with the tent wagon. 
 Amyas was on the other bank with Amous, I was at the 
 foot of the Drift, and was just about to return to drive 
 the tent wagon down, when Joseph, filled, I suppose, 
 with a sudden self-confidence, started his oxen. There 
 was quite a nasty bank on the left-hand side of the road, 
 and any decent driver would have kept his cattle well 
 away from it ; but this particular idiot remained on the 
 right-hand side of the span ; with the inevitable result 
 that the two left-hand wheels mounted the bank, and 
 the whole vehicle turned completely over, absolutely 
 bottom upwards, with the tent crushed to matchwood 
 underneath. 
 
 It so happened that on that wagon were all our pro- 
 visions, or, at any rate, our groceries, for the next six 
 months. \Vhen we finally got the thing righted again, 
 the mess in the road was appalling. Tins of curry powder 
 had burst open ; bottles of Worcester Sauce, jars of 
 pickles, packages of pepper were all smashed. Perhaps 
 the worst of all was a large bottle of concentrated vinegar, 
 the smell from which was amazingly pungent, and the 
 main contents of which had got on to my blankets. A 
 
254 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 bicycle, for which we had paid eighteen pounds, and had 
 never yet used, was reduced to scrap iron. The stock of 
 a shot-gun was cracked. 
 
 At the moment, however, I had no eyes for losses in 
 detail ; I wanted to get at the cause of the losses in 
 general Joseph, the pseudo-driver. But Joseph had 
 gone already. I suppose a sense of his own unworthiness 
 seized him, or, perhaps, he divined something of what I 
 was likely to do and to say ; at any rate, he went ; and, 
 though he probably crawled back during the night for 
 his few rags of blankets and clothing, I never saw him 
 again. 
 
 It was daylight before we had the wagon righted and 
 reloaded ; and, all those hours, I was in a terror lest the 
 stream should rise and catch me with three wagons on 
 one side, one on the other. As it was, however, luck 
 was with us, and, instead of rising, the flood went down. 
 
 Above, I have drawn a picture of the bad side of life 
 on the Transport Road during the wet season, putting 
 in all the discomforts and leaving out all the pleasures. 
 Of course, there were many, many fine days, many treks 
 when Nature seemed perfect, and you revelled in the 
 joy of being alive. It was so splendid to see your cattle 
 fat and well, to have them come back from pasture as 
 full as they could go, to mark how, day by day, they 
 recovered from the semi- starvation oi the winter. It 
 was splendid to have the grass green, the leaves green, 
 never to be short of water ; so splendid that, at times, 
 you found yourself wondering if, after all, you could 
 really be in South Africa. 
 
 I used to curse the mud, to curse the wash-outs, and, 
 as I have shown, I have still a lively remembrance of all 
 the hardships ; but none of these altered my love for the 
 
SUMMER TREKKING 255 
 
 Road ; none of them offered any reason or excuse for 
 giving up the Road ; in fact, in some weird way, I believe 
 they made the Road dearer to me. They kept down 
 the number of those who really knew it in all its moods. 
 
 Of course, transport work during the summer was a 
 risky business, financially. With reasonable luck, you 
 did extremely well, for rates were always high, and loads 
 plentiful ; but if a river held you up for a long time you 
 might easily find a month's profits gone ; whilst if you 
 struck exceptionally bad mud, you might tire your oxen 
 so greatly that you had to give them a protracted rest. 
 
 Naturally, we never agreed to deliver loads within 
 any specified time. It would have been lunacy to do 
 so ; and both consignee and consignor knew that the 
 transport-rider, for his own sake, would not dawdle. 
 
 Once only did we have unpleasantness on this score. 
 We had loaded, in Bulawayo, for Gwelo, three loads for 
 about ten different people, including a large quantity of 
 beer and spirits for the Gwelo Mounted Police. The beer 
 was in barrel, a most unusual thing ; incidentally, too, 
 it made a most awkward load. 
 
 It was about nine days before Christmas when we took 
 the stuff aboard. Nothing was said to us about there 
 being any special hurry, although it would have made no 
 difference in any case. We trekked to the outspan, 
 and let the cattle go, intending to go on that night. It 
 was three days later before we moved again. During that 
 time, the rain had never ceased for an instant. It was 
 through a veritable sea of mud that we ploughed our 
 way. Never before had I known the big flats quite so 
 bad. In all, it took us twelve days to do the hundred 
 and ten miles to Gwelo, which was, in the circumstances, 
 very good time, especially as we were very short of boys. 
 
256 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 At any rate, we got in ahead of all the other wagons which 
 had loaded up the same day as ourselves. 
 
 But one of the consignees, a local hotelkeeper, was not 
 pleased. He drove out to meet us, and found us out- 
 spanned a mile or so from the town. Perhaps, he thought 
 we were Boers ; at any rate, he misunderstood us, for 
 he began to rage and curse at the delay. Then he found 
 he had struck a cyclone in Amyas. Within a very short 
 space of time, he had realized what a pitiful little creature 
 he himself must be, and was apologizing. Later on, 
 when we delivered his stuff it was only a couple of small 
 cases he pressed drinks on us. 
 
 Up at the Police Camp, they greeted us with enthusiasm. 
 We had, it appeared, all their Christmas supply of liquor, 
 and, though Christmas was now past, they were none the 
 less glad to have it. They would have a second Christ- 
 mas, they explained. They did all they could to induce 
 us to stay, and help in the consumption of that beer ; 
 but I have been through one lot of Christmas festivities 
 with the Police, and I did not want to repeat the experi- 
 ment. Sometimes, hospitality can go too far. 
 
 I can remember still, as vividly as though it were only 
 yesterday, instead of twelve or fourteen years ago, the 
 sense of relief with which we turned back towards Bula- 
 wayo with empty wagons. There was no trouble now, 
 no need to worry about mud holes, no question of digging 
 in the rain. We could make up our minds where we 
 were going to outspan, and be quite certain of reaching 
 that place. As we passed each of the spots where we 
 had stuck on our way up, it seemed almost impossible 
 now that we could have been there so long. Really, I 
 believe that the pleasure of returning with empty wagons, 
 after a rough outward trip, more than repays you for all 
 
SUMMER TREKKING 257 
 
 the hardships, especially if the trip has been a success 
 from a financial point of view. 
 
 Riding transport in summer was a hard life, perhaps 
 the very hardest life a white man could live in South 
 Africa ; and I, for one, used to realize those hardships, 
 and curse them. But, for all that, I loved the life, and 
 I still love the memory of it. 
 
THE TECHNICAL SIDE OF 
 TRANSPORT WORK 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE TECHNICAL SIDE OF TRANSPORT WORK 
 
 THE technical side of transport work was a subject 
 which very few Home-born men ever mastered. 
 Some got a rough idea of how to " boss-up " a convoy, 
 how to keep things going generally, all details being left to 
 the drivers ; but they knew nothing of the care needed 
 to maintain wagons and gear in working order month in 
 and month out, of all the little things which have to be 
 attended to every day. 
 
 Transport work was, or ought to have been, a profession, 
 almost a science. I cannot say it is a profession, for 
 there will never again be real transport, those hateful rail- 
 ways have taken all the Romance out of Africa. Railways 
 and politicians ! Abominably bad State Railways run 
 by wholly dishonest and disloyal politicians we have 
 these to-day in place of the Transport Road and the 
 grimly- plucky, absolutely honest men of the Road. 
 
 We call that Progress and Civilization. We prate of 
 the glories of giving constitutions to Daughter States, 
 of giving votes to our enemies ; we treat the braggart 
 Colonial Premier as the man-who-made-the-country, 
 and ignore the fact that the men who really did the work 
 have been allowed to starve to death. 
 
 The Colonial politician is an unwholesome product 
 of the second stage in the country's development. 
 
 261 
 
262 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 During the first stage, the Pioneer Days, there would 
 have been no place for him, even had he dared to risk his 
 precious skin on the frontier ; but, as soon as the rough 
 work is complete, the heavy toil over, the risks reduced 
 to a minimum, he comes in, like a hyaena, and, too often, 
 manages to persuade the foolish folk at Home that he 
 is really a lion in disguise. 
 
 If I had had the opportunity of choosing wagons for 
 transport work in Rhodesia, I should always have selected 
 Natal-made ones, Both in design and in workmanship 
 they are distinctly superior to those from the Cape Colony. 
 The main difference in construction is in the " tongues," 
 the fork into which the " diisselboom/' or " pole," fits. 
 A Cape tongue is a crude thing, and the diisselboom is 
 very badly stayed ; but the Natal tongue is excellent. 
 I should say, without any exaggeration, that, for every 
 three diisselbooms you break in a Cape wagon, you only 
 break one in a Natal wagon. 
 
 Then, too, in the case of the latter, the " lang- wagon/' 
 the wooden bar which connects the fore carriage with the 
 after carriage, is far more easily replaced. To put a new 
 " lang- wagon " in a Cape wagon meant an appalling 
 amount of heavy work ; with a Natal-built vehicle it is 
 comparatively easy. The" bucks," the actual bodies of 
 the wagons, are always more or less similar, with nine- inch 
 by three- inch buck beams of hard wood, " stink wood " 
 usually ; but the Natal brake is far more handy than the 
 Cape brake ; whilst the Natal wagon tent is incomparably 
 superior to its rival. It speaks volumes for the innate 
 conservatism of the Afrikander, that the Cape people 
 should have gone on for so many years without copying 
 a single one of the improvements introduced by their 
 more intelligent neighbours. 
 
TECHNICAL SIDE OF TRANSPORT WORK 263 
 
 Dusselbooms are a never-ending source of worry and 
 anxiety to the transport-rider. To make one, it is 
 necessary to have a pole some eighteen feet long, and 
 about seven inches in diameter at the thick end. On the 
 middle and low veld it is easy enough to obtain suitable 
 sticks ; but on the high veld one often has to tramp for 
 miles, and then only succeed in getting a most inferior 
 article. 
 
 And it is on the high veld that most of the diisselbooms 
 get broken. Those mud flats are absolutely fatal to them. 
 I have had five go in four days. Your span swings round 
 suddenly, the front oxen pulling the leader clean off his 
 feet ; the trek chain taughtens ; but, so deeply are the 
 front wheels embedded that the dusselboom cannot 
 come into line with the chain, then, naturally, it smashes, 
 and you have to waste half a day, a day perhaps, putting 
 in a new one. 
 
 Whenever possible, I used to carry some spare sticks 
 on the wagons, but they were rather a nuisance, and the 
 drivers, unused to such precautions, would try their best to 
 get rid of them. As a rule, the only tools used by the trans- 
 port-rider, or his boys, in getting diisselbooms or " lang- 
 wagons " were an auger and a side-axe ; but I had an 
 adze, and, what was more, I was able to use it without 
 injuring myself. As a time-saver, it was invaluable to us. 
 I could shape up a pole in half the time it would have 
 taken Amous to do it with his axe, expert though the 
 little man was ; and I always took good care to have the 
 augers in first-rate condition, as well as to have a good 
 supply of spare bolts and nuts. When it came to a 
 matter of repairs, my engineering experience stood me 
 in good stead. 
 
 I do not know whether I was unusually lucky, or 
 
264 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 unusually scrupulous, but I was one of those who 
 could say, truthfully, that he had never taken a 
 telephone pole for a diisselboom. Those telephone poles 
 the telephone played the part of the telegraph during 
 those early days in Matabeleland and Mashonaland 
 were very tempting. They were just the right size, well 
 seasoned, and, in most cases, were very near the road. 
 After all, if you did take one, you only let the wire sag 
 a bit, and, sooner or later, the Mounted Police would 
 come along and replace it. Really, you were doing them 
 a kindness by finding them a job. 
 
 I never happened actually to want a diisselboom, 
 when one of those poles was the most handy thing avail- 
 able that was the reason why I never used one of them, 
 why I can look down on other transport-riders from the 
 top of a very pinnacle of virtue. Nor did I ever take the 
 telephone wire itself for the purpose of repairs ; in fact, 
 I never actually saw it being taken ; though, more than 
 once, I have seen an Afrikander diligently repairing some 
 broken part with wire of the same gauge as that which 
 ought to have been hanging on the poles and was not. 
 
 To smash a dusselboom was a nuisance ; to smash a 
 lang-wagon was a filthy nuisance ; but to have a wheel 
 crumple up was a disaster, because you could not repair 
 it yourself, and could not go on until you had sent back 
 for a new one, which might easily mean a month's delay, 
 for there were only one or two places where wheels were 
 obtainable, obtainable at wholly outrageous prices. 
 
 Personally, although I did things from which other 
 men recoiled in horror, crossed and re-crossed mountain 
 ranges which none of them would even attempt, though 
 nothing was ever too risky to the wagons for me to try, 
 I never smashed either a wheel or an axle. For this, 
 
TECHNICAL SIDE OF TRANSPORT WORK 265 
 
 again, I think my engineering experience helped me. I 
 never went out with a shaky wheel or a bad tyre. I 
 used to look at the naves, not only at the felloes, knowing 
 that the naves were by far the more important. And I 
 knew, too, that a thin tyre was an ever-present danger. 
 
 My blacksmith's bill was a very heavy one, from twenty 
 to thirty pounds per wagon per annum, but I always saw 
 that I got good value for the money, and I was always 
 able to laugh at those who had tried to economize. I 
 was constantly passing them on the road, broken down 
 temporarily. 
 
 Tyres were, of course, the heaviest item. I can 
 imagine what an English farmer would say to the prices 
 charged ; but there was a variety of small things as well, 
 stays, bolts, angle irons, which served to run up the 
 account. So far as axles went, I believe I am right in 
 saying I always had three- inch ones, and I certainly never 
 had one break ; but for really heavy loads, over nine 
 thousand pounds weight, the three and a half inch axle 
 was necessary. 
 
 As a rule, the bullock-wagon, the full-sized wagon, was 
 eighteen feet in length, with three by nine inch buck- 
 beams. I owned several of this type, but, in the end, I 
 came to the conclusion that, for all-round work, econo- 
 mical work, the sixteen foot wagon with the same sized 
 beams was far better. Certainly, it would not take so 
 heavy a load, but it travelled faster, and, in the course of 
 the twelve months, it earned more money than did its 
 larger rival which was, after all, the great test. The 
 lighter wagon may lose you a little during the dry season ; 
 the men with the nine thousand five hundred pound 
 loads may scoff at your mere eight thousand, but in the 
 summer you will simply run away from them, doing three 
 
266 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 journeys to their two, and keeping your bullocks fit all 
 the time. I am absolutely certain that the lighter wagon 
 always paid, up on those rough, unmade roads. 
 
 A wagon tent was, of course, an additional weight, 
 and it also rendered loading more difficult ; but it was 
 really a necessity. Of course, everybody used the half- 
 tent, extending rather less than half the length of the 
 wagon. The whole tent, which illustrators of stories are 
 so fond of portraying, is practically extinct. I do not 
 remember ever seeing more than two or three of these, 
 and, in each case, they were the property of some mis- 
 sionary, who could afford to travel in luxury. 
 
 It is wonderful how many people can live in an ordinary 
 half- tent. With Englishmen, one is sufficient, two is the 
 limit ; but Afrikanders are different. I had often seen 
 three or four children, and a husband and wife, crawl 
 out of one, and had shuddered at the bare idea of what the 
 interior must be like ; but when I saw a family of twenty- 
 two with one tent as its headquarters I came to the con- 
 clusion that I had struck the Nadir of Nastiness. I do not 
 mean that all those twenty-two slept in that tent ; but 
 they all used it, at various times ; and, like all Afrikanders, 
 they had no use for soap. 
 
 My dog, Little Prince, is always going in quest of 
 problematical creatures called ' ' Bit ey s . " " Biteys ' ' live 
 at least, he thinks they live in dark corners and under 
 bushes ; but, if he could explore an Afrikander's wagon 
 tent, I am sure he would find far more " Biteys " than 
 his little brain ever dreamed of, " Biteys " which bit you, 
 and made you scratch. I could scratch to-day at the 
 mere thought of them. 
 
 In the tent was always a mattress formed of strips of 
 raw hide, interlaced. On this, you put your wool mat- 
 
TECHNICAL SIDE OF TRANSPORT WORK 267 
 
 tress if you had one and then your blankets. 
 Round the sides, you had wall-pockets, to hold the 
 various necessaries of life, tobacco, cartridges and matches, 
 whilst the rifles and the shot-gun swung overhead. The 
 height was only about four feet, the length seven feet, 
 the width six foot six. As a home, a wagon tent may 
 seem to be somewhat inadequate ; but, for three years, 
 my tent was my only home, and I believe I loved it far 
 more than I have loved any of the infinitely more commo- 
 dious abodes I have had since. 
 
 On the Road, the Great Road, the Road-which-always- 
 went-on, you were a free man, your own master, lord of 
 your own soul, with your own destiny in your hands, so 
 far as the Lord-of-All would allow. 
 
 Always you were moving, always you were doing useful 
 work, Man's work, always you were making use of your 
 Manhood, of the God-like part of yourself. Uncon- 
 sciously, quite unconsciously, by doing your best, by 
 having to do your best, you were bringing yourself into 
 touch with the Divine. 
 
 When you toiled in the rain, barefooted, soaked, 
 muddied from head to foot, digging out the wagon, and 
 cursing, perhaps, all the time, toiling always, keeping 
 your niggers at it by your example, your God was there, 
 beside you, because you were doing a White's Man's 
 work, and so spreading the ideal of the White Man, the 
 Creed of the Christ. 
 
 When you took the leading reim from the voorloeper, 
 and yourself led the cattle through the flooded river, 
 your God was with you, because the White Man must 
 go first, to show the way. 
 
 There was no place for any but a Man on the Trans- 
 port Road. The weakling, the coward, the miser, the 
 
268 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 creature-which-does-not-love-animals, all these found 
 but short shrift. Men and men only, were wanted ; 
 men and men only survived. 
 
 Egotistical ? Aye, perhaps I am egotistical ; but 
 no man living dare say that I have not been through 
 it all. 
 
 Sometimes, it is a relief to boast. When you have 
 listened for months to the putrid pettiness of smug subur- 
 banites, male and female, to the men whose greatest 
 adventure has been the losing of a train, to the women 
 whose sole interest in life is the supposed immorality of 
 a woman better looking than themselves, the men and 
 women who have never done anything, save breathe, and, 
 thereby, vitiate, good air, save bring into the world 
 children as inane and useless as themselves, save, by the 
 vileness of their tongues, add to the sorrow of those 
 who can think and feel, those who have a right to live, 
 when you have been through all this, you want to hit, 
 and hit hard, to drive your blows home. 
 
 I have no patience left nowadays. I can no longer 
 obey the Pauline precept and " Suffer fools gladly." 
 
 Really, I wonder that my stock of patience lasted so 
 long. The fools have ever been the enemies of every one 
 who was dear to me, they are still the enemies to-day. 
 A woman need only have brains and beauty to bring all 
 the ordinary women, the hyaena women of the suburbs, 
 howling hideously after her. Like their prototypes, the 
 hyaenas, they are as cowardly as they are ugly, but the 
 offence of their very existence remains. 
 
 To lie with a laugh on their lips, their well-rouged lips 
 that is the way of the suburban woman, hedging against a 
 slander action by saying it was a joke. And when you 
 send the suburban woman to the Colonies, when you 
 
TECHNICAL SIDE OF TRANSPORT WORK 269 
 
 plant her in a Colonial seaport, she becomes even more 
 vile and venomous than the worst of the Colonials, for 
 she has the wider knowledge which they lack. 
 
 Some day, I shall dip my pen in vitriol, and try to do 
 justice on those who have hurt the women I have loved. 
 Because, so far, I have held my hand, it does not mean 
 that I have forgiven, that I shall forgive. In these 
 matters, there is no thought, no possibility, of forgiveness. 
 For the sake of the whole community, one must carry 
 on the feud and punish the offenders. There can be no 
 question of mercy. 
 
 The wagon-gear is almost as important as the wagon 
 itself. There is no greater curse than the trek-chain which 
 is constantly breaking in a heavy place. During the 
 Boer War, when one had to make shift with anything, 
 I had two chains of this type. I am sure they must have 
 been of Colonial, or American, manufacture ; Cradley 
 Heath never turned out such bad articles. I grew weary 
 of putting in shackles to join up the breaks, yet, so far 
 as weight was concerned, the chains were unusually 
 large. 
 
 Besides its habit of breaking, a chain trek-tow had 
 another unpleasant characteristic when the span got 
 huddled together, entering a drift, the chain was apt to 
 get round the leg of one of the oxen, a round turn, with 
 the result that the moment the span was straightened out, 
 the unfortunate beast's leg was broken. I lost many cattle 
 that way. 
 
 With wire trek-tows, this was, of course, impossible. 
 Moreover, the wire was reliable. You got it with the 
 stamp of an English manufacturer on the shackle, and so 
 you knew it was good. You paid a hideous price for it- 
 has any one ever been able to explain why Colonials should 
 
270 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 receive gratuitous Naval and Military protection, an 
 Imperial guarantee for their loans, and still be permitted 
 to tax incoming articles of British manufacture ? but, 
 even then, it was worth the money. 
 
 So far as yokes were concerned, I always used the 
 Natal yoke, made of stinkwood, with two staples for 
 fixing it to the trek-tow. The two staples allowed you 
 to give an extra leverage to a weaker ox, whereas the 
 one-staple Cape yoke necessitated both oxen being of the 
 same strength, or one of them being constantly pushed 
 backwards. Everything which came from Cape Colony 
 seemed to be rotten. 
 
 Yoke-skeys, the fifteen-inch-long pieces of wood which, 
 passed through the yoke, go on each side of the bullocks' 
 necks, were constantly breaking, especially when one had 
 young cattle. At every outspan, you would find, as you 
 ought to find, one or other of your drivers cutting skeys 
 out of a piece of hard wood, using the driver's pet tool, the 
 side-axe. Amous used to make perfect skeys, and he 
 taught me the art, an art which is known to most of the 
 Basutu ; but the Cape boy and the Zulu generally make 
 a very poor show at the work, as, in fact, they do at most 
 other things. 
 
 In inspanning a bullock for the first time, one uses one 
 ordinary skey and a " false-skey," a reim passed through 
 the outside skey-slot and under the animal's neck. If he 
 tries to twist round, and " turn the yoke/' the false-skey 
 throttles him, whereas an ordinary skey would break 
 immediately. 
 
 As a rule, there is ample space between the skeys for a 
 bullock's neck ; but Basket, my big hornless black bull, 
 nearly touched both skeys, whilst Dudmaaker, the 
 slayer of a lion, could only just get in, so huge was his 
 
TECHNICAL SIDE OF TRANSPORT WORK 271 
 
 nec k i n fact, I was afraid, at first, of his getting neck 
 sores. 
 
 The " strop," the piece of twisted raw hide which passes 
 from skey to skey, under the bullock's throat, is of the 
 utmost importance. Good strops mean a huge saving 
 of time in inspanning ; they are slipped on so easily. 
 
 We always found that water-buck hide made the best 
 strops. It is enormously strong, and, after having been 
 wet, it does not become hard, as is the case with almost 
 every other skin. The greatest enemies of strops are 
 hyaenas. Often and often, when I had thought that 
 everything was safe, I have been awakened in the morning 
 by a driver informing me that the MTisi, the hyaenas, 
 had eaten half his strops. And strops represented two 
 shillings each at least, I could always get two shillings 
 for all those I made. 
 
 Reims, the thongs which you pass round the bullock's 
 horns, are an ever-present worry to transport-riders. 
 They seem constantly to be wearing out, or getting 
 lost. I suppose that, in our day, we were the biggest 
 makers of reims, strops, and whips in the two provinces. 
 Certainly, it was a branch of our business which paid us 
 extremely well. 
 
 We got plenty of game skins ; in fact, there can have 
 been few men in the country who handled so many. We, 
 ourselves, did a good deal of shooting no Game Law ever 
 troubled my brothers or myself but we bought far more 
 skins than we shot. Water-buck, Sable antelope, Lich- 
 tenstein Hartebeeste, Roan antelope we got all these, 
 in addition to smaller buck. As a rule, a skin cost us 
 about two shillings to buy; and we got from twenty 
 shillings to four pounds for the finished articles we had 
 made out of it. Of course, there was the labour bill, 
 
272 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 and the cost of tallow for softening ; but these were 
 very small items ; certainly, they did not amount to 
 ten per cent, of our receipts. 
 
 The process of reim-making is a curious one. The skin, 
 after having been thoroughly dried in the sun, is soaked 
 again until quite soft ; then, after the useless parts have 
 been trimmed off, the rest is cut into one continuous strip 
 of green hide, which varies in width, from an inch in the 
 thick portions to three inches in the thin ones. A good 
 deal of skill is needed in this cutting, and a good deal of 
 experience as well. For instance, most buck have the 
 thickest hide on the shoulders, but the water-buck has it 
 thickest on the rump, and, in starting to cut, facts like 
 these must be kept in mind. 
 
 After the skin has been cut, it is put over and over a 
 branch of a tree, so as to hang in loops about nine feet 
 long, the bottom of the loops being some four feet 
 from the ground. On these loops, a wagon wheel is 
 slung, so as to form a kind of horizontal flywheel, and a 
 native set to work to wind it round and round. When 
 the hide is as tight as it will go, he releases the wheel, 
 which naturally whirls back at a great speed ; then, 
 when it has slowed down, he catches it, and twists it in the 
 other direction. And so the process goes on, usually for 
 three days, at the end of which time the reims are soft and 
 pliable, ready to oe cut into nine-foot lengths, with a 
 noose at the end of each. 
 
 My experience was that water-buck skins made by far 
 the best reims, as they were quite as strong as any others, 
 whilst they did not get hard in the wet weather. On the 
 other hand, for the heavy part of whips, the whip proper, 
 sable antelope was undoubtedly the best, better even than 
 giraffe, by which most Boers used to swear. 
 
TECHNICAL SIDE OF TRANSPORT WORK 273 
 
 Bullock-hide reims were nothing like so strong as game- 
 hide ones, and did not command anything like the same 
 price. 
 
 Voorshlag, the very thin part of a wagon whip, was a 
 most paying thing to make. By far the best skin for the 
 purpose is that of the water-buck cow, which is amazingly 
 strong and durable. Out of one skin of this kind I have 
 made a clear profit of four pounds and the skin had cost 
 me a shilling ! 
 
 All our reims, whips, voorshlag, and strops commanded 
 a ready sale in Bulawayo. We soon got a name for 
 turning out only the very best stuff, and transport-riders 
 who never went down to the game veld were glad enough 
 to buy from us. Although merely by-products, these 
 things made quite an appreciable addition to our profits. 
 
 Sjamboks were another paying thing. Hippo were 
 supposed to be " Royal Game," and you could be fined 
 quite a lot of money for shooting one ; consequently, 
 when we brought in a bundle of raw sjamboks, it was 
 always understood that they came from across the 
 border, in the Portuguese territory. 
 
 I believe that out of one or two really big hippo, we 
 must have cleared from thirty to forty pounds each, 
 allowing for the value of the fat and the ivory as well as 
 the sjamboks, and deducting the heavy cost of transport. 
 
 In the case of a hippo skin, you merely cut it into strips 
 raw, they run from an inch to two inches square, in 
 section hang them from the branches of a tree, with a 
 big stone on the end of each, and leave them there for a 
 month or two. When you take them down, they are 
 harder than century-old oak, but by soaking them for a 
 few days they become quite soft again, and are then easy 
 to work into shape. The price of a raw sjambok used to 
 
 s 
 
274 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 vary from two shillings to fifteen, the latter being for an 
 " after-sjambok," a bullock sjambok, seven feet long. 
 
 As I never shot a giraffe, I cannot say from personal 
 experience what the value of its skin would have been ; 
 but the old Boers used to reckon they could make fifty 
 pounds out of a good bull's hide. Personally, I think 
 this was an exaggeration. 
 
 Brake blocks are a never-ending source of worry to 
 a wagon driver. They are made of very soft wood, and 
 are lashed on to the brake-bar with the inevitable reim. 
 Of course, on a rough road, they do not last many days, 
 and, at every outspan, you will see one or other of your 
 drivers fashioning new ones. 
 
 The brake itself is very primitive ; you screw it on 
 from behind the wagon ; but it is most effective so long 
 as it does not give way anywhere. If it gives way, there 
 is apt to be a disaster. 
 
 I remember once it was in the Selukwe Hills, on the 
 big hill just past the Tebekwe mine the brake of our great 
 eighteen-foot wagon suddenly gave out, just as the 
 wagon started to descend the horrible, stony incline. 
 
 I was behind, helpless. The driver was behind, the 
 broken screw in his hand ; but Amyas happened to be 
 in front. In a moment, he grasped what had happened, 
 flung the leader of the span aside, seized the leading reim 
 himself, and hauled at the cattle. Almost before the 
 wagon had begun to gather momentum, he had the span 
 on the run, and down that awful hill cattle and wagon 
 thundered sixteen big oxen, and a wagon with a four 
 ton load, and a small, brown-faced white man ahead of all. 
 
 It was the only possible way to avert disaster ; but it 
 needed immense nerve to do it. All I can recall is 
 standing stock still, watching as though hypnotized, and 
 
TECHNICAL SIDE OF TRANSPORT WORK 275 
 
 then, out of the great cloud of dust, hearing Amyas' 
 clear voice, " Wu-uk ! Ahnow ! " stopping the oxen 
 on the level. 
 
 We never grudged spending money on our wagons, 
 which was, perhaps, the reason why we never had a really 
 serious breakdown. We bought the best, always, and so 
 got the best results. At the last, you could not have 
 found four more perfectly equipped wagons in Africa. 
 Every tyre was sound, every spoke tight. The gear was 
 the very best obtainable. In the Februany, Amyas re- 
 fused scornfully an offer of a hundred pounds for the 
 black span's wagon. 
 
 A few months later, all four wagons had been aban- 
 doned on the veld, abandoned beside the bones of their 
 dead cattle. 
 
 For aught I know, those wagons, or the rusted remains 
 of their ironwork, are yet on the veld, grim witnesses to 
 official incapacity, and the wreck of men's hopes. Hun- 
 dreds and hundreds of wagons were abandoned in those 
 days of the Great Disease, and I expect that, in most 
 cases, they rotted where they stood, perfect emblems of 
 Rhodesia, of the Land of High Hopes and Unfulfilled 
 Promises. 
 
CATTLE-DEALING AND CATTLE- 
 STEALING 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 CATTLE-DEALING AND CATTLE-STEALING 
 
 THE buying and selling of oxen is a strange business, 
 one at which the amateur is apt to lose heavily. 
 
 I suppose we must have had some special instinct for 
 it certainly, we had no special training but we never 
 seemed to go wrong. In the first year, our cattle showed 
 us some ninety per cent, clear profit. Probably, in our 
 own minds, we always put too high a price on our animals, 
 and, when it came to a question of bargaining, we were 
 beaten down just to the full market price. 
 
 As a general rule, we used to break in all the bulls we 
 bought, see how they shaped in the yoke, and then decide 
 whether we would keep them for ourselves, or sell them. 
 The only exceptions were showy young bulls, with big 
 dewlaps, humps, and small hind quarters ; these we always 
 sold at once to the butcher, without worrying to train 
 them. 
 
 Naturally, the number of trek-oxen we wanted for our 
 own use was, after the first season, comparatively small. 
 We took the very pick, and the rest we usually sold in 
 spans, getting a better price that way than by selling 
 them loose. 
 
 Men got to know how carefully we trained and selected 
 our beasts, and we never had any difficulty in finding a 
 
 270 
 
280 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 market. As for our own spans, they soon became 
 famous. For the Black Span, sixteen absolutely black 
 bullocks, perfectly matched, Amyas refused an offer of 
 five hundred and fifty pounds, an amazing price for 
 native cattle. He was quite right in refusing. At that 
 time, the span was earning forty pounds a month for us, 
 and no one could possibly have foreseen the tragedy of 
 the next few months, the coming of the Redwater, or 
 Coast Fever. 
 
 The butchers did not mind what a beast was, bull or 
 ox, cow or heifer, so long as it was in decent condition. 
 The quality of the meat is never a consideration in South 
 Africa, where anything in the way of decent cooking, 
 any of the clean things of life, are utterly despised. 
 
 I spent seven years in that miserable sub-continent, 
 wasted seven years, I might almost say ; and, during 
 the whole of that time, I never remember having one 
 properly cooked meal, save those that I had prepared 
 myself. And I have stayed at most of the best hotels in 
 Capetown, in Durban, and in Rhodesia. 
 
 East Africa is, of course, different. The poison of the 
 Afrikander tradition has never penetrated there, and 
 even in Beira the despised you can fare far better than 
 anywhere in British territory or I suppose I should say 
 " in Boer territory/' for since that abominable Act of 
 Union, that great betrayal, the British have ceased to 
 count. 
 
 In East Africa, there are clean standards, the standards 
 of British India, of a people who, for generations past, 
 have studied how to mitigate the discomforts of life in 
 the Tropics, a people who insist on proper cooking, 
 on punkahs, on servants in clean clothing. In South 
 Africa everything can be traced back to the Boer ideal 
 
CATTLE-DEALING AND CATTLE-STEALING 281 
 
 a three-legged stool beside a cow-dung fire, a mug of 
 coffee half-filled with miserable Natal sugar, sour bread, 
 and biltong ; with a naked piccanin squatting a few feet 
 away. 
 
 Consequently, South Africa will never pay for quality. 
 To it, meat is merely meat. It will give no more for a 
 young ox than for an old bull. Climatic conditions, 
 environment, are all-powerful ; and its standards are 
 merely those of the Kaffir. Each generation deteriorates 
 a little more, and the influx of new blood seems to do 
 nothing towards stopping the moral dry-rot. Before 
 long, the new-comers have always fallen in with " the 
 Custom of the Country." 
 
 As a rule, we did not let many chances go by when it 
 was a question of selling cattle at a decent price, but the 
 greatest chance which ever came to us we refused to take. 
 The story is a curious one. 
 
 Amyas and I were both at the big store at Chivamba's, 
 a place where we did not see one strange white man in 
 three months, when, just before sundown, two white men 
 rode up. They were hard-looking cases. One was obvi- 
 ously a Boer, with a dash of colour in him, the other was 
 as obviously a German. Both were thin and ragged, and 
 their horses were in poor condition, whilst the loads which 
 their two or three native carriers had on their heads were 
 very small. Moreover and this was what worried us 
 they came from the East, from the country below us, the 
 country which we considered to be our own preserve. 
 
 Of course, we asked them to stay. The offer of washing 
 facilities did not appeal to them ; but they ate ravenously 
 of soup, roast fowl, cold guinea-fowl pie, suet pudding, 
 and stewed pears ; and they showed no shyness about 
 helping themselves to whisky. Of course, when they had 
 
282 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 finished, and were feeling good, they acted after the 
 manner of their races, and made sarcastic remarks con- 
 cerning the " luxury " in which we lived, the table cloth, 
 the china plates, the careful cooking, but we were used to 
 Teutonic ways, and so did not worry. 
 
 So far, they had told us nothing about themselves, 
 not even their names ; but when the table had been 
 cleared, and the second bottle of whisky opened, they 
 began to talk. They had come through, it appeared, 
 from the Portuguese territory they did not explain 
 how, or why they had been there and on their way up, 
 some sixty miles from Chivamba's, they had found coal 
 and copper, found them in close proximity to one another, 
 large outcrops of coal, and enormous ancient copper 
 workings. So far as the copper was concerned, I was quite 
 ready to accept the story, as I had already heard rumours 
 of the workings ; but the coal was difficult to accept. 
 Still, they produced some bags of coal samples, by no 
 means bad stuff, and they were quite ready to give all 
 details, more than ready, we thought. 
 
 Then they sprung their proposition on us. They were, 
 they admitted, absolutely penniless. They had made 
 these discoveries, but could do nothing towards developing 
 them. Would we go into partnership with them ? 
 There was our red span and its wagon down in the vlei 
 worth about three hundred and fifty pounds, in return 
 for that, they would make us over a half share in both the 
 coal and the copper. 
 
 On the face of it, it sounded a regular wild-cat proposi- 
 tion. The men were absolute strangers, absolutely broke, 
 whilst the span and wagon were concrete things. I left 
 Amyas to talk to them, to elicit more details, and went out, 
 ostensibly to make some black coffee, really to see if any 
 
CATTLE-DEALING AND CATTLE-STEALING 283 
 
 of the natives knew anything concerning our visitors. I 
 only had to ask one question. The German, at least, was 
 a famous, or notorious, character, it appeared. He 
 had been Commander-in-Chief of the forces of one of the 
 most dissolute or brutal of native chieftains, a man who, 
 a few years before, had been defeated and deposed by the 
 Portuguese, the one victory won by that nation for 
 many centuries past. 
 
 Since then, the German had been running guns into the 
 Mozambique territory. For a long tune, he had eluded 
 the authorities, but, recently, quite recently, three Portu- 
 guese soldiers had managed to arrest him. His cap- 
 tors must have been too greatly pleased with themselves 
 to be cautious. At any rate, the captive had managed 
 to seize one of their magazine rifles, to shoot all three 
 Dagos dead, and to clear off into British territory. I 
 do not know when, or where, the Boer first came in ; 
 but I imagine he must have been a confederate in the 
 gun-running business. 
 
 The story decided me I think it would have decided 
 most men and I made up my mind at once to keep the 
 red span. Our visitors were a little surly when they 
 were preparing to leave in the morning, and both Amyas 
 and I were careful to have rifles within reach ; but after 
 we had given them stores for their journey into Fort 
 Victoria, and told them of the best track to take no local 
 boy would go with them as guide they cleared off 
 peaceably. 
 
 For a time, we forgot them. Then we heard that they 
 had found a partner, who had put up two or three hundred 
 pounds ; then came rumours of a rich syndicate taking 
 over the discoveries ; and, after that, the news that they 
 and the partner had been bought out for between twenty 
 
284 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 and thirty thousand pounds. Moreover, the news was 
 true. 
 
 After that, I ceased to like that red span of cattle. 
 
 The wind-up of the whole affair was characteristic of 
 Rhodesia. The German went back to a Happy Father- 
 land, where the sight of the many police must have 
 worried him greatly. 
 
 All the Boer's relatives, scores of horrible, unwashed 
 persons, came up from Capetown and lived on him, 
 creating vast scandals, and rapidly eating away the 
 capital ; whilst the partner, I believe, lost his money by 
 speculation, and rather fell away from grace. 
 
 The syndicate formed a vastly over-capitalized company, 
 extracted well over a quarter of a million pounds from the 
 British Public, did nothing, except pay salaries to its 
 friends, and finally dropped out altogether. I suppose it 
 was wound up long ago. At any rate, it never attempted 
 to work the mines the climate was too bad, and they 
 were too remote from anywhere to be commercial proposi- 
 tions and it is years since I have seen its shares quoted. 
 But I missed a fortune. 
 
 During the Boer War there were considerable possibi- 
 lities of cattle-looting, and one or two men did quite 
 well out of the business. Of course, any loyal Britisher 
 ought to have been allowed to go down across the border, 
 and despoil the enemy ; but, unfortunately, the Rhodesian 
 authorities were not all loyal themselves, and every 
 obstacle was put in the way of those who wanted to do 
 loyal service to the Empire, and, incidentally, enrich 
 themselves. 
 
 At the outbreak of the War, when there was a chance 
 of a Boer Raid into Matabeleland half the officials were 
 in the plot we hurried our cattle out of the Gwanda 
 
CATTLE-DEALING AND CATTLE-STEALING 285 
 
 District, and hid them in the hills ; then, some months 
 later, when there was an opportunity for reprisals, when 
 it was possible, easy even, to make a raid into the Northern 
 Transvaal and collect some of the enemy's cattle, we were 
 not allowed to do so. I was told personally, by a high 
 official, that if I made any attempt to go down the Tuli 
 Road, except with bona-fide transport, I should be arrested. 
 
 That was, I suppose, the beginning of the story that we 
 Amyas and myself were kind of latter-day cattle- 
 lifters, imitators of the old Border-thieves, who were not 
 thieves at all, but adventurous gentlemen with patriotic 
 intentions. 
 
 Time after time, I have heard ugly hints concerning the 
 way in which we obtained so many cattle. To the 
 ordinary man, who had had no experience at the game, it 
 seemed impossible that natives should sell such a number 
 of oxen to any single trader ; consequently, the yarn of 
 our being cattle-lifters appeared quite a probable one. 
 The fact of our being so essentially British, and holding 
 such decided views on the necessity for hanging Cape 
 rebels, ensured a popularity for any story against us. 
 
 We never looted a single bullock that is the plain truth ; 
 but, at the same time, it is only right to say that there 
 was always the desire to loot, that the opportunity alone 
 was lacking. During the war, I would have seized the 
 cattle of any one of our foes, especially if that foe was a 
 rebel, and have considered that I was doing a patriotic 
 deed thereby. As I have mentioned, we were not 
 allowed to go cattle-collecting in the Northern Trans- 
 vaal ; but, later on, it seemed as if we were to have a 
 perfectly glorious chance. 
 
 Rumour said and, for once, it did not lie wholly 
 that a number of Boers from the Northern Transvaal, 
 
286 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 " Trek-Boers," more or less wild men, unwashed men, at 
 any rate, intended to make a dash through Rhodesia, 
 up to German East Africa. They were going to cross the 
 Border at Tuli, and take the old Pioneers' Road, which 
 Selous and Frank Johnson made in 1890, when they con- 
 quered the country for Cecil Rhodes, or, rather, made 
 all the preparations for conquest, did all the hard and 
 dangerous work. 
 
 We knew the Pioneers' Road well, and the natives 
 along that Road knew us. It would all have been so 
 simple, and we had our plans arranged admirably. At 
 the Lundi Drift the wagons must have outspanned 
 we were going to make sure that the Drift was in bad 
 condition then, with our band of heathen, it would have 
 been the simplest matter in the world to drive off the 
 cattle whilst they were grazing. We knew every twist 
 and turn amongst those kopjes, and we could have taken 
 our loot to a place where two men could have held off 
 two hundred. 
 
 It was a great shame, and a great disappointment. 
 We had gone into every detail, got everything ready 
 and then the wretched Boers never made the trek after 
 all. Luck was clean against us that time. 
 
 Most men and women all men and women save the 
 sexless creatures in hovels and the suburbs want to lift 
 something or other. To me, cattle-lifting has some touch 
 of the Romantic about it ; there is colour and excite- 
 ment ; though I suppose that, when you reduce it down 
 to a question of morality, it is as low as the business of 
 any ordinary City man. The cattle-lifter is really no better 
 than the stockbroker, or even than the tradesman. He 
 merely plunders in a more picturesque way. 
 
CATTLE-DEALING AND CATTLE-STEALING 287 
 
 I have often wanted to lift a bullock and I cannot 
 think to-day why I never did so. My ancestors were 
 Robber Barons of the most approved type I doubt if 
 the people of the South of France approved of them, 
 though and I certainly have their instincts ; but, some- 
 how or other, though I really belong to the Fifteenth 
 Century, the blight of the Victorian Age seems to have 
 fallen on me, and I have always stopped short. It is as 
 though, instead of being in the open air, I was in an over- 
 grown Crystal Palace, a Crystal Palace which had been 
 treated with Mr H. G. Wells' Food of the Gods. Of course, 
 the cattle I wanted to lift were merely those which I could 
 not buy. Natives are apt to be so idiotic over this matter, 
 and, naturally, one gets annoyed. I used to see a beast I 
 wanted very badly, the ideal beast to fill up one of my 
 spans, and, when I offered to buy him, I would be met by 
 the answer that he could not be sold, that he had been 
 dedicated to the spirit of some deceased savage, and 
 must be kept until the time came for him to be sacrificed 
 in due form. 
 
 It was all so silly, as silly as a missionary meeting ; 
 and I used to get quite annoyed. Animals are dedicated 
 as calves, by having a pot of Kaffir beer poured over their 
 heads, and then they are supposed to go on living in the 
 kraal until the spirit of the dead man calls for meat, 
 which means until the witchdoctor of the village considers 
 that it is time for a huge orgy. As a rule, the very best 
 animals are set aside in this way, and, constantly, when 
 you go into a village, you will be told that the pick of the 
 herd is not for sale. At first, I used to take this literally, 
 but, after a while, I found the way round it. 
 
 If you have a cow calf and a bull calf, no matter how 
 small they may be, you can exchange them for the biggest 
 
288 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 sacrificial bull in the country, provided always that you 
 give some grain as a present, grain for the making of beer 
 wherewith to anoint the head of the bull calf. 
 
 I did scores and scores of deals of this kind ; in fact, 
 half my best cattle had once been doomed as sacrifices ; 
 and I always managed to make a large profit on the trans- 
 action. The whole idea was perfectly characteristic of the 
 Kaffir. He dare not run up against the old superstitions, 
 but he took an absolute joy in cheating the spirits of his 
 ancestors by substituting the bull-calf for the full-grown 
 beast. 
 
 So far as the actual stealing of cattle was concerned, 
 Bulawayo was the only really dangerous place. There, 
 at a horrible spot called the " Location," a collection of 
 the most deplorable hovels, many of which were mere 
 frameworks of branches, covered with beaten-out paraffin 
 tins, or old sacks, the choicest collection of rascaldom 
 lived. Most of the inhabitants were Cape boys, half- 
 castes from the Colony, with the vices of both Afrikander 
 and Native. They generally described themselves as 
 " wagon-drivers," but the transport-rider who engaged 
 one was apt to finish the trip a sadder, wiser, and poorer 
 man. In the Colony, they had votes ; they had been 
 taught to read and write ; and, as a result, all their 
 criminal instincts had come out. In Rhodesia, they were 
 v egarded merely as natives, and they did not like the 
 change^ 
 
 But they had their revenge on the community. I 
 should like to know how many cattle disappeared into 
 that Location. Rumour said that there were certain 
 Teutonic persons in the township who could have given 
 a fair estimate, men who could undersell every one else, 
 so far as meat was concerned. At any rate, that Loca- 
 
CATTLE-DEALING AND CATTLE-STEALING 289 
 
 tion was an unmitigated curse to the men of the Road, 
 and, once you were outspanned near Bulawayo, it was 
 only by unremitting care that you could keep your spans 
 complete. 
 
 In Africa, everything depends on getting your cattle 
 to market in good condition. There is no such thing as 
 stall-feeding, and it is usually a terribly slow business for 
 a bullock to put on flesh on the high veld, where all the 
 towns are situated. An English butcher or drover 
 would find it hard to understand the conditions, to see 
 why a coarse, heavy old bull was more valuable than a 
 young ox. You have got to live in South Africa for some 
 time before you come to realize that quality does not 
 count, that the poorest stuff commands the same price 
 as the best, provided it can be described by the same name. 
 
 Personally, I found cattle-dealing a very good business ; 
 but I doubt if I should find it so to-day, The Railway 
 has killed transport work, and the cold storage has come 
 up with the trains. At any rate, I am never going to try 
 what it is like under the new conditions. I prefer to 
 stick to my old memories of the Good Days. 
 
THE END OF THE ROAD 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 THE END OF THE ROAD 
 
 I DID not actually see the Rinderpest, at least not the 
 worst of it. When that terrible plague swept down 
 from the north, I was at Home ; but I was in Bechuana- 
 land in time to see the results of it, the ruin and desolation, 
 the amazing number of abandoned wagons. 
 
 Thirty wagons at one outspan, loaded wagons, loaded 
 with stores of all kinds I have come across this scene 
 more than once. Hundreds of wagons, tens of thousands 
 of pounds worth of stores, machinery, goods of all kinds, 
 abandoned on the road. There was too much to loot. The 
 cattle died within a few hours, died in the water if possible, 
 poisoning the whole countryside, and then the transport- 
 rider, utterly broken, utterly helpless, abandoned all, 
 and, with a boy or two to carry his kit, tramped back to 
 the nearest outspan, to curse his luck, to drink so as to 
 forget that luck, and, perhaps, to die. 
 
 The desolation brought about by the Rinderpest was 
 awful, appalling. The only hope men used to find in it 
 was the thought that such a plague could never occur 
 twice, that Nature had done her very worst. The disease 
 rolled south, seemed to spend its fury, and practically 
 disappeared. Cattle owners began to breathe again. 
 Ninety per cent, of the oxen on the high veld had been 
 wiped out. A whole breed, the Matabele cattle, had prac- 
 
 m 
 
294 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 tically ceased to exist ; but the low- veld had not suffered 
 so severely, whilst the abnormally high rates soon tempted 
 up fresh wagons and spans from the Caps Colony and Natal. 
 
 Bullock transport was so absolutely necessary to the 
 new country though the railway was being rushed 
 through, it was merely a main line, with no distributing 
 branches that the void left by the great disease was soon 
 filled, in part at least, and once more one heard the 
 hoarse shouts of the drivers, and the rumbling of the huge 
 wagons as they jolted over the rocks or down into the 
 drifts. 
 
 " We shall never have anything so bad again," all the 
 transport-riders used to find comfort in that thought, 
 unconsciously appealing to the law of averages to support 
 their theory. Other diseases we had in plenty lung- 
 sickness, gall-sickness, spleen-sickness ; but they seemed 
 to be, after all, but minor things. 
 
 South Africa generally, Rhodesia especially, is the 
 Country of Diseases. Nothing whatsoever escapes 
 Nature's fierce jealousy. For mankind there is malaria 
 dysentery, and the dreaded blackwater, in addition to 
 ordinary things, such as typhoid produced through the 
 Kaffir's filthy habits. For horses and mules, there is, of 
 course, the dreaded " horse-sickness," which, every year, 
 sweeps off almost all the " unsalted " animals. In my 
 day " salted " horses, horses which had had the disease 
 and had recovered, usually fetched from seventy to ninety 
 pounds. Of course, the vendor gave you a guarantee 
 to refund the money if the beast did die of the sickness ; 
 but it was practically impossible to enforce payment. 
 How could you prove the actual cause of death, when the 
 animal had died miles away, out on the veld, and you had 
 no reliable evidence ? 
 
THE END OF THE ROAD 295 
 
 For a long time, we used to look on donkeys as being 
 safe. They had no special plagues, save the lions, who 
 preferred them to every other form of food. Then, 
 suddenly, glanders broke out, and they died by hundreds. 
 
 Sheep and goats had all the ordinary complaints, 
 especially scab, in virulent forms ; but there were one or 
 two special local ones as well, weird things which no one 
 ever seemed able to diagnose, fatal things, none the less. 
 
 Fowls imported fowls, that is had a particular com- 
 plaint of their own, which, breaking out in epidemic 
 form, would sweep away your whole collection of poultry 
 within forty-eight hours. There were also one or two 
 horrible forms of " dog-sickness/' and even a " cat- 
 sickness " for imported cats. 
 
 Of the ordinary cattle-diseases, " lung sickness " was 
 undoubtedly the worst. Every one seemed to get it, 
 sooner or later, amongst his spans ; though, if he took 
 the thing in time, an inoculated at once, his losses would 
 probably not be great. The process of inoculation was 
 crude enough. You took some of the horrible yellow 
 virus out of a dead beast, soaked some twine in it ; then, 
 with a sail needle, drew that twine through one of the 
 lower joints of your animals' tails. As a rule, there were 
 no evil results, but, in some cases, the whole tail would 
 gradually wither, and then fall off. Tailless oxen were 
 always regarded as being immune against lung sickness. 
 
 There was one fact concerning this disease which very 
 few men seemed to realize, namely that it took two dis- 
 tinct forms, " dry " and " wet " ; and that the animal 
 which had been inoculated for the one was by no means 
 certain to be immune from the other. Once, in Bula- 
 wayo, I mentioned the fact to Dr. Koch, who was then 
 investigating African Coast Fever. He was greatly 
 
296 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 interested, and said that, if he ever had the time, he 
 would go into the matter thoroughly ; but his invaluable 
 life was then drawing to its close. 
 
 At first, gall-sickness was a very great worry to us, 
 and we lost quite a number of young cattle through it. 
 Really, it is an enlargement of the gall bladder, an 
 exaggerated biliousness, I should imagine. Low veld 
 cattle brought to the high veld for the first time are 
 very liable to it. Probably, the cold has a good deal to 
 do with it. An old Boer told me how to treat it, and 
 from that time onwards we never lost a beast through the 
 complaint. Half a wineglassful of hydrochloric acid 
 in a whisky bottleful of water the remedy was as simple 
 as it was effective. And it was quite easy to detect an 
 animal in the incipient stages of the illness, for, not only 
 would his coat be rough, but his eyes would appear to 
 have sunk into his head. 
 
 Spleen sickness was different. There was no warning, 
 no cure. Suddenly, one of your bullocks lay down and 
 began to bellow. For a quarter of an hour, for twenty 
 minutes perhaps, he continued to bellow, louder and 
 ever louder ; and then, in a moment, he was dead. It 
 was a strange, baffling disease. 
 
 Rinderpest was the Act of God. No human power 
 could have stopped it from sweeping down from the north, 
 no one could have checked it, until it got right into 
 civilization. No one was to blame over it. The wild 
 game were, of course, the main agents in its spread, and 
 no one could control their movements. It was a tragedy, 
 an overwhelming disaster ; but, though it left infinite 
 sorrow and suffering behind, it left no bitterness, save in 
 the minds of the most ignorant. 
 
 " There never can be such a terrible plague again," 
 
THE END OF THE ROAD 297 
 
 we used to tell each other, and we used to believe our 
 own words. 
 
 And then, in the last days of the Boer War, the African 
 Coast Fever came. 
 
 Rinderpest spared about ten per cent, of the cattle, 
 and those latter, being salted, at once increased enormously 
 in value. 
 
 The Coast Fever spared practically none I, myself, 
 had one beast left out of hundreds. 
 
 Rinderpest was mercifully quick. In a few hours, you 
 knew the worst. African Coast Fever was a long-drawn- 
 out agony ; and even those which did not die of the 
 disease at once were, you knew, doomed. You could 
 get nothing for them. 
 
 As I said above, Rinderpest was the Act of God. The 
 spread of African Coast Fever was due entirely to the 
 criminal folly of man. We heard of it first as being in 
 Umtali they called it Redwater then. Out of a thousand 
 Australian cows belonging to Cecil Rhodes, all except 
 three had died within a few days. 
 
 The news was amazing, appalling. The Chartered 
 Company's government was bombarded with requests, 
 prayers, petitions to take prompt measures, to draw a 
 cordon round Umtali, to destroy any, and every, other 
 beast which had come into contact with those dead cattle, 
 to stamp out the plague at the start. 
 
 The only answer was, practically speaking, that the 
 plague did not exist, that it was merely a question of 
 Texas Fever, Redwater, and that nothing would be done. 
 Of course, the reason was obvious Rhodes had just died, 
 and to admit the existence of a new cattle disease would 
 have sent down Rhodesian shares. The history of 
 South Africa is full of shameful incidents, yet this was 
 
298 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 one of the very worst. And none of the men concerned 
 in it was ever punished, except by receiving a knighthood 
 or a C.M.G. 
 
 In a few weeks, the disease had got its grip on the 
 country. Every one realized that the cattle were doomed, 
 and prices fell like lead. Naturally, it smashed our 
 business at once. We could no longer sell cattle, and 
 so could no longer buy them from the natives, which 
 meant, too, that the natives could no longer buy trading 
 goods from us. Moreover, all our spans were working 
 up on the high veld, and we were not, of course, allowed 
 to bring them down into the low country. 
 
 Nowadays, the whole story seems to me like some evil 
 dream. We had worked so desperately hard, taken 
 such heavy risks, carried our lives in our hands month 
 after month, and now, when we were just on the point of 
 getting our reward, we were to lose everything. 
 
 Bitter ? I was literally savage then, and, even now, 
 I have not forgotten. I suppose that, in one way and 
 another, we owned some six thousand pounds worth of 
 property when the disease broke out. A few months 
 later, we were only just able to pay our fares out of the 
 miserable country. 
 
 I am glad to say that, personally, I saw very few of our 
 cattle die ; and I loved them all too well to want to 
 ask Amyas many questions afterwards. I know that the 
 whole of the black span died at Selukwe, and that their 
 wagon was left on the hills ; and I know that the red 
 span's wagon was abandoned, fully loaded, near the 
 Tebekwana Drift. I am not sure where the rest came to 
 grief; but, in the end, everything we had was left on 
 the veld, for the natives to loot, or the white ants to 
 destroy. 
 
THE END OF THE ROAD 299 
 
 It would have been impossible to move anything from 
 our stores, and we never even made the attempt. Had 
 we employed carriers to bring in the stuff, no one would 
 have bought it, no one could have bought it, for all were 
 insolvent. 
 
 Months afterwards, when all the cattle on the high 
 veld were dead, the Government found itself compelled to 
 admit that mistakes had been made. To a very great 
 extent, it was I who forced their hands. I attacked them 
 so strongly in the columns of one of the great London 
 financial dailies, that they were compelled to do some- 
 thing. What they did was to send Dr. Koch out to 
 investigate. He could not stop the disease, because there 
 were practically no more oxen to die ; but he could tell 
 them the cause of it. 
 
 The great German scientist himself told me that he 
 knew all about the matter before he came out, that he 
 had known all about it for the past seven years, and had 
 long ago given the authorities warning. It appeared 
 that, along the sea-coast, all cattle were born with this 
 " African Coast Fever " in their systems. So long as they 
 remained near the sea, the poison never affected them ; 
 but the moment they were moved to the high country 
 they died from it. Cecil Rhodes' Australian cows were 
 landed at Beira, and were allowed to mix with the local 
 cattle. In a few days, every one was infected, the infec- 
 tion being carried by the ordinary tick. When they 
 reached Umtali, the disease came out. They died, 
 quickly enough ; but they left hundreds of thousands of 
 infected ticks behind them. 
 
 There is no possibility of excuse for the Chartered 
 officials, and no punishment could have been too heavy 
 for them. They could so easily have prevented the whole 
 
300 THE OLD TRANSPORT ROAD 
 
 miserable business from happening at all. On the other 
 hand, it is strange to think that, had there been no Rinder- 
 pest, there would probably have been no Coast Fever. 
 Prior to the Rinderpest, there was the Tsetse Fly belt, 
 extending all down the East Coast, a stretch of country 
 through which it was quite impossible to take cattle. 
 The Coast Fever could not be carried into the Interior. 
 The Fly was by no means the unmitigated curse which 
 men imagined it to be. But after the Rinderpest, 
 Tsetse Fly almost disappeared. No animal suffered 
 more heavily from the plague than did the buffalo, which 
 was virtually wiped out in many places, and, now, where 
 you found no buffalo, you found no Fly. A very little 
 investigation served to prove that the Fly could not do 
 without the buffalo, that it could only breed in that 
 animal's dung ; consequently, the Rinderpest was 
 directly responsible for the destruction of the Fly, and, 
 with the Fly, of the factor which prevented the introduc- 
 tion of Coast Fever into the high country. The whole 
 sequence of events was most curious. 
 
 Our cattle died. We lost everything we owned in 
 material wealth ; yet the latter was but a small part 
 of it all. We might make fresh fortunes, but there were 
 the things we could not replace, the things which had 
 gone from us for ever our youth, and our enthusiasms, 
 and our illusions. Those we had buried for ever in that 
 dreary South African veld, as so many thousands of other 
 men have done. Africa takes all, and gives nothing in 
 return except a grave, and even that the hyaenas do not 
 respect. 
 
 I was bitter about the Coast Fever ; perhaps I am 
 bitter still ; and yet it was a dramatic finish to the 
 Transport Days. 
 
THE END OF THE ROAD 301 
 
 Those, the Transport Days, were over already. The 
 railway was right up to the Victoria Falls, and the branch 
 lines were spreading out on either side. Our task, the 
 task of the Transport Riders, was finished. I know 
 we had done good work, as a class, but there was no 
 place left for us, no outlet, and that overwhelming 
 disaster which swept us all away, which actually killed 
 so many of us, may have been merciful, after all. 
 
 The Road, the Great Road, the Road-which-always- 
 went-on, has ceased to be now. I know what it must be 
 like to-day, overgrown, the drifts washed into great ruts, 
 even the heaviest of the ironwork on our abandoned 
 wagons long since rusted away. 
 
 In these latter days, I never meet any one to whom I 
 can talk of the Road, any one who knew it. One or two 
 women, women who have never even set foot in Africa, 
 have understood, because they have understood me ; 
 but to the average man, the Romance of it all seems 
 absurd, utterly unpractical. Far better, infinitely better, 
 have the train-de-luxe, on which, by ringing an electric 
 bell, you can procure much whisky. 
 
 Yet, in a way, I am far richer because of those years 
 on the Road, for, though most other things have gone 
 from me, my memories remain. 
 
 by BUILK* * TANNER, From* *nd London, 
 
- 
 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE ^DUE^ ^ 
 
 W1LL ^CREASE TO SOCE ENTH DA Y 
 
 DAY AND TO !< 
 
 OVERDUE. 
 
YC 47975 
 
 418983 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY