The Hartebeest Kloof.

Evening Post, Volume LIV, Issue 152, 24 December 1897, Page 3 (Supplement)

The Hartebeest Kloof.

«. Upon Christinas morning of the year 1880, Arend Van Driel, the trek Boer, stood upon his waggon-box anxiously scanning the plains for any sight f>f game. Leaning upon the tilt, and shading his eyes from the already powerful sun, hia feverish glance swept the great grass plains for the taintest token of animal life. Alas, it appeared that here the veldt was deserted. The big Dutchman's eyes ran fruitlessly over the waste again and again, until they rested upon a little chain of brown hills, just now rose-tinted by the flush of the early morning sun, but nothing in the shape of a herd of game was to be seen. With a deep sigh the Boer climbed slowly down from the waggon and joined his family at their miserable breakfast by the remains of the overnight camp fire. And indeed Arend Van Driel had good cause for dejection. Two years before he and his family had quitted the. Transvaal with a great body of trek Boers, who had made up their minds o leave a country upon which misrule and nisfortune had long rested, and which now lay beneath the hands of the hated British Government. The misfortunes of that illfated Trelt have long since become historical iv the annals of the Transvaal Dutch. Thirst, famine, fever, and dysentery were soon busy among the members of one of the most disastrous arid ill-managed expeditions ever known in South Africa. The trek cattle perished by hundreds in the thirst-lands of the Northern Kalahari ; the flocks and herds, left masteries*, wandered and strayed, and disappeared by thousands. Along the rivers and swamps of Ngamiland and the Okavango, sickness andsuifering destroyed whole families. The trek had set forth with the highest and most exaggerated hopes, chiefly based \ipou the gross ignorance of these misguided and fanatical farmers. They moved northwestward towards some unknown Land of Canaan, where, as they fondly imagined, great snow raountaius stood, where the veldt was always rich and flourishing, where clear waters ran abundantly, and where the wild game wandered as thick as sheep in a fold. Some even believed, as their fathers had believed when they moved into the Transvaal country, that somewhere in this new and unknown laud the great Nile river itself would be found. After more than two years of disastrous trekking most of these vaiu imaginings had been rudely dispelled, but still, their faces ever set doggedly westward, these stubborn peoplo toiled on. During the expedition the trekkers had necessarily become much scattered ; thus Arend Van Driel and his family stood alone this Christmas Day of 1880 by a small pan of muddy water, where they had halted to recruit their exhausted trek oxen and the two horses that remained to them. They i had quitted the Transvaal with 200 head of cattle and 600 sheep and goats. These once thriving nocks and herds were now represented by some two score of miserable cheep and goats, mere bags of bones, which could scarcely drag one limb after another. It was absolutely necessary to husband even these slender resources, and Van Driel had therefore been anxiously surveying the surrounding veldt for some herd of game from which he could secure a meal er two for this weary Christmastide. He now moved up to the camp with disappointment written plainly upon his gaunt, Bun- • tanned, and bearded face. His wife knelt in a ragged old stuff dress stirring some thin porridge of Kaffir corn— their only present sustenance— in an iron pot. She looked up from underneath v her sun bonnet, and catching the gloom upon her husband's face, ejaculated, 'Nic wilde, Arend ? ' ('No game, Arend?') 'Nio wilde, nie,' returned Arend, disconsolately. ' I think the Lord means us to dio after all in this desert. Cursed was the day we over left the Transvaal.' He eat himself down in the red sand by his children, after they had been helped to a small plateful of porridge each, and took and ate his own portion. There were four children left to the Van Driels. There had been seven when they quitted the Transvaal. Three had died of fever at Vogel Pan, a little to the south of the Okavango. Of those remaining, Hermannus, a big lad of fourteen, seemed fairly strong ; the other three, a boy and two girls, ranging from five to twelve, looked, poor things, pale, weak and dispirited from fever, misery, and Bemistarvation. The clothes of all were tattered and raggod and hung loosely about them. The interior of the big waggon hard by Ipoked very bare for ft Dutchman's. But as a matter of fact almost all the little stock of furniture and house gear had been perforce* abandoned. Ploughs, farming implements, tables and chairs, and other impedimenta, all now lay in the middle of th&.t dire thirstland between Khama's and the Botletli river, where they had long since been cast away to lighten tho load. Even the very waggon chairs — dear to every Boer— hadbeen thrown away. Hermannus, the eldest lad, was the first to finish that meagre breakfast of ground millet, boiled in water. He now rose, and in his turn climbed to the waggon and took a survey over the country. Suddenly an exclamation 'broke from his lips, ' Father, there's game half a mile away,* just moving from behind that patch of bush. 1 think they are hartebeest.' The stolid, melancholy-looking Boer was roused in an instant from his apathy. He climbed quickly to the .waggon, and in his turn gazed intently at the game. 'Yes, that's right enough, Hermannus,' he said, 'they're hartebeesfc— they must have slept behind the bushes last night — and they're moving this way for water. Ah ! gee, they have got our wind.' Even as he spoke the troop of game, Borne thirty in number, suddenly halted, turned in their tracks, and cantered in that heavy, loping fashion, which these swift antelopes adopt in their slower pacea, towards the beart'of the plain. Calling to the two Kaffir servants still remaining to him to bring in the horses, just now foeding, knee-haltered, upon the veldt a hundred yards away, Van Driel and his son looked to their saddles and bridle's, filled a water bottle, reached dowo their Westley-Richard rifles and bandoliers from the waggon hooks, and buckled on a rusty spur apiece. ' We. shall be back before snnset, wife,' said Van Driel. • I think, after all, tho Heer God means ub to have a Christmas dinner.' And so, mounting, he rode off with Hermannus. 'The Heer God be with you both,' echoed Vrow Van Driel, ' and may you bring meat— we want it badly enough. 1 The three younger children cried luck after their father and brother, and wavsd their hands, and so, watching the horseman cantering away, gazed and gazed until the two forms presently faded from mere speoka into absolute oblivion, and were swallowi up in the immensity of the great plain. Meanwhile the two hunters rode steadily upon the spoor of the harteboest. It was a good troop, and although the chase might be a long one tho Boers were bo accustomed to bagging the game they followed that they looked confidently to a dead buck or two before afternoon. Surely, they thought, as half -hour after half-hour they followed steadily upon the footprints, now clear in the firm sand, now hardly to be distinguished amid the long grass, even by the wonderful instinct of these sons of the veldt, the hartebeest will probably stand and rest, or feed again. But no. The antelopes had secured a good start, and had long since cantered at that deceptive pace of theirs clean out of sight : and the telltale spoor indicated, as mile after mile was reeled off, that they were still moving briskly, and that their point was some far distant one. The two ponies, rough and unkempt and angular as they were, were perhapa iv bettor condition than the rest of the camp — human beings or stook— put together. Their well-being was absolutely necessary to the safety of the party; without them

game would be desperately hard to come at ; and they had therefore been fed pretty regularly on Kaffir corn and still retained condition. Moreover, they came of that hardy Cape breed which produces some of the toughest, most courageous, and serviceable horseflesh in the world. The nags were all right, and hour after hour they cantered steadily on. It was now twelve o'clock, the sun was desperately hot, they had ridden nearly five hours, with but one short off-saddle, and it was absolutely necessary to give the horses another rest. Father and son, therefore, off-saddled at a patch of thin bush, kneehaltered the nogs, which at once rolled and began to feed, and themselves rented under the 6cant shadow of the bush. For nearly an hour Arend smoked in silence. Meanwhile the lad ■ lay prone upon his stomach, gazing straight in front of him in the direction in which the game still headed. Out there now rose before the two hunteis, swelling solidly from the plain of yellowish green grass, the low chain of hill whioh, as they -viewed it from the waggon- box that morning, seemed so far away. But they had ridden eighteen good miles since breakfast; the hills stood now but four miles away, and each cleft, krantz, and precipice of its scarred and weather-worn sides, each dark patch of bush and undergrowth, now showed plain and naked before their eyes. I ' That's where the hartebeest have made for, father,' said the lad, at last ; ' shall we catch them there, think you ? ' ' Yes,' answered the big Boer, cocking his tattered, broad«brimmed hat yet more over his eyes, and looking very hard at the line of hill. ' They've gone in there, right enough, Hermannus ; in by that dark kloof yonder. But whether the kloof leads right through the hill to the country beyond I can't tell. If it does, we shall have a long hunt and he out all night on the spoor ; if it doesn't we shall catch them in a trap, I hope. Maghte ! But my stomach aches for a bit of good flesh, and your mother and the children want soup and meat badly, poor souls. Fetch in the horses, lad. They've had rest, and we must push on again.' Hermannus rose, walked out on to the veldt, drove up the nags, and once more they saddled up and mounted. They went very warily now, looking keenly along the base of the little range of kopje? to see that the hartebeeits were not feeding quietly among the scattered bush that grew about the foot hills. But, no ; the spoor still held straight ahead, and in half an hour the; were at the entrance of the kloof. It was a narrow ravine, which appeared to have been violently rent by nature right into the heart of the hills, but which, doubtless the action of water erosion and ages of time had worn slowly and with infinite quiet, century after century, deep into the hard rocks. After two hundred yards of this narrow ravine, the kloof suddenly turned at a right angle and then broadened out into an open valley about half a mile long. The spoor had told, the hunters very plainly that the antelopes had entered the kloof. But it was not yet evident why they had travelled all that way thither. Father and son now settled upon a plan of action. It was clear, upon looking up the valley, that no exit was to be found at the far end. If, however, they rode straight up the kloof they would probably drive the game right over the hills, where to follow wou\d be difficult and shooting not easy. • I cannot make out why the buck have come in here,' whispered Van Dreil, meditatively, as they stood beside their horses, and, well screened by bushes, gazed up the valley. ' It's not like hartsbeest ground at all. There must ba water or new grass, or some such attraction, at the head of the kloof. We will leave the nags here fastened to the bush.' He took up a handful of sand and let it fall lightly through his fingers. ' The wind is right enough, it blows fair down the kloof. There is plenty of cover along the bottom here. If we creep very quietly among the bush we shall probably get a fair shot or two each. The game here is seldom hunted', and as far as we can judge the place is never visited by man. Come along ! ' The two moved slowly up the valley, moving from bush to bush with iufinite care and caution, their soft, home-made velschoons of water-buck hide making little or no noise as they crept forward. Now and again they crossed the neat spoor of tho antelopes, imprinted deep in the smooth, red, sandy soil. Then they looked at one another and their eyes gleamed respounively. It was clear that the game had fed slowly and carelessly towards the head of the kloof. Their rifles were - loaded [and cocked ; the time for action was very ne tr. In a quarter of an hour, or a little more, they were drawing very olo6e to the end of the valley ; the bush grew thicker, which was all the better for their purpose. With extraordinary pains they pioked their way, the spoor still guiding them. Suddenly, Arend Van Driel, stretching back his hand in warning, dropped from his stooping walk down upon one knee. Hermannus instantly followed his example. Van Driel motioned his son very softly forward, and, creeping up, the lad saw through a small opening in the bush what had arrested his father's progress. It was a glorious sight, truly. The end of the valley, bounded on three sides by the steep and rough hill, lay before .them. The ground was nearly open, and in the centre of the rich alluvial soil flowed over a rocky bed a sparkling stream of the clearest water, which issued from the hillside to the right, and disappeared apparently beneath . a litter of rocks on the left. Gloso to the stream, within sixty to eighty yards of where the hunters were concealed, were the hartebeests, most of them lying down ; some few standing with heads down in sleepy fashion ; others, again, plucking lazily at some green young grass, .which here and there masked the good red soil. Only one of them — a knowing-looking old cow — was on the alert. The long, black faces, corrugated horns,, and bright bay coats of the big antelopes united with the fair adjacent scenery to form a striking picture of feral life. Attracted by the pleasantness of this green, charming, and well-watered spot, numbers of birds, many of them of brilliant plumage, were flitting hither and thither, crying — some sweetly, some vociferously, one to another. Here were gorgeous emerald cuckoos on their way north, honey birds, kingfishers and bee -eaters of the most resplendent plumage, and various finches and small birds. Seldom had the two Dutchmen set eyes on a more lovely scene. But the aesthetic charm of tbe place was not for the Boers, gaunt with*" hunger and privations. A look and a nod from fathor to son ; the rifles were levelled ; the targets selected, and the loud reports rang out, terrifying the wild life ot" this gem-lilco oasis, and rattling from krantz to krantz along the rough hill sides. Two haitobeests instantly went down and lay struggling in their death agonies. One of these staggered to its feet again ; but Her- , mannushad shoved another cartridge into his breech, and a second shot finally stretched the animal upon the earth aguiu— this lime for good. Meanwhile, as the tirrified troop sprang to their feet aud tore frautionl'y past his right front, Arend Van l)riel rose quickly, slewed half round, tind fiml another shot. Tho bullet sped hnnie, raking obliquely the neck of uno.bui* antelope, which was lateV ou found d«w«l two or three hundred yards down the kloof. The two Boers walked forward to tin* stream, surveyed for a minute <r two tl» r dead game— a fat cow and a young ball, , both in high coudition — and then kneeing at the water drank long aud deep, .'iiid laved their faces, arms, aud hands. The lad was now despatched Bt one.i to i.mmouth of the kloof for the hors-ei, wh.oh could not ouly drink mid feed heio, l>u were to bo freighted with its much meat :ic they could carry for the cump. Before sotting to work to skin the game, V:m Driel walked along the margin of the stream to the Bpot whwe it disappeared— a

sort of tunnel among the rocks. Here, casting about, he oamo upon a discovery . that eleotrified him — first, the whitened bones of a man, a pair of spurs, afterwards an old weather-worn flintlock gun, rotten and rusty, a powder-horn, and a goodsized and very heavy metal box. Opening this metal box with great difficulty the Boor found it full of what he recognised instantly as'gold nuggets, many of them of considerable size. Searching yet further among the rocks, the Boer discovered, juat as Hermannus rode up with the led horse, a carefully laid pile of much bigger nuggets, worth manifestly a large sum of money. Who was the man whose poor remains lay bleaching in the sand there P When had he entered the kloof ? How had he died ? These were questions impossible to answer. Van Driel could only surmise from the make and shape of the flintlock and powder-horn that the man must have died there at some period away bank in the last century. Looking again closely at the powder-horn Hermannus discovered thu initials 'H.D. carved neatly upon the side. But H.D.s life and death and history remain to this hour mysteries absolutely unsolvable. The sweet and secret valley in which he had met his death alone knows the truth of them. getting to work with a will, the father and son quickly skinned and cut up as much of the hartebeest meat as their horses could carry; the rest of the carcases they carefully covered up from the vultures and wild beasts. Just at dark that evening, guided by the stars and the light of their own camp fire, they reached the waggons. It waa a late Christmas dinner for Boers— it was after nine o'clock before they got fairly to work with knife and fork — but none the less it was, for that lone and distressful wilderness, a merry meal, and even the young children, who sat up late, heartily enjoyed it. Next morning Arend Van Driel had fettled upon a plan of action. He despatched the native servants on a month's journey far back to one of the standing camps of the trek Boers towards the Okavango. So soon as they were out of the way, he trekked with his family for the hartebeest kloof, as they all called the place. Arend had seen something of goldmining at Lydenburg, in the Transvaal, and from the discoveries he had already made he guessed that the kloof was rich in alluvial gold. He was not mistaken. In less than a month's search in the flat alluvial soil at the head of the kloof and along the bed of the stream, he and his family discovered enough gold to set themselves up in a fair way for the reßt of their lives. That done, they trekked for the Transvaal again. The Dutch Afrikanders are a secretive race, and keep their own counsel. Moreover, they are the last people in the world to trumpet forth gold discoveries for the benefit of the detested Britisher, who threatens in time to overrun the whole of South Africa. Arend Van Driel is now one of the wealthiest farmers in the Transvaal. His son Hermannus, who is now married, and lives on an excellent farm near, is just as comfortably off. Their Rustenburg neighbours have puzzled for years — and still puzzle' — over the return of this family from the Mosaamedes trek, and their great and inexplicable accession of wealth. But Van Driel and his good vrouw, who started on thaj, terrible expedition strong and hearty people on the right side of three-and-thirty, without a grey hair between them, and came back lined and grey and apparently far on into middle age, are never likely to yield up their secret. Nor is Hermannus, nor are the. rest of the family. The hartebeest kloof and its strange discoveries remain, indeed, a secret safely locked in the breast of each one of them. — By H. A. Bbyden, in Holly Leaves. i i i ■————.