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Updated: June 3, 2025
On the 11th of July five coolies arrived with rice: they had been twenty days on the road, and had been obliged to make great detours, the valley being in many places impassable. They brought me a parcel of English letters; and I started up the Lachen on the following day, with renewed spirits and high hopes.
There must have been three thousand camels, at the least, with several thousand sheep and goats, and a considerable number of horses and asses. Thus we moved forward day after day towards the north-east; not in a direct line, however, for we had frequently to make detours to reach wells or water-holes, or spots where water could be obtained by digging.
The thing that caused them the heartiest laughter was to see Mistatimoosis's endless attempts to steal the leadership of the caravan from his mother. It was the only thing that could tempt Emmy out of her sedate pace. On a fair piece of road the two of them would race at top speed for half a mile; and the colt was continually making sly detours into the bush to get around his mother.
There she stood and waited for the villagers to question them about this unheard of thing; and it was bad to see how they melted away in other directions, out at unused gates, making detours over the grass, visiting the long-neglected graves of relatives, anywhere rather than along the ordinary way, which was the path where the vicar's wife stood. At last came Mrs. Vickerton the postmistress.
I shall of course avoid Eshowe, and then keep along inside the Zulu frontier as far as the Maputa, which is its northern boundary, then we shall cross the Lebombo range into Swaziland. I don't know how far it would be by the way we should have to go, but as the crow flies it is about three hundred miles from here. I suppose, what with the detours and passes and so on, it will be four hundred.
In deference to Lady Hayes's nervousness and sense of responsibility the high-road was avoided as much as possible, and detours taken through quiet lanes, where traffic was reduced to a minimum; and it was along one of these lanes that Darsie rode joyously some five or six days after her visit to the Percivals, bearing in her pocket a return invitation to her new friends.
Thus we were compelled to make wide detours in order to arrive at our journey's end. Several nights were spent on the open fields. We were at times compelled to fell trees near the banks of a river and build a raft to effect a crossing, there being none other practicable.
Reading and experimenting brought a freshness to his work that stimulated detours into untraveled paths. But Mary, Eliza, and Jane never sought out the uncharted way. Evidently monotony suited their stolid temperaments; or if it did not, they never rebelled against it or tried to shake off its fetters.
These detours were in general much longer than the direct road would have been, and he received a constant stream of abuse, to say nothing of blows, from the people whose crops he was ruining. But he seemed quite insensible to assaults and insisted upon following, across lots, a road which led nowhere. It would be difficult to paint a more faithful portrait.
We said so many witty things about it at least, we thought them witty that we laughed continuously through the whole meal, which we ate with prodigious appetite. But with all our driving we were not getting on very fast. The country was exceedingly swampy and we had to make innumerable detours.
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