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Updated: June 6, 2025
He was not upon the ground. Completely exhausted with his long run, he had not been able to return with the deliverers, but had remained at the camp, where the hopo was being constructed. No time was lost in staying by a spot fraught with so many unpleasant memories; and by the dawn of day our adventurers and their African friends were well on the way towards their encampment.
Plenty of other timber was growing near, such as would be needed in constructing the required inclosure. Macora promised that his people should go to work on the following day; when pits should be dug and trees felled for the fence of the hopo. Willem inquired if they had not better first make sure that giraffes were in the neighbourhood, before expending their labour in constructing the trap.
Seven giraffes had been destroyed, nearly all of them by having their necks broken. These, six or seven feet in length, had been too delicately made to resist the impetus of the heavy herds passing over them. Although they had failed in procuring what they wanted, it was not yet proved that the hopo had been built in vain. It might still be available for another time.
Macora's tribe were not now living in a conquered condition; nor were they now prevented from paying a visit to their former home. The plan proposed by the Makololo chief for catching the young giraffes, was to build a hopo or trap, in some convenient place where a herd of giraffes might be driven into it, the old ones killed and the young ones secured alive.
Near it the fences were made of great strength and height, to resist any attempt at leaping over them, or pressing them down. The pit was covered with reeds and rushes; and no means were neglected to make the hopo as effective as possible for the purpose required of it.
Within the two walls of the hopo they could see before them a living, moving mass, composed of many varieties of animals; among them they saw with regret two elephants and a rhinoceros. Towering far above the heads of all others were those of the giraffes, which seemed striving to be the foremost in precipitating themselves into the pit.
Moaba has cattle, sheep, and goats. The other side of the Chambezé has everything in still greater abundance; so we may recover our lost flesh. There are buffaloes in this quarter, but we have not got a glimpse of any. If game was to be had, I should have hunted; but the hopo way of hunting prevails, and we pass miles of hedges by which many animals must have perished.
Their object was to drive the giraffes out of that tract of timber into the one where the trap was being prepared for them. During their excursion no camelopards were seen in this second grove; but this, in the opinion of the hunters, was of little consequence. They would be discovered in the place where they were wanted; and in this hope they hastened back to the hopo.
No better plan could be devised than this, and it was unanimously adopted. A site for the hopo has to be chosen with some judgment, so that labour may be saved in its construction; and, satisfied that the chief would act for the best, the hunters determined on leaving to him all the arrangements regarding it.
Very great numbers of the large game, buffaloes, zebras, giraffes, tsessebes, kamas or hartebeests, kokongs or gnus, pallahs, rhinoceroses, etc., congregated at some fountains near Kolobeng, and the trap called "hopo" was constructed, in the lands adjacent, for their destruction. The hopo consists of two hedges in the form of the letter V, which are very high and thick near the angle.
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