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Updated: May 27, 2025
The paths had been made by the wild animals alone, for the general pathway of the people is the river, in their canoes. We usually followed the footpaths of the game, and of these there was no lack. Buffaloes, zebras, pallahs, and waterbucks abound, and there is also a great abundance of wild pigs, koodoos, and the black antelope. We got one buffalo as he was rolling himself in a pool of mud.
The water slowly filters into the bunch of grass, and is sucked up through the reed, and squirted mouthful by mouthful into the shells. When all are filled, the women gather up their load and trudge homeward. Elands, springbucks, koodoos, and ostriches somehow seem to get along very well without any moisture, except that contained in the grass which they eat.
Now a herd of a dozen buffaloes, now twenty zebras and as many cameleopards might be seen scampering over the plain, followed by numerous steinboks or koodoos, graceful oryxes or hartbeests leaping and bounding away before them. Now and then some of the animals would turn round and charge their pursuers, who fled on either side, darting their spears and often transfixing them.
Arriving up with Groot Willem, the attention of Hans was at once directed to an examination of the antelopes, which he pronounced to be elands, but believed them to be of a new and undescribed variety of this animal. They were elands; but each was marked with small white stripes across the body, in this respect resembling "koodoos."
They have been either exterminated by the Boers, or been driven far northward, into the interior of Africa, together with the lions and elephants, over whose former habitation I was travelling. There are still a good many koodoos, and hartebeestes in this neighbourhood, but I was not fortunate enough to come across them.
Our adventurers had seen many kraals of Bushmen, also of Bechuana and Kaffir tribes, and were surprised to observe such evidences of civilisation so far removed from the teachings and example of the Cape Colonists. On their way down the river, buffaloes were observed in small droves, as also herds of koodoos and zebras.
We met as before buffaloes, elands, koodoos, and various antelopes. As I was walking along ahead, suddenly I found my face enveloped as if by a thick veil; and as I was tearing off the web for such it was I caught sight of a large yellow spider, hauling himself up to the tree above.
Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure, as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw. There are some intervals which border the strain of the wood-thrush, to which I would migrate, wild lands where no settler has squatted; to which, methinks, I am already acclimated.
Next day we made our noonday halt at Poplar Grove, the scene of one of Lord Roberts's fights, and farther on we passed Koodoos Rand Drift, where General French had cut off Cronje and forced him back on Paardeberg. All along these roads it was very melancholy to see the ruined farms, some with the impoverished owner in possession, others still standing empty.
I have seen the kokong or gnu, kama or hartebeest, the tsessebe, kukama, and the giraffe, so mangy as to be uneatable even by the natives. Reference has already been made to the peripneumonia which cuts off horses, tolos or koodoos.
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