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Updated: June 26, 2025
It was one anchorite's pride to lie naked in the mud and let the insects bite him and blister him unmolested; it was another's to lean against a rock, all day long, conspicuous to the admiration of the throng of pilgrims and pray; it was another's to go naked and crawl around on all fours; it was another's to drag about with him, year in and year out, eighty pounds of iron; it was another's to never lie down when he slept, but to stand among the thorn-bushes and snore when there were pilgrims around to look; a woman, who had the white hair of age, and no other apparel, was black from crown to heel with forty-seven years of holy abstinence from water.
I cried, and we sprang over the thorn-bushes where those with us were making ready their spears, trembling as they handled them with fear and the cold of the morning. We looked up. There, down the side of the cliff, came the lions, bounding on the scent of him who had robbed them of their young.
So, when night came, we drove the flock in; and, after milking the cow and getting our supper, we all went to bed. We were precious tired, and all of us slept soundly throughout the night without being disturbed. Both jackals and hyenas came around, but we knew they would not break into that kraal." Hans pointed to the circular enclosure of thorn-bushes, that had been well constructed.
The flowers are free to all pilgrims; but the road to the garden is a very rough road, and thorn-bushes fringe it for a considerable distance. Some pilgrims once organized a band to clear out the thorns; but the bushes have such a tough bark that no knife was able to cut through them. So they stand there still.
Unless one was well acquainted with the highways and byways of that part of the country, one was in constant danger of losing the way; it is a long stretch of bush, consisting of the well-known thorn-bushes of the Hoogeveld, for a distance of about ten miles deep.
Monkeys and rhinoceroses, besides kudus, steinboks, and antelopes, were numerous in the vicinity. At this camp my little dog "Omar" died of inflammation of the bowels, almost on the threshold of the country Ugogo where his faithful watchfulness would have been invaluable to me. The next day's march was also fifteen miles in length, through one interminable jungle of thorn-bushes.
Are not some of your happiest memories, and your most delightful anticipations, bound up with the mid-day meal, at which the anxieties and disappointments of the morning, the birds you missed, the birds that, though they got up in front of you, were shot by your jealous neighbour, the wiped-eyes, the hands torn in the thorn-bushes, at which, as I say, all these are forgotten, when you lay aside your gun, and sit down to your short repose.
The ramparts were of earth, planted on the exterior slope with a thick mass of thorn-bushes, interlaced and strengthened by posts. Outside there were more defences of wooden stockades, and beyond them two ditches, divided by a dyke, on which was a palisade of pointed stakes.
It was the hour when the cormorants come home to roost, and he saw three black specks flying low about the glittering surface; rising from the water, they alighted with a flutter of wings on the corner wall of what remained of Castle Hag, 'and they will sleep there till morning, he said, as he toiled up a little path, twisting through ferns and thorn-bushes.
Meanwhile I perceived that the young nobleman was watching him from amongst the thorn-bushes by the side of the ditch; but what was my astonishment when I saw that my good old friend Charles Hawermann was following them on the hill-side.
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