THROUGH THE KALAHARI DESERT.
CHAPTER I
By rail from Cape Town —Over the hills—Drought in the Great Karroo—No rain for three years—An ostrich farm—A well- built railway—The Orange River terminus—Close packing— Crossing the Orange River—Team-driving in South Africa— “Det es nie hotel nie”—Froude’s “Honest Boer”—An oasis—Disappointing “mine host”—Fording the Mud River—Tin- can houses—”Tin Town,” alias Kimberley.
The evening of Friday the 2nd June, 1885, found a crowd of people, travellers with heaps of friends to see them off, and the usual proportion of idlers flattering themselves that they were making good use of their time doing nothing, and of curious onlookers interested in everybody else’s business because they had none of their own to attend to, on the platform of the Cape Town Railway Station. The “mail express,” destined to carry inland the letters from home that had arrived on the previous evening, was about to start, and there was the inevitable excitement which the departure of a favourite train always creates. Among the pas- sengers were Dr. Sauer, Mr. Caldecott, Lulu, and my- self, bound for Hope Town, then the nearest station to Kimberley, but now united by rail with that city of diamonds. When I heard that there was a Pullman
B
A South African Sleeping-Car.
sleeping-car attached to the train, I felt myself at home again, and tried to imagine that the crowd of Malays were only negroes, and to ignore the Semitic features of the majority of the loafers on the platform. But on closer acquaintance the “Pullman” bore quite as distant a resemblance to the sleeping-car of the American railroads as the yellow skins of the Malay boys did to the ebony face of Sambo. On one side of the gangway was a row of seats for one person, and on the other side a row of wider seats to hold two. Over each of these latter the attendant—or “steward” as he is called—suspended from the roof of the car a piece of canvas, on which he placed a thin, dirty mattress; and this constituted the “bed.’’’ There was no covering whatever; and as I had stowed all my rugs away in the luggage-van, there was no alternative but to “turn in all standing;” for by this time the train was some miles out of Cape Town. However, I managed to sleep pretty soundly in my novel hammock till the train slackened speed as it approached the summit of the Hexe Mountains, near the Hexe River. Having heard much of the beauty of the scenery here- abouts, I “turned out” to look at it, but was dis- appointed to see nothing but a series of rugged mountain spurs. Although it was bright moonlight, no details were visible. By this time, at such a height above the sea-level, it was getting very cold, and the rugs would have been welcome; but when the day dawned we were well down on the other side of the mountains, and rapidly advancing into the Great Karroo, and then we began to feel what it is like when the sun tries to make up for lost time. The heat was intense; the eye became tired of the perpetual trem-
A Terrible Drought.
bling appearance which every object assumed in the parched air; and it seemed impossible to keep cool even when standing on the platform at the end of the cars in the rush of air caused by the motion of the train. Not a cloud in the sky: the very atmosphere was parched and kiln-dried, causing a peculiar mirage which made distant hills look near, and magnified them to twice their size; and yet so intensely clear was the atmosphere that the smallest object stood out in sharply-defined detail. Hotter and still hotter it became as the sun rose higher: and beneath such a brazen sky as this the people had existed for the last two years Not a drop of rain for four and twenty months! As far as the eye could reach nothing but a weary expanse of parched-up clay, the monotony broken only by a few stunted, leafless bushes, and by a succession of stony, flat-topped hills (or koppjes) from fifty to one hundred feet high.
Such was the Karroo, when I saw it first, after a two years’ drought: the most terrible, arid, parched- up, kiln-dried, scorched, baked, burnt, and God-forsaken district the sun ever streamed down upon: not even excepting the Sahara; for there is nothing but sand, no object to serve as a foil to the solitude; while here the sense of desolation is intensified by seeing here and there a farmer’s hut. What! farmers in this country? Yes, three years ago these huts, miles apart as they are, and standing out in gaunt desolation, were surrounded by numberless flocks and herds; their in- mates, now beggars, were then owners of ten or twenty thousand sheep apiece. And still they look forward to the advent, too long deferred, of the refreshing rains, which in a few days—hours almost—will transform this
B 2
Rivers of Rock.
desert into a smiling expanse of rich pasture-land. I cannot, of course, decline to believe what I am told on the best possible authority; but it seems incredible that the Great Karroo can ever be other than it is now —an apparently hopeless desert. Not a blade of grass, not a leaf, visible; not even the beasts of the desert, the klip-bok (rock buck), or stein-bok (stone buck), which make their homes among the flat-topped koppjes, are to be seen: the only living creatures are here and there huge heavy-winged aasvogels, or vultures, making riot among the carcases of the horses and oxen that fairly strew the tracks used by the transport-drivers.
Now and then the railway crosses a deep ravine or a wide gorge, which, in the rainy season, would be filled with water. Splendid rivers, many of them, but now as innocent of water as of whisky.
Suddenly the train stopped close to a broad channel, which once was known as the Gramka River, but the bed of which is now heated rock. The station-master said one of the wells had run dry, and the other showed signs of giving out, while the water in the large dam would not last more than a fortnight longer. A glass of water at the refreshment-rooms cost 3d. It was hardly surprising therefore that a drink “of spirits should cost 1s., and a bottle of beer 3s. 6d. The proprietor of the restaurant, a fat brown Boer, said all his sheep were dead, and he had not a cow or an ox left: yet he still hoped for better times, and he was a fair specimen of the general run of the in- habitants. Sometimes a Boer farmer1 would come to
1 The word Boer really means “ farmer,” but has come to be regarded as synonymous with an Africander, i.e. a person of Dutch descent born in Africa.
A Place where it Never Rains.
