Bushland

“ It is only in the desert tracts of South Africa that the Bushmen exist,—in the karoos, and treeless, waterless plains—among the barren ridges and rocky defiles—in the ravines formed by the beds of dried-up rivers—in situations so sterile, so remote, so wild and inhospitable as to offer a home to no other human being save the Bushman himself. ”

“ The terror inspired by the Bushmen has indeed had an effect in the deforestation of parts of Cape Colony, for the colonists, to guard against stealthy attacks, cut down all the bush far round their holdings. Mission-work among the Bushmen has been singularly unsuccessful. But in spite of his savage nature, the Bushman is intelligent. He is quick-witted, and has the gift of imitating extraordinarily well the cries of bird and beast. He is musical, too, and makes a rough instrument out of a gourd and one or more strings. He is fond of dancing ”

“ I think we have now made the dip of the country to the south, but the mirage is so powerful that little bushes appear like great gum-trees, which makes it very difficult to judge what is before us; it is almost as bad as travelling in the dark. I never saw it so bright nor so continuous as it is now; one would think that the whole country was under water. Camped without water. No timber as yet on this side of the range, except a few bushes in the creek. A good deal of rain has fallen here lately, and the vegetation is looking fresh.
Monday, 12th July, Large Salt-Bush and Grass Plain. ”

“ The bush is very silent. Its dwellers make no noise as they move about, till evening brings the cries of beasts of prey. The nights in winter are intensely cold, with a sharpness which I found more difficult to endure than the honest frost of the high veld. The noons are dusty and torrid, and the thirst of the bush is a thing not easily coped with. But in three phases this desert took on a curious charm. That South African landscape must be bleak indeed which is not transformed by the mornings and evenings. ”

“ Both the bush-pig and the wart-hog are plentiful in the bush veld, and on the slopes of the eastern mountains. Finally, the bush-buck, one of the most beautiful, and, for his size, the fiercest of all buck, is widely distributed among the woods of Cape Colony and Natal, and in the belts of virgin forest which extend with breaks from Swaziland to Zoutpansberg. Living in the dense undergrowth, he has been pretty well out of the way of the hunter who killed for the pot. ”

“ The Bushmen inhabiting the eastern parts of the colony and a small portion of the Orange Free State belong to the pure race of Bushmen, which had been described before I ever entered South Africa. As is well known, the Bushmen are rapidly dying out. The reason of this is, that their great characteristic is a love of liberty and fondness for living in mountains. They have been accustomed to live among the hills and descend into the valleys to shoot game with poisoned arrows. ”

“ The Bushman requires a desert for his dwelling-place. It is an absolute necessity of his nature, as it is to the ostrich and many species of animals; and north of the twentieth degree of latitude, South Africa does not appear to be of this character. The heroic Livingstone has dispelled the long-cherished illusion of the Geography about the “Great-sanded level” of these interior regions; and, instead, disclosed to the world a fertile land, well watered, and covered with a profuse and luxuriant vegetation. In such a land there will be no Bushmen. ”

“ In these parts of the bush the small hut of the humble out-settler may often be espied; and, while we speak of the toils and privations frequently undergone by this class of people at first, we must not forget that they are thus opening to themselves a way to future wealth and comfort. Nor, be it recollected, is the condition of an out-settler [Pg 33] in the Australian bush any more a fair average specimen of that of the inhabitants of the colonies than the owner of a mud-hovel raised on some English heath would be of the inhabitants of the parish in which he happens to dwell. ”

“ It is, for the most part, a dry, sandy region. It is not wholly lacking in vegetation, for it has tufty grass and creeping plants, together with deeply buried bulbous roots, except in the most central section.
The Bushmen are the nomads, or wandering tribes of the desert. They are of low figure, very thin and wiry. They make no attempt to cultivate the land and have no regular homes. Their chief occupation is to chase the herds of antelopes from place to place, and to lie in wait for them with their bows and poisoned arrows, in readiness to shoot them. ”

“ Reader! have you ever heard of a place situated in the forest-depths of this far western wilderness, called Dummer? Ten years ago, it might not inaptly have been termed “The last clearing in the world.” Nor to this day do I know of any in that direction which extends beyond it. Our bush-farm was situated on the border-line of a neighbouring township, only one degree less wild, less out of the world, or nearer to the habitations of civilisation than the far-famed “English Line,” the boast and glory of this terra incognita. ”

“ Every few miles we came to homesteads and clearings, where the bush has been cut down and burnt, and grass sown for grazing; the ground is too cold and damp for corn, but grass grows well and sheep and cattle thrive. It seems sad to destroy such beautiful forest, but settlers cannot make a living out of the bush, and as Government is wisely keeping two or three chains of forest all along the road on either side as well as other big areas of forest country, there is no fear that the bush will entirely disappear before the settler's axe. ”

“ But the greater portion of Bushmanland may be ranked among the most complete solitudes of the earth. The lion, the rhinoceros, and, in fact, most of the larger indigenous fauna have disappeared from it—with the autochthonous pygmy human inhabitants; nevertheless it is a region full of varied and distinctive interest. The landscape consists either of vast plains, mirage-haunted and as level as the sea,—arid mountain ranges—usually mere piles of naked rock, or immense sand-dunes, massed and convoluted. ”

“ A high stockade of tree-trunks sunk in the ground, some of the upper ends hewn into sharp points, others with round knobby tops that suggested impaled human heads, surrounded a populous village of thatched huts. Just beyond it was the bush, stretching away as far as the eye could carry. [Pg 23] It was a secluded, pretty scene, that village with its neat enclosure, its rows of snug wharés which could be seen through the gateway and the openings in the palisade, and its squares of maize and potato cultivations, sheltered by the friendly belt of dark green forest. ”

“ A delight in the Wood Bush is apt to spoil a man for other scenery. The high veld seems tame and monotonous, the bush veld an intolerable desert, and even the mountain glories of the Drakensberg something crude and barbarous after this soft, rich, and fascinating garden-land. ”

“ But, apart from possible mineral exploitation, the land must remain hunting veld, and indeed is favourably placed for a large-game preserve. The very scarcity of water makes it a suitable dwelling-place for the larger buck, who drink but once a-day; and the difficulty of penetrating such a desert will be an effective agent in preservation. A man walking through it sees nothing for days beyond the dead green of thorn bush, till he comes to some slight ridge and overlooks a round horizon, a plain flat as mid-ocean, crisped with the same monotonous dwarf trees. ”

“ The annual migration of springbucks across the desert is, I am positive, an institution of immemorial antiquity. The reason for it is obvious. The fawns are born in winter, and it is necessary that at the time the does should have green food to eat. But Bushmanland, excepting its extreme western fringe, is far drier in winter than in summer. In winter the feathery plumes of the “toa” crumble away to dust and the stumps of the tussocks turn jet-black. Then the plains become unmitigated desert. ”

“ Nicolls and Eglington, in their ‘Sportsman in South Africa,’ inform us that at the present time the Bushbuck is still plentiful in all the maritime divisions of the Cape Colony and Natal, wherever there are any considerable belts of thick bush. It is not usual to find more than a pair of adults together, and the animals seldom emerge from the impenetrable bush except at night-time, when they come out into the open glades to feed. ”

“ It may readily be imagined that bush travelling in the Australian colonies is often an intricate affair; long practice alone can give one assurance and confidence. Few habitues in the Peninsula think of entering it without a pocket compass, flint, and steel, and even the best bushmen have in their day been reduced to the greatest extremities. ”

“ The country was highly favourable to protracted defence by a resolute and ruthless commander, such as von Lettow proved. A very large proportion of the country is covered by “bush,” that is an undergrowth sometimes more or less open, but usually dense, from which rise trees to aCharacter of the country. height of some 30 feet. This bush covers hills and valleys and even dry desert, and in the coast region develops into luxuriant jungle. Much of it is infested by the tsetse fly. Some areas are covered with dense forests, others with elephant grass growing 6 to 10 or more feet high. ”

“ The desert yields me juicy roots,
And herds of bounding deer.
"Yea, even the wasting locusts' swarm,
Which mighty nations dread,
To me nor terror brings nor harm,
I make of them my bread."
The Bushmen are not fastidious in their tastes; for they eat many plants and bulbs which other people would despise as food. Grasshoppers and other insects, and even serpents, are eaten by them with much relish.
Their huts are very inferior to those of other tribes. They are usually mere holes in the ground. They sometimes serve the purpose of a bed. ”

“ Never a sound broke the silence that brooded forever—in spite of the wind—over the lake-like, flattened expanse of the estuary save the deep "how-how!" of the buzzard's superb pinions as she climbed slowly into the sublime vault of the heavens; never a sound from bird or from beast. The beast hung on, dumbly dogged, with fangs that met in the flesh beneath the stained feathers; and the blood of the bird mingled with the blood of the beast as it trickled slowly down over his mangled head, upon which one fearful claw of the buzzard was clutched in an awful grip. ”

“ Until recently, Australian city artists and editors—who knew as much about the bush as Downing Street knows about the British colonies in general—seemed to think the horse-collar swag was still in existence; and some artists gave the swagman a stick, as if he were a tramp of civilization with an eye on the backyard and a fear of the dog. English artists, by the way, seem firmly convinced that the Australian bushman is born in Wellington boots with a polish on ’em you could shave yourself by. ”

“ It is rather a fascinating place, reminding one a little of a French town, with its houses perched about on reddish-coloured hills from which the bush has been cleared. There is no attempt at regularity, it straggles about, up and down the hills, and a very little way outside, the bush closes in again and rolls away, range beyond range, hill beyond hill, clothed as with dark green fur. To seawards a yellow flat stretches to the sand-dunes. Gaunt, dead trees stand on the flat, and a ragged forest of white-pine borders it; there are pools and bogs surrounded ”

“ The whole bush-castle was alive and ready. Every man and boy who could shoulder a gun was in the well-hidden firing lines.
The wet mist slightly lifting as the morning light came, the musketeers presently saw dim figures moving out from the dark forest on their front and right and left flanks. Moving quickly, half running, in a cautious, crouching gait, they flitted from tree to tree, and burnt stump to stump, and nearer and nearer to the stockade. ”

“ The soil of the Bush plains is yellow, tinged a little with red. That of Hempstead plains is darker, owing in some degree to the humus it contains, but essentially, I think, to the influence of air and heat, by which, on account of the absence of trees and bushes, it is more affected than the bush plains. I do not, of course, mean to assert, that there exists through the entire extent of this vast area, a perfect uniformity in the depth and qualities of the soil. No greater diversity, however, occurs than prevails in every equal extent of territory. ”

“ Those who are used to the bush steer their course with almost unerring precision by the sun, and a few known objects, but there are numbers who never acquire this power. the natives appear to know by instinct the direction of every spot they wish to reach; and many white men seem to possess the same faculty.
But I have almost forgotten that we are all this time sailing up the rive in our whale-boat. It was a very beautiful sail, and we repeatedly passed cheerful-looking farm-houses on either bank— sometimes goodly mansions with park-like enclosures about them. ”

“ In extremely cold weather these people gather twigs and earth, till they have a mound heaped up as a protection on the windward side of the hole. In summer they seek the beds of rivers and, lying under the shade of the mimosas, they draw down the branches to shield themselves from the glare of the sun.
The condition of the Bushmen has been very much changed by the circumstances which have governed their lives. Every one's hand has seemed against them, and theirs raised against every one. ”