Between Sun and Sand: A Tale of an African Desert

Immediately to the south of the great Orange River for three hundred arid miles of its course before it sinks through the thirsty sands, or spooms in resistless torrent into the Atlantic Ocean, lies a region of which little is known, in which dwell people unlike any others in South Africa, or possibly in the world.

This region is known as Bushmanland--the name having reference to its former inhabitants who, proving themselves "unfit," were abolished from the face of the earth. Bushmanland is at present intermittently inhabited by a nomadic population of Europeans of Dutch descent, who are known as "Trek-Boers." To "trek" means, literally, to "pull," but its colloquial significance is--to move about from place to place.

The Trek-Boers are, so to say, poor relations of the sturdy Dutchmen who have done so much towards reclaiming South Africa from savagery. The conditions under which they live are not favourable to moral or physical improvement.

These people are dwellers in tents and beehive-shaped structures known as "mat-houses," a form of architecture adopted from the Hottentots. The latter are constructed of large mats made of rushes strung upon strands of bark or other vegetable fibre, and are stretched over wattles stuck by the larger end into the ground in a circle, the diameter of which may vary from fifteen to twenty-five feet, and which have the thin ends drawn down over each other until a dome is formed. Such structures are lighter and more portable than the lodges of the North American Indians--in fact one may easily be erected and pulled down within five minutes. Strange to say they are almost completely water-tight.

A wagon and a couple of tents or mat-houses constitutes the camp and castle of the Trek-Boer. He has never known anything else in the shape of a dwelling; it satisfies all his architectural aspirations, it fulfils his ideal of comfort in a tenement, and he harbours contempt for any structure which cannot be moved about to suit the convenience or caprice of its owner.

The Trek-Boer owns no land. He wanders with his flocks and herds over the vast, unsurveyed tract which is all the world to him, following the uncertain courses of thunderstorms which happen to have been deflected from their ordinary beat and strayed across the desert. The rain from these intermittently fills the shallow, cup-like depressions in the underlying rock with water. Such depressions are invariably choked with sand, but by digging at certain known spots a scanty supply of water may sometimes be obtained.

The Trek-Boer occasionally becomes rich in flocks and herds, but every eight or ten years the inevitable drought occurs. Then his stock dies off from thirst and starvation, and he has to begin the world again, a poor man.

The Trek-Boer is a being sui generis. He is usually ignorant to a degree unknown among men called civilised. He is untruthful, prejudiced, superstitious, cunning, lazy, and dirty. On the other hand he is extremely hospitable. Simple as a child in many things, and as trusting where his confidence has once been given, he cannot be known without being loved, for all his peculiarities. The desert life, which has filled the Arab with poetry and a sense of the higher mysteries, has sapped the last remnant of idealism from the Trek-Boer's nature, and left him without an aspiration or a dream. The usual lack of fresh meat and the absence of green vegetables as an item in his diet, has reacted upon his physique and made him listless and slouching in gait and deportment, as well as anaemic and prone to disease. This is especially true of his womankind, who, besides being extremely short-lived have, as a rule, lost nearly all pretensions to beauty of face or form.

Bushmanland might be described as a desert, the aridity of which is tempered by occasional thunderstorms. Its bounds begin immediately to the eastward of the rugged mountain chain which runs parallel with the coast-line, about eighty miles inland, and it stretches on for hundreds of miles until merged with the central Karoo plains. These also form its indefinite boundary to the southward. It is, for the most part, almost absolutely level. To the northward, however, a chain of mountains, occasionally very lofty, arises. For stern, uncompromising aridity, for stark, grotesque, naked horror, these mountains stand probably unsurpassed on the face of the globe. Composed of deep brown granite, with here and there immense veins, or patches many miles in extent, of jet-black, shining ironstone, they absorb the torrid sunshine all day, becoming almost red-hot in the process. At night this heat is radiated rapidly at high sunlight power, until the furnace of midnight becomes like an ice-house at dawn.

The only vegetation to be found among these mountains is a species of deadly Euphorbia--formerly much used by the Bushmen in poisoning their arrows--and a few stunted shrubs which are rooted deep down in the crannies, and which put forth a little timid foliage in the cooler season. The only animals are "klipspringers"--antelopes very like the chamois in form and habit; leopards which prey upon these; badgers, wild cats, jackals of several kinds, an occasional hyaena, desert mice, snakes, gorgeously hued lizards and fierce tarantulas. A few large brown hawks hover above the gloomy gorges and wake weird and depressing echoes with their shrill screams.

To the north of this almost impenetrable region the great "Gariep"--the "Yellow River" of the Hottentots--now called the "Orange" in honour of a former Stadtholder of the Netherlands, has carved out a gorge for its devious course, thousands of feet in depth. Allowing for its many and abrupt windings, this gorge, from the point at which the river hurtles into it over an obstinate stratum of rock at what is known as the Augrabies Falls, must be over four hundred miles in length. The greater part of this gorge is unexplored, being totally inaccessible.

Like the Nile, the Orange River drains an immense area of fertile country which is subject to heavy summer rains. It flows down in a raging, brimming flood, which is charged with rich alluvium, during several months of the year. Unlike the Nile, it has carved for itself a deep and narrow channel, through which it hurls its fertilising load with resistless momentum into the ocean which needs it not. Under different circumstances its valley might have been the cradle of another civilisation, and another Sphinx, of Hottentot or Bantu physiognomy, might have stood, gazing through forgotten centuries, across the waste of Bushmanland.

No more dreary prospect can be imagined than that afforded by Bushmanland in its normal condition of drought. After rain, however, it turns for a few short weeks into a smiling garden. This is especially the case around the northern and western margins where, among the rocky kopjes forming the fringe of the plain, gorgeous flowers cover the ground with vivid patches of colour, and climb and trail over the grey stones. This combination always suggests to the traveller a skull crowned with flowers. The stark rocks, blasted by aeons of burning sunshine, are always in evidence, and the wanton luxuriance of the garlands seem to mock at and accentuate their death-like rigour.

The grass with which the greater part of the plain is covered grows in thick shocks some thirty inches in height, from raised tussocks about six feet apart. In dry weather the fibre of the grass crumbles away in dust and the tussock turns black. After rain, however, the new blades shoot out with marvellous rapidity, and the Desert becomes a sea of waving plumes, which are tinted a beautifully delicate green. Between the tussocks spring up flowers of marvellous colour, scent, and form. It has been libellously affirmed that the flowers of the Desert have no scent. It is true that in the hot, midday glare all are more or less scentless, but in the early morning or when the afternoon cools the heliophilas, the pelargoniums, the many species of lily, and others too numerous to particularise, often make the Desert a veritable "scented garden."

The great plain is almost absolutely treeless. Only in one or two localities are a few acacias found. These are of very large size. They are called "Camel-thorns," for the reason that the camelopard was fond of browsing upon their foliage. Amongst the branches are often found the enormous nests of the sociable grosbeaks, sometimes ten feet in diameter. These nests are veritable cities--inhabited by countless numbers of birds. Woe betide the exhausted hunter who seeks the deceitful shade of these trees, for the ground beneath is full of the dreaded "sampans," which bury themselves in the flesh and cause serious injury.

In the fringe of kopjes grow immense aloes (_Aloe dichotoma_--probably closely allied botanically to the almost extinct "Dragon Tree" of Teneriffe). These sometimes reach a height of sixty feet, and may measure twenty feet around their ridged and gnarled trunks. This tree is locally known as the "koekerboom," or "quiver-tree," a reminiscence of the fact that the Bushmen used to remove the fibrous wood from a section of a bough and utilise the cylinder of tough bark as a quiver for their poisoned arrows. The koekerbooms are believed to be of immense age; the oldest Trek-Boers will point to small trees growing close to their favourite camping-places, and tell you that they have not sensibly increased in size in upwards of half a century. Their appearance is extremely belated and archaic.

Running through Bushmanland from north-east to south-west is a curved ridge which is known as the "Jacht Bult," or "hunt-ridge," from the plentifulness of game upon it. This ridge rises so gradually from each side that its very existence is not apparent except for a few minutes at morning and evening--and then only if one happens to be on the top of it. Here occurs a curious phenomenon; for, just as the sun is touching the western horizon, if one looks eastward he will be startled at seeing half of the immense plain shrouded in almost complete darkness. The illusion is due to the western plain being flooded with sunlight whilst from the other the sunlight is suddenly and completely cut off. When the sun sinks the illusion vanishes and the eastern plain appears to be no darker than the western. At sunrise these conditions are, of course, reversed.

This region is the home of the "springbuck," which still survives in countless myriads. After a large "trek," as the annual migration of these animals across the Desert is called, has taken place, the wake of the host looks like an irregularly-ploughed field. Every vestige of vegetation is beaten out by the small, sharp, strong hoofs. It seems at such times as if all the springbucks in the Desert were suddenly smitten by a mad desire to collect and dash towards a certain point.

The springbucks as a rule live without drinking. Sometimes, however-- perhaps once in ten years--they develop a raging thirst, and rush madly forward until they find water. It is not many years ago since millions of them crossed the mountain range and made for the sea. They dashed into the waves, drank the salt water, and died. Their bodies lay in one continuous pile along the shore for over thirty miles, and the stench drove the Trek-Boers who were camped near the coast far inland.