SUPPOSED TRADITION OF DELUGE. 93 faith, or extent of knowledge, the traveller may be completely duped, as I was in the present journey. At an isolated village, far in the wilds of Namaqua-land, I met an individual, who appeared somewhat more intelligent than the rest; to him I put a number of questions, to ascertain if there were any tradition in the country respecting the deluge, of which vestiges are to be found in almost every part of the known world. I had made many inquiries before, but all to no purpose. Discovering that he possessed some knowledge on the subject, and being an utter stranger to any of the party, and to all appearance a child of the desert, I very promptly took my pen and wrote, thinking myself a lucky discoverer. I was perfectly astonished at some of his first sentences, and, afraid lest I should lose one word, I appointed two interpreters: but by the time I reached the end of the story, I began to suspect.. It bore the impress of the Bible. On questioning him as to the source of his information, he positively asserted that he had received it from his forefathers, and that he never saw or heard of a missionary. I secretly instituted inquiries into his history, but could elicit nothing. I folded up my paper, and put it into my desk, very much puzzled, and resolving to leave the statement to wiser heads than mine. On our return, this man accompanied us some days southward, towards the Karas mountains, when we halted at a village; and meeting a person who had been at Bethany, Mr. Schmelen's station, lying north west of us, I begged him to guide us thither, as I was anxious to visit the place. He could not, being worn out with the journey; but pointing to the deluge narrator, he said, "There is a man that knows the road to Bethany, for I have seen him there." The mystery of the tradition was in a moment un⚫ravelled, and the man decamped, on my seeing that the fore father who told him the story, was our missionary Schmelen. Stories of a similar kind originally obtained at a missionary station, or from some godly traveller, get, in course of time, so mixed up and metamorphosed by heathen ideas, that they look exceedingly like native traditions. Leaving this subject for the present, we will return to the results of the journey. Having reached some of the branches of the Fish River, where we found water by digging like the natives, we were brought to a stand. The wild Namaquas, as they are called, were jealous of the object of our visit. They knew of the fame of Africaner, and were apprized of his object, as well as that of the missionary; but they had in earlier times received such impressions of "hat-wearers," that they were determined either to oppose our proceeding, or flee. Here we remained some days, and notwithstanding their suspicions, we got the people to listen with great attention to the message of the Gospel. We also met with one of their sorcerers, who, the night before, had made the inhabitants believe that he had entered into a lion that came to the village and killed the cattle, creating an uproar which lasted till the morning dawn. I coaxed him into a conversation with a piece of tobacco, and inquired about his reported powers, to which he readily replied; but when I wished to put them to the test, he declined. I then request ed him to try his hand on me; this he also declined, adding, that I was a white sorcerer myself, from the strange doctrines I taught. Africaner proposed to return, rather than run the risk of shedding blood; in which he was confirmed by the arrival of a relative from the north, who gave a sorry account of the country. CHAPTER X. ON our route homeward we halted at a spot where a novel scene once occurred, and which was described by an individual who witnessed it when a boy. Near a very small fountain, which was shewn to me, stood a camel thorn-tree, (Acacia Giraffe.) It was a stiff tree, about twelve feet high, with a flat, bushy top. Many years ago, the relater, then a boy, was returning to his village, and having turned aside to the fountain for a drink, lay down on the bank, and fell asleep. Being awoke by the piercing rays of the sun, he saw, through the bush behind which he lay, a giraffe browsing at ease on the tender shoots of the tree, and, to his horror, a lion, creeping like a cat, only a dozen yards from him, preparing to pounce on his prey. The lion eyed the giraffe for a few moments, his body gave a shake, and he bounded into the air, to seize the head of the animal, which instantly turned his stately neck, and the lion, missing his grasp, fell on his back in the centre of the mass of thorns, like spikes, and the giraffe bounded over the plain. The THE LION AND GIRAFFE. 95 boy instantly followed the example, expecting, as a matter of course, that the enraged lion would soon find his way to the earth. Some time afterwards, the people of the village, who seldom visited that spot, saw the eagles hovering in the air; and as it is almost always a certain sign that the lion has killed game, or some animal is lying dead, they went to the place, and sought in vain till, coming under the lee of the tree, their olfactory nerves directed them to where the lion lay dead in his thorny bed. I still found some of his bones under the tree, and hair on its branches, to convince me of what I scarcely could have credited. The lion will sometimes manage to mount the back of a giraffe, and, fixing his sharp claws into each shoulder, gnaw away till he reaches the vertebræ of the neck, when both fall; and ofttimes the lion is lamed for his trouble. If the giraffe happens to be very strong, he succeeds in bringing his rider to the ground. Among those that we shot on our journey, the healed wounds of the lion's claws on the shoulder, and marks of his teeth on the back of the neck, gave us ocular demonstration that two of them had carried the monarch of the forest on their backs, and yet come off triumphant. When I had the pleasure of meeting occasionally with the late Mr. Pringle in Cape Town, and mentioned some of these facts, his poetical genius instantly caught the image, and threw the picture into the following graphic lines, which may not be unacceptable to those who have never seen Pringle's African Poems. "Wouldst thou view the lion's den? Search afar from haunts of men Where the reed-encircled rill Oozes from the rocky hill, By its verdure far descried 'Mid the desert brown and wide, Close beside the sedgy brim 96 TERROR OF OXEN AT A LION. In vain!-the spoiler on his prize For life-the victim's utmost speed 'Tis vain; the thirsty sands are drinking His flanks are streaked with sanguin'd strains- We were often exposed to danger from lions, which, from the scarcity of water, frequent the pools or fountains, and some of our number had some hair-breadth escapes. One night we were quietly bivouacked at a small pool on the 'Oup River, where we never anticipated a visit from his majesty. We had just closed our united evening worship, the book was still in my hand, and the closing notes of the song of praise had scarcely fallen from our lips, when the terrific roar of the lion was heard; our oxen, which before were quietly chewing the cud, rushed upon us, and over our fires, leaving us prostrated in a cloud of dust and sand. Hats and hymn books, our Bible and our guns were all scattered in wild confusion. Providentially, no serious inju ry was sustained; the oxen were pursued, brought back, and secured to the wagon, for we could ill afford to lose any. Africaner, seeing the reluctance of the people to pursue in a dark and gloomy ravine, grasped a firebrand, and exclaimed, "Follow me!" and but for this promptness and intrepidity we must have lost some of our number, for nothing can exceed the terror of oxen at even the smell of a lion. Though they may happen to be in the worst condition possible, worn out with fatigue and hunger, the moment the shaggy monster is perceived, they start like race horses, with their tails erect, and sometimes days will elapse before they are found. The number of lions may be easily accounted for, when it is remembered how thinly scattered the inhabi tants are, and, indeed, the whole appearance of the country impresses the mind with the idea that it is only fit for beasts of prey. The people seem to drag out a miserable existence, wandering from place to place in quest of grass, game, or wild roots. Those I had met with had, from infancy, been living a no-made life, with one great object in view, to keep soul and body together. "A region of drought, where no river glides, Among the poorer classes it is, indeed, struggling for existence; and when the aged become too weak to provide for themselves, and are a burden to those whom they brought forth and reared to manhood, they are not unfrequently abandoned by their own children, with a meal of victuals and a cruise of water, to perish in the desert; and I have seen a small circle of stakes fastened in the ground, within which were still lying the bones of a parent bleached in the sun, who had been thus abandoned. In one instance I observed a small broken earthenware vessel, in which the last draught of water had been left. "What is this?" I said, pointing to the stakes, addressing Africaner. His reply was, "This is heathenism;" and then described this parricidal custom. A day or two after, a circumstance occurred which corroborated his statements. We had travelled all day over a sandy plain, and passed a sleepless night from extreme thirst and fatigue. Rising early in the morning, and leaving the people to get the wagon ready to follow, I went forward with one of our number, in order to see if we could not perceive some indications of water, by the foot-marks of game, for it was in a part of the country where we could not expect the traces of man. After passing a ridge of hills, and advancing a considerable way on the plain, we discovered, at a distance, a little smoke rising amidst a few bushes, which seemed to skirt a ravine. Animated with the prospect, we hastened forward, eagerly anticipating a delicious draught of water, no matter what the quality might be. When we had arrived within a few hundred yards of the spot, we stood still, startled at the fresh marks of lions, which appeared to have been there only an hour before us. |