Cape Carts and Lions

“ Tell your children that if I could get hold of a hippopotamus I would eat it rather than allow it to eat me. As for lions, I go on the plan put forth by a little girl in Scotland who saw a cow coming to her in a meadow. ‘ O boo! boo! You no hurt me, I no hurt you 1! •

(A Letterfrom David Livingstone.)

AVOYAGE to Africa in those days took

three months, whereas even a slow ship to-day would hardly take as many weeks to reach Cape Town. Livingstone left England in December and, after touching at Rio de Janeiro, his ship, the George, made Cape Town in the early spring of 1841. During the voyage the captain, a fellow-Scot with whom he made great friends, gave him some sound training in navigation and the use of the quadrant. At Cape Town he spent a month with a missionary named Philip, but did not enjoy his time there at all, and very much hated all the gossiping and tea-parties. In one of his letters home he enlarges on this subject; and as for the missonaries and their wives, he said he wished they had a bishop over them! “ You may shoot me,” he wrote to a friend, “ if you find me at Cape Town during the next ten years! ” He left Cape Town as quickly as he could, and set out for Betshuanaland. There he saw what real pioneer missionary work can do to improve a very unpromising country* Kuruman, before the missionaries came there, was a dreary waste, sparsely dotted with low, thorny acacias. Sir Harry Johnston, the famous traveller, tells us that Kuruman, like many another wilderness, owes everything to the almost slave drudgery of the missionaries. They dug the canals with their own hands, and there is not a tree in the country that has not been planted by them.

To get to Kuruman by land Livingstone had to buy a wagon and a team of oxen to draw it. A South African wagon is about twenty feet in length, very strong, very light, and built—if a good one—of “ stink-wood.” If it is a halftented wagon the “ after ” twelve feet only are covered with canvas, and the front will be free for baggage, rifle-racks, a hide “ cartle ” or bed, and other traveller’s necessaries. If the purchaser is “ green,” as, of course, Livingstone was, he makes some bad mistakes. A good wagon is cheap at £100, but if it have any green wood in it, it will “ show out,” as travellers say, on the first trip, and be worth nothing. Livingstone had fairly good luck over his first wagon, but was “ had ” badly over his oxen. Those were the oxen that formed the text of the unpopular sermon he referred to in one of his letters!

Oxen in those days cost nearly double what they do now. The “ voor ” and “ achter ossen,” the first and last pair in the team, used to be worth as much as £16 each. As sixteen oxen are required for a team, it cost Livingstone a good deal to make that first journey. It cost him still more, because his oxen were not “ salted.” If oxen have not been worked all over South Africa, and so have not become proof or “ salted ” against the red-water disease, they will die when they get on to strange veld. Another ox disease is “ lung-sick.” An ox has to be inoculated against that or it is sheer waste of money to buy it. But Livingstone had, of course, to buy his experience too, and no one ever managed to take the Doctor in twice running.

Crossing the Orange River Livingstone got his wagon aground, and his oxen got out of order, “ some with their heads where their tails should be, and others with their heads twisted round in the yoke so far that they appeared bent on committing suicide.” His letters were full of such incidents, but he took to the wild, free life as to the manner born, and felt that this at last was the real thing—the Africa he had come to explore and to win. He was already full of the idea of discovering the mysterious fresh-water lake— Lake Ngami — rumours of which had reached Cape Town.

Everywhere was game in abundance, and to Livingstone it all seemed a sportsman’s and naturalist’s paradise. But he had no time for the present to do much shooting. He only made a short rest at Kuruman and then did a quick trek of about three hundred miles northward into Betshuanaland, where he wanted to pay a visit to the chief at Shokwane. The next six months he spent at Molepolole, and during that time Livingstone did not see a single European. It was no wonder he learnt the language quickly—he had to. His great desire was to understand the native mind, and to come as close as he could to the life of these Ba-kwena. Their name means literally “ the crocodile people ”; but they were much better than their reputation suggested, and Livingstone made great friends with them. But soon afterwards the whole tribe was driven out of the district by the warlike Ba-rolon, so the Doctor was obliged to fix upon another spot for his intended mission.

Finally he chose Mabotsa, and it was there he had his celebrated adventure with the lion.

The lion is almost extinct now in British South Africa; one might live all one’s life in Betshuanaland and never hear or see one. But in the “ forties ” the whole country was infested by lions. The people in the native village of Mabotsa believed they were bewitched, so many lions attacked their cattle. It was a common belief among the natives that an enemy of their tribe might get a wizard to “ give them into the power of the lions.” These Mabotsa lions soon got so bold that they even invaded the cattle kraals by day and carried off the cows.

Livingstone had a poor opinion of the Mabotsa people as hunters, and at last offered to go with them on their next lion hunt. They started from the village one day with a number of beaters with spears, Livingstone carrying his rifle and wearing a Highland jacket. He did not follow the example of his fellow-Scot and very good friend, Gordon Cumming of Altyre, who hunted the African lion in a kilt! But on this particular lion hunt the Doctor’s coat at any rate was of Livingstone tartan.

The spoor led them to a small hill covered with trees, and Livingstone drew up his men in a circle round it. Then gradually the beaters closed in, and presently Livingstone and the native beside him, Mebalwe by name, saw a lion crouching on a piece of rock in full view. Mebalwe in his excitement “ wiped Livingstone’s eye ” and fired at the lion. Needless to relate, the lion made off quite unhurt. In another moment, however, two more lions were seen, but it was difficult to shoot them without hitting the beaters on the other side of the circle. If they had been real native hunters Livingstone’s men would have at once leapt in and attacked the beasts with their spears. But these Mabotsa people were more careful of their skins and were full of superstitious fears of witchcraft. Presently the Doctor caught sight of still another lion, lying just behind a small bush, and taking aim at him at about thirty yards, he gave him both barrels.

The lion was badly hit, but gave Livingstone no time to ram a charge into his rifle. In another moment the brute was upon him, caught him by the shoulder and began to worry him as a terrier does a rat. Livingstone afterwards described his sensations. As the great, tawny beast stood over him, growling, and shaking him, he said he felt like a patient partly under chloroform. There was no feeling at all of pain or terror. “ The shake annihilated fear and allowed no sense of horror in looking round at the beast.” That is very possibly the halfnumbed condition of all creatures of the wild struck down by beasts of prey. But it has not been the experience of one or two other big game hunters in somewhat similar circumstances—of Mr F. C. Selous, for instance., The lion had one heavy paw on Livingstone’s head, and to relieve himself of the weight he turned round a little and next moment saw Mebalwe taking aim in his direction. Fortunately for the Doctor he was so close to the lion that Mebalwe missed him too with his flint- - lock! But in a trice the lion had sprung away from Livingstone and was after the native.

Another man, whose life Livingstone had saved, rushed at the beast with his spear, and Mebalwe got off with a gash in his thigh; but the lion went immediately for his new assailant. The whole thing lasted only a few moments; it was a last dying effort on the part of the lion. As he seized the man with the spear the bullets took effect, and he rolled over as dead as a door nail.

* Livingstone himself was in rather a bad way. His shoulder had been crunched into splinters, and he had eleven teeth wounds on the upper part of his arm. Fortunately his thick tartan coat had wiped off the virus from the lion’s teeth, so that he escaped the poison which is the most dangerous part of a wound from a wild animal. But to the day of his death Livingstone never had the complete use of his arm again. The natives declared this lion to be the biggest they had ever seen, and to take the evil charm out of him they made a huge bonfire over the carcass.

It was thoroughly characteristic of Livingstone that, in mentioning lions and lion hunting to people at home, he generally rather seemed to depreciate the king of beasts, and on one occasion he actually said that the lion is “ somewhat larger than the biggest dog,” and that it was difficult to distinguish its roar from that of a cock ostrich! “ One is in much more danger,” said he, “ of being run over in a London street than of being devoured by lions in Africa.” Mr Selous, with his usual modesty, once declined to “generalise” on the subject of lions—because, as he said, he had himself “only shot sixteen.” But in several of his books he has nobly championed the African lion, and refuses altogether to accept that undignified comparison with the cock ostrich, unless, perhaps, its “ boom ” is heard at a distance of, say, three miles. One of Mr Selous’ lion-skins, which the present writer has seen, measures eleven feet, one inch, and the lion itself must have weighed anything up to forty stone. Rather larger, certainly, than the largest dog.

Some travellers no doubt have written slightingly about the courage of the lion. And it is perfectly true that if one meets with a lion in the African wilds, the great beast will make off into cover. He is given to strictly attending to his own business, and avoids unpleasantness if he can help it. On the other hand, of all dangerous beasts a lion is the most deadly when once he is roused. He will face odds to the end. Bullet after bullet strikes him, but on he comes, until at length he may be only “ hitching himself along,” so badly wounded is he—but he is game to the very last; you must kill him or be killed yourself. This is the testimony of most of the well-known modern lion hunters—men like Lord Delamere orv Sir Alfred Pease—just as it has always been the opinion of hunters like Oswell and Selous.

What Livingstone said about the lion’s roar is true enough if one hears him at a great distance. When a lion is hunting his prey he is careful, of course, not to make a noise. In the early evening, too, his call is more like “ a questioning cough ” than a roar. But when several lions are driving game, and their object is to terrify, the sound of their roaring is a very stupendous thing. It has been described as being like a very deep and mighty organ in a very small church. The air shakes and the ground itself seems to vibrate at the aweinspiring voices of the great beasts. In lion hunting it is nearly always the unexpected that happens, for the lion is one of the most resourceful of beasts, and he can hide his huge body in cover so scanty that a new-comer would think it too short to conceal even a cat. His mighty spring, coming perhaps utterly unexpectedly from a spot fifteen feet away, is a pretty impossible thing to avoid. And although this is not likely to find an experienced hunter unprepared, the oldest hand will never make the error of despising the lion. Livingstone did not really do so. The fact was that he was always terribly afraid of being “ lionised ” himself, and made as little as he could of his own escapes and adventures. He was quite as wary of being drawn into

A
Village
in
Central
Africa

These villages

are
surrounded
by
high
palisades
formed
of
poles
lashed
together
with

creepers,
sometimes
surmounted
with
tlorn
bushes

to prevent lions leaping

over. Where hostile attacks

are feared it is encircled by a deep trench. “a traveller’s story” as he was afraid of anything approaching “ cant.” He very much horrified a pious lady at a dinner-party when she began to examine him as to the feelings of his soul when the lion was about to devour him. “ What were my feelings? ” said he. “ I was wondering which part of me he would eat first! ”

The chief of the district where Livingstone meant to plant his mission was a tall, manly fellow named Setshele. He and Livingstone took to one another from the first. On account of his swarthiness Setshele was known as “ the Black,” and was a fine specimen of the savage chieftain. He told the Doctor that in his greatgrandfather Motshoasele’s time two white travellers passed through his country and were struck down by fever on the Limpopo River. The rain-makers there, he said, were afraid the white men’s wagons would charm away the rain, and ordered the Englishmen to be thrown into the river.

Setshele himself became a Christian, and Livingstone looked upon him as a wonderful example of what Christianity can do for the savage. He learned to read and write, and introduced something like good government amongst his people. Whenever Livingstone visited the big chief he was asked to read some part of the Bible. Setshele’s favourite Bible stories were from the Old Testament, and he was especially fond of Isaiah. “ He was a fine fellow that Isaiah,” Setshele said; “he knew how to speak.” Setshele’s wife—the only one he was permitted to keep when he became a Christian—remained an incorrigible daughter of the wild. To Livingstone’s amusement, her angry husband would send her out of church to put her gown on, and she would go with her lip shot out, the very picture of unutterable disgust at his new-fangled notions.

The great lion hunter, Gordon Cumming, often paid Livingstone a visit at his mission, and in one of his books he describes how he attended a service there in the wilds. “ I had,” he says, “ considerable difficulty to maintain my gravity as sundry members of the congregation entered the church clad in the most unique apparel. Some of these wore extraordinary old hats, ornamented with fragments of women’s clothes and ostrich feathers. Their fine hats they were very reluctant to take off, and one man sat with his beaver on until the doorkeeper went up to him and ordered him to remove it.” So it is evident that Setshele’s men-folk did more than make up for their ladies’ deficiencies.