70 Hecollections of Adventures 



his great-coat pocket and have a drink. I watched 

 my opportunity, seized the bottle, and threw it into 

 the river, when he got into an ungovernable rage, 

 rushed at me, and in self defence I had to give him 

 a thorough pounding. It was getting late, so I 

 saddled my horse and told him to saddle his, but 

 he would not, so I told him I would thrash him 

 again if he did not. He said he would die, now that 

 he had no brandy to keep him up ; I started however, 

 and he followed. He had had this brandy hidden 

 all the time ; which accounted for his keeping his 

 " drunk " up so long. 



As we neared " Vaalboschfontein," I saw no 

 less than thirteen lions standing on the road; so I 

 made a wide detour to avoid them. They watched 

 us all the time, but they did not follow us. This 

 sobered Watt a little, and he came closer to me, as 

 it was getting dusk, and we had still about 25 miles 

 to ride to get to Groot Christiaan de Beer's, at 

 Waterberg. We kept on steadily. I had two 

 splendid horses and Watt's were fairly good, but it 

 got dark long before we reached Sandfontein (where 

 Johaan Rissik's farm is now). From there we went 

 through heavy sand, and thick trees, and it was as 

 dark as pitch. When about two miles from De 

 Beers, my horses suddenly bolted, and nearly threw 

 me, old Watt's horses followed; but we could see 

 nothing, though the horses had seen or smelt lions. 

 When we reached the farm, Bernardus Enslin (who 

 was afterwards shot on Selikat's Nek by Philip 

 Minnaar in the Boer Civil War) on my knocking at 

 his door came out, and when I told him where we 

 had come from, he said we were lucky to have 

 escaped as some lions had caught his bull that 

 evening on the sand ridge, just where our horses 

 had shied in the dark. I fed the horses well on 



