An Unpleasant Hide 73 



Rhenosterpoort and handed over the confounded 

 money that had made sores on my shoulders and 

 ribs ; filthy lucre with a vengeance ! I had told 

 Bernardus Enslin and the De Beers about the thirteen 

 lions at Vaalbosch, they and the Swanepools traced 

 them to a vlei on the Platte River, and shot nearly 

 all of them. If I had been alone with my two 

 splendid horses, I should have been much safer, as I 

 could time myself, but hampered by a useless, sodden 

 fool, it was the most dreadful ride I ever experienced. 

 After doing the business entrusted to me, and resting 

 my horses two days, I started back home. To my 

 intense relief I heard that armed Boers and a small 

 convoy of about fifteen wagons were ahead of me, 

 going to Magaliesberg, so I rode on and caught 

 them up a few miles beyond (where the lioness 

 nearly took my horses on the way up). The good 

 natured old pioneers were most kind ; I stayed 

 with them until through Macapan's Poort, and past 

 Waterberg, when I rode on to old Daniel Kruger's, 

 who, when he gave me back my clumsy gun 

 said that he and his old wife (who was a great 

 medicine woman in the district), had said that they 

 would never see me alive again. Looking back, I 

 think it was more luck than good management; 

 going those hundreds of miles through bush country, 

 swarming with wild animals and savages, without 

 firearms. I never, till then, realised how nearly a 

 man can break down, if the strain is kept up too 

 long, All the ivory in Africa was dear at the price. 



