A Breath from the Veldt 8i 



assegais — a piece of cruelty he can never forget or forgive. But then, every 

 Dutchman hates Khama, if only because of his friendship for the English, and 

 his refusal to allow any Boer to settle in his country. At twenty-six Van Staden 

 married Hertina Knell, the young widow of a brother hunter, who brought 

 to his household two sons and a daughter, and (as a set-off against this 

 responsibility) two waggons, with some teams of oxen, some horses, cows, etc. 

 The marriage seems to have been a particularly happy one, for though poor as 

 rats and presently encumbered with a large family, they all pulled well together, 

 Frau Van Staden being a good, hard-working wife ; and though at times (as has 

 been said of a famous statesman) " carried away with the exuberance of innate 

 verbosity," she was really a most kind-hearted woman. To provide for this 

 family Van Staden must needs extend his range, and pursue only such animals 

 as would bring him in the most money. These were, of course, giraffe and 

 hippopotami, which, as the country became more and more opened up, retreated 

 into the unhealthy lands east of the Labombo Mountains, where the last 

 of the hippopotami unhappily fell victims to the hard necessity of my friend 

 and his family. Ten years ago, however, a severe accident reduced poor Van 

 Staden's activity, and permanently lowered his spirits. In an unprovoked 

 attack by a buffalo bull, four of his ribs and both collar-bones were broken, 

 whilst the internal injuries he received were such as to cause him considerable 

 pain when any great demand was made upon his strength. 



Now, in taking this trip into the interior, my chief object, as I explained to 

 Van Staden, was to obtain sketches and specimens of the larger antelopes, and to 

 study their habits. He advised therefore an expedition into the " fly " country 

 on the south-eastern bank of the Limpopo, known to the hunters as the " Roi 

 Rant" (Red Hill), where we could obtain all we wanted in addition to the 

 donkeys I had brought with me. On further consideration, however, we 

 determined to trek right through to Eastern Mashonaland, in search of the 

 white rhinoceros, two of which, according to some half-caste hunters named 

 Boas, came regularly to drink at a certain pool there, the previous year. The 

 extreme rarity of the animal made me anxious to obtain, if possible, a specimen 

 for our national Museum. Antelopes, too, were to be found there in abundance, 

 and probably buffalo on the Nuanetsi, where Van Staden had killed nine in the 

 previous year. So now our plans were settled, and the next day we moved off 

 northward, the waggon and cattle following the beaten track — an excellent road 

 leading right through the Transvaal to the Limpopo — whilst the old hunter, 

 his two sons (Hert and Tace), and myself rode in a parallel line in the rocky 



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