52 
THE NEW AFRICA 
On reaching our second camping-ground the bearers told me 
that Rudolf had subsided under a tree some distance back. 
He had neglected his training and caught a slight fever. Return¬ 
ing for him, I found him too weak to walk, and, failing any better 
method of transportation, ‘ humped ’ him into camp, and on the 
following day left him at Westbeech’s station, ‘ Lejuma,’ which 
we passed, in charge of a man called Blockley, who was sending 
a cart back to Westbeech’s with ivory, etc., begging Westbeech 
kindly to look after him and send him out with his wagons to 
Klerksdorp. My reasons for doing this were, that to be hampered 
with a sick man at the start of a long foot expedition would 
vastly increase our troubles, while I knew that he would be 
looked after by Westbeech, and that he stood a much better 
chance of recovery than if he were carried on and on into un¬ 
healthy and unknown regions. 
I may as well finish Rudolf’s sad tale, as a typical example 
of the effects of African fever and hardship. He recovered 
at Westbeech’s and finally reached Pretoria after many adven¬ 
tures, where I met him accidentally in the street two years later. 
His joy at meeting me again, as he said, on his twenty-first birth¬ 
day, was so great that it affected his brain, and next morning 
early, when I went to look for him, as he had failed to keep an 
appointment with me, the people he was staying with told me 
that the evening before he had come home much excited at 
having found his old master, and after going to his room went 
out into the garden, after which they had not seen him. But 
now it struck them that they had heard a muffled report in that 
direction. On vaulting over the thick rose-hedge at the end of 
the garden, I came upon his corpse, with a small ivory-handled 
revolver, a former present from me, lying by his side, a hole in 
his left temple and a smile on his lips. He lies in the Pretoria 
cemetery, with a little stone cross over his grave. 
I must here remark that on the trip up from the coast I had 
insisted on the members of the expedition taking hard walking 
exercise, so that when we reached unhealthy country our trained 
bodies would offer more resistance to malarial infection. Hammar 
