The great springbok migrations.

[Wolverine67]

Found this story on another website. Thought it was great reading.

A Springbok migration in the
19th century - a tale from
Lawrence Green's 'Karoo'
Those vast springbok migrations which
devastated the Karoo districts of South
Africa almost up to the end of last
century must have formed the most
dramatic scenes in the whole world of
mammals.
One cannot see everything, but I am
sorry these cavalcades of fur and flesh
occurred before my time. There was a
trekboer once, a natural artist as a
storyteller, whose tale gave me the
human side of it; one of those tales
which carried the ring of personal
experience in every vivid detail.
This man had left the Transvaal with his
family in the eighteen-seventies as a
boy of ten. They were members of the
first "Thirstland trek," a group of people
impelled by real or imaginary grievances
and certainly by a restless spirit, to seek
a new country. Some reached Angola,
but this family of Van der Merwes broke
away from the ill-fated wagons and
headed south. They spent their lives
trekking with their sheep and cattle in
search of grass. When the old people
died, the son Gert went on living the
only life he knew, sometimes in
Bechuanaland, in the Kalahari and often
in the North West Cape. By the time he
was twenty-one he had a wife and three
children, two coloured shepherds and a
Bushman touleier to lead the oxen and
find the way from one water-hole or vlei
to the next.
One morning Gert van der Merwe's
wagon was plodding along the dry, hard
bed of the Molopo river where it forms
the southern border of the
Bechuanaland Protectorate. Gert
noticed that the Bushman seemed
worried about something. In the middle
of the morning the Bushman left his
oxen suddenly and ran off into the bush
on the high northern bank of the river.
At noon Gert stopped for the usual
outspan and meal. His wife had just
settled down to the cooking when the
Bushman raced into camp and urged the
party to inspan and 'follow him
immediately. "The trekbokke are
coming," the Bushman declared. "It will
be death to stay in the river-bed."
Gert packed up, wondering whether the
alarm was justified, but remembering
that he had his family with him. The
Bushman led the wagon out of the
riverbed, up the north bank to a hill. Van
der Merwe drove the wagon up the hill
as far as the oxen would pull it. Then
they went to the summit of the hill and
the Bushman pointed.
At first Gert could see nothing unusual,
but later he observed a faint cloud of
dust along the horizon. It was miles
away and did not suggest any great
danger to him. However, the Bushman
persuaded him to cut and pile thorn
bushes as a barrier round the wagon
and cattle. The Bushman explained that
if the running springbok came over the
hill instead of round it they would
trample every living thing in their path
to death. However, he hoped the thorn
bush and the wagon would make them
swerve.
After protecting his wagon and stock,
Gert climbed the hill again. By now the
dust was only a few miles away, rising
higher. the air and spread over a wide
front. Gert's hill appeared to be in the
centre of the oncoming game. Now, for
the first time, he felt a little nervous, for
he realized that anything could happen
if such a stampede passed through the
camp. So he ordered his wife and
children into the wagon and made the
dogs fast under the wagon tent. With
the aid of the two coloured men and
the Bushman he gathered heaps of dry
wood and placed them in front of the
wagon. By throwing green stuff on top
of each pile he hoped to send up
enough smoke to startle the buck and
cause them to swing aside.
Gert waited on the hill summit. The
buck were still hidden in their dust
screen, but hares and jackals and other
small animals were racing past the hill
and taking no notice of the human
beings. Snakes were out in the open,
too, moving fast and seeking cover
under the rocks on the hill. Gert and his
men threw stones at the snakes that
came too close, but the snakes seemed
to be dominated by a greater fear.
Meerkat families and field mice also
appeared in large numbers.
At last came a faint drumming. No
doubt the Bushman had sensed this
drumming hours before, with his ear to
the ground. Only now could Gert hear it.
The cloud of dust was dense and
enormous, and the front rank of the
springbok, running faster than galloping
horses, could be seen. They were in
such numbers that Gert found the sight
frightening. He could see a front line of
buck at least three miles long, but he
could not estimate the depth. Ahead of
the main body were swift voorlopers,
moving along a though they were
leading the army.
When the buck came within a mile of
the hill the Bushman ran to the wagon
and climbed in despite the growling of
the dogs. He was taking no chances.
Gert and the coloured men then moved
back, pausing only to light the fires.
They remained with the cattle, which
had sensed the danger and were milling
round and lowing nervously. Gert's wife
wanted him inside the wagon; but he
was gripped by the vast spectacle and
climbed on to the hood for a better
view.
The first solid groups of buck swept
past on both sides of the hill. After that
the streams of springbok were
continuous, making for the river and the
open country beyond. Then the pressure
increased. the buck became more
crowded. No longer was it possible for
them to swerve aside when they
reached the fires and the wagon. Gert
said he could have flicked the horde
with his whip from where he sat on the
wagon tent. Some crashed into the
wagon and were jammed in the wheels,
injured and trampled upon. The wagon
became the centre of a mass of dead
and dying buck. and Gert saw more
biltong than he could have secured in a
year's expensive shooting. But the thorn
barrier had broken, and the buck were
among the cattle. Before long the
terrified, bellowing cattle stampeded
and vanished into the dust in the
direction of the river. Gert had to let
them go. There was only death for
anyone who ventured after them,
among the horns and hooves of the
buck.
At the height of the rush, said Gert, the
noise was overwhelming. Countless
hooves powdered the surface to fine
dust, and everyone found it hard to
breathe. Gert's wife, who had been
watching the rush with frightened
interest, had to draw the blankets over
herself and the children. The dust had
almost smothered them. Everything in
the wagon was an inch deep in pale
yellow dust, and the coloured men had
also turned yellow.
Within an hour the main body of
springbok had passed, but that was not
the end of the spectacle. Until long after
sunset, hundreds upon hundreds of
stragglers followed the great herd.
Some were exhausted, some crippled,
some bleeding. Gert wondered what
had happened to the hares and jackals,
and the snakes which had not taken
cover in time. Next day he found the
answer.
All night lone buck passed the wagon.
The air cleared, but dust rose again
when there was any movement in the
camp. At daybreak Gert climbed the hill
to see whether he could find his cattle.
He had food, and there was a water
hole not far away in the dry riverbed;
but without the oxen he was stranded.
The morning air was so clear, the day so
bright, that Gert felt for a moment as
though the events of the previous day
had a nightmare quality. Then he saw
that the landscape, which had been
covered with trees of fair sizes, green
with food for his cattle, were gaunt
stumps and bare branches. The buck
had brushed off all herbage in their
passing, and splintered the young trees
so that they would never grow again.
Far in the distance Gert thought he
could see a few of his oxen. After
breakfast he set off with his men to
recover them. Every donga leading into
the river, every little gully was filled with
buck. It seemed that the first buck had
paused on the brink, considering the
prospects of leaping across. Before they
could decide, the ruthless mass was
upon them. Buck after buck was pushed
into the donga, until the hollow was
filled and the irresistible horde went on
over the bodies.
Other sights reminded Gert of the fate
he and his family had escaped by
accepting the Bushman's warning. Small
animals were lying dead everywhere -
tortoises crushed almost to pulp,
fragments of fur that had been hares. A
tree, pointing in the direction of the
advancing buck, had become a deadly
spike on which two springbok were
impaled.
For a fortnight Gert camped on that hill
beside the Molopo, searching for his
cattle. He found half of them. The fate
of the others remained a mystery. They
might have been borne along by the
impetus of the stampede until they fell
and were trampled to death; or they
might have escaped from the living trap
far away from the wagon. Gert
inspanned the survivors thankfully and
the wagon rolled on, away from the
scene of destruction. When he told the
tale, it was clear that he regarded it as
the most memorable episode in a life
which he regarded as the finest on
earth. "Ons lewe lekker. Dit is vir ons
heeltemal goed genoeg," declared Gert
at the end of his story. "We live well. It
is absolutely good enough for us."

 

[timbear]

That must have been the most amazing sight - if you survived it!