Alfred Drayson - The White Chief of the Caffres

Although this large snake was a terrible creature to look at, it was not as dangerous as several other snakes that were common near our village. The most dangerous of these was the puff-adder, which the Caffres called “ m’namba .” This snake I have seen about four feet long, and as thick as a stout arm. It is a sluggish, dull animal, very brilliantly coloured, its body being speckled yellow and black, which makes it look like dead leaves, so that you might tread on it without seeing it, unless you were always on the look-out. This snake has a practice of throwing itself backward and striking with its poisonous fangs anything that is following it. To be bitten by the m’namba is certain death, no case ever having occurred of a man or any cattle having been bitten and having lived after it. Our old rain-maker had some little bits of wood that he called mutt , some of which, he said, would prevent a man from dying when he had been bitten by a snake; but I never heard of a cure by this means. Some of his medicine was, however, wonderful in its effects, as I once experienced. I was very ill and had a bad fever; so old Amanzi came to me and gave me a small pill of wood, which I bit and ate. In a few minutes I broke out in a perspiration, and then went to sleep, and slept for nearly the whole of the sun’s course round the earth (a whole day), and when I woke I was quite well. Caffres are very seldom ill: they eat so little meat, are so much out of doors, and take so much exercise, that they rarely suffer from bad health. The climate also is very healthy, so that the people were strong and robust.

It was about two moons after our expedition against the Bushmen, that I was out one morning with Tembile and Inyoni, on some hills near, in search of riet-bok, when we saw two strange Caffres coming towards us. These Caffres, we knew by the “ esikoko ” (the ring on the top of their heads), came from the east, near the bay of Natal. Having given them the usual salutation, we said, “ Chela pela s’indaba ” (“tell us the news”), when they told us that a large herd of elephants was coming down the country, and had done much damage to the corn-gardens of the Caffres on the way, breaking down the fences, eating and treading down the corn. They said there were two bull-elephants, very savage, in the herd, who ran after any man they saw or scented; and that three Caffres, near the Umlass river, had been killed by these elephants.

A herd of elephants visiting a country where the inhabitants are as defenceless as were these Caffres, is a serious matter. Assagies were little or no use against elephants; and if a regular attack was organised against them, in the same manner as we had attacked the buffaloes, we should probably have ten or twenty men killed, and after all not kill the elephant. The corn-gardens, on which we depended for our store of food, might be destroyed; and then there might be, if not starvation, at least great scarcity of grain. So that to prevent the elephants from coming our way was considered most important. There was a great council held the evening after the news was brought; and it was decided that we should send some men towards the east, to find out when the elephants came near us; and on their approach we were to light fires in their track and make noises, so as to try and make them travel in another direction. To turn them back would not have been a proceeding pleasant to the Caffres east of us, but yet we should have liked it, as it would rid us of the animals.

There was nothing talked about during the next week besides the elephants, and I learned much about these animals and their habits from the Caffres. These elephants, I was told, came down the country each year: they did so when the umbrella acacia had its young branches and shoots; for on this tree and several others the elephants fed. In its wild state the elephant lives almost entirely on the branches of trees. These it breaks off with its trunk, eats the smaller branches, and grinds the larger to pieces so as to extract the juice from them. It is at night that the elephant usually travels and feeds: by day, especially if it be very hot, he remains quiet in the bush – so quiet, that you might be within fifty yards of a herd of elephants and not know they were there. If, however, a man disturbs the herd when they are thus at rest, the animals will very likely charge at him, and hunt him through the bush just as a pack of hounds will hunt a fox. At this time of year the elephant bulls, cows, and calves, all keep together; but later on the bulls separate and sometimes travel alone. When thus alone, the bulls are very savage; and if two bulls meet in the bush a terrible battle ensues. The Caffres consider that a bull-elephant is a match for 10 °Caffres, and even then the animal may get the best of the fight.

I was much interested in these accounts of the elephants, and began to think how I could manage to kill an elephant; for it was my ambition to do so.

The Caffre name for an elephant is inglovu , and the words inglovu and ama inglovu were frequently heard during the next few days; for the expected arrival of the elephants was a most serious incident in the daily life of these people; and forty moons ago the elephants had suddenly travelled into this country and had destroyed all the crops of the Caffres near this village. It was all done in one night, and on the morning the people discovered that their yearly crop of corn had vanished. The season was too far advanced to sow again; consequently they were compelled to buy corn and to purchase it with cattle. So that their loss had been very severe.

Taking the first opportunity of speaking to Inyati, I inquired what he intended to do in order to protect his fields and gardens. He replied that the only thing to do was to light fires round the gardens, and to assemble and shout. I inquired why he did not dig a great ditch round his gardens; but he replied that it would take too long, and that the elephants could manage to cross almost any ditch that could be dug.

He also told me that sometimes pits had been dug for elephants; and some years ago an elephant fell into one of these pits, and had been helped out by other elephants; so that it was no use attempting anything against them, as they were as clever as men. That night I thought over every plan by which I could kill an elephant, and at length an idea occurred to me; but I kept my thoughts to myself, as I intended to try by myself if I could not kill one of these enormous animals. Great preparations were made by the Caffres for the arrival of the elephants, quantities of dead wood were gathered in heaps in readiness for large fires to be made when the animals approached our gardens. Several pits were also dug and covered with a hurdle, on the top of which earth was thrown and grass carefully laid. These pits were placed in the old paths of the elephants, because it was known that these animals always followed in their old tracks whenever they revisited a country, and though these tracks were overgrown, or obliterated, yet the instinct, or knowledge of locality of the elephants was so great, that they would travel miles through the bush, and then come out into the open at exactly the same place at which they had come out of the bush some thirty or forty moons previously.

The Caffres told me that the elephants did not understand any man getting up into a tree; that if they were chased by an elephant they climbed a tree, and, although this tree was not big enough to place them beyond reach of an elephant, yet the animal never seemed to think of pulling the man out of it, or of pulling down the tree. This information was of great value to me in carrying out a plan that I was forming in my head.

It was about half a moon’s time after we first heard that elephants were coming our way, that we discovered their traces within five miles of our village. There was a marsh about five miles from us, formed by the overflow of one of the rivers, and in this marsh the elephants had rolled in the mud, and had then returned to the bush. In this bush there were several large trees, hung over by creeping plants and very easily climbed. Having followed the track of the elephants into the bush for a short distance, I noticed a tree that was covered with mud about the stem, and as high as I could reach with my assagy. This was caused by the elephants rubbing themselves against the tree after they had rolled in the mud.