It was just after old Sequati's time, and Sikukuni had got into
power--I forget how. Anyway, I was there. I had heard that the Bapedi
people had brought down an enormous quantity of ivory from the interior,
and so I started with a waggon-load of goods, and came straight away
from Middelburg to try and trade some of it. It was a risky thing to
go into the country so early, on account of the fever; but I knew that
there were one or two others after that lot of ivory, so I determined
to have a try for it, and take my chance of fever. I had become so tough
from continual knocking about that I did not set it down at much. Well,
I got on all right for a while. It is a wonderfully beautiful piece of
bush veldt, with great ranges of mountains running through it, and round
granite koppies starting up here and there, looking out like sentinels
over the rolling waste of bush. But it is very hot,--hot as a
stew-pan,--and when I was there that March, which, of course, is autumn
in this part of Africa, the whole place reeked of fever. Every morning,
as I trekked along down by the Oliphant River, I used to creep from the
waggon at dawn and look out.
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