Tales from the Veld

"Look here, sonny! I've been in this country, man an' boy, ever since I were born; and, you b'lieve me, I never get hole of a paper from the Ole Land but there's some abuse of u...

We were still at the camp near the bush by the sea, and the week's hunt was ended. The "boys" had gone off to a neighbouring kraal to dance and eat and drink throughout the nigh...

The Fish River was "down." It generally was down, in the sense of being low, but colonial rivers run by contraries--when they are down they are up. There had been a heavy fall o...

The Zulus had lifted the cattle when they grazed homewards at dusk amid the thin scattering of dark mimosas on the grey plain. The herdsman lay, with his face to the sky, unburi...

"Hulloa, Bassie! I thought this fine morning would bring you over. The sap's running strong, and the quail are gathering thick in the young wheat. Hear to them whistling. Where'...

In the night we heard the loud barking of a baboon, and next morning Uncle Abe, accompanied by the witch-doctor, Bolo, started back for his solitary homestead, saying that he ha...

We were talking about snakes at the little roadside _winkle_--a composite shop, where you could buy moist black sugar, tinned butter, imported; tinned milk, also imported; cotto...

The day was wet, the ploughing was over, and as we had an idle spell, what more natural than that most of us should find business at the store? where we sat on bags and boxes, a...

"The brandy brings out the goodness from the yerb, and I tell you a dose of it gets home every time. But what's the good--the brandy's gone, there's not a tickey in the stocking...

Our big Christmas hunt was in full swing. In a smooth, well-carpeted glade, surrounded by forest trees and bush, the three tent wagons of the party were outspanned, drawn up in...

There can be no denying that we were reaping a plentiful crop of misfortunes, to which farmers in South Africa are especially exposed. The cattle thieves had mysteriously come a...

Abe Pike was laying a new floor to his shed. He had at last, after many years, brought that wonderful structure to some semblance of a covered shelter, and now he was stamping d...

The next morning Abe was stamping mealies with a wooden pestle in a wooden mortar made from a tree trunk. It was a piece of unusual labour on his part, and I complimented him on...

"I see that the magistrate at Port Nolloth has seen the sea-serpent. It was a mile out at sea--raised its head ten feet from the water, and remained in sight for an hour."

Abe Pike was one of those men who would walk ten miles to set a trap without a murmur, while he thought himself badly used if he were called upon to hoe a row in the mealie fiel...

The next day was hot and drowsy, and old man Pike simply lazed around, with his smasher hat tilted over his eyes and his hands in his pockets. He could not, however, be tempted...

I had got a new tiger trap, and was displaying its beauties to some members of our Cat Club--not that this was the official name, which in full dress proclaimed itself as the Ro...

I had not seen old Abe Pike for some weeks, having been on rinderpest guard on the Orange River, but on my return to the coast I rode over to Gum Tree Farm, where the lone blue-...

"Were I ever in the wars? Did I ever grow pumpkins? There's some fellows go through life asking questions about things that's as plain as plain--why, blow me, I've known 'em ask...

Our Poison Club was in a flourishing condition. During the past year the members had killed off 1,500 red cats, wild dogs, jackals, seven leopards, and 500 baboons. This represe...

"I tole you all about it, and, what's more, I ain't got no time to jaw along when that shed o' mine wants mendin'," and Abe resolutely re-filled his pipe, unheeding my request f...

"Yes!" said Abe, one afternoon, after he had been helping threshin' wheat; "these newfangled machines bin smashing up all the good old customs that were the salt of country life...

I had been busy all day `branding' the young cattle, and returning hot, dusty, and tired to the house, found Abe Pike comfortably seated in the cane chair, with the veldschoens...

I think I have said that Uncle Abe knew everything there was to be known about farming, but he was content with his knowledge and never put it to practical use, unless it was in...

I had ridden out one day to the outpost, where a troop of young cattle were running, when the horse rode into a covey of red-wing partridges, a brace of which I accounted for by...

Abe Pike--Old Abe Pike, or Uncle Abe as he was variously called--lived in a one-horse shanty in the division of Albany, Cape Colony. I won't locate his farm, for various reasons...

Abe suffered for several days from an attack of rheumatism in his shoulder, brought on by his immersion in the flood waters, and he applied himself steadily to the manufacture o...

The red Kaffir is a man with a good deal of character, which he does his best to destroy. The pure kraal Kaffir, who lounges negligently in his red blanket or squats on his loin...

"How is it you never married?" I asked of Abe on an evening after the mealie cobs had been shelled, and we were too dead tired to brush the husks from our hair.

In the spring the quails come in from the west, and one September morning I went out into the standing oat-crops with two other guns, each one of us attended by a little Kaffir...

Old Abe had strolled over to my place to see a new Harvester tried on a good crop of wheat. In the previous reaping season I had been left suddenly in the lurch by my Kaffirs, w...

"And I don't wonder at it," said Abe Pike, when discussing the bull's points. "Trouble sours the best of us, and he's had his share of trouble--what with his struggles as a youn...

I don't know what degree of truth there was in old Abe's account of his adventure with the black tiger, but I certainly learnt to my cost that whether the brute had or had not g...

I have referred to Bolo, an old Kaffir medicine man, who, on his professional tour round the country, always remained a day or two with Abe Pike, in his way, a great doctor with...

The old Kaffir took a pinch of snuff, and began about the jackal and the netikee, the smallest of all South African birds, and a member of the wren family.