Hendricks the Hunter: The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand

Zululand is a wild region of mountain ranges, deep valleys and gorges, roaring torrents, rapidly flowing rivers, plains covered with mimosa bushes, meadows where cattle pasture and grow fat, and level plateaux extending for many miles across it, several hundred feet above the level of the ocean; while scattered here and there, in some parts pretty thickly, are to be seen the kraals or villages and the mealy grounds of the natives. Wild as is the country, and although roads, properly speaking, there are none, it is sufficiently practicable for waggons in various directions.

Some few years back, one of these vehicles, drawn by a span of twelve oxen, was seen slowly wending its way to the south-west, in the direction of Natal. It was a loosely yet strongly built machine on four wheels, fourteen feet long and four wide, formed of well-seasoned stink wood, the joints and bolts working all ways, so that, as occasionally happened, as it slowly rumbled and bumped onward, when the front wheel sank into a deep hole, the others remained perfectly upright. It was tilted over with thick canvas impervious to rain, the goods or passengers inside being thus well sheltered from the hardest showers, and even from the hot rays of the sun.

The oxen pulled steadily together, as became animals long accustomed to work in company. On a board in front stood a Hottentot driver, his black visage surmounted by a broad-brimmed straw hat ornamented by a few ostrich feathers twined round the crown, while his hand held a whip of Brobdignagian proportions, the stock being fully fourteen feet, and the lash upwards of twenty-four feet in length, with which he occasionally urged on the leaders, or drew blood from the animals beneath his feet, as well as from those intermediate in the span, whenever a rise in the ground or its unusual roughness required an additional exertion of their strength.