A JOURNEY TO AMATONGALAND IN SEARCH OF INYALA

The inyala, a rare and beautiful animal—Seldom shot by Englishmen—Account of, by Mr. Baldwin—Further observations of, by the Hon. W. H. Drummond—Inyala-shooting and fever almost synonymous—Distribution of the inyala—Curious antelope shot by Captain Faulkner—Start on journey in search of inyalas—Reach Delagoa Bay—Meet Mr. Wissels—Voyage to the Maputa river—Depredations of locusts—Elephants still found in the Matuta district—A quick run up the river—Reach Bella Vista—Talk with Portuguese officer—Hippopotamuses seen—Change of weather—Longman engages four lady porters—Start for Mr. Wissels's station—Sleep at Amatonga kraal—Description of people—Cross the Maputa river—Reedbuck shot—Rainy weather—Reach Mr. Wissels's station.

Of all the various species of antelopes still to be found in the southern portion of the great African continent, the inyala is perhaps at once the most beautiful and the least known to naturalists and sportsmen. This handsome animal, although it had been previously shot by some few Boer hunters, was first described and brought to the notice of European naturalists by Mr. Douglas Angas, by whom it was named Tragelaphus angasi, or Angas's bushbuck, though it is more generally known at the present day by its native Zulu name of inyala.

Inyala horns are often met with in collections, but such trophies, it will be found, have almost invariably been obtained from the natives, few living Englishmen having actually shot this very local and retiring animal; whilst, as far as I am aware, but two of these have, since Angas's first description, given us any information concerning its haunts and habits.

That tough old sportsman the late Mr. William Charles Baldwin met with the inyala on his first visit to Amatongaland in 1854. He writes:

Hearing from the Kaffirs that there were inyalas in the bush, I sallied out, but without success, until nearly sunset, when, as I was returning home, the Amatongas showed me two inyalas feeding, the first I had ever seen. I succeeded in bagging the stag, a most beautiful dark silver-grey buck, with long mane and very long hair like a goat. He is of the bushbuck species, but on a much larger scale than the inkonka of the colony, with long spiral horns, tanned legs, very long hair on his breast and quarters—a beautiful animal, weighing from 250 lbs. to 300 lbs., and very fierce when wounded. They inhabit the coast from this to Delagoa Bay, and are numerous. The does are often to be seen in large herds, and are likewise very beautiful, resembling a fallow deer, but are of a much darker red, striped and spotted with white. They have no horns, and are half the size of the stag; and nowhere else in Africa have I met with them.

Baldwin was evidently very much struck with the beauty of these antelopes, for, referring to the first of the species which he shot, he says: "When I at last secured him I thought I should never sufficiently admire him." On another occasion he says: "I wounded an inyala doe, and had a long chase after her, but eventually lost her. They are wild and wary, and it requires the greatest caution to get a shot at them."

The only other author, besides Angas and Baldwin, who, as far as I know, has written anything concerning the inyala from personal experience is the Hon. W. H. Drummond, who was travelling and hunting in Zululand and Amatongaland from 1867 to 1872, and who subsequently recorded his observations on the wild animals he met with in those countries in a book entitled The Large Game and Natural History of South and South-East Africa. As his remarks concerning the inyala are very much to the point, I think they are well worth quoting. He writes concerning this antelope as follows:—

Perhaps the most beautiful of all the antelopes that I have seen is the inyala, the white lines with which it is striped being more numerous, more regular, and much better defined than those of either the koodoo or the striped eland, which, as far as I know, are the only two animals which possess them at all. Unfortunately, it does not exist except in the low, fever-stricken districts of the Bombo range, about the 28th degree of south latitude. It frequents the densest thickets it can find, and is wary and difficult to stalk; indeed, I should fancy that more people have caught fever by hunting this antelope than in the pursuit of any other animal in Africa, except perhaps the elephant. Of course, as with most game, early morning and evening are the best times during which to look for it, and early dawn implies being wet through to above the waist by the heavy dew and the subsequent drying of one's things by the heat of the sun—a pretty certain method of getting fever; evening, on the other hand, means not getting home till hours after dark, and breathing during that period the fatal miasma, which, as soon as the sun sets, begins to rise from all over the great lagoons and dotted plains where this antelope is chiefly found. Inyala-shooting and fever are all but synonymous; but to those who have already had the latter, and with whom the mischief as regards constitution is already done, ample amends are made by the graceful beauty of the antelope and the magnificence of its skin. Its horns almost exactly resemble those of a koodoo of eighteen months or two years old, though, if anything, they have a broader spread.

The range of this beautiful animal is very limited, and even yet has not been quite accurately ascertained. Angas first met with it on the northern shores of St Lucia Bay, in latitude 28 degrees south, which seems to be its extreme southern range. North of St. Lucia Bay it is, or was, plentiful in the neighbourhood of all the rivers which flow through the wooded plains that lie between the Lebombo Hills and the sea as far north as Delagoa Bay, being particularly numerous in the thickets which border the Pongolo, Usutu, and Tembe rivers. North of Delagoa Bay its distribution is very imperfectly known; but, as it has been shot on the lower course of the Oliphants river, it doubtless exists along the Limpopo between the point where the former river joins it and the sea. To the north of the Limpopo it is probably found along the coast-line wherever conditions suitable to its habits exist, namely, dense jungle in the immediate neighbourhood of swamps and rivers, as far north as the great Sabi river. At any rate, several Kafirs whom I have questioned in the De Beers compound at Kimberley, and who were natives of the coast country near Inyambani, were evidently well acquainted with it, describing it accurately and giving it the Zulu name of inyala.

North of the Sabi, and between that river and the Zambesi, the inyala has, I believe, never been met with. Personally, I have never come across any trace of it, nor obtained any information concerning it during my travels on the lower course of either the Zambesi, Pungwe, or Buzi rivers, the latter being the first important stream met with flowing into the Indian Ocean north of the great Sabi river.

Thus, until quite lately the range of Angas's bushbuck was supposed to be confined to the coast-line between St. Lucia Bay and a point somewhere to the south of the great Sabi river; but amongst a parcel of skins sent from Nyasaland in 1891 by Mr. (now Sir Alfred) Sharpe to Dr. P. L. Sclater, the well-known zoologist, was the unmistakable hide of a male inyala, and subsequent research has brought to light the fact that this beautiful antelope, whose habitat had hitherto been supposed to be confined entirely to the country immediately north and south of Delagoa Bay, is also an inhabitant of the jungles on the central course of the ShirÉ river. In a consular report concerning the state of Nyasaland, published some years ago, Sir H. H. Johnston, amongst his most interesting notes on the fauna of the country which he had so ably administered, wrote: "In the west ShirÉ and lower ShirÉ districts only is found the very handsome inyala antelope."

Concerning the skin previously mentioned, which was obtained by Mr. (now Sir Alfred) Sharpe, Dr. P. L. Sclater wrote as follows:—

Mr. Sharpe brings a flat skin of what is apparently a male of this antelope (the inyala), hitherto not known to occur so far north. He gives the following notes on it: "This antelope is found in a piece of thick, scrubby country bordering the Moanza, which enters the ShirÉ on the right bank near the Murchison cataracts. I have never seen it alive myself, but have heard of it frequently from the natives, by whom it is called bo, the 'o' being pronounced very long. It frequents the thick scrub, and only occasionally comes out to the edges of the grass flats. I have never heard of it in any other part of Nyasaland."

However, although the fact of the existence of the inyala in Nyasaland was only established as lately as 1891, I think that a specimen of this antelope was undoubtedly shot near Cape Maclear, on the shores of Lake Nyasa itself (where apparently it is not now known to exist), by the late Captain Faulkner in 1866. In his narrative of a journey to Lake Nyasa, in connection with the Livingstone search expedition sent out from England under the command of Lieutenant Young in that year, Captain Faulkner has written, in a little-known work entitled Elephants' Haunts: "I had walked a long way without seeing anything, and as it was getting late, was about returning, when I saw a beautiful antelope feeding near a narrow strip of swamp." This antelope he killed, and then described it in the following words: "He was in splendid condition, and a distinctly different animal from any I had hitherto seen; height at shoulder, 3 ft. 4 in.; spiral horns, 21 in. long, slightly curved forward, skin of a greyish colour, and covered with white spots, belly white."

Now, either this antelope shot by Captain Faulkner on the shores of Lake Nyasa was an inyala, or it belonged to a species still unknown to science. Seeing that it has now been ascertained that the inyala is an inhabitant of certain thickets on the banks of the ShirÉ river, at no great distance from the place where Captain Faulkner shot his unidentified specimen, I am inclined to think that the former supposition is the most probable, and that a mistake was made in describing the animal as covered with spots; for if this sentence had read: "Of a greyish colour, and covered with white stripes, or white spots and stripes," the whole description, meagre though it is, would have been applicable to a male inyala, which the length and shape of the horns, and the standing height at the shoulder, seem to show that it was. It certainly was not a bushbuck, with which animal Captain Faulkner was well acquainted; and as the Kafirs chopped off its horns, and the skin went rotten and was not preserved, and the description of the animal in question may have been written from memory by a man who was not a trained observer, some want of accuracy was to be expected. The fact that the shaggy hair which hangs from the neck and chest, and fringes the flanks of the male inyala, and is such a very noticeable characteristic of this species of antelope, was not mentioned by Captain Faulkner, is certainly very curious; still, I am inclined to the belief that the animal which he shot on the shore of Lake Nyasa was an inyala. If not, there exists in that district a nearly allied species still unknown to science, which I do not think is likely, though it would be worth while to make careful inquiries amongst the natives living near Cape Maclear as to all the antelopes of the bushbuck tribe with spiral horns with which they are acquainted, in order to clear up the mystery.

The foregoing notes represent all the information I have been able to gather from the works of travellers and sportsmen concerning the habits and distribution of the inyala, and I will now give a short account of a journey undertaken by myself to the Usutu river, in Amatongaland, in search of these antelopes, during which I was able to obtain some knowledge of them at first hand.

It had long been my ambition to add the head of an inyala, shot by myself, to my collection of hunting trophies, but year after year had rolled by, without my having been able to spare the time to undertake a special journey to the country near Delagoa Bay in search of it, until I recognised that, unless I made a determined effort, my large collection of South African antelope heads would for ever remain incomplete and unsatisfactory, ungraced as it would have been by the spoils of one of the handsomest species.

Thus I left Matabeleland in September 1896, at the conclusion of the native rebellion in that country, with the fixed resolve to do my best to kill a male inyala before quitting South Africa.

Leaving my wife in the care of kind friends at Kimberley, I proceeded by the shortest route, viz. by rail vi Pretoria to Delagoa Bay, and found myself in the now important town of LourenÇo Marques on the evening of Monday, September 21.

There I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Messrs. Gould and Edixhoven, two gentlemen who were most kind and obliging to me in every way, and who spared no pains to render me all the assistance in their power to enable me to carry out the object I had in view. They introduced me at once to a trader from Amatongaland, who had lately come down to Delagoa Bay, and who was just about to return to his station near the junction of the Pongolo and Usutu rivers. Mr. Wissels (the gentleman in question), a Cape colonist of German extraction, I found was about to return to his station by boat on the following day; and when he heard that I wished to shoot an inyala, he told me that these animals were plentiful in the neighbourhood of his station. Then he most kindly offered to take me there with him, and to find Kafirs who knew the haunts and habits of the antelopes in question to go hunting with me.

I had but very little preparation to make for the journey before me, but before I could leave Delagoa Bay it was necessary for me to get a passport from the authorities to travel in Portuguese territory, and also to obtain a licence to carry arms. Thanks to the ready kindness of Mr. B. Cohen,[17] and the courtesy of the Portuguese governor of LourenÇo Marques, I obtained all the necessary licences in an unusually short space of time, and was ready to embark on Mr. Wissels's large, open sailing-boat by four o'clock on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 22. The same evening, after a good dinner at a small hotel on the opposite side of the bay, we ran out to sea with the tide, by the light of a most glorious full moon, and after passing a reef of rocks which projects into the sea from the southern shore of the bay immediately opposite Reuben Point, on which there is a lighthouse, we anchored about midnight in quite shallow water to wait for the morning breeze, by the help of which Mr. Wissels expected we would be able to run right into the mouth of the Maputa river, in time to catch the inflowing tide.

After a not too comfortable night, passed on mealie bags which had not been arranged to serve as a bed, we awoke just as the day was breaking, but before the moon had quite set, and found that a strong breeze had sprung up, before which we ran right into the mouth of the Maputa river in a very short space of time. The Maputa is the name given to the united streams of the Pongolo and Usutu, below their confluence, and carries to the sea the muddy water of the former commingled with the clear stream of the latter, which takes its rise amongst the far-off hills of Swaziland. As the height of the country above sea-level at the junction of these rivers is, I believe, under 400 feet, it follows that the Maputa runs through a very level tract of country. Like all rivers flowing into the Indian Ocean, on the east coast of Africa, it is a tidal stream fringed on both banks along its lower course by monotonous, dismal-looking mangrove swamps.

The country between the Maputa and the Tembe—which latter is the river flowing into the southern portion of Delagoa Bay—is reputed to be very fruitful, and to carry a large native population, who, however, have suffered terribly of late years owing to the depredations of locusts. The district is called Matuta. To the south the land does not appear to be so rich, and must be more sparsely populated, as elephants are said to still maintain a precarious footing there. After entering the mouth of the Maputa, both wind and tide being favourable, we ran up its course at racing speed, and by ten o'clock had passed the limit of the mangrove swamps. So far the only sign of life we had seen was numerous large flocks of curlews feeding on the mud-banks on both sides of the river. These birds appeared very similar to the species so familiar to British shore-shooters, and were equally wary and shy of close acquaintanceship.

About eleven o'clock we reached the Portuguese military station of Bella Vista, in charge of an officer, who, after he had inspected my papers and found them all in order, was very civil, and invited us to join him at the late breakfast which is one of the two substantial meals partaken of by the Portuguese in Africa.

Our host seemed to be something more of a sportsman than most of his countrymen, and only the day previous to our arrival had shot a fine reedbuck ram, and a short time before a bushbuck ram, having killed both with buck shot. He also possessed a good pair of inyala horns, which, he told me, had been obtained from the natives on the Pongolo river. We remained at Bella Vista for a couple of hours, conversing in French on various topics, especially the late Matabele rebellion, in which our host seemed to take a great interest. He was very emphatic in his condemnation of the policy of raising a police force from amongst the natives of a conquered country. "However," said he, "it is the English way; they have done it in Natal and Zululand too, and may yet live to regret it; qui vivra verra." "But," said I, "you Portuguese surely do the same thing, for wherever I have travelled in your possessions, I have always met with your black soldiers." "That is true," said he, "but still our policy is very different from yours; for we never employ natives as police or soldiers in their own country; all the black troops you see in our East African possessions being recruited in Angola, and vice versa, and thus all native levies in the Portuguese service are looked upon as foreigners by, and are themselves out of sympathy with, the tribes amongst whom they find themselves."

After bidding adieu to our host and resuming our journey, we continued to make very good progress, with the help of wind and tide, and although we now and then lost a little time by sticking on a sandbank, we had done so well by sundown that Mr. Wissels expected to make a record run up to his station. During the afternoon we passed a few hippopotamuses and an odd crocodile; but they were few and far between, and appeared to be very wild and wary. Our luck, however, was not to last, for during the hour which intervened between the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon (which was now but one day beyond the full) the wind veered right round, and commenced to blow fresh and cool from the south. We soon found it impossible to make any further progress, even with the oars, after the sail, which had done us such good service throughout the day, had been lowered; for the strength of the wind blew us in under the bank. So, yielding to necessity, we made our heavy craft fast to a tree for the night, and then, after having made a hasty meal, washed down by a cup of tea, we turned in under our blankets, which were once more spread on the top of the mealie bags.

On the following morning, just at daybreak, two hippos passed down the river close to our boat. They were very wary, however, and gave but little chance of a shot, even had we wished to kill them, which I, at any rate, did not. The weather had now completely changed, the sky being overcast with an unbroken sheet of cloud, whilst the temperature had become quite cool and pleasant, with a strong breeze blowing from the south. It looked to me as if we were going to have a day or two of cloudy weather, which would end in rain when the wind dropped; but as it was very early in the season for rain, Mr. Wissels thought it was only a cool spell which would blow off again in a day or two. However, all progress by boat being impossible as long as the southerly wind lasted, my companion, knowing that my time was limited, advised me to get some carriers and push on at once on foot to his station, which was about thirty miles distant, and in the vicinity of which inyala were to be found. This proposition entirely coinciding with my own wishes, one of our two Zulu boatmen, an excellent fellow named Longman, was sent off to engage four carriers, and soon after midday returned with four Amatonga women; for, in this part of the country, the women act almost exclusively as porters.

Of the ladies who, after a considerable amount of haggling, at length agreed to carry my baggage to the junction of the Usutu and Pongolo rivers, three were already in the afternoon of life—gaunt, bony, wrinkled, hideous hags. The fourth was a younger and pleasanter-looking woman, who, in addition to her load, which weighed about forty pounds, carried a two-year-old child, slung in a goat-skin, at her back. It took some time to arrange the price which was to be paid for their services, but at last, after testing the weight of the loads, they agreed to carry them to Mr. Wissels's store for a certain price. This, however, had to be paid in advance, in accordance with a custom which is general throughout every portion of the Portuguese dominions in South-East Africa—a custom which is most humiliating to the pride of an Englishman, as it seems to say, "By bitter experience we black people have learnt that white men will cheat us if they can, and therefore we do not trust them."

At last everything was ready, and I was able to start on my journey at about two o'clock, accompanied by my four lady carriers and Longman, the Zulu, whom Mr. Wissels had most kindly given me to act as guide and headman. That afternoon we walked for about three hours, and slept at a small Amatonga kraal on a rise above the Maputa river. The country through which we travelled was neither flat nor hilly, but consisted of a succession of undulating rises separated by boggy streams. The soil on the surface was of pure white sand, which rendered the walking very heavy. These sandy rises were for the most part free of trees or bush, though patches of thorny scrub were to be seen here and there, as well as some large thorn trees in the hollows.

The Amatonga about here seem to live in families rather than in large communities, as we passed several kraals, none of which contained more than half-a-dozen huts. Each little community seemed to possess a few head of cattle of a small breed, which is probably identical with that found throughout Eastern and South Central Africa, though in certain localities it has become very dwarfed. At the time of my visit to Amatongaland the people were very badly off for food, as for several successive years their crops had more or less been destroyed by a wing of that mighty army of locusts by which the whole of South-Eastern and South Central Africa has been devastated continually ever since 1890.

Arrived at our destination for the night, a hut was placed at my disposal by the headman of the village, which I found perfectly clean, and free from anything which might have made it interesting to an entomologist. Indeed, I will here say that I found all the Amatonga huts in which I slept during this trip perfectly clean and comfortable. The people themselves are too well known to need any detailed description. They are nearly allied to the Zulus in race, language, and general appearance, and most of them understand and speak pure Zulu. In their own dialect, which I was not able to follow, the letter "h" is very noticeable; for instance, the Zulu word "inkuku," a fowl, becomes "huku" in Satonga. I found no difficulty in understanding them when they spoke Zulu, or in making them understand "Sintabele," the native language with which I am best acquainted, and which is itself a dialect of Zulu.

On waking the following morning, I found that the weather looked very threatening, as the clouds had become quite thick, and rain was evidently near at hand. However, after a good deal of opposition on the part of my lady porters had been overcome, we made a fairly early start, and soon reached the Maputa river at the place where we had to cross it in a native ferry boat, which proved to be merely a very disreputable-looking old dug-out canoe.

On our way here we passed along the edge of a marsh, and as we were doing so I heard a reedbuck whistle, but as the morning was very dull and misty, neither Longman nor I could at first see any sign of the animal that had thus needlessly betrayed its existence. However, after walking a short distance in the direction from which the sound had proceeded, we made out three reedbucks, which, as they ran from behind some reeds into the open ground, I saw were a ram and two ewes. They almost immediately stood, the ram with his hind-quarters towards us; so, judging the distance between us to be about three hundred yards, I put up the third sight, and sitting down took a careful shot at him. I thought I heard the bullet strike, but as he ran lightly behind the two ewes without showing any sign of being hit, I began to think I must have been mistaken. Before going far, however, he stopped suddenly for a few moments, and then rolled over on his side, apparently dead. On walking up to him, however, we found him still alive, although on examination the bullet proved to have passed through the lower part of his heart, having first hit him in the belly between the hind-legs and gone forwards through the whole length of his body.

Whilst Longman and I were cutting up the reedbuck, the lady porters took their loads to the ferry, which was close at hand, and then returned for the meat; and when we had got everything down to the river, we shouted for the ferryman to take us to the other side.

It was some time before the native Charon made his appearance, and, whilst we were waiting for him, my lady porters ate up about half the reedbuck, and I also made a good breakfast, and skinned the head, which was a pretty good one. Just where we crossed the river we saw some elephant spoor which looked fairly recent, and the natives told us that a herd of these animals roamed over the country between the Tembe and Maputa rivers, and sometimes passed close to their kraal on their way to drink in the latter stream. The banks of the river presented a very pretty appearance at the time of our crossing, as all the bushes were covered with convolvulus creepers in full bloom.

It was past midday when we again resumed our journey, and light showers had already begun to fall, and continued to do so during the remainder of the day, becoming heavier towards evening, so that by the time we reached the little kraal where we intended to pass the night, I was pretty damp, though not exactly wet through. With the aid of a big fire, however, I got my things dry again before nightfall, and spent a comfortable night in a clean native hut.

During the night it rained a good deal, but when day broke no rain was actually falling, although heavy watery-looking clouds were coming up fast from the south. Taking advantage of the temporary respite, I managed to get my traps packed up, and my unwilling porters under way, as I knew that I should not be able to persuade them to start if rain were actually falling. We had not proceeded far, however, before being caught in a soaking shower, which soon wetted me to the skin, as, not expecting rain, I had not brought a waterproof coat with me, and was only lightly clad. There was nothing for it but to push on to Mr. Wissels's store. It proved to be farther off than I had anticipated, as it was one o'clock before Longman and I arrived there, whilst my lady porters did not turn up until three hours later, in a very bedraggled condition.

During the morning's walk we had passed a large fresh-water lake or lagoon, on which there were numbers of spur-winged geese, one of which I should have tried to shoot for food, had I not been so cold and wet that my one idea was to reach Mr. Wissels's store as soon as possible. After passing the lagoon we crossed a broad marshy plain, where I saw three reedbucks, and also the spoor of two waterbucks, which I am afraid are almost the last of their species in this part of the country, where not many years ago these animals must have been very numerous. On at length reaching the store, I found that the white man—a German sailor, whom Mr. Wissels had left in charge, and whom I had expected to find there—had gone down to the Maputa river with carriers to bring up some bags of maize, and was not expected back till the following day. Thus, I only found some Amatonga natives looking after the store, who, although they were civil and obliging enough after Longman had told them all about me, were yet unable to give me the same kind of welcome that one white man always extends to another in the wilds of Africa. For instance, had Mr. Wissels's friend been at home I should have borrowed a shirt and trousers from him whilst I dried my own; but, in the nature of things, the naked Amatonga were unable to oblige me in this way; however, they did the next best thing, and built a big fire beneath a large thick-foliaged tree; and by the help of this I managed to get myself tolerably dry in the course of the afternoon.