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4 Lion Glimpses from the Great Letaba River

Perhaps the most attractive of the Transvaal rivers is the Great Letaba, a tributary of the Limpopo before it discharges its waters into the Indian Ocean in Portuguese territory. The country is typical bush or forest lowveld, where the resinous mopani tree predominates. If you set light to a green, growing mopani tree it burns down until even the roots underground are consumed. It is odd to see a heap of white ash, with only the crown of green leaves lying around, where last week a tree had been.

Standing on an eminence so you can see over the surrounding forest, the perfect cone of Gravelotte - a true ‘koppie alleen’ - first strikes your eye. It is close to Leydsdorp, the unique mining town established in Republican days where, in his lordly way, the lion has not ceased to pay visits - unwelcome to the owners of donkeys and stock. To the south-west arise the stately Wolkberge, their tops enshrouded in clouds. They constitute the true Olympus of the old district of Zoutpansberg, from which the gods send down to the plains a bounteous and phenomenal rainfall drawn from the clouds. Further west are the mountains of Majeje above the Eden of Tzaneen, and Duivelskloof valley, fertile beyond compare.

It was only forty years ago that this Majeje, the mysterious White chieftainess of an offshoot of the Transvaal Basutos and the chief rainmaker there, used to terrorise the Shangaan cultivators of the plains with fire and assegai, while playing a double game with the Government. Tradition says that she was seen by two White men only, members of the Du Preez family of Zoutpansberg. The whole region breathes romance, in which the prospector after gold, rubies and emeralds bulks large.

It inspired Rider Haggard's She, just as the Bavenda country farther north, in which the truly strange lake Funduzi and the abandoned Native stone stat Tzata lie, inspired John Buchan's Prester John. While we were at the Letaba two misguided, or inspired, individuals were digging furiously and frantically in pursuit of a will-o'-the-wisp - the Kruger millions - to the annoyance of farmers whose beacons were not being duly respected.

But to return to our lions. The farm we were on was the one on which (as duly chronicled in the Press) last year a lion seized a Pretoria hunter who disturbed his siesta in the reed-bed, flung him into the river and attempted to drown him. The Letaba swarms with fish and crocodiles and produces an occasional hippo. It is as well to keep a gun handy while fishing, though, and to be on the qui vive generally, especially in the evening, as the ungainly, prehistoriclooking crocodile blends with the chocolate rocks of the river and can approach noiselessly and fleetly through the water.

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The petty chief on the opposite bank of the Letaba had lost all his goats but one, through letting them drink at the river. One evening our servant called to us that a crocodile was making a commotion in the water and occasionally rising above the surface. A charge of buckshot seemed to make him more peaceful. On another day the boy found a crocodile basking on the rock above the swimming-pool we used daily and regarded as perfectly safe.

The river yields excellent bream (kurpers), yellow fish, silver fish and black fish and an occasional tiger-fish. It is an annoying experience to get a water tortoise or turtle on your hook. It withdraws its head inside its shell and you cannot get at your hook, so the best policy is to let the animal go for it is useless for food purposes, being allied to the skunk and polecat for ‘highness’. On the other hand, the land tortoise is all right. It crosses the river by walking across the bottom, its course being marked by a string of air bubbles rising to the surface.

The farmer had cleared and sown a large mealie field close to the river. First the hippo came and destroyed his crop. He invoked the aid of the game law and the authorities, and the hippo was in due course destroyed. Then he sowed again. This time the waterbuck came and the mealie crop disappeared. We were thankful to the old mealie field, though, for it yielded us some fine, fat guineafowl.

The river-banks are thick with gigantic forest trees, some evergreen - like the sinister ‘fever trees’, with their ghastly yellow trunks, characteristic of Komatipoort and other malarial areas - and others bare of foliage in the winter season. The number of grimacing baboons and pretty wistful monkeys pay tribute to the abundance of wild fruits in the forest. There is the wild fig, the wild grape, the stamvrug (wild plum), the marula, the mispel (medlar), the moepel (red milkwood) and the green and yellow prickly gemsbok cucumber - singular in its absence from South African fruit markets and a distinct loss to our palates.

The waterbuck in the river-beds fall an easy prey to the lurking leopard on the branches of the overhanging trees. When guns threaten the waterbuck, it makes straight for the water and swims across, despite the crocodiles.

I have mentioned the lion and the Pretoria hunter in the reed-bed along the river. That is not, however, at present a usual place to find lions because the veld abounds with waterholes for game to drink at. It is in the reed beds of dry spruits or vleis that the king of beasts makes his lair, as the numerous spoors amply testify. If he left these during the day for the shade of the trees, he would flee back to the reeds when shooting started in his vicinity. But during the night, when the hunter was at a disadvantage, he would stalk forth proudly and his roar was apt to make even stout hearts quake.

The cattle kraals of the Letaba follow two models. One favours tree trunks

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ten foot to fifteen foot high planted in the ground adjoining one another. The idea is that the lion will not be able to jump over. The other scheme is a wide hedge of the most formidable thorn tree of the bushveld - the haak-en-steek (catch and pierce) thorn - which the lion is afraid to put the soft pads of his feet into.

One night, between midnight and one o'clock, we were awakened at the river, five hundred yards from a high cattle kraal, by the bulls bellowing and the dogs barking. Lions were stalking round the kraal, evidently considering which was the most vulnerable point to attack by scaling, or whether they could start a panic among the cattle and get them to break through, which would suit them equally well. The farmer and his dogs were, however, on the alert and a few shots sent the lions off.

While hunting one day, the farmer and his father succeeded in shooting a waterbuck ram late in the afternoon some distance from the homestead. In accordance with time-honoured custom, they covered the buck as a protection against hyenas, and the next morning early went to bring it in. It had completely disappeared. They found no signs of its having been eaten or dragged away. On examination of the ground, lion spoor was observed; this was followed for the best part of a mile and the buck was found in a dry spruit under a clump of wild date palms.

Now the waterbuck is one of the larger antelopes, and for even a lion to carry such a weight in its mouth for that distance was almost unbelievable, but no other conclusion was possible. A haak-en-steek bush trap was immediately fixed round the dead animal. Two entrances were left and a spring gun fixed over each, so pointed as to shatter the spine of any animal attempting to enter. The next morning we went to see results. There were plenty of tracks of lion about the trap, but the deadly entrances had been severely left alone.

In another part of the veld we found what was evidently a golgotha made by the lions. It was an open space among the trees, covered with luscious grass, with giant anthills about ten foot high at the corners. The open space was strewn with skulls and bones of numerous buck. Reconstructing the past, one could imagine the lions concentrating on the buck grazing in the open space, the hunters taking advantage of the cover afforded by the anthills. A few twelve-feet bounds and the buck were torn down and rent, and perhaps the process was repeated at different times. One edge of the golgotha was gay with the attractive pink flower of the Rathbonia; the Bushmen of South West Africa draw the poison for their arrows from the roots of this plant.

The golgotha was of the past, but in another portion of the bush a place was found where three waterbuck had been killed by lions no earlier than the previous day. The signs showed they had been surprised when sleeping. One had tried to escape, but was pulled down some twenty yards from the other two.

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The hunting veld is crossed by numerous game paths. From the spoor in the soft sand and from the animal droppings, one can tell what buck passed and how long ago. Zebra droppings are at first difficult to distinguish from those of a horse. Zebra and wildebees are generally found grazing together in the veld, and it is a safe guess that the lion will not be far away. A more stately sight can hardly be imagined than a kudu bull proudly raising his head at the end of a forest glade when the distant hunter is first sensed. In another moment, the bull is scurrying away - if the hunter's bullet has not succeeded in stopping him.

On one game path, there were some pieces of skin and other assorted fragments of a hyena. From the footprints of the hyena approaching from one end and those of the lion approaching from the other, the tracker explained what had taken place. When a lion has made a kill, hyenas foregather, but have to take a back seat until his lordship has finished. On this path, the hyena had failed to observe the rule of precedence and paid for its folly with its life.

One afternoon two members of our party went to shoot buck. Approaching a bush, they nearly trod on a sleeping lion. The surprise was mutual. The lion recovered first and managed to put a hundred yards between himself and the first bullet, which wounded him but did not prevent his escape.

It seems odd that a bounty should be paid for killing a baboon and nothing for lions, which constantly cause great livestock losses to the farmer. To shoot at a lion which comes to your kraal at night, or at a lioness with cubs at any time, you take your life in your hands. The baboon in your lands you can shoot with impunity. With the aid of the spotlight on his car, a Letaba farmer recently shot a lion in his cattle kraal at night.

The farmer we visited has shot four lions and one leopard in the last twelve months. Another Letaba farmer has the commendable record of thirty lions. Twenty lions have been accounted for in the last twelve months in the particular ward visited.

An old story, which still raises a laugh, is told of a virtuous young Letaba man who went to a party one night and, disapproving of the lightsome talk, retired from the party in a huff while the night was young. He took a shortcut along a footpath instead of the ordinary road home. Now the owner of the land had been troubled by a lion and had placed a lion trap in the path. The young man promptly fell into it. The pain of the serrated trap jaws round his leg and the prospect of having to face a lion at any moment, caused him to utter loud cries for help - these eventually awakened a ganger on the railway line, who proved a true Samaritan.