fr:Aventures de trois Russes et de trois Anglais - Chapitre 2
CHAPTER II.OFFICIAL PRESENTATIONS.
the next three days, the 28th, 29th, and 30th of
January, Mokoum and William Emery never left the place
of rendezvous. While the bushman, carried away by his
hunting instincts, pursued the game and deer in the wooded
district lying near the cataract, the young astronomer
watched the river. The sight of this grand, wild nature
enchanted him, and filled his soul with new emotions. Accustomed as he was to bend over his figures and catalogues day and night, hardly ever leaving the eye-piece of his telescope, watching the passage of stars across the meridian and their occupations, he delighted in the open-air life in the almost impenetrable woods which covered the slope of the hills, and on the lonely peaks that were sprinkled by the spray from the Morgheda as with a damp dust. It was joy to him to take in the poetry of these vast solitudes, and to refresh his mind, so wearied with his mathematical speculations; and so he beguiled the tediousness of his waiting, and became a new man, both in mind and body. Thus did the novelty of his situation explain his unvarying patience, which the bushman could not share in the least; so there were continually on the part of Mokoum the same recriminations, and on the part of Emery the same quiet answers, which, however, did not quiet the nervous hunter in the smallest degree.
And now the 31st of January had come, the last day
fixed in Airy's letter. If the expected party did not then
arrive, Emery would be in a very embarrassing position; the delay might be indefinitely prolonged. How long, then, ought he to wait?
“Mr. William,” said the hunter, “why shouldn't we go
to meet these strangers? We cannot miss them; there is
only one road, that by the river, and if they are coming up, as your bit of paper says they are, we are sure to meet them.”
“That is a capital idea of yours, Mokoum,” replied the
astronomer: “we will go on and look out below the falls. We can get back to the encampment by the side valleys in the south. But tell me, my good bushman, you know nearly the whole course of the river, do you not?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the hunter, “I have ascended it
twice from Cape Voltas to its juncture with the Hart on
the frontier of the Transvaal Republic.”
“And it is navigable all the way, except at the Falls of
Morgheda?”
“Just so, sir,” replied the bushman. “But I should add
that at the end of the dry season the Orange has not much
water till within five or six miles of its mouth; there is then
a bar, where the swell from the west breaks very violently.”
“That doesn't matter,” answered the astronomer, “because
at the time that our friends want to land it will be
all right. There is nothing then to keep them back, so
they will come.”
The bushman said nothing, but shouldering his gun, and
whistling to Top, he led the way down the narrow path
which met the river again 400 feet lower.
It was then nine o'clock in the morning, and the two
explorers (for such they might truly be called) followed the
river by its left bank. Their way did not offer the smooth
and easy surface of an embankment or towing-path, for
the river-banks were covered with brushwood, and quite
hidden in a bower of every variety of plants; and the festoons
of the “cynauchum filiform,” mentioned by Burchell, hanging from tree to tree, formed quite a network of verdure in their path; the bushman's knife, however, did not long remain inactive, and he cut down the obstructive branches without mercy. William Emery drank in the fragrant air, here especially impregnated with the camphor-like odour of the countless blooms of the diosma. Happily there were sometimes more open places along the bank devoid of vegetation, where the river flowed quietly, and abounded in fish, and these enabled the hunter and his companion to make better progress westward, so that by eleven o'clock they had gone about four miles.
The wind
being in the west, the roar of the cataract could not be
heard at that distance, but on the other hand, all sounds
below the falls were very distinct.
William Emery and the
hunter, as they stood, could see straight down the river for
three or four miles. Chalk cliffs, 200 feet high, overhung
and shut in its bed on either side.