CHAPTER II

FROM FARM TO BATTLEFIELD


In the olden days, before men with strange languages and customs entered
their country and disturbed the serenity of their life, the Boers were
accustomed to make annual trips to the north in search of game, and to
exterminate the lions which periodically attacked their flocks and herds.
It was customary for relatives to form parties, and these trekked with
their long ox-waggons far into the northern Transvaal, and oftentimes into
the wilderness beyond the Zambesi. Women and children accompanied the
expeditions and remained behind in the ox-waggons while the men rode away
into the bush to search for buck, giraffe, and lion. Hardy men and women
these were who braved the dangers of wild beasts and the terrors of the
fever country, yet these treks to the north were as certain annual
functions as the Nachtmaals in the churches. Men who went into the wild
bush to hunt for the lions, which had been their only unconquerable enemy
for years, learned to know no fear, and with their wives and children
formed as hardy a race as virgin soil ever produced. With these pioneers
it was not a matter of great pride to have shot a lion, but it was
considered a disgrace to have missed one. To husband their sparse supplies
of ammunition was their chief object, and to waste a shot by missing the
target was to become the subject of good-natured derision and ridicule.
Fathers, sons, and grandsons entered the bush together, and when there was
a lion or other wild beast to be stalked the amateur hunter was initiated
into the mysteries of backwoodsmanship by his experienced elders.
Consequently the Boers became a nation of proficient lion-hunters, and
efficiently ridded their country of the pest which continually threatened