I was better then, and I went forward to see their proposed track. I did so. It was that miserable stretch where we had hunted for the game which had eaten down all the grass, and had found waterbuck bones with the lions' stinking saliva on them. In short, we knew where we were. Ultimately, we had to tumble down a hill-side.
Men look on trek bullocks as mere animals.
I do know I have come across but few men who had the loyalty and the courage and the patience of those trek bullocks of mine. I had afterwards, in Valhalla, than I would meet ninety-nine out of a hundred of the white men with whom I have had to do. They never went back on me. Even now I can see them as I saw them on one horrible night in 1901, fighting through the flooded Umgesi River, just keeping their feet, straining at the yokes until the tough stinkwood cracked and cracked again, striving, not for their own safety, but to get the wagons, my wagons, into safety. When they had all got through, Amous sat down on the bank and cried with joy, I suppose.