The Toledo chronicle. [volume] (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1873-1924, 1875-01-14

Nay the dear Lord spare her tous, we pray,
For many . long and sunshiny day,
Ere He takes to bloom in Paradise bowers,
This wee bit darling-this baby of ours.
-Christign Union.
A NIGHT OF TERROR IN AFRICA.
THE qualifications of perfect terror
are three. 1t must be unexpected; it
must be absolutely incomprehensible,
and it must culminate like nightmare.
Once had terror which SO perfectly
fulfilled these requirements that no man
may hope to have better.
This thing happened to me in the city
of Pieter- -Maritzburg, in the colony of
Natal; and in order that ] may tell my
tale intelligibly may be allowed to give
some short description Of the place.
Maritzburg (as the name is commonly
abbreviated) is the seat of government
and the headquarters of the garrison.
1t lies on a shoulder of table-land sur
rounded on three sides by an amphithea-
ter of hills, which, to European eye,
are singularly brown and barren of as
pect. In the midst of this great, ugly
basin Maritzburg absolutely blossoms.
All its roofs are of red tile, all its hedges
are rose-hedges, and nearly all its trees
are peach-trees; and thus, when peaches
and roses are in bloom, there is red and
pink enough to make the town
look like a gigantic nosegay. One,
two, or even three streams of bright,
clear, swift-flowlng water run down each
street. A large head of water comes
downward on the town from the top of
the shoulder on which it is built, and
this water supply is subdivided as it en-
tiers the town into multitude of small
rivulets, or sluyts, as the Dutch call them.
Thus, street in Maritzburg is formed
in the following way: Each house stands
well back from the road in its erf or plot
of ground, then comes thick and lofty
hedge of roses, then a sluyt, then raised
footpath or causeway, then another sluyt.
then the roadway. Now these sluyts,
however much they may add to the
cleanliness of the place, are exceedingly
awkward to the pedestrian. Every sluyt
Is about ysEd5 Rsl0y ths df$Ssss4paae ana
Of stone and logs of wood, s--.-- = 60.
a series of traps and pitfalls. If have
drawn my picture rightly, the reader will
see that to walk along footpath in Mar
itzburg on dark night, without the as
sistance of single street lamp, requires
some care, even if the mind is unoccupied
and the senses under control; but to walk
there on dark night, hearing behind
one the -. But l must proceed in
due order.
On the night when the terror came to
me was returning from the fort at the
top of the town to the hotel where l was
staying, which was at the lower end. /
had distance of about one mile to
walk. 1t was midnight. The night was
dark, but not with thick, murky dark
ness. There was no moon and the sky
was clouded over; but the edges of the
horizon could be just distinguished and
roadway and hedges made out with little
trouble. In short, the night was not one
in which a man has to grope his way,
though he could hardly walk quickly
and boldly. Everyone had gone to bed
and not a light was visible in the street
except an oil lamp hanging before the
hotel, the glimmer of which, the street
being quite straight, I could see in the
distance almost as soon as started on
my walk. There was no wind. All was
SO still that the liquid warbling of the
frogs in the vley below the town sounded
near and loud. Besides this and the
multitudinous murmur of nature, which
she never wholly intermits in her most
silent watches and which one hears and
hears not, there was perfect quiet.
Ihad got but little way on my
journey, walking cautiously along the
raised footpath, when l became aware
that l was followed. Close behind me
the sound-very soft and gentle, but un
mistakable-of football made itself
heard. ! stopped, and the football
stopped also. could see nothing what
ever, and the sound-though SO faint as
to be almost like an echo of my own
steps-had appeared to be close at hand
not more, in fact, than three or four
yards distant. / thought l had been
mistaken and walked on again. Yes!
again came the football, and-no-not an
echo. Whenever an echo is heard there
is certain interval of time between the
sound and Its reverberatioH. This in
terval may be momentary-a mere frac-
ton of second-but is always apprecia.
BILE; or, rather, to put it another way,
if the echo is appreciable there must be
an interval. Now the rhythm-the
time," as rowing men would say
of this football was exact. AS my foot
touched the ground SO did that other
foot, in precise and unvaryiDg coinci
dence. The character of the sound was
very remarkable. The path was hard
and firm, with many small stones scat
tered here and there, and with gravel
sprinkled on it. My boots made q
crunching noise as walked.
But this football was evidently
caused by feet that were neither
shod nor (being unshod) of a horny
or hoofy kind. And yet, on the other
hand, there was nothing of the dull thud
that would be made by the naked foot Of
a naan, or by any animal with soft paw
- A.
yOn describes it, with great padding
pace" There was an undoubted impact
on the gravel of that was sure-snd
beyond that / could liken the sound to
nothing earthly. Again, the supposition
that my follower was beast was mega
tived by the too-evident mockery Of the
sound. No beast, surely, would 60 "a
the trouble Of "keeping time" with be
lated wayfarer, and the cessation and re-