The Eaton Democrat. (Eaton, Ohio) 1875-1903, 1886-03-25

Anu IF6cu my soul from QOuDI ana QlOOm.'
And as the door he. trembling, open drew,
Whist did the startled Sadi view?
beneath him. in Q marble crypt-a tomb.
From the Gersadtt, In Indianapolis Journal.
SPORT.
How the Brave Old Hunter Killed
Four Lions.
The story which is narrated in the follow
lngpages came to me from the lips of my old
friend Allan Quatermain, or Hunter Quas-
ermain, as we used to call him In South
Africa He told it to me one evening when
[ was stopping with him at the place he
bought in Yorkshire. Shortly after that,
the death OF his only son so unsettled him
that he Immediately left England, accom-
panied by two companions, who were old
fels5wavoyagsrs OF his Sir Henry Curtis
and Captain Good, and has now utterly
vanished into the dark heart of Africa.
He Is persuaded that a white people, Of
which he has heard rumors all his life,
exists somewhere on the highlands in the
vast, still unexplored interior, and his great
ambition Is to n them before he dies. This
is the wild quest upon which he and his
companions have departed, and from which
l shrewdly suspect they never will return.
One letter only have I received from the
old gentleman: dated from a mission sta
coast, about three hundred miles north of
Zanzibar; In it he says they have gone
through many hardships and adventures,
but are alive and wen, and have found
hope that the results of their wild quest
may be . ~spagnifcent and unexampled
discovery ] greatly fear, however, chat
all he has discovered is death; for this let
ter came a long while ago, and nobody has
heard a single word OF the party since.
They have totally vanished.
1t was on the last evening of my stay at
his house thathe told the ensuing story 70
me and Captin Good, who was dining with
him. He had eaten his dinner and drunk
Good and myself to the end of the second
bottle. 1t was an unusual thing for him to
do, TOR he was q most abstemious man,
having Conceived, as he used to say, a great
upon the class of men-hunters, transport
riders, and others--among whom he had
passed SO many years of his life. Conse-
quentty the good wine took more effect on
him than 1t would have done on most men,
sending q little flush into his wrinkled
chesks, and making him tall more freely
Dear old mani 1 car see him now, as he
went hmping up and down the vestibule,
With his gray hair sticking up In s~crubbing-
brush fashion, his shrivslled yellow face,
and his large dark eyes, that were as keen
rs any hawks, and yet soft as a bucks.
The whole room was hung with trophies of
his numerous hunting expeditions, and he
only You could get him to tell them. Gem
orally he would not for he was not very
fond OF n~arrating his own adventures, but
tonight the port wine made him more COM
mnnicative.
"Ah, You brutew he said, stopping be-
meath an unusually large skull Of a lion,
which was hxed Just ovsr the mantelpiece,
beneath q long row of guns, its jaws dis
tended to their utmost width. "Ah, you
brute. you have given me q lot Of trouble
tor mn o1e d tsse dozen 9aH years. and will %Isuppose,
TELL us the yarn, Quatermair,n said
Good. "You have often promised to tell
me- and you never have"
answered, sfor it is a longish one."
AZ right / said, sthe evening is young,
and there Is some more port"
Thus adjured, he filed his pipe from a jar
OF oourse-cut Boer tobacco that was always
standing on the m~antelpiece, and still
walking up n down the room, began:
st was, / think in the March of $50 that I
was up In Sikukuni's country. 1t was Just
after old Sequati's time, and Sikukuni had
got into powerlIf forget how. Anyway
hoa bhdU Il odpCul
people had gotdown an enormous quantity
OF ivory from the interior, and SO I started
with . ~wagon-load of goods, and came
straight away from Middelburg to try and
trade some OF it. 1t was a risky thing to
the fever; but I knew that there was one or
two others after, that lot of ivory, SO I
determined TO have a try for it, and take
my chance OF fever. I had got SO tough
from continual knocking about tina 1 did
not set it down at much. Well, l got on all
right for a while. 1t is a wonderfully
beautiful piece of bush veldt, with great
ranges Of mountains running through it,
and round granite koppies starting up here
and there, looking out like sentinels over
the rolling waste Of bush. But it is very
hot-hot as q stew-pan-and when I was
there that March, which, of course, is
autumn in that part of Africa, the whole
trekked along down by the Oliphant river,
1 used to creep out of the wagon at dawn
and look out. But there was no river to be
seen-only a long line of pillows of what
looked like the finest cotton wool tossed up
lightly with a pitchfork. 1t was the fever
mist. Out from among the scrub, too, came
little spirals of vapor, as though there were
hundreds Of tiny fires alight in it-reek
rising from thousands of tons of rotting
vegetation. 1t was a beautiful place, but
the beauty was the beauty of death; and
all those lines and blots of vapor wrote one
great word across the surface Of the country,
and that word was 'sfever."
ut was a dreadful year of illness, that.
came, remember, to one little kraal Of
Knobnoses, and went up to see if I could
get some MAS (curdled buttermilk) and a
few Eealies. As I got neal I was struck
with tho silence of the place. No children
begen to chatter, and no dogs barked. Nor
could l see any native sheep or cattle. The
place. though it had evidently been recently
inhabited, was as still as the bush round it,
some guinea fowl got up out of the
prickly pear bushes right at the kraal gate.
l rcmember that 1 hesitated a little before
about the spot. Nature never looks des-
olate when man has not yet laid his hand
upon her breast; she is only lonely. But
whom man has been, and has passed away,
then she looks desolate.
lad trekked from. dawn till eleven
o'clock-a long trek-but 1 wanted to get on /;
and then had the oxen turned out to Craze,
sending the voorlooper to look after them,
meaning to inspan again about six o'clock,
and trek with the moon till ten. Then ]
got into the wagon and had a good sleep
till half-past two or SO in the afternoon,
Then / got up and cooked some meat and
had my dinner, washing it down with a
pannikin of black collector it was difficult
to get preserved milk in those days. Just
nsI had finished, and the driver, a man
called Tom, was washing up the things, in
comes the young scoundreI of a voorlooper
driving one OK before him.
"sWhere are the other oxenp l asked
"Koosp he said, 'Koosl (chief) the other
for . minute and when 1 looked round
again they were all gone except Kaptein
here, who wal rubbing his back against q
You mean that you have been asleep
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