The covenant - James A. Michener [190]
The caravan consisted of Dr. Linnart, the two Van Doorns, Dikkop in charge of everything, and ten Hottentots paid by the Swede. Two wagons accompanied the expedition, loaded with small wooden boxes into which the specimens collected by Adriaan went. On four separate occasions Linnart said that he could not credit the wealth of flowers on the veld, and each time Adriaan assured him that if he went farther, he would find more.
But interested as Dr. Linnart was in botany, he was even more captivated by Seena's remarkable capacity for keeping the camp lively, and he was enchanted one morning when she said briskly, 'Biltong's gone. You, Linnart, shoot us an eland.' So he and Dikkop had gone hunting, and although they failed to get one of the huge antelopes, they did knock down two gemsboks, which they butchered on the spot, bringing back to camp large stores of thinly cut strips of the best lean meat.
'Looks good,' Seena said approvingly as she tended a pot in whose liquor the meat would be marinated.
Linnart, hungry to know the procedures of every operation, asked, 'What's in the pot?' and she showed him: 'A pound of salt. Two ounces of sugar. A heavy pinch of saltpeter. A cup of strong vinegar, a little pepper and those crushed herbs.'
'What herbs?'
'Any I can find,' she said. And into this cold mixture she dropped the strips of meat, stirring them occasionally so that each would be well penetrated. When she was satisfied that the gemsbok was properly marinated, she directed Linnart to remove the strips, take them to the sunny side of the camp where the wind could strike them, and leave them there to dry.
When they were hard as rock, with flavor permeating every cell, they were packed in cloth, to be gnawed upon when other food was lacking. 'The best meal for the veld,' Linnart exclaimed as he nearly broke his teeth chewing. 'Better than the pemmican our Reindeer People make. More flavor.'
The best part of each day came in the late afternoon when Seena and the Hottentots were preparing supper, for then Dr. Linnart sat with Adriaan, discussing Africa and comparing it with other lands he had seen. He liked to take down his atlas and press flat the maps of areas he spoke of, and then little Dikkop would crowd in, look at the incomprehensible pages and nod sagely in agreement with whatever the Swede said. Adriaan, who could not read the words, grasped the geographical forms and he, too, approved.
'Look at this map of Africa,' Linnart told the men one evening. 'Your little colony is truncated. It ought to run all the way north to the Zambezi, its natural boundary. And east to the Indian Ocean.'
'Here in the east,' said Adriaan, tapping the map, 'are many Xhosa.'
'Who are they?'
'Tell him, Dikkop.' And the Hottentot expressed his apprehension over the large tribes of blacks that Sotopo had described during their meeting in the glade.
'Mmmm!' Linnart said. 'If that's the case, sooner or later...' And with his forefinger he indicated the blacks moving westward and the trekboers eastward. 'There's got to be a clash.'
'I think so too,' Dikkop said.
'But up here? Toward the Zambezi? Have any of you gone up there?'
'The Compagnie wouldn't allow us,' Adriaan said.
'But the Compagnie lets you live where you are, hundreds of miles from the Cape. What stops you from exploring the north?' When neither of the men responded, he said, 'Men should always move out till they reach the final barriers. East to the ocean. North to the Zambezi.'
If he implied that the trekboers were delinquent in comparison with other peoples who had explored other lands, he had some justification, but if he thought that they held back through lack of adventurousness, he was wrong, as he discovered when at the end of seven months they came back south through the mountains,