repast, a hut was provided for me. It will be gathered that I needed no lullabying into the deep sleep that ensued. I was completely done up. So much for imperial exploration! Was this place cursed? Or was I?
* * *
I suppose I became a pioneer by default. When I first skittled here from Bulawayo, I had intended to settle across the river at Victoria Falls Town as soon as the railway bridge was complete – there would be great opportunities for those who got in early. I made my headquarters at The Old Drift for the time being. A year had passed since my first visit and the population was now fivefold but the place was still a mere trading post: a few wood and iron buildings and twice as many wattle and daub Kaffir huts.
The crowd, however, had become practically cosmopolitan. Van Blerk ran a store for a Bulawayo firm. Tom King ran a canteen for the Bechuanaland Trading Company. Jimmy, an American ex-cowboy, hunted hippos and started fistfights. A Greek made a living shooting meat – he once killed nine lions, mistaking them for boar. Mr L. F. Moore, the English chemist, edited the weekly paper, the Livingstone Pioneer. Zeederberg was a contractor for the post; the great event of the week, prefaced by a bugle, was sorting through a pile of His Majesty’s mails, dumped from a Scotch cart onto the floor of a hut. A chap called ‘The Yank’ hung about, being lucky at poker, until his luck ran out. The only woman was the wife of a Dutch trader, an extremely jealous man and an expert in the use of a hippo-hide sjambok. He disfigured anyone who dared glance at his dour duchess.
There were two ‘bars’ where we drank and gambled away the hours. A gramophone screeched in one corner, while in another, merchants and speculators threw dice for drinks. In a third corner was a roulette table, the imperturbable croupier raking chips and filling columns of half-crowns, chanting: ‘Round and round the little ball goes, and where she stops there’s nobody knows! No seed, no harvest – if you don’t speculate, you can’t accumulate, and she’s off!’ There was a four-blind game of poker every night and sometimes a spot of vingt-et-un. Of other social life, there was none. No societies, no dance committees, not a dress suit in sight. A postprandial lying contest, chiefly concerned with lions and niggers, might take place, or we’d drum up a party for a hippo hunt.
Amusements aside, fortune flipped lives as the storm flips the leaves of a tree. A smithy gave up for lack of funds; a cotton-gin man died of sheer starvation; a Hebrew stopped through and played impressive card tricks until we ran him out, our empty pockets flapping like flags. Any old drifter might come along with a week’s beard, months of wear to his trousers, and years of treading to his boots. He might leave in a worse bedragglement or he might depart in the finest of clothes, plus a quid in his pocket.
Men came and went. Those who stayed tended to die. The dry-season heat was oppressive, and the thirst it engendered required a sedulous slaking. During the rains, November to March, the place was a right swamp. The mosquitoes gathered in hordes, humming like a German band, their stings sharp enough to penetrate an elephant’s hide: Anopheles, energetic and indiscriminate. Loafer, lord and lout were treated with strict impartiality in these parts, for the mosquito is a true democrat, and cares not what accident of birth has led you here, nor whether the blood it quaffs be red or blue.
Fever was so prevalent at The Old Drift, no particular attention was given to anyone down with it. No need to bother with a medico with a monocle and white bags creased as a concertina. Just feed the victim drops of champagne or of Schweppes with a feather, bundle him up, and let him sweat it out until the shakes subside. I once wrote an editorial for the Livingstone Pioneer and this was my warning: ‘cursed is he who forgetteth his quinine o’ nights, for the shakes and the pukes shall surely take him’. Out of the thirty-one settlers that season, no fewer than eleven died of black fever or malaria. The next year was far worse, with a loss of seventy per cent. Pioneering isn’t all lavender.
We called the place Deadrock. There was a funeral about once a week.