Creatures of the Kingdom: Stories of Animals and Nature by James A. Michener

Author:James A. Michener [Michener, James A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780804151375
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

In the next months the landscape changed dramatically. Mountains began to appear on the horizon ahead, and rivers flowed north instead of east, where the ocean presumably lay. It was good land, and soon they found themselves in a remarkable gorge where the walls seemed to come together in the heavens. Dikkop was frightened and wanted to turn back, but Adriaan insisted upon forging ahead, breaking out at last into a wonderland of baobab trees whose existence defied his imagination.

‘Look at them!’ he cried. ‘Upside down! How wonderful!’

For several weeks he and Dikkop and Swarts lived in one huge tree, not up in the branches, which would have been possible, but actually inside the tree in a huge vacancy caused by the wearing away of soft wood. Swarts, responding to some ancient heritage in a time when hyenas had lived in caves, reveled in the dark interior spaces, running from one to another and making strange sounds.

He had become an exceptional pet, perhaps the finest animal Adriaan had ever known, placid as the best ox, brave as the strongest lion, playful as a kitten, and of tremendous strength, like a grown rhinoceros. He enjoyed playing a fearsome game with Adriaan, taking the trekboer’s forearm in his powerful jaws and pretending to bite it in half, which he could have done. He would bring his teeth slowly together and impishly watch Adriaan’s face to see when pain would show. Tighter and tighter the great teeth would close until it seemed that the skin must break, and then, with Adriaan looking directly into the animal’s eyes, Swarts would stop, and laugh admiringly at the man who was not afraid, and he would release the arm and leap upon Adriaan’s lap and cover him with kisses.

At times Adriaan would think: These years can never end. There will be enough land for everyone, and the animals will multiply forever. When he and Dikkop left a carcass it was good to hear the lions approaching, to see the sky filled with great birds waiting to descend and clean the feast.

They came at last to the river, not the Zambezi, as Adriaan had promised, but the Limpopo, the sluggish stream that marked the natural northern borders of the subcontinent. Portuguese explorers had said the natural border was the Zambezi; anyone who had a map, rude and rough, saw that the Zambezi was the natural boundary, but reality dictated that this boundary be the Limpopo. South of here, the land was of a piece; north of here, it altered radically and could never be digested as a coherent part of a manageable unit.

Perhaps Adriaan realized this in December 1767, when he stood at the Limpopo beside his irreparably broken wagon and his oxen and horses that were dying of disease. ‘Dikkop,’ he said, ‘we can’t go any farther.’ The Hottentot agreed, for he was tired, and even Swarts seemed relieved when the three started south on foot. It was as if the hyena had a built-in compass

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