Writing the Ancestral River. Jacklyn Cock
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before grassland, savannah, karoo and perhaps even fynbos. Experts estimate that there are approximately 6,500 plant species in Albany Thicket, as well as an impressive number of animals, including 5 species of tortoise, 48 large mammals, 25 ungulates and 421 birds.22
There are wild fig trees and magnificent coral trees, which the British settlers used for roof shingles. In the forested valleys there are white ironwood, white stinkwood and yellowwood trees from which solid wheels were cut by the settlers. They are often draped with the long, grey lichen known as ‘old man’s beard’. There are wild olive trees, and at the bottom of the Waters Meeting Nature Reserve one can sit in the deep shade of the septee trees. White milkwood trees are common. One of the three white milkwood trees, umqwashu in isiXhosa, that have been declared national monuments is not too far away. This place, Emqwashini, is situated on the road to Alice from Peddie, and here in May 1835 the Mfengu affirmed their loyalty to the British king after being granted land in the area by the Cape governor, Sir Benjamin D’Urban. Once large enough to shelter thousands, today, having been struck by lightning and damaged in political protest, this milkwood is a sad, straggly reminder of its former size.
The riparian vegetation along the riverbanks contains representative examples of valley bushveld, including subtropical plants like the wild date palm, the leaves of which the British settlers used for making hats. There are Western Cape proteas and geraniums, tall candelabra-shaped euphorbias, bright aloes, cabbage trees, Cape chestnut trees covered with pink blossoms in spring, orange Cape honeysuckle attracting brilliant sunbirds, blue plumbagos, arum lilies, and species of prehistoric cycads. It is beautiful country which I associate with the colour orange, the colour of the bright orange and blue Strelitzia reginae crane flowers growing in the indigenous vegetation on the steep slopes of the riverbanks, the colour of aloes in flower, the blooms of the coral trees, as well as the traditional blankets and cosmetic paste on the faces of recently circumcised young Xhosa men.
The vegetation in the Kowie catchment area includes a cactus species which yields itolofiya, or prickly pears, small fruits with yellow-green skins. These are delicious to eat and were used by the many inhabitants of the area – Xhosa, Dutch and British – to make jam, chutney, syrup and a potent drink known as iqhilika by the Xhosa or witblits by the Afrikaners.23 Portulacaria afra, a hardy plant with fleshy leaves and small pink flowers known locally as spekboom, grows widely and was the favourite food of the elephants that used to roam the area. The elephants have disappeared but the ancient order of cycads remains.
Millions of years ago the climate was warmer and wetter and the land covered in marshes and forests. Remains of the dinosaur Paranthodon were found nearby beside the Bushmans River in 1845. This was one of the earliest recognised dinosaur discoveries in the world and was certainly the first in South Africa.24 One can still see the leguaan or water monitor lizard, which is reminiscent of these extraordinary creatures. Long ago there were sabre-toothed cats, bear-dogs, giant pigs, short-necked giraffes, and several different kinds of primeval elephants.
Before colonisation the Zuurveld was home to colourful birds and exotic wildlife including all Africa’s big game – lion, rhinoceros and large herds of elephant and buffalo. There were zebra and many types of buck – steenbok, hartebeest, eland, springbok and oribi. Hippos swam in the waters of the Kowie River valley and wild boar and leopard were common. Early in the nineteenth century a visitor recorded that the ‘close jungle on the banks … of the Kowie abounds with elephants and buffalos and wood-antelopes [presumably bushbuck]’.25 In 1813 the Rev. John Campbell wrote of ‘a large elephant at the mouth of the Kowie River’.26 He reported that in 1821 ‘elephants were very numerous and lions plentiful’ in the river valley. In 1846 Captain Butler reported that ‘the bush along the Kowie is full of game, not being yet deserted even by elephant and buffalo’.27 Another visitor to the area in 1891 recorded frequent accounts of leopards being killed, herds of quagga running into hundreds, hippos, ostriches, bushpigs, red hares, Cape wild dogs and buffalo. All that is left are a few elephant remains, such as found at Salt Vlei in Port Alfred, and some tusks that were unearthed during the construction of the marina on the river.
All these animals were hunted by the Europeans, the Khoikhoi and the Xhosa, who surrounded their prey using assegais. John Campbell writes of the killing of a buffalo at the mouth of the Kowie River when he was there in 1815.28 One authority maintains that the Bathurst district carried many ‘of the usual plains game, mainly springboks, true quaggas, red hartebeest and elands which the 1820 settlers were to wipe out in the comparatively short time of about 20 years’.29 Writing in 1835, Thomas Pringle observed that ‘the forest-jungle which clothes the ravines that border the rivers of Albany, was at the time of this visit, still inhabited by some herds of buffaloes, and some species of the antelope and the hyena but the elephant had retreated since the arrival of the settlers’.30
It is said that the large pool lined with palms on Lushington farm was frequented by elephants and hippos, and although heavily hunted by all, hippos survived in the Kowie River for some years. There are reports of lions as late as 1846 when, on 28 February, one visited the residential part of Port Frances.31 A small herd of buffaloes was reported in the Kowie bush on the outskirts of Bathurst in 1891.32 An 80-year-old resident of Port Alfred remembers that his father, Gerald Stocks, used to ‘hunt buffalo up the Kowie River’. The spotted hyena was once common but is now extinct in the Eastern Cape, as are lion, hunting dog, reedbuck, eland, red hartebeest, buffalo, warthog, elephant, hippopotamus, black rhinoceros and quagga.
This catalogue illustrates how, intent on the dominance and control of nature, we have pushed thousands of species to extinction. As Robert Macfarlane writes, ‘the loss, after it is theirs, is ours. Wild animals, like wild places, are invaluable to us precisely because they are not us. They are uncompromisingly different. The paths they follow, the impulses that guide them, are of other orders … seeing them you are made aware briefly of a world at work around and beside our own, a world operating in patterns and purposes that we do not share. These are creatures, you realise, that live by voices inaudible to you.’33 The dominant concern today is the control and management of rivers, ignoring most of the wild species that depend on them. But we have much to learn from these wild creatures of the river. This includes the otter, intensely curious, tracing scent maps, moving easily between the water and the earth; the fish navigating back to their birth grounds, guided by memory and the stars; or the eagles riding the high thermals and scanning the earth below.
The iconic Cape Clawless Otter (intini) is my favourite river creature, one of the family immortalised in Ted Hughes’s poem ‘An Otter’, which describes it as ‘four-legged yet water-gifted’.34 Our otters are mysterious, shy, but also curious and playful, with whiskered dog-like faces. ‘She Comes Swimming’ is a marvellous poem about sea otters by Isobel Dixon.35 Otters are crepuscular, active in the early mornings and evenings, and I have spent many hours tracking them or sitting motionless on the riverbank hidden from view. Miriam Darlington writes of ‘the carefully folded demeanour that otter-watching requires’.36 In my own experience more is needed, not only absolute stillness, but pressing oneself into the smallest possible space, hidden from view in the reeds on the riverbank. Seeing otters is difficult as they are mud-coloured and their brown fur seems to merge with the shade of their background. The best way to discover their presence is to look carefully for their scat (droppings or spraint), which they leave as scent marks. These are usually full of fragments of crab shells or white mussels (their main diet) and are found in special toilet areas. I have seen one such place marked by thousands of white mussel shells hidden in the dense riverine vegetation.
Otters are very resourceful. They have been seen using rocks to break open crab and mussel shells. They are powerful swimmers, leaving a rippling wake, and this might be the first sign of an otter’s presence. Or it could be the characteristic trail of bubbles the otter leaves as it swims beneath the surface. Jim Cambray described once seeing two otter pups riding on the back of their mother swimming in Blaauwkrantz pool.
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There are still vervet monkeys, baboons, jackals, ratels (honey badgers), genets with their intricately patterned tails, and even leopards