TODAY the horse power is under the bonnet, but 150 years ago it would have been “two and thirty quadrupeds with frightful horns” as Rev Richard Ridgill wrote in a 1870 edition of the Cape Monthly Magazine.
In the article he describes his trek in October 1855 from Somerset West to Warm Baths in Namibia to serve one of the first European settlements as a Wesleyan minister. His account is vivid and surprisingly contemporary.
He recalls being very nervous, worrying about his poor Afrikaans and trying to learn the names of all the oxen - “from Achterveld to Langeveld and Weiland” - apparently a required skill.
How he needed help to choose three years’ stock of medical provisions, and pack countless boxes, bundles of clothing, blankets and gear into the cramped oxwagons.
Inside the tented wagons more canvas bags were suspended on the sides. Green baize curtains at either entrance gave the occupants some privacy at night.
At last they were ready, said their goodbyes. Then the call “Trek!” and they were off, followed by friends and well wishers on horseback, in carts and on foot who accompanied them as far as their first outspan at noon.
The pace was very slow. By nightfall they had not even reached Stellenbosch. Here he gives a wonderful acount of travelling by oxwagon.
To prevent the oxen from straying, the oxen had to be secured to wagon poles, wagon wheels and yokes. The night air he writes, was filled with the sounds of cattle rubbing their heads against the wagons, straining against the leather rieme and the occasional bellowing. One ox broke away and had to be caught.
After stopping in Stellenbosch to buy more supplies, they headed for Paarl. He writes: “I need say nothing of the well-known Paarl, whose interminable street, which seemed lengthening as we went, we slowly traversed.”
While crossing a stream in one part of the town, the trek-touw of one of the wagons became detached leaving them stranded in the middle of the stream, while the oxen plodded peacefully to the other side “much to the amusement gaping and grinning spectators, not one of whom came to the rescue.”
That night they camped on the banks of the Berg River. The following morning they had to negotiate a wooden bridge across the river.
“The Berg River bridge being a lofty wooden structure with a light open railing.”
This was most likely the new Lady Loch Bridge, completed in 1853. This crossing was filled with life threatening danger.
The first team of oxen - more experienced - crossed the bridge without incident. The younger team followed, and then panicked.
“We came to a dead stand before we had proceeded many yards... with great effort we kept the wagon in the centre of the narrow bridge until the trembling animals were unyoked, then urged across by the impulsive power of a new terror in the shape of the lash.”
The older more experienced team of oxen - “all experienced travellers, fearing nothing” - were then brought in to complete the crossing.
It was spring, and a “vley” near Saron was filled with red watsonias. Getting two heavy oxwagons through the vlei was another matter: “We were well bespattered with mud before we succeeded in extricating ourselves from the boggy soil”, he writes.
As they moved further north the landscape became more arid. Travelling mostly by night to save the animals, they suffered extreme heat and thirst, and worried about the absence of adequate grazing for the exhausted cattle.
This account would have been little more than an interesting travelogue were it not for a footnote Rev Joseph Tindall’s journal.
Tindall writes, “I feel great concern for Mr Ridgill and the Warm Bath people (Namibia). The cattle disease having been brought to the station by him, the people shun him and the station, as they would the plague. In consequence they are widely scattered and are as sheep without a shepherd”.
Ridgill eventually capitulated and left the mission station in 1858. He makes no mention of this personal tragedy in his article, making his story that more poignant.
