We started from Delagoa Bay on the way back home. When we reached the high mountain where the road climbs up a very steep grade, my father ordered the wagon to go ahead and we came behind walking on foot. When we came to the steepest grade in the mountain we found our driver Helkia Mabloane sitting on the road and crying like a child. My father asked him where the wagon is. He pointed down a very deep kloof. We looked down and saw a speck of white right down which was the tent of our wagon. Helkia told us that the wagon got stuck on the steep grade and that he unhooked the chain of the team, with the intention of reversing the wagon so as to get a momentum to go up, but, before he could outspan the hind oxen, the wagon started running backwards and lucky the yokes broke and the two hind oxen got loose. There was no hope of pulling the wagon back to the road, even if the trees were cut open, the grade was too steep. My father hired a lot of shangaan to carry the wagon in small parts to the road. My father had to pay these shangaan natives with all the Salempore and that was the end of profitable expectation. It took about a week before the wagon was reassembled on the road, in the meantime 19 of our oxen died from Tstetse fly bite, leaving us with only one ox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My father sent a runner to Krugerspost and asked his old friend Abel Erasmus<\/a> for help. Abel Erasmus sent his Nagmaalspan of black oxen with a good driver. The oxen were so well trained that they pulled our wagon up those big mountains without a hitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n David Schoeman sent his Nagmaalspan of black oxen to meet us on the way and delivered us safely home without any charge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We started from Delagoa Bay on the way back home. When we reached the high mountain where the road climbs up a very steep grade, my father ordered the wagon to go ahead and we came behind walking on foot. When we came to the steepest grade in the mountain we found our driver Helkia… Continue reading The return journey<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jpd.theoandkai.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jpd.theoandkai.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jpd.theoandkai.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jpd.theoandkai.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jpd.theoandkai.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jpd.theoandkai.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59,"href":"https:\/\/jpd.theoandkai.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/59"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jpd.theoandkai.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jpd.theoandkai.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jpd.theoandkai.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}