Page 65 - The Diary of A. H. W. Behrens

27
1869 – 1870
From there we continued via the Swedish station Umpumulo back to Hermannsburg. We had been away for 26 days and I had learnt how to ride. It was a very interesting journey, but we did not see any game and not a single wild animal.
Because my little brother Hermann had died in Bethanie, my parents let my two sisters Marie and Christine return with Mis- sionary Lohann who had come down from Transvaal with an ox wagon and so I was all alone and was often homesick.
And so, when at the end of 1869 in December Missionary Riechelmann and his wife travelled to Transvaal I was allowed to go with them. That was interesting for me. For the first time I saw the highveld of Transvaal with many thousands of wild animals, different species all together: blesbuck, springbuck, wildebeest, ostriches, zebras, warthogs and many other ante- lope in big herds, from the Drakensberg to Heidelberg. Koos Mahuma was our wagon driver. I had to sleep under the katel, Riechelmanns on top, the driver and foreman under the wagon. From December 1869 to March 1870 I stayed with my parents in Bethanie and when Superintendent Karl Hohls and Backe- berg, who wanted to look for a wife in Natal, came through Bethanie I had to go with them, away to the school in Natal, because up there in Transvaal there were no decent schools
yet.