Jules Verne - The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in Southern Africa: Bilingual Edition (English – French)

Jules Verne

translated by
Ellen Elizabeth Frewer

CHAPTER I. - ON THE BANKS OF THE ORANGE RIVER.

CHAPITRE I - SUR LES BORDS DU FLEUVE ORANGE.

On the 27th of January, 1854, two men lay stretched at the foot of an immense weeping willow, chatting, and at the same time watching most attentively the waters of the Orange River.

Le 27 fvrier 1854, deux hommes, tendus au pied dun gigantesque saule pleureur, causaient en observant avec une extrme attention les eaux du fleuve Orange.

This river, the Groote of the Dutch, and the Gariep of the Hottentots, may well vie with the other three great arteries of Africathe Nile, the Niger, and the Zambesi. Like those, it has its periodical risings, its rapids and cataracts.

Ce fleuve, le Groote-river des Hollandais, le Gariep des Hottentots, peut rivaliser avec les trois grandes artres africaines, le Nil, le Niger et le Zambse. Comme elles, il a des crues, des rapides, des cataractes.

Travellers whose names are known over part of its course, Thompson, Alexander, and Burchell, have each in their turn praised the clearness of its waters, and the beauty of its shores.
At this point the river, as it approached the Duke of York Mountains, offered a magnificent spectacle to the view. Insurmountable rocks, imposing masses of stone, and trunks of trees that had become mineralized by the action of the weather, deep caverns, impenetrable forests, not yet disturbed by the settler's axe, all these, shut in by a background formed by the mountains of the Gariep, made up a scene matchless in its magnificence.

Quelques voyageurs, dont les noms sont connus sur une partie de son cours, Thompson, Alexander, Burchell, ont tour tour vant la limpidit de ses eaux et la beaut de ses rives.
En cet endroit, lOrange, se rapprochant des montagnes du duc dYork, offrait aux regards un spectacle sublime. Rocs infranchissables, masses imposantes de pierres et de troncs darbres minraliss sous laction du temps, cavernes profondes, forts impntrables que navait pas encore dflores la hache du settler, tout cet ensemble, encadr dans larrire-plan des monts Gariepins, formait un site dune incomparable magnificence.

There, too, the waters of the river, on account of the extreme narrowness of their bed, and the sudden falling away of the soil, rushed down from a height of 400 feet. Above the fall there were only surging sheets of water, broken here and there by points of rock wreathed with green boughs; below, there was only a dark whirlpool of tumultuous waters, crowned with a thick cloud of damp vapour, and striped with all the colours of the rainbow. From this gulf there arose a deafening roar, increased and varied by the echoes of the valley.

L, les eaux du fleuve, encaisses dans un lit trop troit pour elles et auxquelles le sol venait manquer subitement, se prcipitaient dune hauteur de quatre cents pieds. En amont de la chute, ctait un simple bouillonnement des nappes liquides, dchires et l par quelques ttes de roc enguirlandes de branches vertes. En aval, le regard ne saisissait quun sombre tourbillon deaux tumultueuses, que couronnait un pais nuage dhumides vapeurs, zbres des sept couleurs du prisme. De cet abme slevait un fracas tourdissant, diversement accru par les chos de la valle.

Of these two men, who had evidently been brought into this part of South Africa by the chances of an exploration, one lent only a vague attention to the beauties of nature that were opened to his view. This indifferent traveller was a hunting bushman, a fine type of that brave, bright-eyed, rapidly-gesticulating race of men, who lead a wandering life in the woods. Bushman, a word derived from the Dutch Bochjesman, is literally a man of the bushes, and is applied to the wandering tribes that scour the country in the N.W. of Cape Colony. Not a family of these bushmen is sedentary;

De ces deux hommes que les hasards dune exploration avaient sans doute amens dans cette partie de lAfrique australe, lun ne prtait quune vague attention aux beauts naturelles offertes ses regards. Ce voyageur indiffrent, ctait un chasseur bushman, un beau type de cette vaillante race aux yeux vifs, aux gestes rapides, dont la vie nomade se passe dans les bois. Ce nom de bushman, mot anglais tir du hollandais Boschjesman, signifie littralement homme des buissons. Il sapplique aux tribus errantes qui battent le pays dans le nord-ouest de la colonie du Cap. Aucune famille de ces bushmen nest sdentaire.

they pass their lives in roaming over the region lying between the Orange River and the mountains of the East, in pillaging farms, and in destroying the crops of the overbearing colonists, by whom they have been driven back towards the interior of the country, where more rocks than plants abound.
This bushman, a man of about forty years of age, was very tall, and evidently possessed great muscular strength, for even when at rest his body presented the attitude of action.

Leur vie se passe errer dans cette rgion comprise entre la rivire dOrange et les montagnes de lest, piller les fermes, dtruire les rcoltes de ces imprieux colons qui les ont repousss vers les arides contres de lintrieur, o poussent plus de pierres que de plantes.
Ce bushman, g de quarante ans environ, tait un homme de haute taille, et possdait videmment une grande force musculaire. Mme au repos, son corps offrait encore lattitude de laction.

The clearness, ease, and freedom of his movements stamped him as an energetic character, a man cast in the same mould as the celebrated Leather-stocking, the hero of the Canadian prairies, though perhaps possessing less calmness than Cooper's favourite hunter, as could be seen by the transient deepening of colour in his face, whenever he was animated by any unusual emotion.

La nettet, laisance et la libert de ses mouvements dnotaient un individu nergique, une sorte de personnage coul dans le moule du clbre Bas-de-Cuir, le hros des prairies canadiennes, mais avec moins de calme peut-tre que le chasseur favori de Cooper. Cela se voyait la coloration passagre de sa face, anime par lacclration des mouvements de son cur.

The bushman was no longer a savage like the rest of his race, the ancient Laquas; for, born of an English father and a Hottentot mother, the half-breed, through his association with strangers, had gained more than he had lost, and spoke the paternal tongue fluently.

Le bushman ntait plus un sauvage comme ses congnres, les anciens Saquas. N dun pre anglais et dune mre hottentote, ce mtis, frquenter les trangers, avait plus gagn que perdu, et il parlait couramment la langue paternelle.

His costume, half-Hottentot, half-European, consisted of a red flannel shirt, a loose coat and breeches of antelope hide, and leggings made of the skin of a wild cat; from his neck hung a little bag containing a knife, a pipe, and some tobacco; he wore on his head a kind of skull-cap of sheep-skin; a belt, made from the thick thong of some wild animal, encircled his waist;

Son costume, moiti hottentot, moiti europen, se composait dune chemise de flanelle rouge, dune casaque et dune culotte en peau dantilope, de jambires faites de la dpouille dun chat sauvage. Au cou de ce chasseur tait suspendu un petit sac qui contenait un couteau, une pipe et du tabac. Une sorte de calotte en peau de mouton encapuchonnait sa tte. Une ceinture faite dune paisse lanire sauvage serrait sa taille.

and on his naked wrists were rings of ivory, wrought with remarkable skill. From his shoulders flowed a kross, a kind of hanging mantle, cut out of a tiger's skin, and falling as low as the knees. A dog of native breed was sleeping near him, while he himself was smoking a bone pipe in quick puffs, giving unequivocal signs of impatience.