Читать книгу Huberta's Journey - Cicely van Straten - Страница 4

The story of Huberta holds a mystery – why did a young female hippo wander alone nearly a thousand kilometres down the South African coast? We shall never know the exact answer to this riddle. We can only put together pieces of the puzzle and try to make sense of them.

Many people met Huberta on her journey and legends grew around her. Some of these stories are untrue, others are exaggerations with a grain of truth in them. Many more can be accepted as true, thanks to reliable sources.

We shall never know exactly what happened to separate Huberta from her herd some time in 1928. I have constructed what I hope is a reasonable explanation, and I have tried to give an idea of the conflict between the creatures of the wild and the expanding farming population.

Some characters in the story are fictional. They include the Smith family at New Guelderland, the Indian families at Anerley, Solani and his people in Pondoland and the Zulu men hired by the team from the Johannesburg zoo. It is possible that “Long Nose” was a Mr Thomas, but I could not be certain.

Other characters are historically true, including the people who met Huberta on April Fool’s day outside the West Street pharmacy in Durban!s

From these different strands gathered from different sources – books, archives and newspaper cuttings – I have woven a story based on facts. I hope this reflects the extraordinary travels of the hippo who was eventually named Huberta.