84 LODGES IN THE WILDERNESS 



I had been on foot for some time. Prince, 

 with the reins fastened short about his neck to 

 prevent them trailing, followed like a faithful 

 dog. Should I pause for what he considered 

 too long an interval, he pushed me gently 

 forward with his nose. He, too, wanted to 

 explore — to wandei on listlessly whither the 

 spirit of solitude beckoned. 



At length we reached the first strip of 

 Kanya. It was hardly six feet wide, — that 

 even, regular pavement of ironstone spheres 

 laid down by the hand of Nature in further- 

 ance of some aeon-old phase of world-develop- 

 ment. Were those spheres forged in some 

 volcano-furnace or turned in the lathe of the 

 rolling waves in days when the temples of 

 Atlantis gleamed white over the ocean that is 

 its tomb and that bears its name? Were they 

 slowly ground in the mill-vortex of some 

 mighty river that bore away the drainage of a 

 boundless humid tract, where now a raincloud 

 is almost as rare as a comet? 



Straight ahead, a little more than a mile 

 away, the continuous Kanya-veld shewed 

 like a darker wrinkle on the desert's brown 

 face, for we were now out of the region of 

 "toa." The stony strips grew wider as I ad- 

 vanced, and the intervening spaces narrower 



