158 LODGES IN THE WILDERNESS 



rise; nevertheless this circumstance enabled 

 anyone camping on its margin to gain a view 

 over an immense area of desert. Usually, we 

 had been told, at least one heavy thunderstorm 

 broke over Brabies early in each season, and 

 then the vley held water for about three weeks. 



With the exception of a few small troops of 

 ostriches, immensely far off, no game was in 

 sight. However, a long, low ridge — rising so 

 slightly above the general level that the eye 

 had difficulty in recognising it as an elevation 

 at all — lay to the northward, some six miles 

 away. We knew that the tract just on the other 

 side of that ridge was one of the favourite 

 feeding-grounds of the oryx. And it was oryx 

 and nothing else that we were just then in- 

 terested in. Judging by the amount of spoor, 

 some of it quite fresh, our game could not be 

 very far off. 



This more or less central area of Bushman- 

 land, — a tract from ten to twelve hundred 

 square miles in extent — was practically the last 

 refuge of the oryx south of the Orange River. 

 It is almost absolutely flat, — except on its 

 northern and eastern margins, where the dunes 

 intrude for an inconsiderable distance over its 

 bounds. The tract is quite arid, but occasion- 

 ally, in perhaps half-a-dozen spots, the under- 



