A SECRET OF THE ORANGE RIVER. 177 



Hottentot after-rider, whom I despatched on a detour ', 

 I managed to cut across the herd, and knocked over a 

 fat cow at forty yards. We soon had her skinned, 

 and taking the best of the meat, rode on for the 

 waggon. Again we had an exhausting trek over a 

 burning sandy plain ; the heat of this day was 

 something terrible. I have had some baddish 

 journeys in the doorstland on the way to the great 

 lake, but this was, if possible, worse. Towards four 

 o'clock, the oxen were ready to sink in their yokes ; 

 their lowing was most distressing, and as the water 

 was now nearly at an end, and we might not reach a 

 permanent supply for another day, nothing could be 

 done to alleviate their sufferings. At nightfall, more 

 dead than alive, we outspanned beneath the loom of 

 a gigantic mountain range, whose recesses we were 

 to pierce on the following morning. Half a day 

 beyond this barrier lay the valley of diamonds, as 

 Klaas whispered to me after supper that night with 

 gleaming excited eyes ; for, noticing my growing 

 keenness, he, too, was becoming imbued with some- 

 thing of my expectancy. 



"That night, as we lay under the mountain, was 

 one of the most stifling I ever endured in South 

 Africa, where, on the high table-lands of the interior, 

 nights are usually cool and refreshing. Even the 

 moist heat of the Zambesi Valley was not more 

 trying than this torrid, empty desert. The oven- 

 like heat, cast up all day from the sandy plain, 

 seemed to be returned at night by these sun- 

 scorched rocks with redoubled intensity. Waterless, 

 we lay sweltering in our misery, with blackened 

 tongues and parched and cracking lips. The oxen 

 seemed almost like dead things. Often have I 



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