208 KLOOF AND KARROO. 



expressions of thanks and goodwill, rose to seek 

 our beds. That night, before falling asleep, I 

 pondered long upon the strange narrative we had 

 heard. Often since I have done so. Often, too, 

 have I thought of the lone grave of the English 

 hunter, Mowbray, far out on dim Kalahari. 



Many will think a grave in some green and 

 umbrageous village churchyard in Old England a 

 fitter resting place ; I doubt it. I believe that for 

 spirits, such as Mowbray ; those hardy adventurers 

 and bold hunters, who have opened up the South 

 African interior, and have made the name of 

 Englishman known and respected, even amongst 

 the uttermost tribes, loving, as they ardently love, 

 the wild free life of the desert, a last resting-place 

 upon the open veldt would accord more with their 

 habits and ideas. Thus, in the quiet Kalahari, 

 amid the fauna, and the scenes he loved so well, 

 Mowbray will sleep in peace. There are men and 

 if you meet them anywhere, you meet them in 

 South Africa who even in these latter days have 

 in their blood the pure hunter spirit, possessed by 

 rude and remote ancestors, who subsisted by their 

 weapons, and lived only for the joy of war and 

 of the chase. These modern men have, however, 

 commingled with the old hunter spirit, and almost 

 unknown to themselves, a love for the beautiful, 

 for nature in her wildest, most primeval moods, 

 and to these South Africa has offered a veritable 

 paradise. These are the men who, of all others, 

 really and truly enjoy existence, albeit in a rude 

 kind of way. No one, who has not met South 

 African hunters, British or Dutch, can rightly 

 appreciate the overpowering sentiment that enthrals 



