AN EARLY START 73 



Two days before this, I brought down a koran fly- 

 ing, with single ball. Our chances for this evening 

 being now over, and night setting in, I returned to the 

 farm with Strydom in high spirits. 



CHAPTER IV. 



A Bustard shot — Flight of Locusts — Quagga Shooting in the Dark- 

 Curious Mistake — Ostriches — A Sportsman napping — Leave Stry 

 dom's Residence in quest of Wildebeests — Wildebeest Shooting — 

 Meeting with a Brother Officer — Proceed to Colesberg — Additions to 

 Equipments. 



At an early hour on the morning of the 6th, while I 

 was yet in bed, Hendric Strydom and his frau were 

 standing over my fire, alongside of my wagon, with a 

 welcome supply of sweet milk, and hurrying on the in- 

 dolent Hottentots to prepare my breakfast, and rouse 

 their slothful master, the earliest dawn being, as he 

 affirmed, the best time to go after the springboks. On 

 hearing their voices, I rose, and, having breakfasted, 

 we shouldered our " roers," walked about a mile across 



exhibit on the greater migrations is utterly astounding, and any trav- 

 eler witnessing it as I have, and giving a true description of what he 

 has seen, can hardly expect to be believed, so marvelous is the scene. 

 They have been well and truly compared to the wasting swarms of 

 locusts, so familiar to the traveler in this land of wonders. Like them, 

 they coueurae every green thing in their course, laying waste vast dis- 

 tricts in a few hours, and ruining in a single night the iruits of the farm- 

 er's toil. The course adopted by the antelopes is generally such as to 

 bring them back to their own country by a route different from that 

 by which they set out. Thus their line of march sometimes forms 

 something like a vast oval or an e.xteusive square, of which the diam 

 eter may be some hundred miles, and the time occupied in this migra 

 tion may vary from six months to a year. 



Vol. L— D 



