ON THE PRAIK 71 



an hour in climbing up through the rugged 

 side hills, till we reached the top of the first 

 great plateau that had to be crossed. As 

 soon as I got on it I put in the spurs and 

 started off at a gallop. In the dusk the 

 brown level land stretched out in formless 

 expanse ahead of me, unrelieved, except by 

 the bleached white of a buffalo's skull, whose 

 outlines glimmered indistinctly to one side 

 of the course I was riding. On my left the 

 sun had set behind a row of jagged buttes, 

 that loomed up in sharp relief against the 

 crn sky; above them it had left a bar 

 of yellow light, which only made more in- 

 tense the darkness of the surrounding heav- 

 ens. In the quarter towards which I was 

 heading there had gathered a lowering mass 

 of black storm-clouds, lit up by the inces- 

 sant play of the lightning. The wind had 

 totally died away, and the death-like stillness 

 was only broken by the continuous, meas- 

 ured beat of the horse's hoofs as he galloped 

 over the plain, and at times by the muttered 

 roll of the distant thunder. 



