250 



EXPEDITION INTO [Chap.XXVIII. 



pyramidical hills, had been selected as the point of 

 rendezvous with the amb^tjador. On arriving 

 there, however, crowds of both sexes issuing forth, 

 we were informed that he was still a day's journey 

 in advance; and were thus provokingly hurried 

 from place to place, until late on the evening of the 

 8th, when we reached a small collection of deserted 

 wigwams, on the Sant river, immediately under the 

 mountains. But even here we were destined to 

 experience further disappointment and suspense — 

 the catifF guides declaring that the object of our 

 search, who was still not forthcoming, must have 

 been asleep in one of the kraals that we had passed 

 in the morning ! Suspecting the story of his advent 

 to be a hoax, invented merely to annoy us, we 

 now distinctly intimated to the messengers, that if 

 the minister did not make his appearance in the 

 course of the following forenoon, we should not wait 

 for him ; and with this understanding they left the 

 waggons, accompanied by the guides, faithfully 

 promising to return with the great man in the 

 morning. 



