DREADFUL INCIDENT. 59 



by this acfc conferred a benefit on my friends, ' tho 

 children of the desert,' and had doubtless been tho 

 means of saving many from the horrible fate that 

 had of late fallen to the lot of numbers of their 

 intimates and relatives." 



Gordon Gumming, again, very graphically de- 

 scribes a like dreadful incident to those just named, 

 and of which, like Mr. Steneberg and Mr. Green, 

 he was himself, so to say, a spectator. 



" Having outspanned, we at once set about 

 making a ' kraal ' for the cattle, and that of the 

 worst description of thorn trees, as I had now 

 become very particular since my severe loss by lions 

 on the first of the month. I had yet, however, 

 a fearful lesson to learn, as to the nature and 

 character of those beasts, of which I had at 

 one time entertained so little fear; and on this 

 night a horrible tragedy was to be enacted in my 

 little lonely camp of so very awful and appalling a, 

 nature as to make the blood curdle in my veins. I 

 worked till near sundown at one side of the ' kraal ' 

 with Hendrich, my first waggon-driver, I cutting 



/ O O 



down the trees with my axe, and he dragging them 

 to the spot. When the 'kraal' was completed, 

 and tho cattle secured within it (as were also my 

 two waggons, the horses being made fast, to a 

 trekton stretched between the hind wheels of the 

 vehicles), [ turned my attention to preparing a 

 pot of barley-broth. Kor this purpose, I light oil 

 a fire outside of the 'kraal,' between it and the 

 water, close on the river-bank, and under a dense 

 bush grove of shady trees, but made no kind of 



