98 MELTON AND HOMESPUN 



" A few minutes of difficult climbing up a narrow, 

 tortuous pathway through the thorn scrub, and Mortimore 

 found himself at the doorway of the strangest human habi- 

 tation he had ever set eyes upon. Standing in a cleft of 

 the kopje, the walls of the cabin were constructed of 

 small boulders and darga (mortar made by mixing the 

 earth of ant hills, cow-dung, and water together), a thick 

 plaster of the latter material being laid over all to keep 

 out the wind and rain. In lieu of slates, pantiles, or 

 corrugated iron, the skins of antelopes, jackals, klip-das, 

 and other animals, stretched across strips of raw-hide 

 reims, acted the part of roof. A little loophole of a 

 window, open to the wind and weather by day, and closed 

 with the beaten-out tin of an old biscuit tin by night, 

 gave light and ventilation to the interior of the hut, 

 while the entrance boasted a leathern-hung, dilapidated 

 door, which, in years gone by, had probably belonged to 

 one of the early Transvaal Government mail-coaches, 

 for the motto was still legible although the coat-of-arms 

 had long been obliterated by the elements. High above 

 the hut and its well-kept mealy and melon patch towered 

 the almost perpendicular side of the kopje, a pair of great 

 Egyptian vultures keeping watch over their nest on one 

 of the topmost spurs of rock, like grey sentinels of evil. 

 To north, east, and west stretched a seemingly boundless 

 expanse of perfectly level desert; a broken chain of 

 rugged hills, a patch of stunted acaciae, and a small 

 lagoon of water glinting in the rays of the afternoon sun 

 being the only objects to break the wearying monotony 

 of the desolate scene. 



" Pushing open the obsolete coach-door. Jack 

 found himself in the strangest and, from a sports- 



