CHAP. X.] KETROSPECTS. 313 



I again saw the ostriches, and went after them in my 

 chariot. I soon came up with them, and, jmnping 

 out, captured six more. 



Christmas and New Year's Day had passed, when, 

 early in January, 1852, as the morning haze cleared 

 away, the sails of a schooner loomed large before us ; 

 in a moment I was in my pontoon and paddled out to 

 her, jumped on board, and received my letters of a 

 year and nine months' interval. They were not indeed 

 unchequered by melancholy news ; but for the intel- 

 ligence they conveyed of my own family circle I had 

 every reason to be grateful. Thus closed my anxieties 

 and doubts. I had much indeed to be thankful for. 

 I had not lost one of my many men either through 

 violence or through sickness in the long and harassing 

 journey I had made. It was undertaken with servants 

 who, at starting, were anything but qualified for their 

 work, who grumbled, held back, and even mutinied, 

 and over whom I had none other than a moral control. 

 I had to break in the very cattle that were to carry 

 me, and to drill into my service a worthless set of 

 natives, speaking an unloiown tongue. The country 

 was suffering from all the atrocities of savage war 

 when I arrived, and this state of things I had to put 

 an end to before I could proceed. All this being 

 accomplished, I found myself without any food to 

 depend upon, except the oxen that I drove with me, 

 which might, on any evening, decamp or be swept off 

 in a night attack by the thieving and murderous 

 Damaras. That all this was gone tln'ough success- 

 fully, I am in the highest degree indebted both to 



