AN EARLY STAKT. 73 



Two days before this, I brought down a koran fly- 

 ag, with single ball. Our chances for this evening 

 leing now over, and night setting in, I returned to the 

 Eirm with Strydom in high spirits. 



CHAPTER IV. 



I Bustard shot — ^Flight of Locusts — Quagga Shooting iu the Dark- 

 Curious Mistake — Ostriches — A Sportsman napping — ^Leave Stry- 

 dom's Residence in quest of Wildebeests^^ Wildebeest Shooting — 

 Meeting with a Brother Officer — Proceed to Colesberg — Additions to 

 Equipments. 



At an early honr on the morning of the 6th, while 1 

 j?as yet in bed, Hendric St*ydom and his frau were 

 itaittding over my fire, alongside of my wtgoh, with a 

 TOlcome supply of sweet milk, and hurrying on the in- 

 blent Hottentots to prepare my breakfast, and rouse 

 ;heir slothful master, the earliest dawn being, as he 

 iffirmed, the best time to go after the springboks. On 

 leaiing their voices, I rose, and, having breakfasted, 

 wre shouldered oiir "roers," walked about a mile across 



sxhibit on the greater migrations i? utterly astouSding, and any trav- 

 eler witnessing it as I haye, and giying a true degcriptipn of what he 

 lias seen, can hardly expect to be beheved, so marvelous is the scene. 

 They have been Weill jmd truly compared to the wasting swarms of 

 [ocusts, so familiar to the traveler in this land of wonders. Like them, 

 iey consume every green thing in their course, laying waste vast dis- 

 licts in a few hours, and ruining in a single night the iruits of the farm- 

 3r's toil. TlUfr course adopted by the antelopes is generally such as to 

 bring them back to their own country by a route different from that 

 [jy which they set out. Thus their line of march sometimes forms 

 something like a vast oval or an extenavo square, of which the diam 

 Bter may be some hundred miles, and the time occupied in this migra 

 don may vary from six months to a year. 

 Vol. L— D 



