A TROOP OF YOUN& OSTRICHES. 148 



Storm ceased, and my boys arrived with the head. The 

 foUowing day was the 1st of February; In the morn- 

 ing I dispatched two men to bring home the skin of the 

 roan antelope and a snpply of the venison, which was 

 in high condition. Strange to say, they found the buck 

 all safe, having escaped the attacks both of hyaenas and 

 vultures. 



My meal-bag was reported almost empty ; and this 

 being a dangerous country for the horse-sickness, a 

 distemper which rages during February, March, and 

 April, I resolved to recross the Vaal Eiver, and bend 

 my course for the land of blesboks, a large and beau- 

 tiful violet-colored ^telope, which is found, together 

 with black wildebeests and springboks, in countless 

 thousands on the vast green "plains of short sour grass 

 situated about a hunflred and fifty miles to the east- 

 ward of my then position. My purpose was to amuse 

 myself hunting in -these parts until the beginning of 

 . April, when the most dangertus period of the horse-sick- 

 ness would be past, and after that to revisit Colesberg, 

 where I intended to store the specimens of natural his- 

 tory which I had already accumulated, and, having re- 

 fitted and laid in a store of supplies, fo start for the re- 

 mote districts of the far interior in qnest of elephant, 

 rhinoceros, giraffe, buffalo", eland, and other varieties of 

 large and interesting game to be found in those seclud- 

 ed regions. Before removing from my present en- 

 campment I had another hard day amOng the sharp 

 rooks and wait-a-bit thorns to the northward of the 

 Vaal, when I fell in with a troop of about twelve young 

 ostriches, which were not much larger than Guinea- 

 fowls. I was amused to See the mother endeavor to 

 lead us away exactly like a wild duck, spreading; out, 

 and drooping her wings, and throwing herself down on 



