26 | PINTADOS. 
with them on crossing these desert plains, we left 
them to proceed on our journey : 
‘* Afar in the desert I love to ride, 
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side: 
Away—away—in the wilderness vast, 
Where the white man’s foot hath seldom passed, 
And the quiver'd Coranna or Bechuan 
Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan : 
A region of emptiness howling and drear, 
Which man hath abandoned from famine and fear ; 
Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone, 
With the twilight bat from the yawning stone ; 
Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root, 
Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot ; 
And here while the night-winds around me sigh, 
And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky, 
As I sit apart by the desert stone, 
Like Elijah at Horeb’s cave alone, 
‘ A still small voice’ comes through the wild 
(Like a father consoling his fretful child), 
Which banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear, 
Saying— Man is distant, but God is near.” 
Crossing the bed of a dried-up river, studded 
thickly with trees and bushes on either side, we dis- 
turbed a number of pintados, which had taken roost 
among the branches. Their sudden rising, as we 
sauntered heedlessly along, startled our horses, and 
threw us for the moment into considerable confusion. 
The ground in this neighbourhood was in many 
places so completely undermined by the burrows of 
various small animals, such as jennets or pole-cats, 
and ichneumons, that the horses sank up to their 
kneés almost at every step. The moon now began 
