70 
UNIVERSAL JOY IN THE KRAAL. 
7 March, 
got ready their own five, the whole number which they at this time 
possessed. 
It was late in the afternoon when we set out ; the sun being not 
more than two hours high. Our road leading us through the kraal, 
we were stopped by the crowd who gathered round us, and who 
seemed half-crazy with joy, and the overflow of spirits. The scene 
was truly laughable ; it was happiness burlesqued. Old women skip- 
ping and dancing about with clots of red ochre hanging from their 
hair, and a protuberant bundle of petticoats behind ; laughing, and 
clapping their hands ; all talking to me at the same time, without any 
possibility of my understanding a word of what they said ; they 
themselves seeming not to care for an answer, could they but have 
the pleasure of telling me their own joy ; these, and some girls with 
their faces daubed with streaks of red ochre, and a few old men, con- 
tinued thronging round me, till my horse stood still, unable to get 
through the crowd. But when Ruiter announced that the rhinoceros 
was at a great distance, and remarked to them, that it was already late 
in the day, they immediately made way for us, and we trotted off at 
full speed. 
On our road we met Philip, who very prudently had decided on 
returning home for the purpose of reinforcing those who were left in 
care of the baggage : although I cannot allow myself to think that 
the people of the kraal would have taken the most trifling article 
belonging to us ; even if every thing had been left under the bush, 
without a single person to guard it. And I feel persuaded that no 
one of Kaabis Kraal would have been base enough to rob me ; what- 
ever might be the inclination of the inhabitants of other kraals with 
whom we had formed no acquaintance, and whose good-will we had 
not yet secured by similar acts of friendship. 
We proceeded nearly the whole way at a brisk step, sometimes 
trotting and at other times galloping ; while the three Bushmen who 
drove the pack-oxen on before us, hurried them over the rocky ground 
at so extraordinary a rate, that even on horseback, I found it not easy 
to keep up with them ; and often, when the surface was so thickly 
covered with stones and large fragments of rock that my horse could 
scarcely find where to place his foot, I was obliged to call out to them 
