22 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
save that their wings are beautifully mottled with white 
dots — were all about the rocks and cliffs, or flying out 
on the veldt to feed. When we came to the head of 
the gorge, where we were about to descend, there were 
hundreds of them sitting about on the high rocks waiting 
for their companions to join them, and all go to break- 
fast together. Some of them, however, made a breakfast 
for us instead, and others that fell down into the 
crevices of the rocks out of our reach would be found 
by the pretty small otters that inhabit this wild place, 
where they had been undisturbed for centuries, until 
we came and frightened them with the report of our 
guns. At every discharge, the noise of which was 
multiplied a thousand times, as it echoed from cliff to 
cliff, hundreds of the feathered inhabitants flew out of 
the recesses and fairly filled the narrow space between 
the nearly perpendicular walls of the deep wild gorge. 
Our German companion did not conceal his delight 
at every addition to our bag, and volunteered to gather 
wood and make a fire to cook them for dinner. “ I’ll- 
vatch-it dat cley vill be cooked veil,” he said — much as 
he had said before, “ I’ll-vateh-it dat anyveares you sail 
go I vill go mit you ; ” but it was easy to see that, 
although he had talked a great deal about his being 
able to climb about wherever we went, he was not 
unwilling to find an excuse for keeping as much as 
possible out of danger ; and when he saw how difficult 
it would be to get down to the bottom of the canon, he 
decided that it would be safer and easier for him to 
act the cook rather than the gymnast. 
Nearly at the outset we had to use the ropes to de- 
scend into a deep hole that was still muddy from the 
summer’s high water. A half-inch rope was rather 
small to climb easily ; to go down was easy enough, 
but we had to think of coming back, to facilitate which 
we tied knots in it. After getting safely down, we 
shouldered our camera, &c., and crossed a veritable 
slough of despond, up to our knees in the stickiest, 
slipperiest, nastiest clay mud, that would not even be 
scraped off’, so we had to put our shoes on over it, the 
