DREADFUL INCIDENT. 
59 
by this act conferred a benefit on my friends, £ the 
children of the desert/ and had doubtless been the 
means of saving many from the horrible fate that 
had of late fallen to the lot-of numbers of their 
intimates and relatives. 55 
Gordon Gumming, again, very graphically de¬ 
scribes a like dreadful incident to those just named, 
and of which, like Mr. Steneberg and Mr. Green, 
he was himself, so to say, a spectator. 
“ Having outspanned, we at once set about 
making a c kraal 5 for the cattle, and that of the 
worst description of thorn trees, as I had now 
become very particular since my severe loss by lions 
on the first of the month. I had yet, however, 
a fearful lesson to learn, as to the nature and 
character of those beasts, of which I had at 
one time entertained so little fear; and on this 
night a horrible tragedy was to be enacted in my 
little lonely camp of so very awful and appalling a 
nature as to make the blood curdle in my veins. I 
worked till near sundown at one side of the e kraal 5 
with Hendrich, my first waggon-driver, I cutting 
down the trees with my axe, and he dragging them 
to the spot. When the £ kraal 5 was completed, 
and the cattle secured within it (as were also my 
two waggons, the horses being made fast to a 
trekton stretched between the hind wheels of the 
vehicles), I turned my attention to preparing a 
pot of barley-broth. For this purpose, I lighted 
a fire outside of the 6 kraal, 5 between it and the 
water, close on the river-bank, and under a dense 
bush grove of shady trees, but made no kind of 
