LEAVE THE COLONY. 
5 
the sport, that I verily jumped at the proposal to 
sleep under one of the wagons, both of which were 
crammed full up to the very tent, and one topped 
up with a boat, keel uppermost. But I would then 
rather have slept in six inches of water than not 
have gone at all. This trip consisted chiefly in the 
slaughter of sea-cows (as the hippopotamus is 
here called), which abounded in St. Lucia Bay, in 
the unhealthy season, just as if that God-forgotten 
land, as I have sometimes almost thought it, did 
not present sufficient drawbacks in itself, or hard¬ 
ships enough to encounter in everyday occurrences, 
without seeking out death. But so it was, and if 
older heads had only been placed upon the shoulders 
of the enterprising and the young, I might not 
have had to tell how out of nine hunters who 
went out full of vigour and hope, in all the ardour 
of enterprise, Gibson and myself alone returned, 
enervated and prostrate after months of insensibility 
in Kaffir kraals. I would gladly forget, and must 
pass by, some of the details of that trip. 
Within three weeks from my landing we started— 
three wagons, seven white men, and lots of Kaffirs. 
The powder ordinances being very strict in those 
days, every wagon searched, and none allowed to 
leave town or cross the Tugela with more than 
ten pounds of powder, we each of us shouldered 
our weapon and carried ten pounds of powder on 
our backs, done up in a sort of knapsack fashion, 
till we had crossed the Tugela, the boundary of 
