112 > 
itself to the gaze, and deeply are its lines engraven upon the tablet of my recollection! Like a huge pine apple in the centre 
of a flower-decked prairie which spread away to the far horizon, stood one isolated tumulus of conical figure, whilst in the 
distance, three rectangular table-topped mountains of singularly uniform appearance, reminded the spectator of terraced barrack- 
rooms — shooting boxes, perhaps, erected by the giants of olden time, A shower of land tortoises excepted, not a living 
animal had been seen during the whole of the preceding day; now the welcome appearance of grazing troops of quagyas, 
ostriches, and springboks, with squads of hair-brained gnoos careering madly over the plain amid vast herds of blesboks, 
"On whose empurpled breast 
Glowed the deep hue by blood-stained hand impréssed,” 
proved the welcome harbingers of water; and to our delight a sedge-grown fountain was presently descried, at which, after 
twenty-eight hours of total abstinence, the dying teams were enabled to slake their terrible thirst. 
The absence of fuel shortly obliged us to continue our march over a succession of salt-pans, upon which numerous 
great herds of blesboks were busily licking the erystalized efflorescence. Alarmed at the approach of our cavalcade, vast 
troops of them were continually sweeping past against the wind, carrying their broad white noses close to the ground like a 
pack of harriers in fall ery. Having never obtained any specimens of this species, and our stock of provisions moreover 
grievously requiring to be recruited, I mounted Breslar, my favourite Rosinante, and little heeding whither I sped, dashed 
into the very thick of them. The pine-apple hill bearing east about five miles, must, I concluded, prove a never failing land- 
mark to direct my return to the road, which, however faint it had become, could still readily be distinguished by a practised 
eye. Dealing death around, I thus continued to scour the ensanguined plain, and to use my pleasure wit the herd before 
me, which had in the meantime increased from hundreds to thousands — reinforcements still pouring in from all directions, 
when, crying “hold, enough,” I stayed my hand from slaughter— 
“Be that it trey if the oware of none 
Ane hontrith fat huckes Bey ther lap,’— 
of which having divested some of the primest of their brilliant party-coloured robes, 1 packed the spolia on my horse, and 
well satisfied with my performance, set out to rejoin the waggons. But ah! vainly was it that I sought for them. Cantering 
to and fro between the string of frosted salt-pans, and the little hill, which, floating in the sea of mirage that environed it, 
seemed as though poised in the sky, agam and again I strained my eyes for the road. The monotony of the landscape baffled 
all attempts at recognition, and my search proved utterly fruitless, Every feature of the cone was precisely the same—the 
table mountains were completely obscured by the mid-day haze—and in the constant recurrence of similar forms, I lost the 
points of the compass, and at last became totally bewildered, 
To retrace my steps over plains so trampled by innumerable herds, was clearly impossible, At one moment, as if in 
mockery, @ solitary quagga, magnified ten thousand times by the treacherous mirage, loomed like the white tilt of a waggon: 
but my joy at the supposed discovery was followed by the bitterest disappointment. Again . group of pigmy Bush- 
women walking unnoticed among a herd of blesboks, and seen through the same deceptive medium, personated our fol- 
lowers with the cattle. Alas! these, too, fled at my approach, and jabbered like baboons when I had overtaken them, Several 
hours had thus passed in idle search, and hour after hour the prospect was still the same. Spent by fatigue and anxiety, my 
parched tongue rattling like a board against the palate of my mouth, I wandered on over flowery wastes still lengthening as I 
advanced, Dry tanks surrounded yh garden of pinks and marigolds, but yielding forth the croaking of no friendly frog, 
served only to increase my sufferings. Flights of pin-tailed grouse, rising noiselessly from each sun-cracked hollow, winged 
their whirring flight in gyrations through the quivering atmosphere —but neither fount, nor pool, nor running stream, greeted 
my straining gaze, At length, the refraction dissipating with the declining day, the three table-topped mountains became 
once more visible in the hitherto blank horizon, With the consoling reflection that I was now, at all events, advancing in 
the same direction as the caravan, I hastened forward, with renewed hope, and before dusk found myself not a little revived 
by a deep draught of the clearest water, from a serpentine river flowing to the westward, of which the banks were trimmed 
with reeds and dwarf willows, whilst portions of the sandy bed were imprinted with the heavy foot-steps of a troop of lions. 
The mind ever becomes more readily reconciled to hardship and suffering than the body, Everything around me was 
now vague and conjectural, and wore an aspect calculated to inspire deep despondency; yet my heart was light and my spirits 
buoyant, and no sooner had I become convinced that I was actually astray in the midst of a howling wilderness, inhabited, 
if at all, by barbarous and hostile tribes, than I felt fully prepared to meet the emergency. The setting sun having given me 
the bearing of the table mountains considerably to the westward of south, it was evident that I had, without being aware of 
it, erossed the road, and ridden too far to the eastward. In the hope of yet retrieving my error, therefore, I hurried down 
the river bank as fast as possible, but night closing in, I was fain to prepare for a bivouac among its bushes. The stars were 
completely concealed behind a clouded sky, and repeated flashes of lightning were accompanied by the rumbling of distant 
thunder. All my preparations completed, I was listening with breathless attention for the cracking of a whip, or the signal-guns 
which I knew world be fired from the waggons, when to my inexpressible delight a joyous beacon fire shone suddenly forth 
near the river. Upon consideration I felt somewhat puzzled to account for its appearance in a spot which I had so recently 
passed, but concluding that the waggons must subsequently have arrived there, I “laid the flattering unetion to my soul,” and 
groped my way towards the light, My disappointment and disgust may better be imagined than described, when, flitting like 
troubled spirits around the unfriendly blaze, I discovered a gang of Lilliputian Bushmen, with their imp-like squaws, carousing 
over a carcase! 
