This is especially the case on the road from Cape Town to the Transvaal, viâ Griqualand West. After leaving Ceres you enter upon a succession of Karroos, or treeless and waterless plateaus, each circumscribed by its distant hills. The road traverses these wastes like a mere line drawn across a sheet of cartridgepaper, and, to all intents and purposes, the country to either side of it is a desert. At rare intervals-sometimes ten, sometimes twenty miles, and sometimes at even greater distances apart-are houses, the residences of Boers. These houses are generally built near a dry watercourse, raised in the maps to the dignity of a river, and which may occasionally have a little water in it. But such occasions are always the exception. The rain-bearing clouds from the sea are generally stopped by the mountain ranges nearer to the coast on the south and east, and, in some portions of these Karroos, six or seven years have been known to pass without a shower falling.

At still greater intervals along the road are towns. You ask yourself what is the raison d'être of these towns. None of them seem to have any special industry. Why were they built? The soil is not fertile, there is no attractive scenery, and no timber, neither is there mineral wealth. There is only water, which, after all, may perhaps account for the mystery.

These towns generally consist of red and white houses, built of brick or plastered mud. The few streets cross each other at right angles, and are perhaps graced by a few willows. At a little distance will be the Native Location, where the black and coloured people live. To arrive at one of these towns-built in the middle of a treeless veldt, sometimes without a bush worthy of the name of tree within a hundred miles-is like calling in at a small island in mid-ocean for a few hours. Perhaps two days later you will touch at

As you go northwards-say after leaving Victoria West-game begins to appear on the plain. It must not, however, be supposed that in the more southerly districts there is an entire absence of game. Quite the contrary. Within a few miles of such centres of civilisation as Cape Town and Port Elizabeth small gazelles, genets, hares, jerboas, and deer abound; but, as a rule, they lurk in the kloofs and thickets until nightfall, when they issue forth. Here, however, there is no concealment. Herds of springbok are seen daily from the waggon. Then the sportsman, for there is sure to be a sportsman in the party, unearths a rifle from his baggage. The waggon stops. The sportsman takes a long and careful aim, and fires.

You see the bullet knocking up the dust about four hundred yards off. The buck are really about six hundred yards distant, but the purity of the air in these upland plateaus causes objects to appear much nearer than they really are, and it is difficult to judge distance on a bare plain.

At the sound of the rifle the springbok bound seven or eight feet in the air, clearing at each spring some fifteen feet of ground. In this manner they make off for a few hundred yards, then they change their mode of progression to a trot, arching their necks, and lowering their noses to the ground. Then they stop, and turn to have another look. In the meantime the waggon has gone on. At a distance of perhaps halfa-mile the buck trot along, keeping up with it. Then they commence to circle ahead, approaching the road. As the road is reached, each buck clears it with a single bound, so suspicious are they of beaten tracks. Ten, twenty, or thirty of them leap it together, and then, trotting away over the veldt, they once more stop and regard the waggon inquisitively from the other side.

Fifteen or sixteen years ago, perhaps only a couple of hundred miles further on, one might chance to see a trek-bokken, or migration of springbok. All night at the outspan would be heard the grunting of bucks, and at daybreak the plain would be seen covered with a living mass of springbok, marching steadily along. For hour after hour they would continue pouring through an opening in the hills

like a flood, and disappearing over a distant ridge. There is something majestic in these countless herds of wild animals all moving in one direction without a pause. Then many men feel stirring within them instincts which have been doubtless inherited from our remote savage ancestry, and which have been disguised by civilisation, but not rooted out. They rush to gun and horse. They charge upon the flanks of the living mass, loading and firing again and again, until with the thirst of blood satiated, and the plain covered with the bodies of twenty, thirty, or forty dead and dying springbok, they return to the outspan exulting. One, or at all events two victims, would have been sufficient for food; the rest will lie there and rot, or be devoured by jackals and vultures. Such trek-bokken are now, I am told, only to be seen far north in the Transvaal or Bechuanaland. The only wonder is that, considering the number annually slaughtered, for sport, for food, and for the gratification of the instinct of destruction, there are any left to migrate even so near as that; for since the opening of the Diamond Fields, thousands upon thousands of springbok, blesbok, and black gnus have been killed; and waggon-loads of springbok venison, brought in by the Boers for sale, may frequently be seen at Du Toit's Pan and the New Rush.

At night-time you will outspan in the veldt, near some vley, or close to a Boer's house, with a dam appertaining thereto. If the latter, it does not follow that you will sleep under a roof, as Boers do not, as a rule, have spare beds. The whole family usually occupy one bed-room, and sleep in their clothes. For the casual visitor, who dislikes sleeping out of doors, there is the floor of plastered dung of the other apartment, or perchance, if it be sufficiently long, a table; but to most men a kaross or blanket on the ground out in the open air is preferable to these. There is a strange sense of novelty in sleeping out of doors in an unknown country for the first time. There is a sense of insecurity produced by the absence of the four enclosing walls to which you have been accustomed, and by the knowledge that your present retiring-room is a plain several miles in extent. All this, however, wears off in a day or two at the most, and sleeping on the ground in your clothes and boots becomes soon to be regarded as the normal condition of things.

As darkness sets in the cranes and

herons from round about begin to collect on the vley or dam by which you have outspanned, and form long rows in the middle of the shallow water, where they may remain all night secure from the attacks of jackals and wild cats. At intervals during the night you hear them calling to one another, and sometimes all their voices are raised in a general hubbub. Either something has alarmed them, or the birds which have been on the watch are suggesting that it is time for others to relieve them of that duty. In the bright moonlight you will see them all chattering together volubly, and then, the matter in hand having been settled, all but two or three tuck their long necks under their wings and go to sleep again.

At a little distance will be the camp fire of your "boys" Korannas, Basutos, Griquas, or Bechuanas. They are accomplished liars, and enliven the evening by startling narratives of their own achievements. Sometimes they break out in song, which usually consists of a solo, two or three bars in length, yelled at the top of the voice, and a chorus, all this in a minor key. The air is not unpleasing if somewhat monotonous.

These songs are generally about war or cattle-lifting. I remember one in particular about cattle, of which the chorus was, "E-e-e-yu-yu-yu. E-e-e-yuyu-yu." The performers were, I believe, Zulus, and the song was accompanied with vigorous gestures. The men were squatting on their haunches round the fire, with their elbows pressed into their sides, and their forearms, with the fists clenched, held straight to the front. At the sound "Ee-e-," they drove their arms out to their full length, and at each "yu," they brought back their elbows with a thud to their sides. So much energy did they expend in this exercise that they were all streaming with perspiration, and in the firelight looked as if they had been polished. This song went on without change for an hour at least.

After crossing the Orange River at Hopetown the scenery changes slightly. At Scholtz Fontein, instead of the stunted rhinoster bush, the rolling plains are covered with grass, not with turf like an English meadow, but with grass growing in tufts and patches, coarse-looking and from one to two feet high. Clumps of camel-thorn acacias, with their broadspreading crowns, give the plain a park

On the rocky hills and knolls, baboons, which probably you will not have seen since you traversed the three mountain barriers at Baine's Kloof, Mitchell's Pass, and Hottentot's Kloof, begin to appear. On the ridges their sentinels, generally old males, distinguished by the long thick hair which falls over their shoulders, will be posted to keep a sharp look-out, while the remainder of the troop are intent upon plundering some mealie field or garden below. If you attempt to approach, one of the sentinels will utter a warning cry, and in a few minutes you will see the whole community scrambling up the rocks; mothers with their babies clinging round them, half-grown boys and girls, and adult males, all with their pouches and paws filled with their spoil. On the march they move with almost military precautions. The young males form the advanced guard, and are scattered over the ground far ahead as scouts; next comes the main body, composed of the females and young ones, while the old men bring up the rear.

The Dutch farmers complain bitterly of their depredations. Whenever a garden or field is left unguarded, they descend upon it and plunder. They are said, too, to be very destructive with sheep, seizing the lambs, and tearing open their stomachs with their teeth, so as to drink the milk they contain. In this way they will kill several in a very short time. They are sufficiently fierce, especially when wounded, and even when unmolested have been known to attack and kill men; but with modern fire-arms they are shot easily enough. From a distance of three or four hundred yards a rifle bullet may be dropped into the midst of a group. They do not at once scatter to cover. They utter loud cries, surrounding the one that has been wounded or killed, and appear

Probably you will one day stop at a farm devoted to ostrich-farming, a profitable business enough, but attended with risks peculiar to itself. Birds just hatched are worth five pounds; a half-grown one from twenty pounds to fifty pounds; and as much as one hundred and twenty pounds is sometimes paid for brooding hens. Should a wild ostrich happen to come along that way, he will carry off with him all the semi-domesti cated birds, and the ostrich-farmer is ruined. The birds are plucked before they are a year old. The operation is attended with some difficulty and danger, as the kick of an ostrich will easily fracture a limb. When several have to be plucked they are penned up closely together, so that there is no room for them to spread their wings, or make that dart forward, which appears to be the necessary preliminary of a kick, and the men then go among them.

At some farms the half-grown ostriches run about round the house like domestic poultry. I remember this was the case at a farm, Du Plooi's, I think, near the Riet River. We outspanned there one morning about ten, and arranged with the people to have some breakfast. Among my fellowtravellers was a young Englishman, who, ever since we had started from Cape Town, had been making conscientious endeavours to empty his flask of "Cango" brandy between every two halting-places. It was an internecine struggle, in which it seemed probable that the flask would be the victor, for, throughout the past day or two, the man had been observed making wild clutches at imaginary flies in the air in front of his nose. He looked suspiciously at the ostriches at this place, halfdoubting perhaps whether they were not mere creations of his brain, and they certainly did look ugly and ungainly creatures, for they had been plucked recently.

We went in to breakfast, which con