e is of an icy coldness, and might be blowing
straight from the South Pole. During the dry season the traveller should
not contract fever, unless he happens to have the germs in his system,
and in this case he may have been immune the whole wet season, and then
the first cold weather brings out the disease and lays him low.

I must now devote a few words to the veldt and to its animal life as we
learnt to know it during some delightful weeks spent in camp eight miles
from the township, where game was then still abundant. There we lived in
comfortable tents, and our dining-room was built of grass held in place
by substantial sticks. The delight of those days is fresh in my memory.
Up and on our horses at dawn, we would wander over this open country,
intersected with tracks of forest. The great charm was the uncertainty
of the species of game we might discover. It might be a huge eland, or
an agile pig, or a herd of beautiful zebra. Now and then a certain
amount of stalking was required, and on one occasion a long ride round
brought us to the edge of a wood, from whence we viewed at twenty yards
a procession of wildebeeste--those animals of almost mythical
appearance, with their heads like horses and their bodies like
cattle--roan antelope, and haartebeeste; but as a rule, the game having
been so little shot at, with an ordinary amount of care the hunter can
ride to within shooting distance of the animal he would fain lay low.
Should they take fright and be off, we found to gallop after them was
not much use, owing to the roughness of the veldt and the smallness of
the ponies. Occasionally we had to pursue a wounded animal, and one day
we had an exciting chase after a wildebeeste, the most difficult of all
bucks to kill, as their vitality, unless absolutely shot through the
heart, is marvellous. When we at last overtook and finished off the poor
creature, we had out-distanced all our "boys," and it became necessary
for my fellow-sportsman to ride off and look for them (as the meat had
to be cut up and carried into camp), and for me to remain behind to keep
the aas-vogels from devouring the carcass. These huge birds and useful
scavengers, repulsive as they are to look at, always appear from space
whenever a buck is dead, and five minutes suffices for a party of them
to be busily employed, while a quarter of an hour later nothing is left
but the bones. Therefore I was left alone with the dead wildebeeste and
with the circlin