ction. I counted on hitting off the big river that way,
and at the same time I'd often longed to do a little prospecting on the
ground I was going to cross. But this time, as it happened, I got out
of my reckoning. I'd got into a waterless desert--and foodless too. I
had biltong enough to last for any time, but water is a thing you can't
carry much of--and if you could it would all turn bad in that awful
heat. First my pack-horse gave out--then the nag I was riding--and
there I was dying of thirst in the middle of the most awful dried-up
country you can imagine. There were mountains far away on the
sky-line--must have been at least a hundred miles away, for they were
hull down on the horizon. There might or might not be water there; but
if so I should never reach it, because I couldn't crawl ten miles in a
day, and was about played out even then. Nothing to kill either--no
game of any kind--or the blood might have quenched thirst. Nothing
except aasvogels, and they were too slim to come within shot. You see,
they knew I was booked for them sooner or later, and whenever I looked
up there was a crowd of the great white carrion birds wheeling overhead
ever so high up, waiting for me.

"Well, at last I was for giving in; was looking for a place to sit down
comfortably, and put the muzzle of my piece to my ear and finish off;
for I couldn't stand the idea of being eaten alive by those filthy
devils, as would have happened when I got too weak to beat them off--
when I came plump into a gang of wandering Bushmen. They were resting
at the foot of a stony kopje, and as soon as I hove in sight they
started up it like monkeys, screeching and jabbering all the time.
They'd never seen a white man nor yet a gun, and when I fired a shot I
reckon they thought the devil had got among them. I managed to make
friends with them at last, and it was the saving of my life. They'd got
some kind of liquid, which must have come out of a plant or root, but it
did for drink at a pinch until we found water.

"Well, after some days we reached the mountains I had seen. Awful part
it was too; seemed to consist of nothing but great iron-bound krantzes
and holes and caves--sort of place where nothing in the world could live
but aasvogels and Bushmen and baboons. Some of the caves had skulls and
bones in them, and were covered with Bushmen drawings, and I tell you I
saw queer things done while I was with those fellows--things you'd never