f a mile above the Lower Camp.

Kameel showed me the cave, overlooking the Blyde River Valley, in which
he and his mother had hidden themselves while spear and firebrand were
erasing his tribe from the face of the surrounding country. This cave
could only be entered by climbing up the trunk of a white ironwood-tree
and stepping on to a ledge from one of its branches. Other fugitives,
Kameel told me, sought the hiding-place during the night, but his
mother, fearing that their tracks would be followed, escaped with her
children to another refuge during the darkness. It was fortunate that
they did this, for the spoilers found the tracks leading to the cavern
and massacred every soul it contained. Probably today it still conceals
the gruesome pile of bones principally of women and children which I
saw in it in 1874.

Kameel was a character in his way. He had spent his life a law unto
himself and his family on the little ledge where the kraal he inhabited
stood. Being, in spite of his years, a strong active man and a skilled
hunter, Kameel was in great demand among those who, like myself,
endeavored to combine sport with prospecting on their trips. He
accompanied me on several of the longer expeditions which I undertook.

Through listening to the conversation of his employers, whose language
was apt to be "painful and frequent and free" on slight provocation,
Kameel had picked up some stock expressions which were very amusing. I
cannot, unfortunately, bowdlerize the best of these without spoiling
them, so I will endeavor to give a few examples of the less forceful.
If, for instance, Kameel wanted to indicate size, importance, force, or
greatness as an attribute of anything whatever from a flash of
lightning to a hippopotamus or an attack of fever he would say
"Helovabigwaan," using that term as an adjective. To express
disapproval or disgust, he would exclaim "Toodamaach," and shake his
head emphatically. The first time I heard the latter expression was
when, after a long, painful, and really clever stalk against a heavy
wind, I missed a splendid koodoo bull at a distance of about ten yards.
The miss was due to a bad cartridge fired from an unspeakable rifle,
but Kameel held it to be my fault and despised me accordingly.

It was a quaint little cosmos, this community of gold seekers in one
form or another whose tents made white the broken slopes of the winding
Pilgrim's Valley. We were exceedingly unconventional in most r