chain of lakelets or water-holes. After crossing a bar
between two of these ponds, they were much annoyed by a horrible stench
borne upon the breeze, and coming from the direction they intended to
take. As they journeyed on, so offensive grew the smell that a halt was
made, and a resolution passed without a dissenting voice, that they
should turn to the east and get to windward of this offensive odour,
still unexplained.

While doing this, they observed to the west, a flock of vultures,
wheeling high up in the air; and, down upon the plain below, hundreds of
jackals and hyenas were seen leaping about. So large an assemblage of
these carrion-feeding creatures called for an explanation; and, on
riding nearer, the hunters saw a number of dead antelopes lying within a
few feet of each other.

As they rode farther along the plain, more dead antelopes were seen, and
they began to fear that they had entered some valley of death, from
which they might never go out. The mystery--for such it was to them--
was readily cleared up by the Makololo and Congo. The antelopes had
been drinking water from a pond or spring poisoned by the natives; which
proved that our travellers had arrived in the neighbourhood of some
tribe of the Bechuanas. Of this method for wantonly destroying animal
life, practised by many of the native African tribes, the hunters had
often heard. The many stories which they had been told of the wholesale
destruction of game by poison, and which they had treated with
incredulity, after all, had not been exaggerated. They estimated the
number of dead antelopes lying within a circumference of a mile, at not
less than two hundred. One of the water-holes of the chain by which
they had halted, had been poisoned. A herd of antelopes had quenched
their thirst at the place, and had only climbed up the bank to lie down
and die.

"We have been very fortunate," remarked Groot Willem, "in not encamping
by the poisoned water ourselves. Had we done so, we would all, by this
time, have been food for the jackals and hyenas, as these antelopes now
are."

To this unqualified surmise, Congo did not wholly give his assent. He
believed that men would not be likely to drink a sufficient quantity of
the water to cause death; though he further stated that their cattle and
horses, had they quenched their thirst at the pond, would have been
killed to a certainty.

For the sake of procuring three or four antelopes for food, w