ted I should much prefer
locusts to shrimps, though I would avoid both if possible.

In traveling we sometimes suffered considerably from scarcity of meat,
though not from absolute want of food. This was felt more especially by
my children; and the natives, to show their sympathy, often gave them
a large kind of caterpillar, which they seemed to relish; these insects
could not be unwholesome, for the natives devoured them in large
quantities themselves.

Another article of which our children partook with eagerness was a very
large frog, called "Matlametlo".*

* The Pyxicephalus adspersus of Dr. Smith.
Length of head and body, 5-1/2 inches;
fore legs, 3 inches;
hind legs, 6 inches.
Width of head posteriorly, 3 inches;
of body, 4-1/2 inches.

These enormous frogs, which, when cooked, look like chickens, are
supposed by the natives to fall down from thunder-clouds, because after
a heavy thunder-shower the pools, which are filled and retain water a
few days, become instantly alive with this loud-croaking, pugnacious
game. This phenomenon takes place in the driest parts of the desert, and
in places where, to an ordinary observer, there is not a sign of life.
Having been once benighted in a district of the Kalahari where there
was no prospect of getting water for our cattle for a day or two, I
was surprised to hear in the fine still evening the croaking of frogs.
Walking out until I was certain that the musicians were between me
and our fire, I found that they could be merry on nothing else but
a prospect of rain. From the Bushmen I afterward learned that the
matlametlo makes a hole at the root of certain bushes, and there
ensconces himself during the months of drought. As he seldom emerges, a
large variety of spider takes advantage of the hole, and makes its
web across the orifice. He is thus furnished with a window and screen
gratis; and no one but a Bushman would think of searching beneath
a spider's web for a frog. They completely eluded my search on the
occasion referred to; and as they rush forth into the hollows filled by
the thunder-shower when the rain is actually falling, and the Bechuanas
are cowering under their skin garments, the sudden chorus struck up
simultaneously from all sides seems to indicate a descent from the
clouds.

The presence of these matlametlo in the desert in a time of drought was
rather a disappointment, for I had been accustomed to suppose that the
note was always em