easy pace to start with, doing, on an
average, about twenty miles a day, and contriving, during the first four
days of our march, to outspan each night in the vicinity of a farmhouse,
where, in accordance with the custom of the country, I obtained
hospitality for the night. After that, however, the farms became more
widely scattered, and I was obliged to content myself with the cartel in
my wagon, which, to be perfectly truthful, I found far more comfortable,
because more cleanly, than some of the beds I had slept in. On the
evening of the eighth day, about half an hour before sunset, we
successfully forded the Orange River and outspanned on its northern
bank, by which time the oxen were actually going better than at the
start, and were in harder condition.

It was a glorious evening, the sky cloudless, the heat of the day over;
and there was just the softest breathing of a cool, refreshing air from
upstream. The country, low-lying along the margin of the river and
rising very gently as it swept away northward, presented just the
combination of rich grass land and bush that seemed to promise an
abundance of game, and about a mile upstream from our outspan the river
broadened out and was rush-fringed in such a fashion as to suggest
almost a certainty of wild duck; therefore, while the "boys" outspanned
and attended to the cattle, I took from the wagon the double-barrelled
combination of rifle and smooth-bore that I had purchased for my father
a year before in Port Elizabeth, and, accompanied by the two dogs, set
out for a little walk upstream, partly for the enjoyment of the walk and
partly in the hope of securing something a little more appetising than
buck meat for supper.

Keeping closely along the river margin, and walking slowly, with the
dogs close at heel, I soon became lost to everything but the entrancing
beauty of the evening, its perfect peacefulness and quietude, emphasised
rather than broken by the gentle gurgle and ripple of the river along
its banks and the soft sigh and rustle of the wind among the reeds;
while the swift changes of light and colour flooding the landscape as
the sun sank rapidly in the western sky afforded a picture the
surpassing loveliness of which there are no words to describe.
Unconsciously I halted that I might the better be able to watch the
wonderful play of prismatic colour upon the bosom of the river, upon the
gently swaying reeds along its margin, upon the broken ground ahea