vertical, cliffs, drawn so closely together that, riding though
we were beside the margin of the river, there was little more than bare
room for us to travel abreast. It was not until we rounded a bend in
the gorge that we knew how near we were to the end of it; and the sight
which then greeted our eyes caused me to utter a shout of delight: for
before us, at a distance of a short quarter of a mile, was the extremity
of the gorge, a mere narrow slit between two mighty walls of overhanging
sandstone, through which we caught a glimpse of an open, grassy,
sun-bathed plain, the long rich grass billowing to the sweep of a fresh
breeze, and its wide stretches of level surface darkened here and there
with the rich purple shadows of slow-moving clouds, promising a welcome
change from the close, suffocating, enervating, insect-haunted
atmosphere of the gorge. And as a background to this breezy, sunlit
scene, there towered high into the air, at a distance of some ten miles,
a magnificent sweep of lofty mountains, rugged and broken of outline,
tree-clad to their summits, and gleaming like emeralds in the strong
blaze of the morning sun.

With another shout of delight I pressed my heels to Prince's ribs, and
three minutes later Piet and I trotted gaily out through the mouth of
the gorge into the sunlit plain--to find ourselves confronted by a troop
of some fifty of the most extraordinary-looking warriors I had ever
seen, who had evidently been lying _perdu_ in waiting for us behind the
screen of towering rocks that formed the gateway, as it were, of the
gorge.

They were little fellows, about the height of a well-grown English boy
of ten years of age, but that they were full-grown men was evidenced by
the luxuriant beards and moustaches which they all wore; indeed, one of
them, their leader, appeared to be well advanced in years, for his hair
and beard were dashed here and there with grey. It was a little
difficult to judge what their natural complexion might be, for they were
all deeply tanned by the sun, but I imagined it could be very little
darker than my own, for I was as deeply bronzed as any of them, as I
could see by a glance at my own sunburnt hands. They were clad in a
uniform consisting of a sleeveless shirt that looked as though made of
white thick silk, over which was worn a kind of tunic of fine scale
armour, which gleamed and flashed in the sun as though made of gold--as
indeed it afterwards proved to be. On th