ange to look upon.

But, beautiful as this country is, it is most unhealthy for man and
beast. The close odour, the long creeping lines of mist, the rich rank
vegetation, the steady heat of day and night, all say one word, "fever,"
and fever of the most virulent type. The traveller through this sort of
country is conscious of a latent fear lest he should some day begin to
feel hot when he ought to be cold, and cold when he ought to be hot, and
so be stricken down, to rise prematurely old, or perhaps to die, and be
buried in a lonely grave covered with stones to keep off the jackals.
We were travelling in the very worst fever-month, March, when the summer
vegetation is commencing to rot, and throw off its poisonous steam. What
saved us here and afterwards, at Secocoeni's, was our temperate living,
hard exercise, and plenty of quinine and tobacco-smoke.

All the country through which we were passing is good game-veldt, but we
saw very little and killed nothing. This was chiefly owing to the fact
that we did not dare go out of hearing of the waggon-wheels, for fear
of getting lost in the bush, a thing very easily done. A few years back
this veldt swarmed with big game, with elephants and giraffes, and
they are even now occasionally seen. We managed now and again to get
a glimpse of some of the beautiful "Impala" buck, or of a small lot of
blue wilderbeestes vanishing between the trees, like a troop of wild
horses. There are still plenty of lions about, but we did not hear any:
whether it was that they had gone to the high-veldt after the cattle, or
that they do not roar so much in summer, I do not know. Perhaps it is as
well that we did not, for the roar of a lion is very generally followed
by what the Dutch call a "skrech." After roaring once or twice to wake
the cattle up, and make them generally uneasy, the lion stations himself
about twenty yards to the windward of the waggon. The oxen get wind of
him and promptly "skrech," that is, break their rims and run madly into
the veldt. This is just what the lion wants, for now he can pick out a
fat ox and quietly approach him from the other side till he is within
springing distance. He then jumps upon him, crushes his neck with one
bite, and eats him at his leisure.

And so we trekked on through the sunrise, through the burning mid-day
and glowing sunsets, steering by the sun and making our own road; now
through tambouki grass higher than the oxen, and now through dense bush