on it brings with it. The whole air, to
twelve or even eighteen feet above the ground, is filled with the
insects, reddish brown in body, with bright gauzy wings. When the sun's
rays catch them it is like the sea sparkling with light. When you see
them against a cloud they are like the dense flakes of a driving
snow-storm. You feel as if you had never before realized immensity in
number. Vast crowds of men gathered at a festival, countless tree-tops
rising along the slope of a forest ridge, the chimneys of London houses
from the top of St. Paul's,--all are as nothing to the myriads of
insects that blot out the sun above and cover the ground beneath and
fill the air whichever way one looks. The breeze carries them swiftly
past, but they come on in fresh clouds, a host of which there is no end,
each of them a harmless creature which you can catch and crush in your
hand, but appalling in their power of collective devastation. Yet here
in southern Matabililand there had been only a few swarms. We were to
see later on, in the eastern mountain region, far more terrible
evidences of their presence.

From Dhlodhlo we drove to the store on the Shangani River, a distance of
twenty miles or more, right across the open veldt, finding our way, with
the aid of a native boy, over stony hills and thick shrubs, and even
here and there across marshy stream beds, in a way which astonishes the
European accustomed to think that roads, or at least beaten tracks, are
essential to four-wheeled vehicles. I have driven in an open cart across
the central watershed of the Rocky Mountains; but the country there,
rough as it is, is like a paved road compared with some parts of the
veldt over which the South African guides his team. Once or twice we
missed the way in the deepening twilight, and began to prepare ourselves
for another night under the stars, with a nearly exhausted food-supply.
But at last, just as darkness fell, we reached a native village, and
obtained (with difficulty) a native guide for the last few miles of the
drive. These miles were lighted by a succession of grass-fires. Such
fires are much commoner here than in the prairies of Western America,
and, happily, much less dangerous, for the grass is usually short and
the fire moves slowly. They are sometimes accidental, but more
frequently lighted by the natives for the sake of getting a fresh growth
of young grass on the part burned and thereby attracting the game.
Sometimes the ca