use is even slighter. The Kafirs are fond of eating the
mice and other small inhabitants of the veldt, and they fire the grass
to frighten these little creatures, and catch them before they can reach
their holes, with the further convenience of having them ready roasted.
Thus at this season nearly half the land on these downs is charred, and
every night one sees the glow of a fire somewhere in the distance. The
practice strikes a stranger as a wasteful one, exhausting to the soil,
and calculated to stunt the trees, because, though the grass is too
short to make the fire strong enough to kill a well-grown tree, it is
quite able to injure the younger ones and prevent them from ever
reaching their due proportions.

The term "store," which I have just used, requires some explanation.
There are, of course, no inns in the country, except in the three or
four tiny towns. Outside these, sleeping quarters are to be had only in
small native huts, built round a sort of primitive "general shop" which
some trader has established to supply the wants of those who live within
fifty miles or who pass along the road. The hut is of clay, with a roof
of thatch, which makes it cooler than the store with its roof of
galvanised iron. White ants are usually at work upon the clay walls,
sending down little showers of dust upon the sleeper. Each hut contains
two rough wooden frames, across which there is stretched, to make a bed,
a piece of coarse linen or ticking. Very prudent people turn back the
dirty rug or bit of old blanket which covers the bed, and cast a glance
upon the clay floor, to see that no black _momba_ or other venomous
snake is already in possession. Such night quarters may seem
unattractive, but we had many a good night's rest in them. When they are
unattainable one camps out.

From the Shangani River to Gwelo the track leads again over a succession
of huge, swelling ridges, separated from one another by the valleys of
_spruits_, or streams, now nearly dry, but in the wet season running
full and strong. The descent to the spruit, which is often a short,
steep pitch and is then called a donga, needs careful driving, and the
ascent up the opposite bank is for a heavy waggon a matter of great
difficulty. We passed waggons hardly advancing a step, though eight or
nine span of oxen were tugging at them, and sometimes saw two three span
detached from another team and attached to the one which had failed,
unaided, to mount the slope.