rtly by irrigation,
partly in reliance on the rains. Almost anything will grow, but garden
stuff pays best, because there is in and round Fort Salisbury a market
clamorous for it. The great risk is that of a descent of locusts, for
these pests may in a few hours strip the ground clean of all that covers
it. However, our young farmers had good hopes of scaring off the swarms,
and if they could do so their profits would be large and certain. A few
hours more through driving showers, which made the weird landscape of
scattered peaks even more solemn, brought us to the halting place on
Lezapi River, a pretty spot high above the stream, where the store which
supplies the neighbourhood with the necessaries of life has blossomed
into a sort of hotel, with a good many sleeping huts round it. One finds
these stores at intervals of about twenty or thirty miles; and they,
with an occasional farm like that of Lawrencedale, represent the
extremely small European population, which averages less than one to a
dozen square miles, even reckoning in the missionaries that are
scattered here and there.

From Lezapi I made an excursion to a curious native building lying some
six miles to the east, which Mr. Selous had advised me to see. The heat
of the weather made it necessary to start very early, so I was awakened
while it was still dark. But when I stood ready to be off just before
sunrise, the Kafir boy, a servant of the store, who was to have guided
me, was not to be found. No search could discover him. He had apparently
disliked the errand, perhaps had some superstitious fear of the spot he
was to lead me to, and had vanished, quite unmoved by the prospect of
his employer's displeasure and of the sum he was to receive. The
incident was characteristic of these natives. They are curiously
wayward. They are influenced by motives they cannot be induced to
disclose, and the motives which most affect a European sometimes fail
altogether to tell upon them. With great difficulty I succeeded in
finding another native boy who promised to show me the way, and followed
him off through the wood and over the pastures, unable to speak a word
to him, and of course, understanding not a word of the voluble bursts of
talk with which he every now and then favoured me. It was a lovely
morning, the sky of a soft and creamy blue, dewdrops sparkling on the
tall stalks of grass, the rays of the low sun striking between the
tree-tops in the thick wood that clo