y were not nearly so troublesome. A shot would
always send them scampering to a distance, but cartridges were not
things to be wasted by the traveler in the Low Country.

On arriving at Lourenco Marques in 1874 I met a man named Good, whom I
had known slightly up country. I have been told but I do not guarantee
the statement that he was the original of Rider Haggard's "Allan
Quatermain." From Good I heard sad news; poor Pat Foote, one of my best
friends, had died in the fortress during the previous night. I went up
at once to see his remains; they lay on a wretched truckle-bed in a
dingy cell.

The funeral took place that afternoon. The grave was dug among some
cocoanut palms out beyond the fetid swamp which lay in those days a
crescent of foulness on three sides of the town. A wall separated the
swamp from the houses, and over this wall the sewage used to be cast.
Poles, bearing human heads, stuck out here and there. The swamp was
crossed by a causeway.

The proceedings were marked by a melancholy lack of dignity. Several of
those forming the cortege were drunk. Among them was a Portuguese
officer. The military guard at the causeway gate failed to present
arms, so the officer rushed at the men and belabored them with a stick.
However, poor Foote was too sound asleep to be disturbed by such
trifles. I wonder whether, besides myself, any who took part in those
squalid obsequies are alive. I believe the palms which shaded that
lonely grave have been long since cut down and that the town has
extended over the site.

In the early part of 1875, after I left "The Reef," I worked for a
short time near the head of the creek. One day a friend named McCallum
came and showed me a piece of gold he had picked up on a headland which
jutted over the Blyde River near Peach tree Creek. Next day was Sunday,
so we went together to the spot and took a prospect. The result was
most encouraging; not alone was there a good yield for the amount of
wash we had panned, but the quality of the gold suggested that it
belonged to a genuine lead. Next morning we struck our tents and moved
down to the scene of the discovery. As the area was not far enough from
the nearest proclaimed diggings to entitle us to an extended miner's
right, we just marked out a claim apiece and made no report of the
matter. We pitched our tents in a little grove of peach-trees below the
bluff, close to the river bank.

The thing was a "surface" proposition; that is to