could not have held out for another half-hour. Whitson, the wiry, had
not yet felt the least fatigue.

This march had taken them to the very foot of the Drakensberg range,
and they rested in a valley between two of its main spurs. Here they
remained all day, comfortably located in a sheltered nook where there
was plenty of dry grass. Their resting-place was encircled by immense
rocks. Although the surrounding country was desolate to a degree, and
neither a human being nor an animal was to be seen, Ghamba would not
hear of their lighting a fire nor leaving the spot where they rested.
The weather was clear, and neither too warm nor too cold. They slept at
intervals during the day, and at evening felt quite recovered from their
fatigue.

At nightfall they again started, their course leading steeply up the
gorge in which they had rested. Although the pathway became more and
more indistinct, Ghamba appeared never to be at a loss. Langley several
times shuddered, when they passed by the very edge of some immense
precipice, or clambered along some steep mountain-side, where a false
step would have meant destruction. He began to show signs of fatigue
soon after midnight, so at Ghamba's suggestion a considerable portion of
his load was transferred to the shoulders of Whitson, who seemed to be
as tireless as Ghamba himself.

At daybreak they halted in the depths of another tremendous gorge
with precipitous sides. The scenery in this particular area of the
Drakensberg range, the neighbourhood of the Mont aux Sources, is
indescribably grand and impressive, and is quite unlike anything else
in South Africa. Enormous and fantastically shaped mountains are here
huddled together indiscriminately, and between them wind and double deep
gloomy gorges, along the bottoms of which mighty boulders are thickly
strewn. On dizzy ledge and steep slope dense thickets of wild bamboo
grow, and a few stunted trees fill some of the less deep clefts,
wherever the sunshine can penetrate. Splendid as is the scenery, its
gloom, its stillness, its naked crags and peaks, its dark depths that
seem to cleave to the very vitals of the earth, become so oppressive
that, after a few days spent among them, the traveller is filled with
repulsion and almost horror. Few living things have their home there.
You might meet an occasional "klipspringer" (an antelope, in habits and
appearance somewhat like the chamois), a wandering troop of baboons, and
now and then a