In time I found her. Still, it took time; and before we
met, Hilda had had leisure to settle down quietly to her new existence.
People in Rhodesia had noted her coming, as a new portent, because of
one strange peculiarity. She was the only woman of means who had ever
gone up of her own free will to Rhodesia. Other women had gone there
to accompany their husbands, or to earn their livings; but that a lady
should freely select that half-baked land as a place of residence--a
lady of position, with all the world before her where to choose--that
puzzled the Rhodesians. So she was a marked person. Most people solved
the vexed problem, indeed, by suggesting that she had designs against
the stern celibacy of a leading South African politician. "Depend upon
it," they said, "it's Rhodes she's after." The moment I arrived at
Salisbury, and stated my object in coming, all the world in the new town
was ready to assist me. The lady was to be found (vaguely speaking) on
a young farm to the north--a budding farm, whose general direction was
expansively indicated to me by a wave of the arm, with South African
uncertainty.

I bought a pony at Salisbury--a pretty little seasoned sorrel mare--and
set out to find Hilda. My way lay over a brand-new road, or what
passes for a road in South Africa--very soft and lumpy, like an English
cart-track. I am a fair cross-country rider in our own Midlands, but I
never rode a more tedious journey than that one. I had crawled several
miles under a blazing sun along the shadeless new track, on my African
pony, when, to my surprise I saw, of all sights in the world, a bicycle
coming towards me.

I could hardly believe my eyes. Civilisation indeed! A bicycle in these
remotest wilds of Africa!

I had been picking my way for some hours through a desolate plateau--the
high veldt--about five thousand feet above the sea level, and entirely
treeless. In places, to be sure, a few low bushes of prickly aspect rose
in tangled clumps; but for the most part the arid table-land was covered
by a thick growth of short brown grass, about nine inches high, burnt up
in the sun, and most wearisome to look at. The distressing nakedness of
a new country confronted me. Here and there a bald farm or two had been
literally pegged out--the pegs were almost all one saw of them as yet;
the fields were in the future. Here and there, again, a scattered range
of low granite hills, known locally as kopjes--red, rocky prominences,
f