ssured them and they
approached--a man, a young mother with a baby at the breast, and two more
children. There were evidently more not far off who were too timid to
come on, as we heard calls from beyond the ridge. This buck was a fine,
upstanding fellow, very lithe and strong, though thin and small of
bone. Dressed in the fashionable desert costume of nothing at all,
excepting a band of string round his forehead, and a similar belt round
his waist, from which hung all round him the spoils of the chase, with a
spear in one hand and throwing-sticks in the other he looked a queer
figure in the setting sun--iguanas and lizards dangling head down from his
hair and his waist-string--indeed a novel way of carrying game. His lady
followed him with a cooliman under her arm, with a further supply of
reptiles and rats.

The whole family established themselves close to us. Their camp had been
near the crest of the ridge, but, apparently liking our company, they
shifted their household goods, and, starting a fire within twenty yards
of us, were soon engaged in cooking and eating their supper. The process
of preparing a meal is simple in the extreme. The rats are plucked (for
they do not skin the animal, but pluck the hair as we do feathers from a
chicken), and thrown on to a pile of hot wood-ashes with no further
preparation, and are greedily devoured red and bloody, and but barely
warm. A lizard or iguana calls for a further exercise of culinary
knowledge. First, a crooked twig is forced down the throat and the inside
pulled out, which dainty is thrown to any dog or child that happens to be
near; the reptile is then placed on hot coals until distended to the
utmost limit that the skin will bear without bursting, then it is placed
on ashes less hot, and covered with the same, and after a few minutes is
pronounced cooked and ready for the table. The old lady did the cooking,
and kept up an incessant chattering and swearing the while. We noticed
how kind they were to the poor diseased buck, giving him little tit-bits
of half-raw rat's flesh, which he greatly preferred to any food we fed
him. They were strange, primitive people, and yet kind and grateful. We
anointed the sick man's wounds with tar and oil (a mixture used for mange
in camels), and were well rewarded for our unsavoury task by his dog-like
looks of satisfaction and thanks. We had ample opportunity to watch them
at night, as our well-sinking operations kept us up. They see