efore
twelve o'clock on the next day, the horses were swollen all over their
bodies and about their heads. Their eyes were quite closed up; they
refused any longer to eat, but staggered blindly among the luxuriant
grass, every now and then expressing the pain they felt by a low
melancholy whimpering. It was plain to every one they were going to
die.

Von Bloom tried bleeding, and various other remedies; but to no purpose.
There is no cure for the bite of the tsetse fly!

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

THE LONG-HORNED RHINOCEROS.

Great, indeed, was now the affliction of the field-cornet. Fortune
seemed to be adverse in everything. Step by step he had been sinking
for years, every year becoming poorer in worldly wealth. He had now
reached the lowest point--poverty itself. He owned nothing whatever.
His horses might be regarded as dead. The cow had escaped from the
tsetse by avoiding the cliffs, and keeping out upon the plain; and this
animal now constituted his whole live-stock,--his whole property! True,
he still had his fine wagon; but of what use would that be without
either oxen or horses? a wagon without a team! Better a team without a
wagon.

What could he do? How was he to escape from the position he was placed
in? To say the least, it was an awkward one--nearly two hundred miles
from any civilised settlement, and no means of getting there,--no means
except by walking; and how were his children to walk two hundred miles?
Impossible!

Across desert tracts, exposed not only to terrible fatigue, but to
hunger, thirst, and fierce carnivorous animals. It appeared impossible
that they could accomplish such a task.

And what else was there to be done? asked the field-cornet of himself.
Were they to remain there all their lives, subsisting precariously on
game and roots? Were his children to become "Bush-boys,"--himself a
Bushman?

With these reflections passing through his mind, no wonder that Von
Bloom felt deeply afflicted.

"Merciful Heaven!" he exclaimed, as he sat with his head between his
hands, "what will become of me and mine?"

Poor Von Bloom! he had reached the lowest point of his fortunes.

He had, in reality, reached the _lowest_ point; for on that very day,--
even within that very hour--an incident occurred, that not only gave
relief to his afflicted spirit, but that promised to lay the foundation
of future wealth and prosperity. In one hour from that time the
prospects of the field-co