time enough for me to get back
without suffering much, but if so I must give up my explorations. This
I was determined not to do. The more I looked at these red cliffs the
more eager I was to find out their secret. There must be water
somewhere; otherwise how account for the lushness of the vegetation?

My horse was a veld pony, so I set him loose to see what he would do.
He strayed back on the path to Umvelos'. This looked bad, for it meant
that he did not smell water along the cliff front. If I was to find a
stream it must be on the top, and I must try a little mountaineering.

Then, taking my courage in both my hands, I decided. I gave my pony a
cut, and set him off on the homeward road. I knew he was safe to get
back in four or five hours, and in broad day there was little fear of
wild beasts attacking him. I had tied my sleeping bag on to the
saddle, and had with me but two pocketfuls of food. I had also
fastened on the saddle a letter to my Dutch foreman, bidding him send a
native with a spare horse to fetch me by the evening. Then I started
off to look for a chimney.

A boyhood spent on the cliffs at Kirkcaple had made me a bold cragsman,
and the porphyry of the Rooirand clearly gave excellent holds. But I
walked many weary miles along the cliff-foot before I found a feasible
road. To begin with, it was no light task to fight one's way through
the dense undergrowth of the lower slopes. Every kind of thorn-bush
lay in wait for my skin, creepers tripped me up, high trees shut out
the light, and I was in constant fear lest a black mamba might appear
out of the tangle. It grew very hot, and the screes above the thicket
were blistering to the touch. My tongue, too, stuck to the roof of my
mouth with thirst.

The first chimney I tried ran out on the face into nothingness, and I
had to make a dangerous descent. The second was a deep gully, but so
choked with rubble that after nearly braining myself I desisted. Still
going eastwards, I found a sloping ledge which took me to a platform
from which ran a crack with a little tree growing in it. My glass
showed me that beyond this tree the crack broadened into a clearly
defined chimney which led to the top. If I can once reach that tree, I
thought, the battle is won. The crack was only a few inches wide, large
enough to let in an arm and a foot, and it ran slantwise up a
perpendicular rock. I do not think I realized how bad it was till I
had gone too