iet off to the river for water with which to
restore her. But all our efforts were vain, for in less than half an
hour after we had come to her the unhappy girl died, without recovering
consciousness. As soon as I was quite sure that she was dead I mounted
my horse, and, bidding Piet place the poor scarred, emaciated corpse in
my arms, rode back to the wagon; and, procuring the necessary tools, I
dug a grave in which we laid the poor inanimate body to rest, covering
it well with big boulders from the river to protect it from the ravages
of the jackals and hyenas. Then, notwithstanding that it was by this
time late in the afternoon, we inspanned and trekked a good ten miles up
the valley; for there is nothing that a South African savage fears much
more than a grave, and I knew that nothing would have induced my "boys"
to pass the night within half a dozen miles of poor Siluce's last
resting place.

Two days later, about mid-afternoon, we outspanned close to the
headwaters of the small stream, the course of which we had been
following for so many days. It had its source in the slopes of the more
eastern of the two mountains toward which we had been travelling, and we
outspanned at the very base of the mountain and close to the margin of
the rivulet, which at this point had dwindled to a width that I could
easily leap across. And now, having arrived at a point where this
particular stream would be of no further service to us, our first
business, before continuing our journey, must be to find another stream,
flowing northward in a direction corresponding generally with that which
we desired to pursue. Accordingly, as there still remained to us some
three hours of daylight, Piet and I, accompanied by 'Mfuni, who had by
this time learned to sit a horse, set out upon a short exploring
expedition northward.

The spot upon which the wagon was outspanned was at the extremity of the
south-western slope of the mountain, almost on the northernmost
extremity of a wide, flat plain; and from this position, looking
northward, we saw that the country again presented a somewhat broken
appearance, with high ground to the right and left, and something in the
nature of a valley directly ahead. And, a valley being obviously the
place where one would most naturally expect to find water, it was toward
the entrance to this one that we wended our way, with the steep slope of
the mountain, shaggy with thickly growing timber, of strange for