almost to
the dignity of hills, still shutting us in on either hand.

The spot which we had reached seemed well enough adapted for our nightly
outspan, therefore Piet proceeded to mark the spot by setting up our
usual signal, which was a small branch of a tree, with its leaves
attached, broken from the parent stem and stuck upright in the soil.
This would at once arrest the attention of Jan, the Hottentot driver,
upon his arrival at the spot; and seeing it, he would outspan, even if
we chanced to be elsewhere when he arrived. Then, mounting again, we
resumed our journey down the valley, in search of something wherewith to
replenish our empty larder.

At a distance of some five miles farther down the valley we secured what
we wanted, having come quite unexpectedly, while our horses were
walking, upon a herd of black antelope, among them a number of
half-grown fawns, one of which I managed to bowl over before they had
sufficiently recovered from their surprise to get away; and having
secured our prize upon the back of Piet's horse, behind his saddle, we
proceeded to retrace our steps leisurely. But we had scarcely covered a
mile upon our backward way when we became aware of certain strange
roaring and grunting sounds, of a kind quite new to us, apparently
proceeding from the far side of a big clump of bush which lay at a
distance of a short quarter of a mile on our right front. Curious to
learn what could be the origin of those strange sounds, we turned our
horses' heads in that direction, and a few minutes later, upon rounding
the extremity of the clump, we came upon a most extraordinary sight.

The scene was an open glade of about four acres in extent, bordered by
trees, among which were a few specimens of the kind described in the
preceding chapter, with weirdly shaped, swollen, knotted, and twisted
trunks and branches, and long, flat, ribbon-like streamers of leaves,
coated with a vile-smelling exudation. But it was not so much the glade
itself--strange as was its appearance, with its weird-looking
vegetation--that attracted our attention, as what was being enacted in
it. For away toward one edge of it was a big boulder, on the top of
which crouched the figure of--was it a woman, or a monkey? The creature
seemed to partake about equally of the characteristics of both; she was
entirely unclothed, her whole body was covered with short, thick,
golden-brown hair, that on her head being much longer than that on th