We had been shooting in this Ba-Wangketsi country for a fortnight, and the work had been very hard. One morning after breakfast, my companion, who was busy cleaning the head of a koodoo, said he would have a day of rest, and finish what he was about. His laziness was catching. I ordered my horses to be unsaddled, and was idling about the camp when our head man told me there was no food for the twelve or fourteen dogs, our night watchmen; so I took up my gun, which was only loaded in one barrel, and strolled out on the chance of a shot; but as, kill or miss, I intended to return immediately, I did not carry any spare ammunition. A reedy pond lay close in advance of the waggons in a little opening; beyond this, as on every other side, stretched a sea of bush and mimosa-trees. Two hundred yards from the outspan I came upon a clump of quagga and wounded one, which though mortally hit struggled on before falling. I followed, and marking the place where it fell, set my face as I thought towards the waggons, meaning to send out men for the flesh. No doubt of the direction crossed my mind--the pool was certainly not more that 400 yards in a straight line, and I thought I could walk down upon it without any trouble; so taking no notice of my out tracks, which had bent slightly in following the quagga, I started. It was now about 10 A.M.; little did I think that 5 P.M. would still find me seeking three vans nearly as large as Pickford’s, and half an acre of water. In my first cast I cannot say whether I got wide or stopped short of the mark I was making for, and it was not until I had wandered about carelessly hither and thither for half an hour, feeling sure that it was only the one particular bush in front of me which hid the waggons, that I very unwillingly owned to myself that I was drifting without bearings in this bushy sea. The sun was nearly overhead, and gave but slight help as to direction, and the constant turning to avoid thick patches of thorns rendered it nearly impossible, in the absence of any guiding point, to hold a fixed course through this maze of sameness.