On the fourth day after landing, tents were struck at eight in the morning, and we marched through the long straggling street of Port Elizabeth, accompanied for some distance out of the town by a motley crowd, screaming and dancing round the band. A long train of about thirty lumbering waggons, each drawn by ten or fourteen of the largest bullocks we had ever seen; carrying immense and most inconvenient-looking horns, brought up the rear. Naked little "voorloupiers"[1] led the teams, which were driven by dwarf Hottentots flourishing enormous bamboo whips eighteen or twenty feet in length, the incessant cracking of which was like the report of so many pistols, as they descended with volleys of Dutch oaths on the backs of the unfortunate oxen answering to the names of Schwartlande, Bluberg, or Scotlande. The country was most monotonous, and but for such features of novelty as strange shrubs and plants presented, uninteresting enough, being little more than a succession of bare sandy flats, and low hills sprinkled with bush, here and there a large salt-pan, and occasionally clumps of aloes and elephant tree,[2] a large bush with round fleshy leaves of an agreeable acid, the favourite food of the elephant, which only a few years back inhabited the whole of this district. The sun was scorching hot; clouds of fine sand, raised by the moving column, floated round, filling eyes and mouth; and altogether the men (judging from their remarks) appeared to entertain a very indifferent opinion of Africa. After fourteen miles we came to the Zwartkop river, and crossing the _drift_ or ford, encamped among the scattered mimosas, bristling with gigantic white thorns, on a piece of short, smooth grass, at the foot of a hill, completely covered with aloes, drawing up the waggons in line, and _knee-haltering_ the horses, which were turned loose to feed with the oxen till dark. A brilliant moon rose early, and we sat round a cheerful camp-fire, smoking our first pipe in what might be called the bush; the long lines of tents and white-topped waggons peeped from among the dark trees, bright fires encircled by red coats shone everywhere; the oxen tied to the yokes lay grouped together, the horses stood sleeping, the Hottentots scraped their fiddles and screeched under their waggons, and in the distance the sentinels paced up and down their beat; while above the general hum, rose every now and then the loud laugh and merry song, finishing occasionally with the mournful howl of a jackal. Next morning, after ascending the steep winding road cut through a forest of large African aloes, we marched to Coega River, where, learning that there was no water to be had for the next twenty miles, we were obliged, on account of the oxen, to halt for the day. We had good sport at buck-shooting, and I got a beautiful tiger's skin from a native who had but just stripped it from the carcass of its late owner.