After trekking over miles the following morning we halted for breakfast at the foot of the Stormberg mountains, another steppe, or range, stretching east and west as far as the eye could see. The road up being steep and winding, the effect was very peculiar, as at every turn portions of the column were seen one above another, while the long train of waggons and the distant rear-guard were still creeping along the plain below. We had a broiling climb of it; on gaining the top, a vast green plain was again before us, and after some miles further we camped near a large vley of thick muddy water. The night, in this elevated region, was as cold as the day had been hot in the sultry plains, and though we piled every available article on our beds, we could not keep warm. On striking a light next morning at the 'Rouse' to dress and pack up by, the walls of the tent glistened and sparkled with frozen moisture, and the water in the basin was covered with a coating of ice as thick as a half-crown. The poor horses felt the cold severely; their bodies drawn together quite benumbed, and the moisture from their breath hanging in hoar frost about their nostrils. The mountain tops all round were white with snow. It was, no doubt, the sudden change of temperature, together with our light dress, that made the cold so particularly severe, as I have felt far less inconvenience in a Canadian winter, with the mercury frozen in the thermometer. After an eight miles march the sun became exceedingly hot as we descended slightly towards the Stormberg Spruit, a tributary of the Orange River; by the time we got to our halt, in a wild bare spot, called Sanna Spruits, close to a chaotic assemblage of singularly fantastic rocks, we were very glad to get under the friendly shade of their overhanging masses. They were completely overrun with the 'dossies,' supposed, by the way, to be the 'coney' of Scripture, and on the highest point were a number of beautiful blue ibis. We shot several at first, but afterwards they kept far out of range, circling round and round in the air, at a great height. The Boers call them "wild turkeys," from the curious red head, which is quite bare and hard, and looks just like sealing wax. The bird is about the size of a large game-cock, with a long curved red beak and legs of the same colour, the general plumage of an iridescent green and purplish blue, with brown wing coverts. Having got into camp much earlier than usual, we were enabled to make soup and wash our shirts. About the middle of the day following, we fell in with horns of hartebeest and springbok here and there by the wayside, and a few hours later, saw a small herd of each scudding across the plain a couple of miles off. The heat became intense, we were choked and blinded by clouds of fine sand, and after a long and weary march, came to a halt in a barren scorching karroo at the foot of a rugged hill. The silence and absence of life were most oppressive.