Having been thus served with notice to quit, we stayed but two days longer, and then struck tents and marched across the dreary charred plain for nine miles; our clothes, hands, and faces soon becoming as grim as the blackened ground, from which clouds of impalpable ashes rose at every step. We halted at a deserted farm house called Reit Fontein, having had several shots by the way, at duykerbok and koran,[13] a species of bustard, highly and deservedly esteemed; its flesh, when roasted, is very like that of the wild turkey of North America. The encampment was formed near the house, a short distance from a garden, containing a spring, by the side of which grew a large clump of bamboo-looking reeds, upwards of twenty feet in height; whence the name of the place. The neighbourhood abounded with duyker, bosch, and steinbok, small varieties of the antelope tribe, found singly or in pairs, in the more open bush; as also paauw,[14] another of the bustards, about the size of a pheasant, with black head and breast, and finely mottled wings and back; and parties of us went out almost daily after them, Baird generally making the best bag. On the 6th I started with Bruce and 200 men for Somerset, seventy miles distant, to convoy ammunition, and bring back cattle for our commissariat. The halt for the first night was on the Koonap, in which we had a most refreshing bathe. The Fingoes, lower down, swimming and splashing about like porpoises; the instant they came out of the river they were as dry as ever, the water running off their shiny skins as from a duck's back. On the second day we entered a vast level sandy plain, unbroken except by immense ant hills, thousands of which dotted its surface as far as the eye could reach, fresh ones constantly coming in sight as we advanced. A deserted farm-house, one or two of which we passed each day, at long intervals, served as our hotel at night. We established ourselves in the empty echoing rooms, lighting fires in the grates, collecting the scattered chairs and tables, and spreading our plaids on the cartel bedsteads. Our march next morning was still over immense plains, stretching to the horizon. We came on more farm-houses, abandoned like the rest, in consequence of the outrages of the enemy, and looking the pictures of ruin and desolation; doors and windows broken, dried carcases of sheep and oxen scattered about the front, with rusted implements of husbandry and broken furniture; and gardens overgrown with rank waving grass.