Two or three nights before finding this ford he tied himself among the branches of a stunted acacia-tree, and shaken by the wind slept as soundly as in a cradle rocked by an attentive nurse. He did this to escape the wet and chills of the stony ground on which the travellers bivouacked and rested during the darkness. Much labour was given in tracing the courses of rivers, the direction of mountain ranges, and acquiring information of the physical features of the country, and of its natural history.[320] All these services were not accomplished without much exertion and diligence. To scale the mountain side, to creep down the perilous declivity, to wade the morass, to traverse a wild country torn into fissures, and encumbered by rocks and scrubs and a dense vegetation, were but their common daily task; but when to these exertions are added the trials arising from privation, constant exposure to the sun and the storm, the bare shelter by night of some overhanging cliff or frail tent, with the discomfort of being, for days together, unable to undress or wash themselves, a faint glimpse only is caught of the harassing and difficult nature of their duties, their weariness, their sufferings and hardships. ----- Footnote 320: Auger accompanied Captain Grey on one occasion to examine a sandstone ridge in the hope of finding egress from it. After proceeding some distance the corporal discovered a cave, in which was an intaglio face and head cut in the rock, of rather superior workmanship for an untutored savage; and Captain Grey has distinguished the work by giving a drawing of it in his Travels. Vol. i. p. 206. Private Mustard, who had been at the Cape of Good Hope, brought his experience to bear upon the present service. He discovered the spoor of a large quadruped with a divided hoof. He had seen like impressions at the Cape. Captain Grey conceiving that Mustard had made some mistake, paid no attention to his report, until he afterwards saw traces of the animal himself. On one occasion the Captain followed its track for a mile and a half, when it was lost in rocky ground. The footmarks were larger than those of a buffalo, and it was apparently more bulky, for where it had passed through the brushwood, shrubs in its way of considerable size, had been crushed aside or broken down. The animal has not yet been seen. Its existence is, however, asserted, from the peculiarity of the spoor. Vol. i. p. 242, ‘Grey’s Travels.’ -----