There were no ostriches visible. Those that on the previous day stampeded eastward had no doubt gone back during the night to the locality in which Hendrick had found them. A few springbuck were occasionally to be seen, but they were exceedingly wild. One would have had to manoeuvre to get within a thousand yards of them. Now and then a paauw flew up,--a forerunner of that immense migration which would take place a few weeks later. Then the whole paauw-population of the Kalihari would cross the Orange River and move over the plains by an oblique route towards the coast. They would return over the same course after they had nested and hatched out their young. I had brought my rifle,--more from force of habit than anything else, for I was not anxious to shoot. I was content to gaze on the enthralling, impassive face with which the world there defied the arrogant sun; to admire that quality in it which I most lacked,--its steadfastness. I wanted to breathe the desert's breath, to drink of its life,--to do it homage and to love it--not for any fleeting beauty, but because my unsteadfast soul found it loveable and strong. I had been on foot for some time. Prince, with the reins fastened short about his neck to prevent them trailing, followed like a faithful dog. Should I pause for what he considered too long an interval, he pushed me gently forward with his nose. He, too, wanted to explore--to wander on listlessly whither the spirit of solitude beckoned. At length we reached the first strip of Kanya. It was hardly six feet wide,--that even, regular pavement of ironstone spheres laid down by the hand of Nature in furtherance of some aeon-old phase of world-development. Were those spheres forged in some volcano-furnace or turned in the lathe of the rolling waves in days when the temples of Atlantis gleamed white over the ocean that is its tomb and that bears its name? Were they slowly ground in the mill-vortex of some mighty river that bore away the drainage of a boundless humid tract, where now a rain-cloud is almost as rare as a comet? Straight ahead, a little more than a mile away, the continuous Kanya-veld shewed like a darker wrinkle on the desert's brown face, for we were now out of the region of "toa." The stony strips grew wider as I advanced, and the intervening spaces narrower and narrower until they disappeared altogether. Here Prince and I parted company for a while; I dared not risk the possibility of injury to those faithful feet that had carried me so swiftly and so far. Even proceeding at a walking pace in the Kanya, unless every step were carefully picked, involved a risk of sprain to ankle or fetlock. So I removed the saddle and tied my companion to a bush--not because I feared his straying, but for the reason that it was otherwise impossible to prevent his following me.