The Mongolian features of Hendrick were distinctive and very interesting. What was it that his appearance suggested; not exactly the Chinaman, for his expression was not at all impassive; one could always read his mood by it. His eyes were slightly oblique, his cheekbones high, his head was as round as a Kanya stone. With remarkable muscular development of the chest and shoulders, heavily hipped and very slightly bandy-legged,--for long I was puzzled to discover what is was that Hendrick reminded me of. He loved a horse and rode like a Centaur--or the man-part thereof. Then I knew: it was a Hun that I was seeking for,--one of the locusts of that Asiatic horde which swept over Europe from the north-eastern steppes. I think that Attila, the Eraser of Nations, who swayed the world from his saddle-throne, must have looked somewhat like my scout. The most plausible theory as to the origin of the Hottentot race is that its progenitors migrated hither from Asia. Even van Riebeek noticed the resemblance between the aborigines of the Cape and the Chinese. Yes, I was almost certain that Hendrick was a Hun,--or rather that the tribe he was mainly descended from and the Huns were twigs from the same bough of the great human tree. Hendrick, to be appreciated, should have been seen on the back of an unrestrained or a vicious horse; it was then that he became a personality. He rode as gracefully bare-back as with a saddle. I could picture him galloping away from some sacked and smoking town--not on raw-boned Bucephalus, but on some thickset, shaggy, steppe-bred mount. Hanging limply across his tense, gripping thighs was a milk-white, gently-nurtured Ildico maiden. Her wide blue eyes were stony with horror,--her golden hair dabbled in the sweat of the horse's heaving flank. She was bound and pinioned with shreds torn from her robe of lawn. The other Huns were loaded with sacks of church plate, with weapons and with merchandise. But Hendrick looked on the face of this maiden, the daughter of what, but a few short hours before, had been a proud and noble house,--and desired her alone. But I think and hope she died of terror before the bivouac was reached. Hendrick was a tame, kindly, obedient hunting-scout, but I am sure that the fierce, conquering Hun lay sleeping within him. There is not a watering place in the Bushmanland desert which has not some tragic story connected with it,--some reminiscence of a lonely thirst-death, some tale having for its motif the shedding of blood-- usually by treachery. But death, accidental or designed, was always the theme. Not many miles from where we were camped that night one of the earlier Wesleyan missionaries travelling from Warmbad to the half-breed settlement on the Kamiesbergen had been shot to death with poisoned arrows. This happened early in the nineteenth century. The murderer was executed some time afterwards at Silverfontein.