Andries Esterhuizen had lived all his life on the fringe of Bushmanland. His farm, Silverfontein, which lay a little more than twenty miles from the Ookiep Mines, had been for many years the principal jumping-off place for expeditions to the desert. Andries was a Field Cornet,--an office which empowered him to arrest offenders against the law. He was a typical Boer of the better class. Large-boned and tall, his increased bulk had for several years prevented his doing that which his soud loved above all else,--riding down a herd of oryx. His blue, laughing eyes shone from a ruddy face. His brown beard was streaked with grey. His great fist could have felled an ox; the tempest of his laughter was like the neighing of war-steeds. Andries sent his ox-wagon to fetch my guns and baggage. Next day I followed in a cart drawn by four strong horses, for heavy stretches of sand had to be crossed before reaching Silverfontein. On arrival there I met with a hearty welcome. The wagon stood, fully packed, before the farm-house door. The heaviest and most important item of the load was three casks of water, for we were about to enter and encamp in the deadly dune-veld where Thirst is a king who has reigned supreme since the world was young. We meant to storm his strong city and occupy it for a season,--well knowing, however, that we should soon have to retire, leaving his ancient realm unconquered and unspoiled. As we did not mean to be luxurious, our commissariat list only included coffee, sugar, salt and "Boer-biscuits" (a kind of coarse but exceedingly palatable rusk). Of these Mrs Esterhuizen had manufactured enough to fill three immense linen sacks. For meat we should have to depend upon our guns. The country surrounding Silverfontein was wild and rugged. Long, dyked ridges, foam-tipped with snow-white quartzite rocks, stretched away to infinity, north and south; here and there a naked granite finger pointed to the cloudless sky. On the western side these ridges seemed to break like waves against the enormous bronze-hued bastions of the Kamiesbergen; on the eastward they sank by degrees into the ocean-like expanse of the desert. Huddled in irregular patches where the dykes sprang from the red sand were the "koekerboome" ("quiver-trees,"--so called because the Bushmen used pithed sections of the boughs as receptacles for their arrows.) These were gigantic aloes of archaic form and immense age. As a rule their height was from fifteen to twenty feet. Their ungainly trunks were cone-shaped, groined and heavily buttressed. The rosette-crowned ends of their dichotomous branches collectively formed a more or less irregular oval. But at one spot, as we crossed the line where the hills ended and the plains began, we noticed some with smooth, slender, white boles rising to a height of nearly sixty feet,--each crowned with a single cup-like whorl of leaves.