And then--once more the unutterable peace, the sumptuous palace of the night,--the purple curtains of infinity excluding all that made for discord,--the music of the whispering tongues that filled the void. How the limitless, made manifest in the throbbing universe of stars, responds to the infinite which the most insignificant human soul contains. These are the transcendent wonders which the mighty Kant bracketed together. An utterance of Shakespeare--embodying one of those cosmic imaginings only he or Goethe could have expressed, came to my mind--"the prophetic soul of the wide world dreaming on things to come." If there be a spirit proper to our globe--a thinking and informing spirit--surely the desert should be its habitation. If such ever dwelt where men congregate, it does so no longer, for men have no longer leisure to think; they spend their strength in continuous futile labour, the fruits of which are ashes and dust. Leisure, opportunity to collate experience and appraise its results,--surely that is necessary to balanced thought,--towards being able to see things in their true proportions. But so-called progress has killed leisure. Where, to-day, is the voice of Truth to be heard? Not in the frantic and contradictory shoutings of the forum or the market place, nor in the groans of those doomed to unrequited and unleisured toil,--but I think that an attentive ear may sometimes hear her voice whispering in the wilderness. And this I know: that when a spent and wounded soul steals out and sinks humbly at the feet of Solitude, some kind and bountiful hand holds out to it the cup of Peace,--and often the pearl of Wisdom is dissolved in that cup for the spirit's refreshment. CHAPTER TEN. THE ORYX HUNT--TERRIBLE THIRST--PREHISTORIC WEAPONS. Soon after daybreak we saddled up. That day our hunting was to be northward, for thither all the oryx spoor trended. Andries, Hendrick and I rode off together. We had to pass the western end of the long, low ridge noted on the previous evening. Hendrick, just before we started, declared that he saw some "black sticks" protruding near the ridge's eastern extremity. This was difficult to credit when one took the distance into consideration, yet we could not help admitting that the Hun had never yet misled us. So we proceeded on the reasonable assumption that his eyes had not on this occasion played him false.