Before the sun had set we camped in a sandy hollow, a few hundred yards from the river's bank. There were no rocks in the immediate vicinity so we hoped to escape the usual plague of tarantulas. After a long, luxurious swim in the placid river, I returned to examine the collections of Flora and Fauna. The latter had been permitted to wander afield that day. The number of centipedes, scorpions and miscellaneous reptiles which had been soused in the poisoned spirit was so great that I no longer feared her attempting to sample it as a beverage. The harvest was more rich and interesting than usual. Flora had found a gorgeous stapelia with a more than ordinarily atrocious smell, and Fauna had captured a beetle infested with a most extraordinary parasite; also a small, speckled toad--a novelty, I thought--and a scorpion which, when stretched out, measured eight and a half inches. Well done, Fauna! Hendrick had roasted a pheasant to a turn. I was savagely hungry; just as I was about to begin eating I noticed some people approaching along our trail. These comprised a man, two women and several children. I was filled with foreboding. The strangers approached, each carrying something with carefulness. They set offerings before me. These consisted of ghoonyas, and nothing else. What did these people take me for; did they suppose I lived on a ghoonya diet--that I fed my caravan on ghoonya soup? Was I to have the extinction of an innocent species of orthoptera on my already burthened conscience; or would the result of all this be the adoption of the ghoonya as the totem of the Richtersveld Tribe? Those unlucky threepenny pieces,--my unfortunate enthusiasm over the first specimens-- these seemed to have set the whole of the local population on the hunting trail for ghoonyas. Anger gave way to despair. I spoke a few words of appeal to Hendrick, seized my fragrant pheasant and hurriedly made for the open veld. When I returned, half an hour later, the ghoonyas and the strangers had disappeared. I never enquired as to how Hendrick had disposed of them. After darkness had fallen I took my kaross and strolled down to the water's edge. There I spent some peaceful, contemplative hours waiting for the sea-cows which, however, did not come. Then, with a contented heart I welcomed the touch of the wing of sleep upon my eyelids, and turned over to compose my tired thews for recuperative repose against the fatigues of the morrow. Just before dawn I woke up cold and very damp. A thick fog had rolled in with the westerly breeze. My kaross was soaked through. So dense was the vapour that I had to wait, shivering, until it was broad daylight before attempting to find my way back to the camp. Even then I had to bend down and trace, step by step, my spoor of the previous night.