Winter is the season during which rain falls among the mountains lying between Bushmanland and the coast desert. Then for a few short weeks the mountain range covers itself with verdure and flowers. Therefore the trek. However, of late years the mountain tract has been largely taken up by farmers, so the springbuck, as a rule, invade only its eastern margin. The western fringe of the plains usually get a slight sprinkling from the mountain rains. The exception happens when the trek, instead of being distributed over a wide extent, concentrates. Then the springbuck, in their myriads, over-run hundreds of square miles of the mountain tract, and clear the face of the country of vegetation as completely as would a swarm of locusts. The term "springbuck" is not a satisfying one for this ethereal creature--this most lovely and graceful of the animals whose home is in the desert. The name is too obvious; why not call it what it really is, a "gazelle?" But the early Dutch inhabitants of South Africa not alone lacked imagination, but shewed positive ineptitude in the names they bestowed on the various wild animals. Take for instance the term "gemsbok," as applied to the oryx; what could be more inappropriate? "Gemsbok" means "Chamois"--and we have in South Africa an antelope which is a chamois to all intents and purposes, but which is called a "klipspringer." Again,--the tall, heavy, sober-tinted desert bustard is called the "paauw," a word which means "peacock." However, these names are so firmly fixed in the South African vocabulary that any endeavour to change them would be a hopeless task. We trekked south-east from Silverfontein in the spring-wagon, behind a team of eight spanking horses. We slept at Kamiebies, which is an uncertain water-place a few miles over the edge of the desert and a short day's journey south of Gamoep. During the day we rested; in the night we had to make a dash of some forty miles for our objective. We meant to take the poachers by surprise,--to drop on them just at daybreak, as though from the clouds. So in the mean time I lazed through the long, delicious day. The rains had not alone been earlier and heavier than usual, but they had fallen throughout an unusually extensive area. The mountain tract was ablaze with flowers; even Bushmanland stirred in its aeon-old sleep, for the skirts of the last rain-cloud had trailed well over its borders, and the latent life of the waste had leaped, responsive, to the surface. Now a whole flora that had slept for years in tubers and dry stalks sent forth blossoms in million-fold rivalry to attract the replete, drowsy insects.