“I had difficulty in keeping the dogs from attacking him, and once he brought his battle-axe within a few inches of Stoffel’s skull. He became quiet, however, when Makabo (Manyami’s son)[49] told him the facts of the case, and said I could go on, but my boys, who were subjects of the king, would be killed, and if I went on I had better pay them off here. I therefore decided on sending to the king,--first, to ask for further security for my boys, second, for leave to take Stoffel with me; and decided to send off Manyami’s son, with two others, with a letter to the king and another to Thomson. “At night there was a tremendous conflagration raging close to us. It was a splendid sight, but made me a little nervous. However, it was principally on the other side of the road, and died before it came quite close. The effect of the burning trees and long line of fire was very fine. One tree in particular, showing all its twigs red-hot or in flame, reminded me of some part of a display of fireworks.” The following morning Makabo was duly despatched with two boys--Umfanimboozi and Umfan--to the King’s, and Frank Oates remained hunting on the Ramaqueban, till their return a few days afterwards, with a favourable answer to his message. On the 10th of August he was once more moving northwards the same way as he had gone before, halting again on the 11th for a couple of days’ hunting higher up the river, at a point where game seemed more than usually abundant. This was the place where the road branches off from the Ramaqueban across the veldt again towards the Tati. “I now feel,” he writes at this point, on August 13th, “to be realizing almost for the first time some of my old visions of South African sport. To-day, soon after starting, I ascended a kopje near the waggons, and saw a large herd of quagga. Counting roughly, I made out a hundred. It was a beautiful sight. All around was the sea of bush, with here and there bare patches, and here and there kopjes--some of the latter far distant. The winding spruits, too, lay as in a map. The quaggas were quietly moving on, or standing and playing, or brushing away the flies. It was a scene such as I used to fancy must be common, and which probably was so when the accounts I have read were written, and may occur often still in more remote districts.” The day previous the traveller had shot koodoo, hartebeest, and pallah, and seen an immense herd of quagga and blue wildebeest, numbering not far from a hundred of each sort. Amongst the lesser antelopes, the graceful klipspringer, found only in the hills, was met with in this district. [Illustration: KLIPSPRINGER.--_Oreotragus saltatrix._ (Height about 20 inches.)]