One evening I had strolled to a kloof about three miles from my friend's house, to make a sketch and shoot a guinea-fowl. I walked quietly up the kloof, and sat down amongst some thick underwood, where I could just get a peep at the mountains which I wanted to draw. I selected a good concealed situation, as my bush habits had become so much like nature that I should have considered it throwing away a chance of a shot at something if I had sat out in the open. I had succeeded in putting down the view on paper, and was finishing its details, when I heard a little tap on a tree near me; I looked up, and on the stem, some fifteen feet high, I saw the arrow of a Bushman, still quivering in the bark. I drew back quietly, and cocked my gun by the "artful dodge;" not doubting that these rascals had seen me enter the ravine, and were now trying to pink me with their arrows. I waited anxiously for some minutes, and then saw a Bushman come over the rise, and look about. I knew at once that he must be unconscious of my presence or he would never have thus shown in the open; he turned round, and seemed to be taking the line which his arrow had travelled. As he did so, I saw a rock rabbit (the _hyrax_) hanging behind him, and then knew that he was after these animals, and probably in shooting at one had sent his arrow into the tree near me. I did not move, as my shelter was so good that even a Bushman's eye would with difficulty see me. He looked about him, and seeing his arrow in the tree, he picked up some stones, threw two or three at it and brought it down; he then walked quietly away over the ridge. I slipped down the kloof and made the best of my way home, to give my host a caution about his cattle and my horses; as these determined robbers were most dangerous neighbours. We were not however disturbed. At about nine o'clock in the evening we could see a fire shining from a neighbouring mountain, and we supposed that the Bushmen were having a feast of grilled hyrax for their supper. It was proposed that we should go out and attack the party, but there being no seconder to the proposition, it fell to the ground. My horses after four or five days began to look rather low in flesh; so I bid my host farewell and returned to Pietermaritzburg. On nearing the Umganie drift, I found the river swollen into a complete torrent, occasioned by some heavy showers and storms that had fallen up the country. The rivers of Africa are never to be trusted, for a traveller may pass with dry feet over the bed of a river in the morning, and on returning in the evening find a roaring torrent across his path.