him; and Ransson said that it was one of his most uncanny experiences to see all those pairs of eyes glowering on him in the gloom. To shoot would probably have meant being torn limb from limb; to turn his back on them and climb the slippery rock would have left him at their mercy; to go on was impossible, as there was a sheer drop of 20 feet into the water. In this dilemma he did quite mechanically what he could not have bettered by hours of thinking, for he pulled out his matches and lit his pipe. And as the little flame flickered up one of the big baboons--they are huge fellows in these mountains--gave a hoarse, grunting call, and away the whole troop fled, actually brushing against Ransson as they did so, clambering up the almost vertical rocks, and disappearing almost instantly. I went to the spot the following day, taking a rope with me and a “boy,” whilst Ransson tried to reach the other end of the gorge by a circuitous route. Making fast the rope, I easily got down to the rushes, and found an abundance of water in this hollow place, which was circular and wider than the ravine, and the walls of which overhung. At the far extremity the ravine continued downward in a cleft of about 8 feet wide, and I burst through the reeds and looked down. Below was another basin, nearly full of black water; it looked very deep, and its overhanging sides were so smooth that had a man fallen in he could never have got out. Altogether it was a gruesome-looking spot, for the sun at noonday only sent a few flickering rays into the ravine above, and never reached the black, dead water. Beyond the smooth lip of this big basin the ravine fell sheer for two or three hundred feet, and further progress was out of the question. A day’s ride due east from Quagga, in country quite unknown to any of our “boys,” we located another fine water-hole. We wished to attempt to reach the Orange in that direction, but the “boys” said we should never get through the mountains. There was the usual tale of no water, though one of them said his father had told him of a spot in that direction where there was a big _fontein_, but no one had been there for years, and that it was _verloren_ (lost). It was useless taking the “boys,” so Ransson and I set out with our ponies and two days’ water, to attempt to find a way through.