I nearly dropped with surprise, for I had never met a white man near this spot before, and considered that tree to be my own particular property. I felt hurt! They never moved, so I said, “Hullo!” The nearest one opened one eye--“Hullo!” he echoed; to the others, “Here’s Rip van Winkle.” Well, I suppose I looked something like it!--a week’s beard, and the grime collected in hauling empty oil-barrels about, greasing cart-wheels, sleeping on Mother Earth, etc., being added to by the blood of a steenbok that I had shot and carried slung across my shoulders. They turned out to be a party of mounted police under Lieutenant Burgess, which had been hurried through the wild country from Upington to Zendling’s Drift on news of trouble there. They had been to the Drift, found that the Germans had decided not to venture across, and were returning to “civilisation” when I found them under my tree. They had a waggonful of stores, and we spent a most enjoyable Christmas together. We found the Kuboos natives extremely surly and suspicious; it was evident that they resented the visit of the police, and we could get no one to take us farther till after Boxing Day, when at an exorbitant price we succeeded in getting a waggon, and reached the Drift on December 28th. Here we pitched camp in a pleasant spot by some trees close to the river, which was in flood and higher than I had hitherto seen it. The waggon turned back to Kuboos, and we were alone. About a mile downstream, and opposite the German police post, there was a tribe of Hottentots encamped, and from them we expected to get a sufficiency of labour, but we found that they had acquired the Christmas habit and were all drunk, insolent, and inclined to be dangerous. At length, after a long powwow, I induced two of them to join us for good wages and plenty of tobacco, and we got the camp shipshape, hoping that their spree would not last longer than the New Year. Meanwhile the river rose rapidly, a brown swirling torrent of some 300 yards separating us from the German bank, whilst downstream the roar of the rapids warned us when bathing to keep out of the main current. We had hoped to get a certain amount of game, and an occasional sheep or goat from the natives, but their crowd of mongrel dogs had caught or driven away the former, and they demanded an exorbitant price for the latter, so that we had for a time to depend on our tinned stores.