There is nothing more painful than a bad scorpion-sting, but as a rule they are not particularly dangerous. This, however, was an exception, for the symptoms that followed were alarming in the extreme. As quickly as possible the sting was scarified and treated with permanganate of potash, but within a few minutes the arm had swollen to an enormous size; and although I bound a ligature tightly above the wound, the glands of the neck, arm-pit, and groin became similarly affected, the jaw stiffened, and other most alarming symptoms showed themselves. Van Reenen was almost mad with pain, and, strong as he was, he was soon in a state almost of collapse. We had a small bottle of brandy, and this we poured down him at once, without the least effect, and for hours we walked him up and down, to prevent him from falling into the deadly stupor that followed the first effect. For days afterwards his right arm was quite useless, and the experience made him extremely nervous whenever scorpions took a hand in our proceedings, which was pretty often, for the desert swarms with them, and scarcely a morning passed but we found three or four of the venomous things snuggled in between our blankets and the sand on which we had lain. We found the Orange at Upington extremely low, and even the favoured river-lands not wholly free from the effects of the drought. News from the desert was very conflicting. The farmers were suffering badly, and _veldt_ for transport animals along the route to Rietfontein was practically non-existent, but most of them seemed to believe that heavy rains had fallen in the actual reserve eastward, to which we were bound. Into this large tract of country no one ever went, except an occasional camel trooper, and their infrequent patrols did not extend farther than the large pans known as “Aar Pan,” “Gunga Pan” and “Betterstadt Pan,” which were said to lie about twenty miles from the western edge of the desert. A patrol had passed that way about a month previously, and had seen no sign of rain having fallen, but Bushmen had reported that t’samma was flourishing farther east, and the only way to find out if such was the case was to go in and find out for ourselves. In Upington we were lucky in finding Lieutenant Geary, the officer in charge at Rietfontein, who was down on a holiday, and who very kindly filled in the approximate positions of the above-named pans on my map, upon which the vast Game Reserve was simply a huge blank space, marked “Unexplored.” These pans he had visited himself on camel-back, and he was sceptical of our being able to reach them in any other manner. But camels, we found, were quite unobtainable in Gordonia, the Rietfontein police being the only people who had any, and they, it appeared, being so short that to lend us any was out of the question. [Illustration: “CANDELABRA EUPHORBIA.” The Bushmen make arrow-poison from this.] [Illustration: “OLD GERT.”