The bare-looking little bushes were principally the _drie doorn_ and _zout bosch_ common all over South Africa, whilst here and there on the slopes of the dunes were thick _haak doorn_ bushes of vivid green. These were covered with huge cocoons, the size of one’s thumb and very firmly attached to the twigs. This cocoon is of the consistency of very tough, thick cardboard, and contains a large black larvæ which is eaten by the Bushmen, who utilise the strong case for snuffboxes, etc., also making bracelets and anklets of them, stringing them together, and placing small stones inside so that in their favourite “baboon dance” they give forth a swishing, rattling sound with each movement. They also eat the huge white maggot which bores so freely into the larger gum-trees, scorching them on hot stones as they do their other _bonne bouche_, the locust. As we got farther into the dunes, the going became more and more difficult, for the long parallel waves of sand, though trending at first south-east, soon curved away from our course, and we were forced to cross them, diagonally at first, but later they lay right athwart our path. So high were they, so steep and close together, and so soft the sand near their summits, that our progress became slow to a degree, and only possible at all by infinite labour and difficulty. Often the second team had to be outspanned and added to the leading waggon to haul it over the crest of some sand-mountain, whence it plunged down a perilous slope, to encounter a similar obstacle immediately. In addition to this laborious crawling over wall after wall of sand, the hollows between were now frequently honeycombed with the huge holes of the ant-bear, or the burrows of large colonies of musk-rats, meer-cats, jackals, porcupine, and other small animals, amongst which the oxen fell and floundered, at imminent risk of breaking their legs, and we were therefore often forced to make tedious detours from our already difficult course. Track or path, of course, there was none. We were making our own waggon-path through country where no waggon had ever ventured within the memory of Rauchtenbach’s Hottentots who were guiding us. No sign was there anywhere of a man’s footprint, though the soft sand was as a closely written page with the spoors of countless animals.