Turning south, I plodded on till about nine, when a tiny glimmer told me that I was again in the vicinity of human beings. It proved to be a canvas _huis_ about 10 feet square, in which were living two white men, a woman, and several children. They were smoking and drinking coffee when I turned up out of the desert half dead with fatigue, but they made no offer of the coffee (usually proffered even by the least hospitable in these lonely regions), and I had to ask for water twice before I got a cup of even that. They wanted to know whether I had found diamonds, however, but feeling hipped at their boorishness, I said “Good night” and walked about another hour, when I struck a tiny border farm called “Wit Puts,” belonging to a Boer named Engelbrecht, where I found an elderly man and a youth still awake and reading the Bible aloud. Here I was given a very kind reception, plenty of real bread and warm milk, and for the first time for months slept under a roof. I could get no horse, however, and the next day had to walk on to Witkop, a distance of nearly thirty miles, to rejoin my companions, who, I heard, were anxiously awaiting me, as I was some days overdue. I did not get in till almost midnight, thoroughly knocked up. Our time was now getting short, and we had still a great desire to reach a pan in the southern portion of the Reserve, where several diamonds had been picked up, so after a bare breathing-space, we again turned into the desert at a place called “Zwart Puts,” this time with a strong Scotch cart and eight oxen, and two Bastards who knew the district. Two days’ trek eastward we struck both t’samma in abundance, and most steep and difficult dunes, amongst which we came upon a small tribe of Bushmen, who had not time to get out of our way. Their tiny shelters of branches were extremely rudimentary, mere windbreaks without roof, and they had seen no water for over eight weeks, living entirely upon the abundant t’samma, roasting it for water, mixing its pulp with the blood of animals as a tit-bit, grinding the dried pips between two stones and making a most palatable meal of them, or parching them in the fire first, and making a beverage not unlike coffee. With the exception of a very highly prized and badly battered old oil-can, their utensils were all of earthenware made by themselves, their arrow-heads were of chipped flint and agate, and their t’samma knives of the hard, ivory-like shin-bone of the ostrich. They had digging-sticks of fire-hardened wood, near the point of which was fixed the _kiwe_, a heavy, rounded, perforated stone, of which I had often seen specimens in museums, and had myself found in shell middens along the beach near Cape Voltas, but had never before seen in actual use.