The direction of his course lay along the eastern coast, towards the country of the Kaffers. At intervals the houses of colonists, with their orchards and plantations, appeared; but they became thinner as he advanced, while the woods and general scenery increased in magnificence; and the troops of wild animals, such as the zebra and the antelope, which stretched themselves out like armies on the plain, became strikingly more numerous and of more frequent occurrence. “We likewise,” says the traveller, “saw several ostriches; and the variety and the movements of these vast hordes were particularly amusing. My dogs fiercely pursued all these different species of animals, which, mingling together in their flight, often formed but one enormous column. This confusion, however, like that of theatrical machines, lasted but for a moment. I recalled my dogs, and in an instant each animal had regained his own herd, which constantly kept at a certain distance from all the others.” Among these animals were the blue antelope, the rarest and most beautiful of all the known species of gazelle. The habits of a small kind of tortoise, which afforded them the materials of various feasts during this part of the journey, are very remarkable. When the great heats of summer arrive, and dry up the ponds in which they pass the winter, they descend into the earth in search of humidity, deeper and deeper in proportion as the sun penetrates farther and farther into the soil. In this position they remain plunged in a kind of lethargy until the return of the rainy season; but those who require them for food may always, by digging, discover an ample supply. Their eggs, which they lay on the brink of the small lakes and ponds which they inhabit, and abandon to be hatched by the sun, are about the size of those of the pigeon, and extremely good eating. Le Vaillant was careful as he went along to augment his followers, both rational and irrational. He hired several new Hottentots, and purchased a number of oxen, with a milch-cow, and some she-goats, whose milk he foresaw might be an important possession in various circumstances. He likewise purchased a cock to awake him in the morning, and a monkey, which, besides serving as an almost unerring taster, his instinct enabling him immediately to distinguish such fruits and herbs as were innoxious and wholesome from such as were hurtful, was a still better watchman even than the dog, as the slightest noise, the most distant sign of danger, instantly awakened his terrors, and, by the cries and gestures of fear which it extorted from him, put his master upon his guard.