How far the profound indifference in which they are said to grovel on this point may exist, however, I will not presume to determine. It is possible that travellers may sometimes make these and similar savages the interpreters of their own thoughts. On approaching the country of the Kaffers, a brave and warlike people, exceedingly hostile to the Hottentots, whom they regarded as the slaves and spies of the colonists, the most terrible apprehensions were awakened in his camp. Night and day they were on the alert. Every sound which startled the darkness was transformed, by their terror, into the footsteps of a Kaffer; and if they did not at once burst into open mutiny against their chief, it was rather the fear of the dangers to which the loss of him might expose them, than any ideas of discipline or fidelity, that restrained them. Le Vaillant’s determination, nevertheless, still was to advance into Kaffraria; but finding after repeated endeavours that no argument could prevail upon his attendants, a very small number excepted, to accompany him, he contented himself with despatching an envoy to the Kaffer king, or chief. Meanwhile he continued to roam about on the frontiers, hunting, shooting, and adding to his collections. Here he encountered the fury of an African tempest. “The rain,” he observes, “fell all night in such abundance, that, in spite of all our efforts, it extinguished our fires. Our dogs made an indescribable clamour, and kept us awake all night, though no wild beast appeared. I have observed that during these rainy nights the lion, the tiger, and the hyena are never heard; but the danger is increased twofold; for, as they still roam about, they thus fall suddenly and unexpectedly on their prey. Still further to increase the fright which this unfortunate fact must occasion, the great humidity almost entirely deprives the dogs of the power of smelling, which renders them of little use. Of this danger my people were well aware, and therefore laboured with remarkable energy to keep alive the fires. “It must be confessed,” he continues, “that the stormy nights of the African deserts are the very image of desolation, and that terror, on such occasions, involuntarily comes over one. When you are overtaken by these deluges, your tents and mats are quickly drenched and overflowed; a continual succession of lightning-flashes causes you twenty times in a minute to pass abruptly and suddenly from the most terrific light to entire darkness: the deafening roarings of the thunder, which burst from every side with horrible din, roll, as it were, against each other, are multiplied by the echoes, and hurled from peak to peak; the howling of the domestic animals; short intervals of fearful silence; every thing concurs to render those moments more melancholy. The danger to be apprehended from wild beasts still further increases the terror; and nothing but day can lessen the alarm, and restore nature to her tranquillity.”