The want of water, which they had already begun to experience, continued to increase as they advanced. The oxen, like the men, suffered extremely, and several of them dropped down, and were unable to rise again. The feet of the dogs were exceedingly lacerated; they limped along painfully, and with the greatest exertion. In one word, every man and animal in the camp required repose; and with inexpressible joy they at length saw the day of their arrival at the Cape, which put an end to the toils and sufferings of sixteen months. Le Vaillant had not yet satisfied his locomotive passion, and had, indeed, notwithstanding the interest which his adventures inspire, seen but little of Africa. He now amused himself with visiting the various districts of the colony, and, among other spots, the extreme point of the promontory, which opposes its rocky snout to the eternal storms and waves of the Southern Ocean. Here, as with a sombre melancholy, he viewed the constant succession of the billows, which, confused and foaming under the influence of the winds, hurled themselves against the cliffs, a depression of soul came over him, and he compared the phenomenon before him to the life of man, and the annihilation which, according to his creed, succeeds it. This miserable dogma, the offspring of insane reasoning, and a distrust in the power or goodness of the Divinity, was at that period in dispute among the sophists of Europe; but I pity the man who could make so bestial a creed the companion of his soul amid the vast solitudes of the desert, where we might expect that the very winds of heaven would have winnowed away so vile a chaff, and rendered back its native whiteness and purity to the mind. Returning to Cape Town, he began, but with less enthusiasm than on the former occasion, his preparations for a second journey into the interior. Experience, he imagined, had enabled him to improve upon his former plans. He had seen the country, he had studied its inhabitants. Had he not laid the foundation for almost certain success? The result showed how dim, how bounded, how little to be depended upon is human foresight. His followers were now more numerous than formerly: eighteen men, one woman, three horses, thirteen dogs, three milch cows, eleven goats, and fifty-two oxen. With this train he departed from Saldanha Bay, June 15th, 1782, directing his course towards the north, along the western coast of Africa. During the early part of the journey, in the district of the Twenty-four Rivers, he found the prodigious nests of the Termites or white ant, which, though inferior in dimensions to those described by other travellers, were yet four feet in height. These ants, which are accounted a delicacy by the Chensu Karir, a wandering people of the Deccan, are likewise eaten by the Hottentots, who seem to regard them with a more favourable eye even than locusts, which are, however, highly esteemed.