He therefore proceeded towards the north; but, while he despised the fears of his Hottentots, and somewhat doubted the correctness of their representations, he nevertheless considered it prudent to move along in a guarded manner, seeing that every thicket might contain an enemy. For some days silence and solitude prevailed around. There appeared no traces of man; or if any human beings ever started up in the distance, it was only to flit immediately away like phantoms among the rocks and sandhills, leaving behind them strong doubts of the reality of their apparition. Meanwhile their route led them over a burning desert, covered with saline dust, which, lifted up by the winds, entered their eyes and almost maddened them. The vehement heat of the sun, from which no contrivance could wholly shield them, likewise began to disorder their senses and their imaginations; so that, like mariners in a calenture, they saw mountains, green fields, or groves, or running streams, where in reality there was nothing but a prodigious plateau of scorching sand. At length, upon halting in the evening, they observed, as the darkness came on, several vast fires among the peaks of the distant hills, which they doubted not belonged to the Hoozwanas. With this discovery all their old terrors returned. The watch, therefore, it may be easily imagined, was vigilant that night; and as soon as the morning appeared, Le Vaillant, taking a few of his attendants along with him, proceeded to reconnoitre. The scene which now presented itself was desolate beyond description. Steep ridges of barren rock, rising from a plain of sand, and broken into ravines, gullies, chasms, precipices; beyond a few stunted, miserable plants, no signs of life; while a dead silence brooded over all, save when the wild daman sent forth its shrill cry from among the rocks, or when the vulture or the eagle screamed aloft over their heads.