sheep ran loose and we could not drive them in together; one ran quite away, and was eaten, I presume, by the hyenas, who disturbed us a good deal; one we killed, and the other we tied to a bush. Hans made me a much more comfortable bed than I had previously enjoyed, showing me how to cut the bushes and make a dead hedge of them; then he smoothed the ground, and plucking dry grass, strewed it thickly about; upon that he laid two or three sheepskins, over them my mackintosh, and, lastly, my eider-down quilt. This had become torn to rags by the thorns, and I intended on the first opportunity to get a caross instead of it. Sheepskins and carosses are no incumbrance in travelling with pack-oxen, for they are carefully placed under the saddle-bags, and their use in keeping the animal’s back from being galled is more than compensation for their weight. I listened with much interest to Hans’ tales and anecdotes. He had been the most successful sportsman in the country, and had lived the last two or three years in sole charge of an immense drove of oxen, once amounting to 700, with only one or two native lads to help him in the care of them. He had shot a great many lions out of the Swakop, six in the preceding year, and made it a much safer place than it used to be, to drive cattle in. From his account, that river-bed must have swarmed with game, when it was first seen by Europeans, but I can easily fancy, from the confined character of the country, how in a short time one or two guns would entirely exterminate them.