One amusing circumstance I omitted to mention in connection with one of these wild Bushman boys, when at Swaart-Modder in the Hygap river, where we had built a stone house under the cliff to keep our goods during our stay there. A young Bush boy came in the evening to the camp and made himself comfortable by the fire. After some time my boys asked him where he came from, but he would give no reply. At last they got from him that he had run away from his people, because his mother had burnt his fingers for stealing, and he came to get something to eat. This was his second visit, and as he had been well fed before, he came again, but managed at the same time to steal some of my boys' food. On this evening, we had a young man from the colony to drive the cart and look after the boys, and as our stone house was infested with large mice, this young Hancock was catching them in an iron pot, and throwing them out amongst the boys for amusement. As one by one, up to seven, were thrown, this Bush boy picked them up, put them into the red-hot ashes to cook, and, when half-done, ate them as they were. Thinking he must be awfully hungry, I told my cook to put on a pot and cook some Boer meal, which is wheat ground but unsifted; two pints of this were cooked in water, and when ready it was set before him and soon disposed of. After all the people were asleep, he stole the food they had left, and in the middle of the night, sucked three of my goats dry. The following morning he was not to be found, and for nearly a month we did not see him again; when we had travelled 100 miles north, and were outspanned, he presented himself again, as if it were his first visit. We found out he had lived in the bush, existing on a wild water-melon, called shama or kongive, and had kept us in sight as we travelled. I tried to tame him, but it was of no use; his age was about eleven years. He kept with us off and on for three months, then disappeared altogether; the lions would not let him remain long, without making a meal of him. We were now travelling through a very pretty part of the desert, open glades and timber trees, lofty pyramidal hills, partly covered with bush, fine grass, with white feathery tops, no inhabitants; a wild and picturesque region, crossing open plains, then gentle rises with low bush; in the distance, mountains with their lofty peaks fading away into nothing. The perfect calm and silence that pervades everything around, the variety of game quietly grazing in all directions, the very loneliness of my position, being many hundred miles from any white man, surrounded only by my own Bushmen, and those who accompany me, living in all their natural innocence as their forefathers lived in prehistoric ages, add immensely to the pleasure one feels in viewing a scene so novel and so seldom to be enjoyed.