At the hotel we met a gentleman and his wife, whose acquaintance we had made on our arrival in the country. They had recently bought an ostrich farm, some thirty miles from the town, and pressed us warmly to pay them a visit, which invitation we were delighted to accept. They proposed bringing the ox-wagon from the farm to take us out. The wagon arrived, and our friends had prepared it for our use, neglecting nothing to make our ride as easy and comfortable as possible. The coloured boy, with a tremendous crack of the long whip and shouting "T-r-ek," started the long train of sixteen oxen into a slow walk along, the town road. When we got into the country on the hilly road, where ruts were many, we all got out and walked. Our road lay through a thick, thorny wood, and along by steep, rocky cliffs, upon which we could see and hear hundreds of monkeys leaping from rock to rock, chattering and screaming. They seemed greatly frightened at us, and yet fascinated, for they would run along the face of the cliff ahead of the slowly toiling oxen, keeping up a startled clatter, and peering at us from behind stones or branches of trees. We had started late in the afternoon, and before we reached the farmhouse at which we were to stop for the night the moon had risen, and dense black shadows and silvery streaks of light were thrown ghost-like before our path. After reaching the house we sat up till late, watching the beauty of the moonlit scene. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. Next morning we resumed our journey, and after five hours' trek, made most enjoyable by the mode of travelling and the rugged beauty of the scenery, we arrived at "Grasslands," the home of our friends. The house was of one-storey, well built and roomy, and being on a rise, commanded a fine view of the wild, uninhabited surrounding country. Our host was a handsome, high-spirited Englishman, with a little English child-wife, a dainty little piece of humanity. As the young wife leaned against the veranda talking to us in her pink calico dress, broad-brimmed straw hat trimmed with a bit of lace, and a spray of jessamine she had pulled from the vine covering the front of the house, she did not look much like one to live where wild monkeys chatter in the trees, and savage beasts come within rifle range of the front door.