Chapter Ten.
The Camel-Birds.
On leaving the “drift” where they had crossed the Orange River, our hunters “treked” in a north-easterly direction. Had they gone due north they would soon have reached the rim of the Great Kalihari Desert—the Säara of Southern Africa. Of course they could not have penetrated this, and would necessarily have been compelled to head in a new direction, either to the east or west. But they had long since determined on an easterly course, as the region lying to the eastward of the desert had the reputation of being a grand country for the large animals—the buffalo, the elephant, and the camelopard; and the rivers in that part were filled with huge sea-cows (hippopotami) and gigantic crocodiles. That was the very country the young yägers wanted to be in.
They were not travelling without a guide. Congo was their guide. He knew every inch of the route. He had promised to bring them into a country abounding in elephants and giraffes; and no doubt was entertained that the Kaffir would keep his promise.
Next day they were on the move at an early hour. They made a long day’s march, and, halting a little before sunset, outspanned in a grove of mokhala-trees, standing upon the very edge of a bleak desert, that stretched before them as far as they could see,—and indeed much further. This desert had a very arid and parched appearance, the only vegetation upon it being solitary plants of the arborescent aloe, with its large coral-red flower-spike, palm-like zamias, some species of cactus-like euphorbias, and here and there small clumps of Acacia horrida, or “wait-a-bit” thorns, as these bushes are jocosely termed, from the disposition of their curved spines to hook upon the clothes of any one passing them.
Both plants and bushes grew far apart, and wide tracts of the plain appeared without even any of these to vary its brown monotony. It was a sort of outlying spur of the Kalihari Desert, and they would have to cross it before they should reach the country promised by their guide. There would be fifty miles without vley, spring, or stream—fifty miles from water to water.
They had outspanned by the last spring, which gurgled out among the roots of the mokhala-trees upon the very edge of the desert. There they intended remaining for a couple of days to dry the flesh of the gemsboks, and also to recruit their animals and prepare them for the long waterless journey of the desert,—a perilous passage.
It was near sunset when they had finished “outspanning,” having formed their camp in the centre of the mokhala grove, and not far from the spring.
Hans, in a contemplative mood, had wandered to the edge of the grove; and, seating himself under one of the trees, whose full umbrella-like top cast a fine shade, was gazing out upon the wide treeless waste.
He had not been long in this situation, when his attention was attracted to three upright forms that appeared upon the plain at the distance of some hundred yards from the grove. They were bipeds, for he saw them from head to heel. Not human bipeds, however, but birds. They were ostriches.