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 birds, not a hundred yards off. It was too dark to distinguish what they were; and before we could creep near them they had taken alarm and had risen high in the air; but I am tolerably certain that I recognized the deep long-drawn notes, as they re-echoed in the stillness of the night, as the warning cry of the South African grey crane. Notes of this full, resonant character, that seem to reverberate as if from a sounding-board, so as to be audible at an unusual distance, are peculiar to a few kinds of birds, including the swans, which have a hollow breast-bone, through which the wind-pipe curves before ascending to the throat.

On the evening of the fourth day after quitting Wonderfontein, we re-entered Potchefstroom, and made our encampment at the same spot as before.

Several of the residents, with whom we had already made acquaintance, came and paid us a visit in our waggon. They told me that Mauch had stayed several times in Potchefstroom, and had found a liberal friend in Herr Fossmann. In the course of conversation they mentioned that dendrolites and other petrifactions were to be found on the mountains that we could see towards the east; and, in answer to my inquiries about the interior of the country, they said that several times a year waggons laden with ivory, ostrich feathers, and large quantities of skins came from Shoshong, the town of the Bamangwatos, on their way to Natal. These waggons came down by the Limpopo, crossing it just above its junction with the Marico. They were the pro-