Page:Seven Years in South Africa v1.djvu/233

 some days, and we were sanguine of finer weather; but the nights were very sensibly colder than when we first started on our expedition.

Our mid-day halt was made, on the following day, beneath the shade of some of those many-stemmed dwarf trees, the branches of which, in complicated twinings, bend downwards to the ground. Immediately below them the soil was almost bare of verdure, and was penetrated by many mouse-holes; but beyond there were slight depressions in the earth, where the grass grew luxuriantly.

Arriving early next day at the flowery valley of the Estherspruit, I devoted some hours to a search for insects, knowing that many of the smaller coleoptera would abound on the umbelliferous and liliaceous plants. We afterwards all went off in a body, armed with our guns, pincers, and the waggon-whip, to the rocks on the left of the valley. One of the results of this excursion was the capture of two snakes; and, to judge from the width of the traces that I noticed, I should. conclude that there were a good many puff-adders in the neighbourhood. It was precisely the place where they would be likely to thrive, as being haunted by reed-rats—the smaller of a brown colour, the larger of a grey hue with black stripes—as well as by swarms of the striped mice which build in the bushes. Reed-rats are venturesome creatures that from their shape might almost be called jumping-shrews. The largest of them are about the size of acommon rat. They live in holes underneath rocks, their food consisting of