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 steppes, with the object, they say, of promoting the growth of the grass. It is known, too, that ostrich-hunters were formerly in the habit of causing these conflagrations so as to get a crop of tender-sprouting grass, which is always attractive to the birds, who delight in the young herbage. Fires of this kind are likewise to be seen from time to time amongst the low scap- (sheep-) bushes, rarely exceeding eighteen inches high, on the plains both in the Colony and the Free State, and on dark nights the glowing streaks that mark the heavens are thus accounted for.

We had hardly travelled half an hour next morning before we discovered that the waggon-tracks that we had been following had brought us into the same road that we had used on our previous journey from Gassibone to the Vaal. Our good-natured guide here took leave of us, and we descended one of the passes leading to Gassibone’s kraal. The defile was wide, but became much narrower at the farther end; the sides, although they were covered with luxuriant vegetation, yet permitted the terrace-like stratification of the hills to be distinctly traced. The flat parts were over-grown with wild mimosas, and had an aspect not unlike the cherry-gardens planted on our own hill-sides in Europe.

It was about noon when we reached the kraal. Passing through it, we encamped under some trees in a hollow close to the bed of a torrent. The ground was covered with a rich sward