All was barren and strange; even the granite blocks and kops were rare, and I looked still in vain for some sign of human habitation, some track of wheel or print of foot.

The last I did begin to see now; but they were not the prints of ironshod hoofs, only those of antelopes, large and small, and not too frequent.

Still, here was sign; and as I looked more closely I twice saw the soft round prints of the great sand-coloured cats, and my eyes began now to roam afield in the expectation of perhaps seeing those which had made the marks.

No; the open valley that twenty or thirty years earlier might have been alive with game was absolutely desolate; not one of the vast herds which used to roam there, as the old Boers had often told me, was to be seen.
There was nothing whatever to break the long slopes of sand-coloured soil.
Ah! what was that on the ridge to my left, which ran down till it lost itself in the open bottom of the valley along which Sandho gently cantered?
Some white-feathered and familiar birds, displaying their soft plumes, which looked ostrich-like in the distance.

What could it be?
I knew no bird, in spite of my wanderings, that ever looked like that.