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Bought two camels, and shipped them all right: the market at this miserable village is as poor as that at Getene. The river is about a mile and a half wide, fringed with mimosas; country dead flat; soil very sandy; much cultivation near the village, but the dhurra of poor quality. Saw many hippopotami in the river.
Glenarvan, Mulrady, and Ayrton darted after him, and speedily shared his stupefaction at the spectacle which met their gaze. Two bullocks and three horses lay stretched on the ground, struck down like the rest. Their bodies were already cold, and a flock of half-starved looking ravens croaking among the mimosas were watching the unexpected prey.
The horse was soon shod. The blacksmith claimed his wage, and went off without uttering four words. Half an hour later, the travelers were on the road. Beyond the grove of mimosas was a stretch of sparsely timbered country, which quite deserved its name of "open plain." Some fragments of quartz and ferruginous rock lay among the scrub and the tall grass, where numerous flocks were feeding.
He was attended by several of his principal people, and as he approached through the bright green mimosas, mounted upon a beautiful snow-white hygeen, I was exceedingly struck with his venerable and dignified appearance.
The tears ran down the cheeks of the savage but good-hearted Karka as she sobbed, "He is dead!" We stopped the boat. It was a sandy shore; the banks were high, and a clump of mimosas grew above high-water mark. It was there that we dug his grave. My men worked silently and sadly, for all loved Saat. He had been so good and true, that even their hard hearts had learned to respect his honesty.
To them the great waggons; the gigantic Cape-oxen which appeared to have been created expressly to match the waggons as well as to carry their own ponderous horns; the wild-looking Hottentots and Bushmen; the big phlegmatic Dutchmen; the bristling thorns of the mimosas, cropping out of comparative darkness; the varied groups of emigrants; the weird forms of the clumps of cactus, aloes, euphorbias, and other strange plants, lit up by the fitful glare of the camp-fires, and canopied by the star-spangled depths of a southern sky all seemed to them the unbelievable creations of a wild vision.
Enormous trees, the trunks of which attained a height of 200 feet, were tied to each other by garlands of bindweed, real natural hammocks, which a light breeze rocked. They were mimosas, figs, hibisci, and palm trees, mingled together in profusion; and under the shelter of their verdant vault grew orchids, leguminous plants, and ferns.
At the other end of the bridge a flower-woman, wrinkled, bearded, gray with years and dust, followed them with her basket full of mimosas and roses. Therese, who held her violets and was trying to slip them into her waist, said, joyfully: "Thank you, I have some." "One can see that you are young," the old woman shouted with a wicked air, as she went away.
The burning sun that for nine months had scorched the earth was veiled by passing clouds; the cattle that had panted for water, and whose food was withered straw, were filled with juicy fodder: the camels that had subsisted upon the dried and leafless twigs and branches, now feasted upon the succulent tops of the mimosas.
The tears ran down the cheeks of the savage but good-hearted Karka, as she sobbed, "He is dead!" We stopped the boat. It was a sandy shore; the banks were high, and a clump of mimosas grew above high water-mark. It was there that we dug his grave. My men worked silently and sadly, for all loved Saat: he had been so good and true, that even their hard hearts had learnt to respect his honesty.
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