Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
For a couple of hours I poked about without seeing anything that I could get a shot at, but at last, just as I was again within seventy yards of the waggon, I put up an old Impala ram from behind a mimosa-thorn. He ran straight for the waggon, and it was not till he was passing within a few feet of it that I could get a decent shot at him.
Soon we perceived two of our comrades driving a flock of springboks towards the river. Mike at once diverged towards a clump of bushes which it seemed probable they would pass. In ten minutes we were down in a hollow, with the horses hid behind a mimosa-thorn. The boks had not seen us, being too much taken up with their pursuers; they came straight towards us.
Another struck me as having the broadest pair of shoulders I ever saw in a man of his size. "Capital water here," said Green to me, on alighting beside the mimosa-thorn. "Indeed," said I, thirsting for some, "where is it?" "Here! come; I'll show you." He led me to a spot among the bushes where lay a small pond of thin mud the colour of weak tea with milk. "There you are," said Green.
Inland there's a rolling, forest country, beginning with decent trees and ending in mimosa-thorn, when the land begins to rise to the stony hills of the interior; and that poisonous yellow river rolls through it all, with a denser native population along its banks than you will find anywhere else north of the Zambesi.
In a few minutes he returned, leading the horses, and then busied himself in surrounding the camp with an almost impenetrable wall of mimosa-thorn branches, the spikes of which were so tremendous that it seemed as if nothing smaller than an elephant could force its way through.
They were coming to help Ladysmith, if you like; but the idea of Ladysmith helping them! At his urgency they sent the convoy back. I rode on miles through the openest country I had yet seen hereabouts a basin of wave-like veldt, just growing thinly green under the spring rains, spangled with budding mimosa-thorn.
They took refuge in a mimosa-thorn, and there he kept them all night. It was no use their trying to make a bolt for it, because twice or three times their speed could not have saved them from the ostrich. There they remained, and there father found them next morning, when he rode out to feed the birds." The sturdy sons of this Karroo farmer had no light duty to perform each day.
Had the distance been great, their chance of escape would have been small. As it was, Gouws overtook one of the party just as he reached a part of the wall which had been mended with mimosa-thorn bushes.
Word Of The Day