If You Killed One Without Permission Your Punishment Would Perhaps Be Greater Than If You Had Killed A Man.

If a bullock becomes ill on the road, the driver will, with his knife, cut all around the sod where the animal has left its footprint.

Lifting this out, he will cut a cross on it and replace it the other side uppermost. This cure is most implicitly believed in and practised.

[Illustration]

The making of the cross is supposed to do great wonders, which your guide is never tired of recounting while he drinks his mate in the unbroken stillness of the evening. Alas! the many bleaching bones on the road testify that this, and a hundred other such remedies, are not always effectual, but the mind of the native is so full of superstitious faith that the testimony of his own eyes will not convince him of the absurdity of his belief. As he stoops over the fire you will notice on his breast some trinket or relic - anything will do if blessed by the priest - and that, he assures you, will save him from every unknown and unseen danger in his land voyage. The priest has said it, and he rests satisfied that no lightning stroke will fell him, no lurking panther pounce upon him, nor will he die of thirst or any other evil. I have remarked men of the most cruel, cutthroat description wearing these treasures with zealous care, especially one, of whom it was said that he had killed two wives.

When your driver is young and amorously inclined you will notice that he never starts for the regions beyond without first providing himself with an owl's skin. This tied on his breast, he tells you, will ensure him favor in the eyes of the females he may meet on the road, and on arrival at his destination.

I once witnessed what at first sight appeared to be a heavy fall of snow coming up with the wind from the south. Strange to relate, this phenomenon turned out to be millions of white butterflies of large size. Some of these, when measured, I found to be four and five inches across the wings. Darwin relates his having, in 1832, seen the same sight, when his men exclaimed that it was "snowing butterflies."

The inhabitants of these trackless wilds are very, very few, but in all directions I saw numbers of ostriches, which run at the least sign of man, their enemy. The fastest horse could not outstrip this bird as with wings outstretched he speeds before the hunter. As Job, perhaps the oldest historian of the world, truly says: "What time she lifteth herself up on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider." The male bird joins his spouse in hatching the eggs, sitting on them perhaps longer turns than the female, but the weather is so hot that little brooding is required. I have had them on the shelf of my cupboard for a week, when the little ones have forced their way out Forty days is the time of incubation, so, naturally, those must have been already sat on for thirty-three days.

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