Page:Seven Years in South Africa v1.djvu/431

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From Molopolole to Shoshong.
357

been at least twenty in number. After keeping along them for nearly two miles, I found the tracks divided, but I adhered to the line of the more numerous, taking, as I imagined, a north-west direction.

The turf was close and by no means deep, so that it was at times rather difficult to distinguish the footprints; the broken branches, however, showed clearly enough that the animals had gone that way quite recently. In some places the underwood was very dense, and there were a good many irregularities in the soil. All the time that my attention had been given to the breaking off of the branches, I had quite forgotten to take any account of the direction in which I had been advancing, and after three miles it occurred to me that I might have some difficulty in returning. Whilst I was pondering over my position, I became conscious of a sickening sensation, which I attributed to being tired and hungry, but almost immediately afterwards I felt a most violent pain in my temples, and my head appeared to be whirling round like a windmill. I wandered about for a while, quite realizing to myself that I could not be more than five miles from the waggon, but finally started off rapidly in what must have been precisely the opposite direction. Whether I was overcome by fatigue and pain, or whether I had experienced a slight sun-stroke, I cannot say, but to this day it is a mystery to me why, from the time I left the giraffe-track, till the lengthened shadows told of the approach of