Lodges in the Wilderness

The world moves rapidly and with increasing momentum. Even regions remote from those communities which the stress of increasing population and the curse of unleisured industrial...

Andries Esterhuizen had lived all his life on the fringe of Bushmanland. His farm, Silverfontein, which lay a little more than twenty miles from the Ookiep Mines, had been for m...

Daybreak found us sitting close to the candle-bush fire, for the air of morning was chill. Soon the kettle boiled and coffee was prepared. Meat was badly needed; we had eaten th...

Arched, sore, gritty and with overstrung nerves I sought my bed early, hoping that sleep would come soon and obliterate the effects of that day of turmoil. I meant to shoot an o...

Another glorious morning; the air was like cooled, sparkling wine. I knew, both by the taste and the direction of the wind, that the day would be as mild as it ever was in the d...

The ocean-plain to the south of Typhon and the camp we had broken up, is probably the loneliest among the less frequented parts of Bushmanland. No Trek Boer ever ventures there...

Morning,--and the cool west wind, laden with refreshment, hastened over the desert's rim to where I lay, still on the border-land of sleep. The sweeping garments of the air-spir...

That mountain tract stretching like a back-bone through Namaqualand, parallel with the coast upon which the Atlantic ceaselessly thunders, is the region which catches the sparse...

Daybreak,--and the chill sea-wind was still surging up the gorge. It was delightful; nevertheless, even among the sheltering trees, a fire was very comforting. The pageant of gr...

Soon after daybreak we saddled up. That day our hunting was to be northward, for thither all the oryx spoor trended. Andries, Hendrick and I rode off together. We had to pass th...

Just before the Orange River, wearied from its long travail, slides into the Atlantic, it bends in a sickle-shaped curve. Its course for the previous three hundred miles has bee...

through dusty dongas. We bumped and clattered over high, steep-sided ramparts of rock. But the skill of Andries as a driver, the endurance of the oxen and the strength of the wa...

In the grey dawn I arose and resumed preparations for the expedition. When, after breakfast, I sent word to the scherms that I wished the guides to report themselves for duty, I...

Reliable information reached me to the effect that the Half-Breed ostrich poachers had again been at their nefarious work. So we decided, Andries and I, to make a swoop upon the...

My eyes have gazed their last upon the face of the desert. Although I love her still,--although the memory of her burning ardour, her splendid indifference and her wealth of ill...