hobbling the camels, who in their turn made all haste to devour this
life-giving vegetation.

Camp made, we set to work on the well, sinking our boxes as before, our
black friends watching us with evident interest. Presently we heard a
shrill call, and, looking up, saw the rest of the family hesitating
between curiosity and fear. The old gin reassured them and they
approached--a man, a young mother with a baby at the breast, and two more
children. There were evidently more not far off who were too timid to
come on, as we heard calls from beyond the ridge. This buck was a fine,
upstanding fellow, very lithe and strong, though thin and small of
bone. Dressed in the fashionable desert costume of nothing at all,
excepting a band of string round his forehead, and a similar belt round
his waist, from which hung all round him the spoils of the chase, with a
spear in one hand and throwing-sticks in the other he looked a queer
figure in the setting sun--iguanas and lizards dangling head down from his
hair and his waist-string--indeed a novel way of carrying game. His lady
followed him with a cooliman under her arm, with a further supply of
reptiles and rats.

The whole family established themselves close to us. Their camp had been
near the crest of the ridge, but, apparently liking our company, they
shifted their household goods, and, starting a fire within twenty yards
of us, were soon engaged in cooking and eating their supper. The process
of preparing a meal is simple in the extreme. The rats are plucked (for
they do not skin the animal, but pluck the hair as we do feathers from a
chicken), and thrown on to a pile of hot wood-ashes with no further
preparation, and are greedily devoured red and bloody, and but barely
warm. A lizard or iguana calls for a further exercise of culinary
knowledge. First, a crooked twig is forced down the throat and the inside