I hope you will come and see it on your way back, though it is not as fine as it appears from a distance.

It would be very pleasant after all these years to talk to an English gentleman again." Then we parted, I rather offended because he did not seem to include me in the description, he calling after us-- "Stick close to the path through the patch of big trees, for the ground is rather swampy there and it's getting dark." Presently we came to the place he mentioned where the timber, although scattered, was quite large for South Africa, of the yellow-wood species, and interspersed wherever the ground was dry with huge euphorbias, of which the tall finger-like growths and sad grey colouring looked unreal and ghostlike in the waning light.

Following the advice given to us, we rode in single file along the narrow path, fearing lest otherwise we should tumble into some bog hole, until we came to higher land covered with the scattered thorns of the country.
"Did that bush give you any particular impression ?" asked Anscombe a minute or two later.
"Yes," I answered, "it gave me the impression that we might catch fever there.

See the mist that lies over it," and turning in my saddle I pointed with the rifle in my hand to what looked like a mass of cotton wool over which, without permeating it, hung the last red glow of sunset, producing a curious and indeed rather unearthly effect.

"I expect that thousands of years ago there was a lake yonder, which is why trees grow so big in the rich soil." "You are curiously mundane, Quatermain," he answered.