Indeed, their rough, wild life had agreed with Benita
extraordinarily well, so well that any who had known her in the streets
of London would scarcely have recognized her as the sunburnt, active and
well-formed young woman who sat that night by the camp fire.
All the horses they had brought with them had been sold, except some
which had died, and three that were "salted," or proof against the
deadly horse sickness, which they took on with them. Their own servants
also had been sent back to Rooi Krantz in charge of a Scotch cart laden
with ivory, purchased from Boer hunters who had brought it down from the
north of the Transvaal. Therefore, for this was part of the bargain, the
three Makalanga were now their only attendants who drove and herded the
cattle, while Benita cooked the food which the two white men shot, or
sometimes bought from natives.
For days they had been passing through a country that was practically
deserted, and now, having crossed a high nek, the same on which Robert
Seymour had left his waggon, they were camped in low land which, as they
could see by the remains of walls that appeared everywhere, had once
been extensively enclosed and cultivated. To their right was a rising
mountainous ground, beyond which, said the Makalanga, ran the Zambesi,
and in front of them, not more than ten miles away, a great isolated
hill, none other than that place that they had journeyed so far to
reach, Bambatse, round which flowed the great river.
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