crtAP, x.] WIHAZES, SHARKS, AND OSTRICHES. 191
faces about eight o'clock, and to my intense delight I saw in the disl lace two vessels at anchor in Wallisch Bay. We arrived there at ten it the forenoon, not a bit tired, but highly excited. The vessels were whal !rs ; all the Scheppmansdorf party were on the beach, and seeing and tall ing to so many people seemed quite another world to me, after my I mg and almost solitary ramble. These whalers were the very first ves°. els, excepting one, which had touched at the Bay since my arrival is the country. I now put the store-house into habitable order, and sE ttled down, awaiting the arrival of the ship I expected, which was to bring me all my letters, my clothes, and everything that I had left behind me at Cape Town.
Days passed, the cold was bitter, and I passed most of the daytime rolled up in my caress. The wind whistled through every cranny, and though the sun was vertical at noon, yet its rays never seemed to touch us. I employed myself fishing with a seine net, doing a little whale fishery in the bay, and in trying to harpoon small sharks out of my mackintosh pontoon ; one gave me a capsize. I shot and captured one, and slew but lost three others ; at least, though habitues of the place, they never reappeared. I rode one day with Andersson to Scheppmansdorf, when we saw a brood of young ostriches, each about a foot high, with their parents, and gave chase. The creatures could run very nearly as fast as we, and had quite as good a wind, so, having a long start, they gave us a severe chase before we came up to them, when we slew six. Returning from Scheppmansdorf I drove the three miles in a cart that Mr. Bain had made himself, and as we were cantering over the plain I again saw the ostriches, and went after them in nay chariot. I soon came up with them, and, jumping out, captured six more. [Their skulls were wanted by Prof. Owen.]
Christmas and New Year's Day had passed, when, early in January, IS 52, as the morning haze cleared away, the sails of a schooner loomed large before us; in a moment I was in my pontoon and paddled out to her, jumped on board, and received my letters of a year and nine months' interval. They were not indeed unchequered by melancholy news ; but for the intelligence they conveyed of my own family circle I had every reasons to Le,grateful. Thus closed my anxieties and doubts. I had much indeed to be thankful for. I had not lost one of my many men either through violence or through sickness in the long and harassing journey I had made. It was undertaken with servants who, at starting, were anything but qualified for their work, who grumbled, held
