44 A NATURALIST IN THE TRANSVAAL. 



These long-spined acacias and hard-wooded trees alone 

 possessed an adequate resistance to such attacks, and 

 their survival proclaims that they were the fittest in the 

 long struggle for existence which in that phase has now 

 passed away. To-day their danger is from the grass-fires 

 of the Boer or in their capacity for supplying fuel. 



We meet the river which in its serpentine course has 

 twice to be crossed the first time at the base of a 

 quartzite cliff which affords a dwelling-place for a small 

 colony of baboons *, one of which, that has been late in 

 returning from his nightlv excursions, I have sometimes 



C* t_7 v 



surprised early in the day. It was at this spot also 

 where one could meet and secure a specimen of the 

 migrant " European Bee-eater " (Merops apiaster\ a 

 bird of the gayest plumage to be found in the neigh- 

 bourhood ; whilst it was here and beyond my reach that 

 I have watched the wild and majestic flight of a 

 Charaxes butterfly, a species I was never able to secure. 

 This river, so clear and shallow during the dry season, 

 was sometimes found impassable during the rains. Our 

 way becomes more tortuous as we ascend and descend 

 the ridges of the higher ground till we reach about 

 the roughest piece of road that man ever drove over, 

 or that can be surpassed in South-African driving. A 

 hill with a surface of broken rock and bearing a few 

 trees has to be crossed ; the road, if it can be called 

 one, rises steeply up one side, crosses the crest, and 

 abruptly descends the other extremity. The whole way is 

 one mass of broken quartzite jumbled together in titanic 

 undulation, and one hardly knew at which to be most 

 thankful for having driven up one side, or safely 

 travelled down the other. A narrow road ensues, with 

 trees overhead, a river beneath on one side, and the 

 quartzite hills rising high and rough-heAvn around us. 

 Great blocks of rock strewn here and there, now peace- 

 fully surrounded by herbage, tell the story of the wild 

 crash in which at some bygone time, they have broken 

 away from the parent block above and plunged head- 



* These kill the young sheep, and are therefore assiduously shot by the 

 farmers. 



