A STREAM IN CAPE COLONY 95 



teal, or even a great Egyptian goose — when water 

 was abundant — gave variety and interest to the 

 bag. 



Even the man who has tasted the delights of sport 

 and travel among the great game and in the pathless 

 veldt of the far interior of South Africa, can yet 

 recall with the kindliest pleasure the quiet hills and 

 valleys of the old Colony. For the more modest 

 sportsman and the field naturalist there are few 

 pleasanter places to wander in. It is passing strange 

 that while the hunter, the trader, the pioneer, and 

 the prospector press feverishly northward, the Cape 

 Colony — the " old Colony," as all South Africans call 

 it — lies beneath the cold shadow of neglect. The 

 slow-moving Boer sticks to his old acres and is content, 

 and the long-settled British farmers, forming the 

 backbone of the Eastern Province, still steadily 

 prosper. But much of the younger blood joins, and 

 will continue to join, the northward torrent, and it is 

 difficult to see how, in the years to come, Cape Colony 

 is to be kept moving, unless new settlers and fresh 

 blood are introduced from Europe. 



Within the last fifteen years the Cape railways 

 have opened up great districts, yet the land is so 

 vast and distances are so immense that huge portions 

 of the Colony lie to this day as remote, almost as 

 unknown, as in the year 1806, when the Biitish 

 finally took possession of the soil. In the arid north- 



