KLOOF AND KARROO 



SPORT, LEGEND, AND NATURAL HISTORY 



IN 



CAPE COLONY. 



CHAPTER I. 

 A CAPE CART JOURNEY. 



A FEW years since I travelled with two friends 

 from Port Elizabeth up country to GraafF 

 Reinet and thence across the Karroo Plains 

 to a mountain farm in the Witteberg, a range west of 

 the Zwart Ruggens district, where we afterwards 

 sojourned. This journey was performed with a Cape 

 cart and a pair of horses, assisted for part of the 

 distance by a buggy and two other horses. Upon 

 our way we encountered scenery of never-failing 

 magnificence, execrable roads, and occasional odds 

 and ends of shooting foretastes of the pleasures 

 afterwards to come. To three young fellows fresh 

 to South Africa, the journey and its incidents were 

 replete with untiring charms. Since that time the 

 railway systems of the Cape have been greatly ex- 

 tended ; but the Colony has so vast an area that 

 even now a great portion of the travelling has to 

 be accomplished either by Cape cart, on horseback, 



