ACROSS CAMDEBOO TO NAROEKAS POORT. 65 



expel these robbers, I will procure you a large grant 

 of land within the poort." The offer was accepted, 

 a commando was raised, and the fierce Bushmen, 

 fighting grimly to the last, were, after great trouble, 

 all slain or expelled from the mountains that for 

 centuries untold had given them shelter. Bushmen 

 there are still in these parts, but they are at all 

 events semi-civilised and quite harmless, and they 

 now prove themselves the best of native servants, 

 as hunters, herds, and grooms. 



With our coaching-horn we woke the slumbering 

 echoes of these grim defile as we passed blithely 

 if laboriously through, and then for the remaining 

 five or six miles we drove through some of the 

 wildest and most sublime mountain scenery in the 

 Colony. The gaunt and desolate masses of Witteberg 

 heaved everywhere around in solemn and rather 

 awful grandeur. Down in the valley, far beneath 

 us, ran the river, fringed with bush and thorn, and 

 here and there passing through groves of acacia. 

 It was a magnificent drive, marred only by the 

 frightfully rough travelling. Road there was none ; 

 long staircases of rock, down which we banged and 

 rattled, huge boulders sticking up here and there 

 in the middle of the track, and occasional deep 

 holes, made things more than lively for us ; and 

 through all this had come our host and hostess and 

 family, to take possession of their mountain farm. 

 Every stick of furniture, every plank of wood about 

 their house, all that made up their home, had come 

 over these six awful miles of mountain track. 

 Colonists at the Cape, especially they who pitch 

 their tents among the mountains, have some rough 

 experiences indeed. But at last, after one slight 



5 



