LIFE ON A MOUNTAIN FARM. 89 



rhebok, are to be sought amid the long grey grasses 

 higher up the mountain. We have no lack of cattle 

 to ride ; if we want a fresh nag we have only to have 

 a few driven down and take our pick, and after a 

 week's grooming, the bush-ticks are cleared from 

 their skins, and they begin to present a decent 

 appearance. Sometimes we visit the Kaffir location, 

 or the Boers farming outside our mountain passes 

 Swanepoels Poort in one direction, and Witte Poort, 

 our alternate exit, in the other. 



" 'Twas merry in the glowing morn, among the gleaming grass, 



To wander as we've wandered many a mile, 



And blow the cool tobacco cloud, and watch the white wreaths pass, 

 Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while." 



Following the Plessis River through our poort, 

 and riding some four miles alongside of its alluvial 

 bottom, the Kaffir kraal I have spoken of is arrived 

 at. Here, located upon some Crown lands, is a 

 .considerable encampment of Amakosa Kaffirs, once 

 the bitter foemen of the colonists, now harmless 

 enough. These people, some sixty or seventy in 

 number, live much as they have always lived, in a 

 semi-tribal state. They have their petty chief, who 

 is a friend of our host and a very decent fellow, and 

 they live quietly enough, pursuing a lazy pastoral 

 existence, in which the women-folk do most of the 

 hard work. It is a pity they won't work, but they 

 have the greatest repugnance to enter service with 

 the colonist, save now and then intermittently a 

 few of them as herds. Their huts are enclosed 

 within a ring fence of thorns, and their kraals are 

 near at hand. The chief's wife, N'Sana, a really 

 handsome well-set up woman, is often to be met 

 tending her husband's goats, her baby fastened at her 



