170 KLOOF AND KARROO. 



River, between the great falls and the sea ? No ! 

 I don't suppose you do, for very few people have 

 ever trekked down it ; still fewer have ever got down 

 to the water from the great walls of desolate and 

 precipitous mountain that environ its course, and 

 except myself and two others, neither of whom 

 can ever reveal its whereabouts, I believe no mortal 

 soul upon this earth has ever set eyes upon the 

 place I am going to tell you about. Listen ! 



" In 1871, about the time the diamond-fields were 

 discovered, and people began to flock to Griqualand 

 West, I was rather bitten with the mania, and for 

 some months worked like a nigger on the fields ; 

 during that time I got to know a good deal about 

 stones. I soon tired of the life, however, and finally 

 sold my claim, and what diamonds I had acquired, 

 fitted up a waggon, gathered together some native 

 servants, and trekked again for those glorious 

 hunting grounds of the interior, glad enough to 

 resume my old and ever-charming life. Amongst 

 my servants was a little Bushman, Klaas by name, 

 whom I afterwards found a perfect treasure at 

 spooring and hunting. Like all true Bushmen, he 

 was dauntless as a wounded lion, and determined 

 as a rhinoceros, which is saying a good deal. I 

 suppose Klaas had had more varied experience of 

 South African life than any native I ever met. 

 Originally, he had come as a child from the borders 

 of the Orange River, where he had been taken 

 prisoner in a Boer foray, in which nearly all his 

 relations were shot down. He had then been 

 ' apprenticed ' in the family of one of his captors, 

 where he had acquired a certain knowledge of semi- 

 civilised life. From the Boer family of the back 



