RAINBOWS OF EAST GRIQUALAND 269 



tainous scenery rejoices the eye. One feels, as it 

 were, in the presence of primeval shapings, nature 

 in her rude beginnings, and then Ugie ! Just a 

 stationmaster's cottage and the limited structures 

 attached to a small rural railway station, together 

 with a few trees, that is Ugie, baldly described. 

 No hamlet can be seen, for it is a good half-mile 

 away, concealed below a slope. The event of the 

 day is the arrival of the train. Ugie station was 

 explained by a dweller on the spot : " After the 

 train has gone, it is the silence of death." 



To the town-dweller, weary of bricks and 

 mortar, of the rushing motor-car and its offspring 

 the motor-bicycle, of clanging tramcar and of 

 unceasing telephone, this is just the place ; to him, 

 seeking rest, it is not the silence of death, but of 

 tranquillity and content. Inhaling grateful gulps 

 of oxygen, he gains strength as he communes with 

 mother nature. 



All the while, though, he wonders, What of 

 the rivers ? What of the trout ? The first river is 

 the Wildebeeste (fishing this and other local rivers 

 necessitates a ten-shilling licence), which is only a 

 couple of hundred yards from the hotel at Ugie, 

 and the spot one's mind first fastens on is the big 

 bridge, a worthy piece of workmanship by the 

 Public Works Department of its day. The village 

 is just a large farmhouse, as it were ; and the day 

 on which we arrived was Ugie's washing day, which 

 means that Kaffir women were busy doing laundry 

 work in the river, just by the bridge. At this spot 

 there seemed likely places for trout ; but the coloured 



