138 MELTON AND HOMESPUN 



Well do I remember my first acquaintance with the 

 place. I was jogging quietly across the veld, after an 

 early morning visit to the then recently imported pack of 

 English foxhounds which were kennelled at Geldenhuis, 

 when a bunch of duck passed over my head, and I marked 

 them down into the Wemmer dam. Upon nearer ap- 

 proach I discovered that the pan of water was simply 

 alive with fowl, paddling in and out of the network of 

 open channels amongst the dense carpet-like growths 

 of beautiful aquatic plants. Determined to pay a visit 

 to the water at an early date, I cantered into the " Golden 

 City," and that very same evening made arrangements 

 with a couple of English mining engineers and a well- 

 known Dutch advocate to shoot the dam two days later. 



Shortly before dawn of the appointed morning my 

 friends and I, accompanied by a numerous following of 

 blubber-lipped Kafirs, left the slumbering and odorous 

 the sanitary men were engaged in their unsavoury work 

 city behind us, and once free of tailing heaps, head-gears, 

 noisy stamp batteries, and gold mines generally, we set 

 out on a bee-line across the veld. We had not gone very 



far, when G 's pony put a foot into an aard vark's 



(ant bear's) earth, and, turning a complete somersault, 

 gave his rider what looked to be a very nasty " purler." 



G , who rode well under ten stone, was but little the 



worse for his involuntary fall however, and was quickly 

 in the saddle again. 



It was broad daylight by the time we arrived at the 

 head of the dam, where a " pow-wow " was held to 

 instruct our ebon beaters in the manner in which the 

 dam was to be driven. Having learned their lesson, 

 off went the Kafirs, led by a huge Zulu, who bore the 



