II 



A NATAL TROUT 



is a delightfully soft sound about 

 the word Mooi, when you hear it from the 

 lips of a South African. It is rendered better 

 by " lovely " than " beautiful," and lovely 

 it is to arrive by a stream of running water, 

 with infinite possibilities of trout therein, after 

 a long sojourn on the high veld in a dry season, 

 when all vegetation has been burned up by a 

 hot sun by day or nipped by frost at night, 

 and the nerves of the brain-workers are as 

 strained and responsive as banjo strings. For 

 some folk the drawback to visiting the Mooi 

 River is that in the best trout-stocked parts 

 there is no accommodation to be found on its 

 banks. You must camp. Camping means 

 transport, and in the days of which I write 

 transport is difficult to obtain ; but we are in 

 a position to surmount that difficulty. A twenty- 

 mile drive in a Cape cart, behind four mules, 

 brings us from the nearest railway station to 



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