MYSTERIOUSLY CONSTRUCTED COPJF.S. 



293 



time that was occupied in gaining the vicinity of these 

 miniature hills, but at length the desired end was 

 accomplished, but not before my patience was nearly 

 exhausted. 



Ox-waggon travelling is admissible when no other 

 means of progression can be obtained, but it is terribly 

 slow, terribly trying, siid terribly disappointing. It 

 suits Boers and natives who know not the value of 

 time, and so never are in a hurry ; but to a European, 

 or more especially to a Yankee, it simply is heart- 

 breaking. 



But the reward that had to be laboured for so hard 

 was assuredly grand compensation, for the like to 

 what I now gazed upon I never saw before ; to 

 describe the scene I will try, but I doubt if any writer 

 could do it justice. From an unusually green and 

 level plain sprang up innumerable detached copj'es, 

 many reaching to an altitude of three hundred feet. 

 Their outlines were as dissimilar as it would be 

 possible to imagine, yet all were composed of in- 

 numerable gigantic pieces of silvery grey stone, that 

 looked as if they had been hewn out by man's art. 

 But what manner of men could they be that per- 

 formed such gigantic work ? To veritable Titans alone 

 could such labour be possible. To my mind the 

 heaps looked like debris remaining after a huge city 

 had been constructed, or what might be left of 

 immense structures, after it had been rended to 

 pieces by a terrible up-heaval of the earth. It 

 looked utterly impossible to think that some kind of 

 human beings had no hand in cutting, shaping and 

 fashioning those flat and right-angle cornered stones ; 

 but if so, how could they have been transported to 

 where they reposed ? for as far as I could judge no 

 similar description of stone is to be found except in 

 these copjes. The base of the first that I reached 

 was so densely covered and bound together by 

 vegetable grow th, that I could not reach the substance 



