158 KLOOF AND KARROO. 



however, nothing daunted, we resumed our way. 

 All that morning we toiled up rough and jagged 

 mountain-sides, through deep kloofs, and along flat, 

 table-like, hill tops, littered here and there with huge 

 dolmen-like boulders, and covered with dense crops 

 of long waving sour-grass, in search of game ; it 

 was a hot morning as the sun gained strength. 

 Twice only did we sight antelopes before twelve 

 o'clock ; once a brace of klipspringers, far up on a 

 rocky krantz, and quite inaccessible, except at the 

 long range of six or seven hundred yards. Lying 

 flat upon the ground, we put up our sights, and 

 essayed the forlorn hope. As I expected, the bullets 

 struck short, for in the marvellous clearness of this 

 atmosphere, one is apt too often to misjudge 

 distances in this way ; only incessant practice and the 

 constant habit of pacing out distances can get over 

 this difficulty. As the bullets rattled into the cliff" 

 below them, the klipspringers bounded away up the 

 precipitous crags, and were soon lost to view ; then 

 the echoes of our shots, reverberating loudly among 

 the rocks, came rolling back. We obtained just a 

 glimpse of a vaal or grey rhebok a little later, but he 

 got our wind, and was away long before we could 

 get near him. At twelve o'clock we rested for a 

 mouthful of lunch, and I then discovered that 

 Jackson had had about enough of it ; the lack of 

 sport had no doubt something to do with this, added 

 to his somewhat indifferent health. We determined 

 to walk quietly for another hour or two, and then, if 

 unsuccessful, to make our way to a store that lay just 

 outside the poort, or pass from the mountains to the 

 plains beyond. Still no luck ; we tramped steadily 

 on for two hours longer, and then rested upon a 



