192 KLOOF AND KARROO. 



to an opening, and here a most singular sight fell 

 upon my vision. Hitherto we had been so shut 

 in that the sun failed to penetrate between the 

 narrowing cliffs — except, probably, for a short while 

 as it passed immediately above them. 



" Suddenly, as the gorge widened on either hand, 

 a blaze of sunlight glowed and glistened on the 

 upright walls to the left hand of us. As I looked 

 thither, one of the most marvellous sights in nature 

 was, in an instant, laid bare ; a sight that few 

 mortals, even in seons upon seons of the past, 

 have ever gazed upon, in these remote and most 

 inaccessible regions of the Orange River. The 

 wall of mountain on our left stood up straight before 

 the hot sunlight, a dark reddish-brown mass of 

 rock — I suppose some five hundred feet in height — 

 and then sloped away more smoothly to its summit 

 that overlooked the river, as I should judge, about 

 a mile distant. As we came out into the sunshine, 

 Klaas, pointing to the cliff, ejaculated, in quite an 

 excited way, ' De paarl ! de paarl ! kek, sieur, 

 kek ! ' (The pearl! the pearl! look, sir, look!). 

 Looking upwards at the mass of rock, my eye was 

 suddenly arrested by a gleaming mass that protruded 

 from the dead wall of mountain. Half-dazzled, I 

 shaded my eyes with my hand, and looked again. It 

 was a most strange and beautiful thing that I beheld, 

 a freak of nature the most curious that I had ever 

 set eyes on. The glittering mass was a huge 

 egg-shaped ball of quartz, of a semi-transparent 

 milky hue, flashing and gleaming, in the radiant 

 sunshine, with the glorious prismatic colours that 

 flash from the unlucky opal. But yet more 

 strange, above the ' paarl,' as Klaas quaintly called 



