chap. xvii. THE BOOMAH PASS. 133 
two miles from the river the troops entered the narrow 
defile. It may, perhaps, be well that I should en¬ 
deavour to describe the ground. A little on the left 
was a high precipice, something in the shape of a 
crescent, its two horns falling away to a ledge. The far 
end one abutted on the Keiskama River, which ran on 
the right hand side of the track and conformed to the 
shape of the precipice, leaving a narrow belt of forest- 
wood between the rocky mountain and the river. The 
road or track wound through this forest of large trees, 
rocks fallen from the perpendicular cliffs, and tangled 
underwood. There were boulders as big as castles, and 
you had to serpentine and make your way through these 
as best you could. On the opposite side of the river 
there was a peninsula-shaped spit or tongue of land 
sloping down to its banks, with conical-shaped hills at 
the far end of the tongue ; this slope was covered 
with bush and large olive-trees, as was also the rocky 
mountain on the left, and in fact the whole of the 
country around the pass itself. 
The troops entered the pass in the order before in¬ 
dicated, and the Kafir police and Cape Mounted Rifles 
passed through unmolested. Colonel Mackinnon and 
myself were at the head of the cavalry ; and I pointed 
out the difficulty of the pass if it had been held by the 
Kafirs, as we should have had to dislodge them from 
each successive rock. Up to this time no Kafirs had 
