Dutoitspan. I went first of all to a friend at Bultfontein, intending to stay with him until the 6th, and there to complete my preparations. Not alone was it my scheme to explore Southern-Central Africa, but I hardly expected to return to Cape Colony at all, consequently my arrangements on leaving this time were rather more complicated than they had been on the two previous occasions.
Quitting Bultfontein on the day proposed, I proceeded for eleven miles, and made my first halt by the side of a sandy rain-pool, enclosed by the rising ground that was visible from the diamond-fields. We slept in the mimosa woods, through which the road to the Transvaal runs for several miles, and the deep sand of which is so troublesome to vehicles.
On the 7th we passed the Rietvley and Keyle farms, around which we saw a good many herds of springbocks in the meadow-lands.
The next day’s march took us by the farms at Rietfontein, and Pan Place, and we made our night camp on Coetze’s land. Near these farms, which lay at the foot of the considerable hill called the Plat Berg, I secured some feathered game, amongst which was a partridge. To me the most interesting spot in the day’s journey was a marshy place on Coetze’s farm; it was a pond with a number of creeks and various little islands, which were the habitat of water-fowl, particularly wild ducks, moor-hens, and divers. In the evening I called upon Mynheer Coetze, and in the course of conversation mentioned his ponds with their numerous birds. He surprised me somewhat by his reply. “Yes,” he said, “the birds breed there, and we
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