Page:Seven Years in South Africa v2.djvu/49

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From Jacobsdal to Shoshong.
25

hours, as the half-ruined condition of the bridge made it necessary for us to use even more caution than on my previous journey.

I spent a pleasant day in the Buisport glen, and had some good fishing in the pools of the Marupa stream, as well as some excellent sport on its banks. The upper pools contain many more fish and water-lizards than those near the opening of the glen, for being deeper and more shady they are less lable to get dried up. Some of the mimosas and willows that overhang the stream were sixty feet high, and as much as four feet in diameter.

Next day we passed the Witfontein and Sandfontein farms, both in the Bushveldt. The residents at Witfontein were making preparations for a great hunting-excursion into the interior, where they expressed a hope that they might meet me again. Zwart’s farm I found quite forsaken, its owner having started off on a similar errand the week before; from his last excursion he had brought back some ostriches and elands. Some Boers that we met informed me that fresh stragglers from the Transvaal were continually joining Van Zyl, and that the Damara emigrants would soon feel themselves sufficiently strong to continue their north-westerly progress; their place of rendezvous was on the left bank of the Crocodile River between the Notuany and the Sirorume.

Before the day was at an end we reached Fourier’s farm at Brackfontein, and spent the night there, encamping next day at Schweinfurth’s Pass, in the Dwars mountains. By the evening we had come as far as the springs in the rocks on the spurs of the Chwene-Chwene heights, whence we skirted the