After leaving Klerksdorp, we travelled the next day in our wagon
thirty-two miles, halting for the night at Potchefstroom, which is not
only one of the oldest, but one of the most important of the Transvaal
districts. Recently the presence of gold-bearing reefs has been
demonstrated in many parts of the division. On our way we passed, during
the afternoon, a spot on the road where a flock of not less than fifty
of those unclean birds, vultures, were hovering over and around the
carcase of a recently dead bullock. These birds are the scavengers of
this part of the world; they feed greedily on carrion, and rapidly pull
a dead animal completely to pieces, leaving only the bones, which
afterwards lie bleaching on the Veldt, to mark the spot where it has
fallen in death--whether it be either horse, or mule, or bullock--left
to die, worn out with fatigue by its unfeeling owners.
Before leaving Potchefstroom, the next morning, I paid a hasty visit to
the Fort and Cemetery, rendered so tragically historical in connection
with the Transvaal war. It was here that my lamented friend, the late
Chevalier Forssman, was shut up with his family for ninety days, and
lost during the siege, two of his children, a son and a daughter. I was
much struck with the picturesque appearance of Potchefstroom. It has a
population of about 2,000. Another long two days' journeying of about
sixty-four miles, through a prettier country than the wide wilderness
of the boundless and treeless plain, we had hitherto passed through in
the Western part of the Transvaal, brought us to Johannesburg.
[Illustration: Decorative]
[Illustration: Decorative]