Leaving the Orange River at Bethulie Bridge, we continued on the main
road till the morning, when we struck off in a northeasterly direction
for Ahival North, which was reached in a few days. The town is built
close to the Orange River, and promises to be a place of much
importance, being on the high road between all eastern ports of the Free
State, the diamond fields, and the interior. It is a pretty town, a
great number of the houses having gardens around them filled with trees.
We stayed here for a few days, and recommenced our journey down the
country, soon exchanging the plains of the Free State and northern
districts for the alternate mountain passes and stretches of open karoo
of the middle veldt. Passing through the hamlet of Jamestown, with its
one store and few straggling houses, we entered the mountain passes
which cross the Stromberg range. Soon after entering the first rocky
defile we encountered another violent thunderstorm, which, though
unattended by the disagreeable features of our first one, delayed us
over a day. We travelled on through the hills, passing through
Dordrecht, a place which bears the reputation of being the coldest place
in the country.
It is a straggling village of about eight hundred inhabitants, with a
few stores and two or three churches. A resident remarked to us, as he
pointed with pride to the village, "I have lived here for seventeen
years, and seen this place grow up around me," in a similar tone of
voice to that in which we had heard old Chicagoans say the same thing.
But there was a difference in the size of the villages!
The town lies on the northern slope of the Stromberg, and we had several
days' mountain travelling after we left it.
An impression the traveller receives in South Africa, more especially in
the mountain regions, is one of ghostly stillness. The wild, rocky
hills rear themselves up all around, and often there is not a breath of
wind stirring to break the awful quiet. Sometimes this silence is
oppressive, and it is a relief to hear even the hideous chattering of a
monkey or the unmusical cackle of a Kafir's laugh. The giant mountains
in the background seem to look down reproachfully at the traveller for
invading their solitudes, while the dark ravines and deep clefts, in
their rocky sides, suggest all sorts of nameless horrors.
Tigers, or rather leopards, abound in these mountains, but are seldom
seen except by the solitary farmers living in the hills, who are in
perpetual warfare with these savage destroyers of their flocks. One
morning we found a romantic glen on the side of the mountain, full of
rare ferns, and with a beautiful stream of water dripping and echoing as
it gushed out from the rocks. It was a lovely day, and we took our
karosses and rugs to the spot, and picnicked there. We carried along
"Nicholas Nickleby" to read aloud. Since that day I always associate
the Cheeryble Brothers with ferns, and think of Do-the-boys Hall as
built on top of a precipitous mountain, with a smiling, sunshiny valley
lying at its feet.
The nights were very cold in the Stromberg, and we required all the rugs
and karosses we had to keep us warm at night, sunrise nearly always
showing everything around us, from the tent of the wagon to the blankets
of the slumbering boys, covered with a white hoar frost.
Our wagoner told us an experience of a cold night in the Free State. He
said: "In the middle of June, two years ago, my partner Jim and myself
started from Bloemfontein for Pretoria. As the shooting was good on
that road and walking cheap, we decided to go on foot, taking with us a
couple of boys to carry our traps, which were not very extensive,
consisting, in fact, of a change of linen, or rather flannels, a pair of
blankets each, the cooking utensils, and a spare gun. We had for our
companion a young man whom we had met in Bloemfontein a few days
previous to our departure, a young Scotchman but lately arrived in the
country. As he wanted to go to Pretoria he proposed to join us. The
nights during the winter are very cold on the elevated plateaus of the
Free State and the Transvaal.
"Though the midday sun is almost as warm as in summer, one needs to be
well provided with covering if they propose passing the night on the
veldt. To give some idea of the cold of the plains at night, I may tell
you that a few winters ago several natives, members of a tribe called
the Knob Noses, who were on their way to the fields, were frozen stiff
and stark on the road from Pretoria to Potchefstrom. The road we
followed was a fair sample of most of the Free State roads, a tolerably
straight path across an uninteresting, unwooded, undulating plain.
Starting about two o'clock in the afternoon, we walked briskly with
occasional halts for coffee until about ten o'clock at night, when the
moon shone at its full, and we decided to turn in for the night. The
wind was already blowing pretty fresh, and we looked about for the place
in the veldt where the ant-hills were thickest so we might set fire to
two of them to heat our kettles, and to keep us warm during the night.
After having had a cup of coffee, and sat round the fire until we were
all thoroughly warmed, Jim and I slipped off our boots, and putting them
under our heads for pillows, pulled our blankets over our heads and
feet, and were soon fast asleep, of course imagining that Mac would do
the same. About two o'clock, when the night was at its coldest, we were
awakened by a dreadful groaning, and emerging from our coverings were
astonished to see Mac huddled upon the ground with nothing over him but
a _rubber overcoat_, shivering, chattering, and moaning piteously. The
fire was out, an icy wind was sweeping around the veldt. `Good
gracious, Mac, what is the matter; where are your blankets?' `I
d-d-didn't bring any,' chattered the unfortunate youth. `Didn't bring
any; then what on earth was that big bundle the Kafir was carrying?'
`That is my b-best clothes,' moaned the sufferer.
"We were soon up and bundled the poor fellow into our blankets, and
waking the boys we made up a roaring fire, and thawed him back to life.
The next day, on arriving at Wynberg, you should have seen Mac rushing
into the first store, and regardless of `siller,' buy two of the
thickest blankets to be had. This man had never before slept outside
four walls in his life, and had imagined that any place in Africa must
needs be suffocatingly hot at all times.
"I don't think he made the same mistake again."