Page:Seven Years in South Africa v1.djvu/142

 great distance by their black tails, and by the black stripes on the upper and front parts of their bodies. They must rank with the springbock and blessbock gazelles, in being the most common game on the treeless plains, from the western region of Cape Colony as far as lat. 23° north.

Late in the afternoon we turned into a small glen, at its opening into the Vaal valley. A few little canvas huts, and some tents, could be seen peeping gracefully from the dark green foliage, and constituted all that now remained of the once flourishing town of Gong Gong.

Hence we proceeded still northwards. Some white specks in the distance, on the steep rocky cliffs overhanging the Vaal, marked the sites of New Kierke Rush, and other places that a few years since had been the prosperous settlements of the river-diggings. The journey from Gong Gong to Delportshope, which is about a mile from the mouth of the Harts, was one of the most uncomfortable that I have ever made in a bullock-waggon, and I was at a loss to comprehend how, in the flourishing times of the diggings, such a road could have sufficed for the requirements of a population of some thousands. It was no better than the channel of a boulder-stream, and travelling along it was equally difficult and painful. No sooner had one of our back wheels, by the combined efforts of the six oxen goaded on mercilessly by the driver’s whip, been dragged out of a hole left by a rain-pool, than one of the front wheels would come in contact with a huge stone a foot high, which it was