Page:Seven Years in South Africa v1.djvu/146

 comparative, the district of Griqualand West appearing to me singularly deficient in natural beauty.

After rushing on their way from the south in numerous rapids, the waters of the Vaal here subside into a broad muddy channel, and flow peacefully on to the mouth of the Harts River, which comes from the north-east. Just before the streams unite, the Vaal makes a sudden turn to the west, and so flows on for a little distance, when it bends away in a south-south-west direction. Where it makes this last bend, the bank of the river is swampy and overgrown by trees, and is the haunt of wild cats, lynxes, and other beasts of prey, besides herds of wild swine.

The southern portion of the right-hand bank is a fertile plain, though it is only close to the river-mouth that trees grow to any considerable size. The upper layer is loam upon a substratum of clay. The opposite shore of the Harts River is much higher, rising in a rocky cliff composed of stratified schist, underlying chalk-beds poor in fossils, and forming the table-land connected with the N’Kaap. This highland descends abruptly to the Vaal River, just above the bend, and is intersected by a glen which lies above 300 yards from the mouth of the Harts River, but which must not be confounded with the Klippdachs grotto, discovered by Hübner. Formerly both shores on the lower part of the river were in the possession of the Batlapin chief, Yantje, who resides at Likatlong, three miles from the right bank, and now receives an annual payment of 200l., as a dependent of the British Government.