Page:Seven Years in South Africa v1.djvu/163

 nostrils, chuckling out “Monati! monati!” (That is fine! that is fine!)

In the course of the afternoon we passed a farmstead composed of three huts, which in cleanliness surpassed anything I ever saw amongst the Batlapin tribe. They were built of strong stakes, and were very spacious. Beneath a shed formed of rushes stood a good substantial waggon, and in the court-yard was another smaller waggon, to which the farmer and his labourers were doing some repairs. Besides this I noticed—what was a great rarity in the Batlapin country in 1873—a good, useful plough. Half a dozen leathern milk-bags, too, were hanging in the cattle-enclosure. In the shed, two Batlapin men were busy making a waggon-tilt out of an old piece of canvas; and I do not remember ever having seen any of the tribe working so industriously. Fifteen little black children were playing merrily enough in the immediate neighbourhood of the farm, none of them having the least pretence to clothing beyond a narrow strip of leather serving for an apron; a few elder children were minding the cattle on the river-bank a mile away; and altogether the place had a singular air of comfort and prosperity.

Nearer and nearer we approached the heights that had opened before us in the morning. They were the most northerly branch of the chain of hills beginning near Hebron, on the right bank of the Vaal. I found the geological formation especially interesting, the rocks sometimes standing in up-