plain, towards the highlands of the interior.

The country through which the long line of waggons passed was as varied
as can well be imagined, being one of the wildest and least inhabited
tracts of the frontier districts. The features of the landscape changed
continually from dark jungle to rich park-like scenery, embellished with
graceful clumps of evergreens, and from that again to the sterility of
savage mountains or parched and desert plains. Sometimes they plodded
wearily over the karroo for twenty miles or more at a stretch without
seeing a drop of water. At other times they came to a wretched mud
hovel, the farm-house of a boer, near a permanent spring of water.
Again, they were entangled among the rugged, roadless gorges and
precipices of a mountain range, through which no vehicle of European
construction could have passed without absolute demolition, and up parts
of which the Cape-waggons were sometimes compelled to go by means of two
teams,--that is, from twenty to thirty or more oxen,--being attached to
each. At other times they had to descend and re-ascend the precipitous
banks of rivers whose beds were sometimes quite dry and paved with
mighty boulders.

"It's an unco' rough country," observed Sandy Black to Charlie
Considine, as they stood watching the efforts of a double team to haul
one of their waggons up a slope so rugged and steep that the mere
attempt appeared absolute madness in their eyes.

Considine assented, but was too much interested in the process to
indulge in further remark.

"Gin the rope brek," continued Sandy, "I wadna gie muckle for the
waggon. It'll come rowin' an' stottin' doon the hill like a bairn's
ba'."

"No fear of the rope," said Hans Marais, as he passed at the moment to
render assistance to Ruyter, Jemalee, Booby, and some others, who were
shouting at the pitch of their voices, and plying the long waggon-whips,
or the short sjamboks, with unmerciful vigour.

Hans was right. The powerful "trektow" stood the enormous strain, and
the equally powerful waggon groaned and jolted up the stony steep until
it had nearly gained the top, when an unfortunate drop of the right
front wheel into a deep hollow, combined with an unlucky and
simultaneous elevation of the left back wheel by a stone, turned the
vehicle completely over on its side. The hoops of the tilt were broken,
and much of the lading was deposited in a hollow beside the waggon, but
a few of the lighter and smal