ad yet encountered.

Remembering some of the breakneck gorges of the Zuurberg, Jerry Goldboy
said that he didn't believe it possible for any route to be worse than
that over which they had already passed, to which Sandy Black replied
with a "humph!" and an opinion that "the field-cornet o' the distric'
was likely to know what he was speakin' aboot." But Jerry never had
been, and of course never could be, convinced by reason. "Nothing," he
candidly admitted, "but hard facts had the least weight with him."

"'Ee've got hard fac's noo, Jerry," said Sandy, about noon of the
following day, as he threw down the axe with which he had been hewing
the jungle, and pulled off his hat, from the crown of which he took a
red cotton handkerchief wherewith to wipe his thickly-beaded brow.

Jerry could not deny the truth of this, for he also had been engaged
since early morning with a South African axe nearly as large as himself,
in assisting to out a passage up the glen.

Not only was there no road up this mountain gorge, but in some parts it
was scarcely possible to make one, so rugged was the ground, so dense
the jungle. But the preliminary difficulties were as nothing compared
to those which met them further up; yet it was observable that the Dutch
waggoners faced them with the quiet resolution of men accustomed to the
overcoming of obstacles.

"You'd go up a precipice, Hans, I do believe, if there was no way round
it," said Considine, as he gazed in admiring wonder at his tall friend
driving his oxen up an acclivity that threatened destruction to waggon,
beasts, and men.

"At ony rate he'd try," remarked Sandy Black, with one of his grave
smiles.

Hans was too busy to heed these remarks, if he heard them, for the oxen,
being restive, claimed his undivided attention, and the wielding of the
twenty-foot whip taxed both his arms, muscular though they were.

When the long line of emigrants had slowly defiled through the _poort_,
or narrow gorge, of the mountains from which Baviaans River issues into
the more open valley where it joins the Great Fish River, they came
suddenly upon a very singular scene, and a still more singular man. In
the middle of the poort they found a small farm, where tremendous
precipices of naked rock towered all round, so as to leave barely
sufficient space on the bank of the river for the houses and
cattle-folds, with a well-stocked garden and orchard. There was also a
small plot of corn-land on