-Lack of nursing--Temperature rises after death
Pilgrim's Rest in early days--The prison--The stocks--No color line--John
Cameron in trouble--The creek "lead"--Plenty of gold--Wild peaches
Massacres of natives in old days--Kameel--His expressions--Life on the
creek--Major Macdonald--The parson--Boulders--Bad accidents--A quaint
signboard--"Reefing Charlie".

As the days lengthened out I began to extend the scope of my weekly
rambles. Instead of starting on Sunday I would do so on Saturday
afternoon, as soon as work in the claim had ceased. Four hours stiff
walking would take me over the Divide, and almost across the plateau
beyond the Mac Mac River. At some suitable spot I would camp for the
night. Next morning's dawn would find me on my way to the edge of the
beetling cliff. However, sunrise was rarely a striking spectacle from
there, for the reason that usually and more especially in the morning
the Low Country was shrouded in haze. It was later, when the sun had
climbed high and the haze had somewhat dissipated, that the prospect
grew most enthralling. But haze, although its density varied
considerably from time to time, was rarely absent from the regions
lying eastward.

This almost continuous barrier to very distant vision used to annoy me
considerably, for my eyes strove greedily to gather up details of the
most remote tracts within their range. Once, on an unusually clear day,
I caught sight of the Lebomba about eighty miles away. The very name of
this then mysterious region used to thrill me with romance. How I
longed to explore its heights which, after all, turned out not to be
so very high and to plunge into its seaward hollows. How I girded at
the vapor that almost continually shrouded it. But I am now inclined
to believe that the glamour which made the prospect seen from the
cliff-edge so rich, was largely due to the diaphanous impediment to
complete vision. This, by hiding or allowing only a bare hint of the
details, gave full play to the imagination.

It must be borne in mind that in the early seventies the vast stretch
of country below the mountain range was practically an unknown land. No
map of it existed; its geography was but vaguely rumored of. We knew
that great rivers the Crocodile and the Komati, the Olifant, the
Letaba, and the lordly Limpopo, in whose depths Leviathan and Behemoth
wallowed flowed through its enchanted pastures, and that wild game of
infinite variety and plentiful beyond the d