.

After a long day's work the caravan halted for the night at the spot
where the valley narrowed to the ravine.

"It has been a pretty hard day's work to-day!" Tom said.

"It is nothing to to-morrow's, as you will see," Mr Harvey replied.
"Traders consider this defile to be the very hardest passage anywhere in
South Africa, and there are plenty of other bad bits too. In many cases
you will see we shall have to unload the waggons, and it will be all
that a double team can do to pull them up empty. Sometimes of course
the defile is easier than at others; it depends much upon the action of
the last floods. In some years rocks and boulders have been jammed so
thickly in the narrow parts that the defile has been absolutely
impassable; the following year, perhaps, the obstruction has been swept
away, or to a certain extent levelled by the spaces between the rocks
being filled up with small stones and sand. How it is this season, I do
not know; up to the time we left I had heard of no trader having passed
along this way. I have spoken of it as a day's journey, but it is only
under the most favourable circumstances that it has ever been
accomplished in that time, and sometimes traders have been three or four
days in getting through."

Directly the caravan halted Blacking and Jumbo started to examine the
defile; it was already growing dusk, and they were only able to get two
miles up before it was so dark that they could make their way no
further. They returned, saying that the first portion of the defile,
which was usually one of the most difficult, was in a bad condition;
that many enormous boulders were lying in the bottom; but that it
appeared to be practicable, although in some places the waggons would
have to be unloaded.

At daybreak the oxen were inspanned, and in a quarter of an hour the
leading waggon approached the entrance of the gorge; it seemed cut
through a perpendicular cliff, 200 feet high, the gorge through which
the river issued appearing a mere narrow crack rent by some convulsion
of nature.

"It would be a fearful place to be attacked in," Dick said, "and a few
men with rocks up above could destroy us."

"Yes," Mr Harvey said; "but you see up there?"

Dick looked up, and on one side of the passage saw some tiny figures.

"The three hunters and ten of our men with muskets are up there; they
started three hours ago, as they would have to go, Jumbo said, five
miles along the face of the cliff