Disgusted at my failure, I broke up our encampment immediately, and set out once again towards the interior of the Transvaal, where I contemplated making the caverns of Wonderfontein the limit of my present journey, after which I should commence my return to the diamond-diggings.
During our stay by the Klipspruit, I had made a good many additions to my collection, notably a pretty young water-lizard, several kinds of insects and fish, some scolopendra, and various grasses, besides some interesting specimens of greenstone.
It was quite late at night when we next halted for our rest, though we were scarcely more than four miles north-east of the ford. The night was fine and tolerably clear; and as we sat talking over the chances and mischances of the day, we could hear the bellowing of the male gnus, varied ever and again by the heavy thud that was caused by the clashing of their horns as they met in angry conflict. From midnight to dawn the howl of the jackal and the yell of the hyæna showed that while game was in abundance there was no lack of beasts of prey.
The country through which our next day’s journey carried us showed no falling off in the quantity of game. The depressions of the spruits became deeper than we had heretofore seen, and were in some places covered with bushes that were the haunt of the guinea-fowl which are common everywhere, from the southern coast to the further side of the Zambesi.
This breed of wild poultry is undeniably one of the most interesting features of the African bird-world. Hunted perpetually, it is nevertheless ever on the increase. Most frequently it is found in flocks varying from ten to forty in number, in bushy or wooded places near rivers or standing water. It is distinguished from our guinea-fowl by a horny membrane on the forehead.
On the Vaal and its tributaries the best time for hunting guinea-fowl is about two hours before sundown, when they leave the bushes in the plains to drink, previously to roosting for the night in the trees by the banks. This hour may on an average be taken to be about four o’clock in the afternoon, and as the birds nearly always use the same approach to the river, a sportsman, who has concealed himself hard by, will see a cloud of dust gradually coming nearer to him from the land; this is caused by their repeatedly stopping on the way to scratch up seeds and insects from the sandy soil. When in thick grass they continually raise their heads to look around them, and where the grass is over three feet in height I have seen them at intervals run out of it for ten or fifteen yards and fly, or rather spring into the air, that they may be able to look above it. Should they happen to catch sight of man or beast, or anything that has to them a suspicious appearance, they give a loud cackle, and dart off with incredible swiftness. I know few birds that can run so quickly, and when they have once taken to flight, a sportsman unacquainted with their habits has little chance of catching sight of them again that day. An experienced hand, however, will either chase them with dogs, or conceal himself so as to confront them as they rise suddenly from the ground, when their flight is so awkward that they afford a mark which the most unpractised shot can hardly fail to hit. Like other feathered game, guinea-fowl have not much to fear from the natives; the only people that I saw making any attempt to get them were the Korannas, who first make them rise by the aid of their dogs, and then pelt them down with the hard stones of a small edible fruit known as the “bluebush.”
In the afternoon we reached the Matheuspruit, which in spite of the rain was nearly dry. Near the road a small dam was placed right across its bed, and formed one side of a pond.
From the Matheuspruit the road was in a wretched condition, and where it was not stony the soil was so soft that we were in momentary dread of sticking fast. On the evening of the 29th we reached the Jagdspruit.
The following morning was warm and bright, and the rising sun lighted up the eastern slopes of the Klerksdorp heights, some of which had a conical shape, and stood isolated and bare on the bank of the Schoenspruit, others being covered with bushes, and joined together in ridges. Between us and the hills lay a shallow depression, about two miles wide, that appeared to open into the narrow valley of the Schoenspruit a few miles lower down. We were told that Klerksdorp, the oldest settlement in the Transvaal, was close on the other side of a chain of hills that stretched right across our path.
Tempted by the genial weather I went out for a stroll on the plain, which afforded me ample scope for botanizing. Amongst other plants worth gathering I found a cinna growing rankly as a weed, bearing one or more brick-red or rose-coloured blossoms on stems that varied from four to ten inches in height. From a clump of bushes on the left I took a number of beetles, some small bright ones (Buprestidæ), some leaf-beetles (Chrysomelidæ), and some Longicorns (Cerambycidæ); also several black and yellow-spotted spiders, that, like our cross-spiders, had spun their webs from bush to bush, and from tree to tree. Two duykerbocks sprung up at my approach, and vanished quickly into the thicket.