The voyage along the upper course of the river was soon accomplished, and although the weather soon became rainy, the passengers, comfortably installed in the ship's cabin, suffered no inconvenience from the torrents of rain which usually fall at that season. The "Queen and Czar" shot along rapidly, for there were neither rapids nor shallows, and the current was not sufficiently strong to retard her progress. Every aspect of the river-banks was enchanting; forest followed upon forest, and quite a world of birds dwell among the leafy branches. Here and there were groups of trees belonging to the family of the "proteaceæ," and especially the "wagenboom" with its reddish marbled-wood, forming a curious contrast with its deep blue leaves and large pale yellow flowers: then there were the "zwarte-basts" with their black bark, and the "karrees" with dark evergreen foliage. The banks were shaded every where by weeping willows, while the underwood extended beyond for several miles. Every now and then vast open tracks presented themselves unexpectedly, large plains, covered with innumerable colocynths, mingled with "sugar-bushes," out of which flew clouds of sweet-singing little birds, called "suiker-vogels" by the Cape colonists. The winged world offered many varieties, all of which were pointed out to Sir John Murray by the bushman. Sir John was a great lover of game, both hairy and feathered, and thus a sort of intimacy arose between him and Mokoum, to whom, according to Colonel Everest's promise, he had given an excellent long-range rifle, made on the Pauly system. It would be useless to attempt a description of the bushman's delight when he found himself in possession of such a splendid weapon. The two hunters understood each other well, for though so learned, Sir John Murray passed for one of the most brilliant fox-hunters in old Caledonia, and he listened to the bushman's stories with an interest amounting to envy. His eyes sparkled when Mokoum showed him the wild ruminants in the woods; here a herd of fifteen to twenty giraffes; there, buffaloes six feet high, with towering black horns: farther on, fierce gnus with horses' tails; and again, herds of "caamas," a large kind of deer, with bright eyes, and horns forming a threatening-looking triangle; and every where, in the dense forests as well as in the open plains, the innumerable varieties of antelopes which abound in Southern Africa; the spurious chamois, the gems-bok, the gazelle, the duiker-bok, and the spring-bok. Was not all this something to tempt a hunter, and could the fox-hunts of the Scottish lowlands vie with the exploits of a Cumming, an Anderson, or a Baldwin? It must be confessed that Sir John Murray's companions were less excited than himself at these magnificent specimens of wild game. William Emery was watching his colleagues attentively, and trying to discover their character under their cold exterior. Colonel Everest and Matthew Strux, men of about the same age, were equally cold, reserved, and formal; they always spoke with a measured slowness, and from morning to night it seemed as if they had never met before. That any intimacy should ever be established between two such important personages was a thing not to be hoped for; two icebergs, placed side by side would join in time, but two scientific men, each holding a high position, never.
Nicholas Palander, a man of about fifty-five years of age, was one of those who have never been young, and who will never be old. The astronomer of Helsingfors, constantly absorbed in his calculations, might be a very admirably constructed machine, but still he was nothing but a machine, a kind of abacus, or universal reckoner. He was the calculator of the Anglo-Russian Commission, and one of those prodigies who work out multiplications to five figures in their head, like a fifty-year-old Mondeux.
Michael Zorn more nearly resembled William Emery in age, enthusiasm, and good humour. His amiable qualities did not prevent his being an astronomer of great merit, having attained an early celebrity. The discoveries made by him at the Kiew Observatory concerning the nebula of Andromeda had attracted attention in scientific Europe, and yet with this undoubted merit he had a great deal of modesty, and was always in the background. William Emery and Michael Zorn were becoming great friends, united by the same tastes and aspirations; and most generally they were talking together, while Colonel Everest and Matthew Strux were coldly watching each other, and Palander was mentally extracting cube roots without noticing the lovely scenes on the banks, and Sir John Murray and the bushman were forming plans for hunting down whole hecatombs of victims.
No incident marked the voyage along the upper course of the Orange. Sometimes the granite cliffs which shut in the winding bed of the river seemed to forbid further progress, and often the wooded islands which dotted the current seemed to render the route uncertain; but the bushman never hesitated, and the "Queen and Czar" always chose the right route, and passed round the cliffs without hindrance. The helmsman never had to repent of having followed Mokoum's directions.
In four days the steamboat had passed over the 240 miles between the cataract of Morgheda and the Kuruman, an affluent which flowed exactly past the town of Lattakoo, whither Colonel Everest's expedition was bound. About thirty leagues above the falls the river bends from its general direction, which is east and west, and flows south-east as far as the acute angle which the territory of Cape Colony makes in the north, and then turning to the north-east, it loses itself in the wooded country of the Transvaal Republic. It was early in the morning of the 5th of February, in a driving rain, that the "Queen and Czar" arrived at Klaarwater, a Hottentot village, close to the meeting of the Orange and Kuruman. Colonel Everest, unwilling to lose a moment, passed quickly by the few Bochjesmen cabins that form the village, and under the pressure of her screw, the vessel began to ascend the affluent. The rapid current was to be attributed, as the passengers remarked, to a peculiarity in the river, for the Kuruman being wide at its source, was lessened as it descended by the influence of the sun's rays; but at this season, swollen by the rains, and further increased by the waters of a sub-affluent, the Moschona, it became very deep and rapid. The fires were therefore made up, and the vessel ascended the Kuruman at the rate of three miles an hour.
During the voyage the bushman pointed out a good many hippopotami in the water; but these great pachyderms, clumsy, thickset beasts, from eight to ten feet long, which the Dutch at the Cape call "sea-cows," were by no means of an aggressive nature, and the hissing of the steam and the panting of the screw quite frightened them, the boat appearing to them like some great monster which they ought to distrust, and in fact, the arsenal on board would have rendered approach very difficult. Sir John Murray would have very much liked to try his explosive bullets on the fleshy masses, but the bushman assured him that there would be no lack of hippopotami in the more northerly rivers, so he determined to wait for a more favourable opportunity.
The 150 miles which separated the mouth of the Kuruman from the station of Lattakoo were traversed in fifty hours, and on the 7th of February the travellers had reached the end of their journey. As soon as the steamboat was moored to the bank which served as a quay, a man of fifty years of age, with a grave air but kind countenance, stepped on board, and offered his hand to William Emery. The astronomer introduced the new-comer to his travelling companions, as—
"The Rev. Thomas Dale, of the London Missionary Society, Governor of the station of Lattakoo."
The Europeans bowed to Mr. Dale, who gave them welcome, and put himself at their service.
The town of Lattakoo, or rather the village of that name, is the most northerly of the Cape Missionary stations, and is divided into Old and New. The first, which the "Queen and Czar" now reached, had 12,000 inhabitants at the beginning of the century, but they have since emigrated to the north-east, and the town, now fallen into decay, has been replaced by New Lattakoo, which is built close by, on a plain which was formerly covered with acacias, and thither Mr. Dale conducted the Europeans. It consisted of about forty groups of houses, and contained 5000 or 6000 inhabitants of the tribe of the Bechuanas. Dr. Livingstone stayed in this town for three months before his first voyage up the Zambesi in 1840, previously to crossing the whole of Central Africa, from the bay of Loanda to the port of Kilmana on the coast of Mozambique.