Chapter Twenty Seven.
Leaving the Orange River at Bethulie Bridge, we continued on the main road till the morning, when we struck off in a northeasterly direction for Ahival North, which was reached in a few days. The town is built close to the Orange River, and promises to be a place of much importance, being on the high road between all eastern ports of the Free State, the diamond fields, and the interior. It is a pretty town, a great number of the houses having gardens around them filled with trees.
We stayed here for a few days, and recommenced our journey down the country, soon exchanging the plains of the Free State and northern districts for the alternate mountain passes and stretches of open karoo of the middle veldt. Passing through the hamlet of Jamestown, with its one store and few straggling houses, we entered the mountain passes which cross the Stromberg range. Soon after entering the first rocky defile we encountered another violent thunderstorm, which, though unattended by the disagreeable features of our first one, delayed us over a day. We travelled on through the hills, passing through Dordrecht, a place which bears the reputation of being the coldest place in the country.
It is a straggling village of about eight hundred inhabitants, with a few stores and two or three churches. A resident remarked to us, as he pointed with pride to the village, “I have lived here for seventeen years, and seen this place grow up around me,” in a similar tone of voice to that in which we had heard old Chicagoans say the same thing. But there was a difference in the size of the villages!
The town lies on the northern slope of the Stromberg, and we had several days’ mountain travelling after we left it.
An impression the traveller receives in South Africa, more especially in the mountain regions, is one of ghostly stillness. The wild, rocky hills rear themselves up all around, and often there is not a breath of wind stirring to break the awful quiet. Sometimes this silence is oppressive, and it is a relief to hear even the hideous chattering of a monkey or the unmusical cackle of a Kafir’s laugh. The giant mountains in the background seem to look down reproachfully at the traveller for invading their solitudes, while the dark ravines and deep clefts, in their rocky sides, suggest all sorts of nameless horrors.