Tigers, or rather leopards, abound in these mountains, but are seldom seen except by the solitary farmers living in the hills, who are in perpetual warfare with these savage destroyers of their flocks. One morning we found a romantic glen on the side of the mountain, full of rare ferns, and with a beautiful stream of water dripping and echoing as it gushed out from the rocks. It was a lovely day, and we took our karosses and rugs to the spot, and picnicked there. We carried along “Nicholas Nickleby” to read aloud. Since that day I always associate the Cheeryble Brothers with ferns, and think of Do-the-boys Hall as built on top of a precipitous mountain, with a smiling, sunshiny valley lying at its feet.
The nights were very cold in the Stromberg, and we required all the rugs and karosses we had to keep us warm at night, sunrise nearly always showing everything around us, from the tent of the wagon to the blankets of the slumbering boys, covered with a white hoar frost.
Our wagoner told us an experience of a cold night in the Free State. He said: “In the middle of June, two years ago, my partner Jim and myself started from Bloemfontein for Pretoria. As the shooting was good on that road and walking cheap, we decided to go on foot, taking with us a couple of boys to carry our traps, which were not very extensive, consisting, in fact, of a change of linen, or rather flannels, a pair of blankets each, the cooking utensils, and a spare gun. We had for our companion a young man whom we had met in Bloemfontein a few days previous to our departure, a young Scotchman but lately arrived in the country. As he wanted to go to Pretoria he proposed to join us. The nights during the winter are very cold on the elevated plateaus of the Free State and the Transvaal.
“Though the midday sun is almost as warm as in summer, one needs to be well provided with covering if they propose passing the night on the veldt. To give some idea of the cold of the plains at night, I may tell you that a few winters ago several natives, members of a tribe called the Knob Noses, who were on their way to the fields, were frozen stiff and stark on the road from Pretoria to Potchefstrom. The road we followed was a fair sample of most of the Free State roads, a tolerably straight path across an uninteresting, unwooded, undulating plain. Starting about two o’clock in the afternoon, we walked briskly with occasional halts for coffee until about ten o’clock at night, when the moon shone at its full, and we decided to turn in for the night. The wind was already blowing pretty fresh, and we looked about for the place in the veldt where the ant-hills were thickest so we might set fire to two of them to heat our kettles, and to keep us warm during the night. After having had a cup of coffee, and sat round the fire until we were all thoroughly warmed, Jim and I slipped off our boots, and putting them under our heads for pillows, pulled our blankets over our heads and feet, and were soon fast asleep, of course imagining that Mac would do the same. About two o’clock, when the night was at its coldest, we were awakened by a dreadful groaning, and emerging from our coverings were astonished to see Mac huddled upon the ground with nothing over him but a rubber overcoat, shivering, chattering, and moaning piteously. The fire was out, an icy wind was sweeping around the veldt. ‘Good gracious, Mac, what is the matter; where are your blankets?’ ‘I d-d-didn’t bring any,’ chattered the unfortunate youth. ‘Didn’t bring any; then what on earth was that big bundle the Kafir was carrying?’ ‘That is my b-best clothes,’ moaned the sufferer.
“We were soon up and bundled the poor fellow into our blankets, and waking the boys we made up a roaring fire, and thawed him back to life. The next day, on arriving at Wynberg, you should have seen Mac rushing into the first store, and regardless of ‘siller,’ buy two of the thickest blankets to be had. This man had never before slept outside four walls in his life, and had imagined that any place in Africa must needs be suffocatingly hot at all times.
“I don’t think he made the same mistake again.”