It was a ten miles' march next morning before we came to water for breakfast. The heat was very great, and increased to an overpowering degree on entering a narrow rocky defile, called Klaas Smidt's Poort, out of which, after a three miles march, we emerged on a measureless level plain, bounded only by the outlines of blue mountains, which danced hazy and indistinct in the heated air. In this cheerful situation was a solitary Dutch farm-house; all around littering, untidy, and neglected, with three or four huts to match for the Fingo servants. Mrs. Grant's Glenburnie was a pattern of neatness in comparison. Several of the inmates, for it was a Laager, afterwards galloped over on rough little horses to our camp, which was pitched two miles beyond. Their astonishment at the bagpipes, and not less at the dress of the Pipers, was extreme, crowding round them with childish wonder, as they goodnaturedly played reels, marches, strathspeys, and pibrochs; unconsciously to themselves, they were little less objects of curiosity in our eyes, differing so much from the Anglicised Boer of the colony; stout heavy-built fellows, in short round jackets of purple or sky-blue moleskin, with huge broad-brimmed white hats, wrapped round with a band of black crape, which a Dutchman wears not as a sign of grief but a sort of finish to his beaver; stockingless feet thrust into rough home-made veldt-schoenen, with a heavy spur on the left one; a small jambok hanging from his wrist; a clumsy roer; cow-horn powder-flask at the side, and an untanned leather bullet-pouch--these, with a green-stone pipe sticking in the mouth or out of the waistcoat pocket, completed their equipment. The only subject on which they became at all animated, was guns and shooting; they were as much pleased as surprised at the practice of some of our best shots with the Minié rifle at ant-heaps at 1000 yards range. Though the roer, from its large bore and weight of metal, carries a great distance, it is not at all an accurate weapon, as might be expected from its extraordinary make and finish; an immense shapeless stock, a rough flint lock, and an ivory 'sight' as large as a domino.