The following morning we entered the Ecca Pass, the terror of waggon-drivers and "post-riders," and notorious as the scene of many fatal ambuscades. The road winds along a deep narrow valley between high hills covered with dense thorny bush, and has a high wall of rock on the one hand, on the other a precipitous ravine, with admirable cover for Kaffirs everywhere, and is, perhaps, one of the most villanous specimens of a high road in the known world, abounding throughout its entire length with rocks of all sizes, from that of a "company's arm-chest" downwards; holes in the middle of it as deep as an ordinary horse-pond. On the one side the yawning precipices encroach on the crumbling path; while on the other some communicative driver points to overhanging crags and unapproachable cliffs, from which unsuspecting escorts and parties of horsemen are frequently fired upon by lurking bands of the enemy; with what fatal effect is evidenced by the bones and dried up hides of oxen and horses lying in the track. At a turn in the road, where only three days before a mounted express had been attacked, and four of the party wounded, we disturbed a troop of gorged vultures, which, rising from the half-devoured carcase of one of the horses, alighted on the rocks above, from the concealed crevices of which the rebels had taken aim. Within three weeks after this attack they again waylaid a like party, but with more fatal effect, two men being killed and four wounded. We were suffered to pass without molestation. The appearance of our long line, as it moved down the valley, was very striking; wild-looking Fingoes, strings of oxen and waggons, the glittering forest of bayonets, straggling Levies, pack-horses, and camp followers, winding along the hill-side, through the glowing bush, which was varied by magnificent euphorbias, rivalling forest trees in height. Among the rocks were numbers of dossies[7] (a sort of rabbit, with a rat's head and monkey's hands) and some large baboons. We emerged from the valley by a steep rough road, called Brak River Hill, and after a few miles level trek through a sandy country, sprinkled with thorn bushes, arrived at Fort Brown, a lonely quadrangular fortification, close to the Great Fish River, on the opposite bank of which we encamped for the night. At the Koonap River, where we outspanned for a couple of hours next morning, two magnificent koodoo were seen, but they disappeared in the thick bush before any of the stalkers were within rifle range; one of them was a splendid fellow, as large as a mule, with long upright spiral horns, full three feet high. From this the road for some distance ran along the base of a lofty range of cliffs called the Blue Krantz, an unbroken precipice of grey rock, at least 100 feet in height, and so perpendicular that a stone thrown from it would have fallen right among us; its summit fringed with aloes and overhanging trees, scarlet geranium springing from every crevice.