The valley was full of good grass, there was sufficient water for a good herd of cattle, but the whole land lay deserted. Probably the fact that the valley is hemmed in by mountains on all sides keeps the Hottentots from visiting it, and there are many such spots in this little-known region. Having found the water, we pushed on for the Orange, though as we approached the mountains that hemmed it in I began to despair of ever getting through, so rugged and precipitous were they. Our only hope was to follow the principal dry river-bed, though these often end in a _cul-de-sac_. But our luck held, and after interminable twisting and turning in what was surely the most tortuous ravine of all this labyrinth, getting gradually into the heart of the mountains, and being confronted, time after time, with a seemingly impassable barrier, we suddenly found the narrow passage blocked by a bank of dry silt 15 or more feet in height. Over this a sheer precipice faced us, seemingly but a few yards distant, and it appeared that the Orange must be beyond it, and that we must seek another path. But, scrambling up the silt, we saw dense trees immediately below us and heard the song of birds again, and within a few yards had burst through the undergrowth and were on the bank of the river. The precipice was on the farther side, in German territory, a sheer mountain face rising abruptly from the water, which at this spot was scarce a hundred yards from bank to bank. The narrow belt of vegetation on either bank had scarce clinging room, and above rose the wall of mountains. Much of the rock was crystalline limestone, beautiful marble, white and pink, whole mountains of it. The narrow belt of trees was extremely hard to break through, though old blaze marks on certain big trees showed we were not the first to visit the spot, as we well might have been. There were leopard spoors everywhere, and whole troops of baboons on the rocks above. We made our horses fast on a patch of grass and worked our way along the bank for a mile or so, but as far as we could see no other outlet pierced the cliffs on our side of the river, and upstream our way was soon blocked by a place where vegetation ended and the vertical cliff overhung the black water. The spot, though beautiful, had something awe-inspiring about it: the sight of this big body of water, silent, lonely, and mysterious, flowing from unknown reaches, pent in between these gigantic walls, and so hidden in this land of thirst through which it flows that the wayfarer might well die of thirst within a few hundred yards of it, appealed strongly to the imagination of men who, like ourselves, had the fear of thirst and the anxiety of constantly searching for water always before them.