Thence the mountains rise abruptly, the track ascending by tortuous curves and gradients far exceeding in steepness those of the famous Hex River Pass, and climbing some 2,000 feet within the next few miles. The scenery is magnificent: mountain after mountain on either side, peak after peak, and range after range; near at hand the vivid splashes of bright-coloured rocks showing up in brilliant contrast to the green of the _melk bosch_ (euphorbia) clothing the less precipitous slopes, everything startlingly clear and distinct in the brilliant sunshine and clear air of the mountains, the tawny hues of the peaks in the middle distance gradually changing to a blue, which in the more remote ranges became ethereal to a degree, till mountain and sky became merged in the bright shimmer of the horizon. Around Klipfontein are the corn-lands of the natives, and on the occasion of my first visit these “lands” presented a most beautiful and wonderful appearance. For field after field of cleared plateau and mountain slopes were ablaze with gorgeous colour, being absolutely covered with the most brilliant-hued flowers, not mingled in blurred and confused masses, but in broad and clearly defined stretches of different vivid colourings. Here, morgen after morgen of glorious crimson; there, half a mountain-side of mustard yellow, in startling contrast to the other half of azure blue. Parterres of lovely heliotrope, red-hot patches of scarlet and orange of every shade, of pink, of mauve, salmon, a hundred tints, and all so thickly clustered and luxuriant, so well-defined and separated, that the general impression was that of an enormous garden of wonderful carpet bedding. The veldt flowers of South Africa are justly celebrated for their wonderful beauty, but I doubt if at any other part of the sub-continent they can be seen in such gorgeous perfection as at Klipfontein on the Port Nolloth-O’okiep line. The season for them is, however, but a transient one, and two months later, when I again passed the spot, not a blossom was to be seen. A few miles farther and Steinkopf is reached; from thence the track winds on a down-grade across a wide, barren, desolate plain, broken by queer-looking granite kopje, to where a high, humped mountain marks the position of the copper-mine at O’okiep. Steinkopf consists of a mission church and buildings substantially built of stone by the natives themselves, a post and telegraph office, a store or two, and a scattered collection of miserable shanties and the circular mat huts of the natives. Flimsy as these latter are, they are infinitely preferable to the paraffin-tin built abominations usual to the locations, for they are not only more sightly, but they can easily be moved when sickness or a prolonged stay upon one spot has produced the usual awful state of sanitary affairs.