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Ch. 3: The Pioneer Advance

Ch. 3: The Pioneer Advance Page of 449 Ch. 4: The Discovery Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
CHAPTER IV
THE DISCOVERY
EARLY two hundred years had passed since the memorable expedition of van der Stel made known to geographers the Groote River, which, a hundred years later, was christened the Orange. Before Great Britain took the Cape, the daring van Reenen had penetrated to Modder Fontein, unconsciously skirting the rim of a marvel­lous diamond field. Since the beginning of the century scores of roving hunters had chased their game over a network of devious tracks, traversing every nook of the land between the Orange and the Vaal, and often camping for days upon their banks. Then the trekking pioneer graziers and farmers plodded on after the hunters, sprinkling their huts and kraals over the face of the Orange Free State, but naturally squatting first on the arable lands and grazing ground nearest the water-courses. So, in the course of years, in the passage of the Great Trek, thousands of men, women, and children had passed across the Orange and Vaal, and up and down their winding valleys, and hundreds, at least, had trodden the river shore sands of the region in which the most precious of gems were lying.
On the Orange River, some thirty miles above its junction with the Vaal, there was the hamlet of Hopetown, one of the most thriving of the little settlements, and a number of farms dotted the angle between the rivers. Along the line of the Vaal, for some distance above its entry into the Orange, there were some ill-defined reservations occupied by a few weak native tribes, — Koranas and Griquas, — for whose instruction there
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Ch. 3: The Pioneer Advance Page of 449 Ch. 4: The Discovery
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