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of
him were dividing up the rich ground and a day's delay might cost him a
fortune. So never before was there such a scurrying, reckless of
lagging ox-teams and horses, blazing suns, and blinding dust. What a
fuming there was, too, on the river banks when the sudden floods halted
the rush with their impassable torrents, and the pilgrims on nettles
watched the yellow water run surging, swirling, and whirling between
them and their goal ! Most of the adventurers still plodded along with
their bullock wagons, but some who could afford to pay roundly (£12) for transport were carried to the Diamond Fields by the wagons of the Inland Transport Company, an enterprising association
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which
undertook to run a regular coach-line to the Vaal from Wellington, the
terminus of the short Cape railway in 1870. The carriage was a long,
narrow wagon with five rows of seats for fourteen passengers and a
driver. Only forty pounds of baggage could be carried by a passenger,
but men who were anxious to reach the mines were ready to start without
even a shift of shirts. Eight wiry horses dragged this rattling wagon
over the rough track at a lively rate, changing teams at relay
stations, from thirty to forty miles apart, and making the trip to the
Vaal in eight or nine days when the way was not blocked by floods. By
this stride of progress the journey from Cape Town was made in less
than a quarter of the time required by the crawling ox-wagons from the
other coast ports, although these
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