so that the cost of living was largely increased.
It was a great satisfaction to me that I was able to purchase a horse. I was fortunate in buying a good sound animal, that did as much work as the whole three together that I had to keep in 1873.
Largely, however, as my business developed, and beneficial as it was in replenishing my pocket, the perpetual exertion told seriously on my health, and I was obliged to seize an opportunity of taking a holiday when most of my patients seemed unlikely to require any immediate attention. I made up my mind to visit Mr. Wessel at his neighbouring farm in the Free State, where I was received with the most liberal hospitality. While I was staying there I saw a number of those remarkable carvings on rocks done by the Bushmen, which had recently been inspected by Stow the geologist, and by Captain Warren.
Though the Bushman tribe is gradually dying out, they are still to be found in certain parts of Cape Colony, but remaining, even to the present time, as impervious as ever to the influences of civilization. Formerly they occupied the rocky caves in the slopes from the heights, both in the colony and in the Free State. They are probably the oldest inhabitants of South Africa; but now one branch of them seems to have blended with the Bantu families on the north, whilst another has become amalgamated with the Hottentots more to the east. They hunt the game which they spy out from their elevated resorts with the most primitive bows and arrows; but low as is the grade of their intellectual culture, they have the very wonderful art of decorating the rocky walls of their dwellings with
