From Bruyntjes Hoogté we descended to the Karoo plains of Camdeboo. These plains are intersected by the Bly river, the Vogel river, the Platte river, and the Melk river, in their passage from the Sneuwberg into the Sunday river. Naked as the surface appeared to be, game of every sort was very plentiful, particularly springboks and the larger kinds of antelopes. Upon those parched plains are also found a great variety of small quadrupeds that burrow in the ground, and which are known to the colonists under the general name of meer-cats. They are mostly of that genus of animals to which zoologists have given the name of viverra. An eagle, making a stoop at one of these, close where we were passing, missed his prey; and both fell a sacrifice, one to the gun, the other to the dogs. They both happened to be undescribed species. Of the eagle, the head, neck, back, and abdomen, were of a pale ferruginous brown; wings and tail steel-blue, the latter faintly barred with small bands from the root to the middle; the cera pale yellow; beak and nails black; the feet entirely covered with downy feathers; length two feet two inches. The viverra was wholly of a bright chesnut colour; the tail shaded with black hairs, bushy, straight, and white at the extremity; ears short and round; on the fore feet five, and the hind feet four, toes; the body and tail each one foot long. Others of this genus are the muskiliatte cat, or zenik of the Systema Natura; the tigrina, or tiger-cat; the mellivora, or ratel; and the cafra. In general these animals are easily domesticated. One species, however, is very difficult, if not impossible, to render tame. It resembles the pectorius or polecat of America, with this difference only, that the latter has five parallel white lines along the back, and the African species only four, that diverge from the shoulder. When first taken, they smell

very strongly of musk, which, however, shortly wears off by confinement. There is also found in this part of the country a beautiful little groundsquirrel, with a white stripe on each side from the shoulder to the flank; the body a dark chesnut colour, about eight inches in length; tail ten inches, grizzled, black, brown, and white.

That elegant bird, the Balearic crane, grus pavonina, was first met with near the Melk river; and Guinea fowls were very abundant near every streamlet. Bee-eaters, merops apiaster, with their beautiful plumage, and certhias, or creepers, with colours still more brilliant, were fluttering about in vast numbers among the mimosas of the Sunday river, where are also many beautiful species both of kingfishers and wood-peckers. The modest garb of the colii, of which I met with three species, formed a striking contrast with the gaudy plumage of the others. There are several species of swallows in the Cape, all migratory. One in particular, with a red-spotted breast, frequents the habitations of man, where it builds its nest. In many of the farmhouses are small shelves nailed against the beams, expressly for the swallows; and I have heard it asserted very commonly, that the same birds return to their places for many years, and generally on the very same day; a striking instance that Nature is not more constant in the organization of the machine, than in the effects that are intended to result from it.

The Sunday river was nearly dry, which gave our people an opportunity of taking plenty of turtle with great ease. These run generally about a foot in diameter: the females are exceedingly prolific in

eggs, and are by no means wanting in flavour. The river abounds also with short thick eels, that are very delicious. From the ford of the river to the Drosdy of Graaff Reynet, is a very short distance. We arrived at this village on the 30th September, having made our long circuitous journey in less than two months.

CHAP. IV.

Sketches on a Journey into the Country of the
Bosjesmans.

THREE weeks had scarcely elapsed, after our return from the Kaffer country, till we were ready for another expedition to the northward, across the Sneuwberg or Snowy Mountains. In these mountains, and in the country immediately behind them, dwells a race of men, that, by their habits and manner of life, are justly entitled to the name of savagea name, however, of which, it is greatly to be feared, they have been rendered more worthy by the conduct of the European settlers. They are known in the colony by the name of Bosjesmans, or men of the bushes, from the concealed manner in which they make their approaches to kill and to plunder. They neither cultivate the ground nor breed cattle, but subsist, in part, on the natural produce of their country, and make up the rest by depredations on the colonists on one side, and the neighbouring tribes of people that are more civilized than themselves, on the other. Twenty years ago, it seems, they were less numerous and less ferocious than at the present day; and their boldness and numbers are said of late to have very much increased. At one time they were pretty well kept under by regular expeditions of the peasantry against them. Each division had its commandant, who was authorised to raise a certain number of men, and these were furnished by government with powder and ball. It was a service at all times taken with reluctance, especially

by such as were least exposed to the attacks of the savages; and, during the late disturbances of Graaff Reynet, these expeditions met with considerable interruptions. The people of Bruyntjes Hoogté were the first who failed in raising their proportion of men. Zuure Veldt was deserted, and Camdeboo and Zwart Ruggens became negligent and remiss. The people of Sneuwberg, lying nearest to the common enemy, were left to sustain the whole brunt of the business; and had they not conducted themselves with great fortitude, perseverance, and address, that valuable part of the colony, the nursery of cattle, had now been abandoned. A whole division called the Tarka, and a great part of another, the SeaCow river and Rhinosceros-berg, had been deserted, as well as a small part of Sneuwberg. There is, however, another cause which, more than the interruption to the expeditions, has tended to increase the strength and the boldness of these savages, and which, unless removed, will in the end effect the utter ruin of this distant part of the colony. The case is this-The government of the Cape, which seemed to have been as little acquainted with the temper and disposition of its distant subjects as with the geography of the country, formed all its resolutions, respecting the Bosjesmans, on representations made to it by the persons immediately concerned. In consequence of these representations, it decreed that such of the Bosjesmans as should be taken alive in the expeditions made against them, were to be distributed by lot among the commandant and his party, with whom they were to remain in a state of servitude during their lives. Such as have been taken very young and well treated, have turned out most excellent servants; they have shown great talent, great activity, and great fidelity. An opposite treatment has been productive of a contrary