few persons. The temperature of the waters, where they first break out of the ground, is 114° of Fahrenheit, but in the bath they are reduced to 110°. They are chiefly recommended for rheumatic complaints and debilitated constitutions.

From the bath we proceeded to the westward,crossed a steep sandy hill, called the Hou hoek, and on the seventeenth, descended the Hottentot's Holland's kloof, a difficult pass across the great north and south chain of mountains, but infinitely less so than either the Duyvil's kop, or the Kayman's river.

From the portal, or entrance of the kloof, is a grand view of the Cape peninsula, the sweeping shores of the two great bays, and the intermediate dreary isthmus appearing like a sea of sand, and enlivened only by a few neat farm houses, scattered over the fore-ground, at the feet of the great chain of mountains. The middle of the isthmus is inhabited only by a few poor people, who gain a subsistence by collecting the stems and roots of the shrubs that grow in the sand, and sending them in small carts to the Cape, where they are sold for fuel. The distance from Hottentot's Holland's kloof to Cape Town, is about thirty-six miles, or an easy day's journey, which we made on the eighteenth of January; not sorry to have brought to an end a seven months' tour, in the course of which many personal inconveniences and difficulties had occurred, to be borne and surmounted only by a determination to gratify curiosity at the expense of comfort.

CHAP. VI.

Sketches on a Journey into the Country of the Namaaquas.

THE breaking up of the south-east monsoon, which generally happens towards the end of April or the beginning of May, is a season of the year that, of all others, is worst calculated for undertaking a journey through the sandy deserts of Southern Africa. Should the change of the monsoon not have taken place when the traveller sets out, the long drought which always precedes it, will have parched up and destroyed vegetation to such a degree, that his cattle would be in danger of perishing from scarcity of food, and still more so from want of water and, should the contrary be the case, he is equally unfortunate, as not only for some time he will find no pasturage, but must also have to contend with all the inconveniences of stormy weather, and perhaps be retarded for weeks together by the swelling of the rivers.

Weighty as these objections appeared to be, it was thought expedient to commence a journey to the northern parts of the colony, along the western coast, at the very moment when the breaking up of the summer monsoon was expected. It was the tenth of April when I set forward from Cape Town, with a covered waggon, and twelve stout oxen, in good condition, a single horse, a slave, a waggoner, and leader, who had accompanied me

on the other journies, and an additional Hottentot to attend the oxen for relays: for it must not be supposed, that the same team of oxen should be able to draw daily for a length of time. The farmers, who live only at the distance of ten days' journey from the Cape, seldom come up with less than a couple of teams of bullocks to use alternately. They also travel at nights, for the sake of coolness, and that their cattle may graze or browse during the day.

But for the better convenience of those who travelled on the public service, government imposed a kind of tax on the farmers, by obliging them to furnish Voorspans, or gratuitous teams of oxen, whenever they should be demanded. It was considered as a sufficient recompense for this service, that they were supplied by the government, without any expense to themselves, with powder and ball to carry on their expeditions against their enemies, the Bosjesmans. In the present, as well as on the former tour, I availed myself of this privilege of ancient usage in the colony, and never met with a refusal, or even a reluctant compliance with the demand, which, indeed, was always requested not as a matter of right, but of favour.

None of my Hottentots being acquainted with one step of the northern tour I was about to undertake, we had to depend entirely on the information of the farmers as to the road and most convenient halting places. The first day brought us to Koeberg, about eighteen miles from the Cape; and the second to Groene kloof, about sixteen miles farther of deep sandy road, a hard day's drag for a dozen

oxen.

Groene kloof is a division of the Cape district, consisting of several clumps of small hills, that cross the sandy slip, extending along the western coast. On the dales that lie within these hills are copious springs of good water, and excellent pasturage for cattle and horses. None of the ground near the Cape can be considered as remarkably productive in grain; it requires manure,or to lie fallow for two or three years, and even then affords nothing that in England would be considered as a crop. It appears from the returns of grain, which the farmers are obliged to deliver annually to government, that the average product is under tenfold. In places close to the town, the returns are much less, the ground being worn out by a continual succession of crops of grain.

I

Among the hills of Groene kloof, are considerable numbers of Steenboks, Duykers, and Reeboks, and a few Hartebests, but frequent visits of sportsmen from the Cape have made them very shy. Hares, kor. haens, grous, and partridges, were sufficiently plentiful. Various species of the liliaceous tribe, particularly of the amaryllis, and other bulbous rooted plants, were now in bloom, but the long drought had left little verdure on the sides of the hills. At this season of the year that refreshing tint is only to be looked for in the neighbourhood of springs and rivulets.

The house of Slabert, the Tea fonteyn, is the next usual stage beyond Groene kloof. As this family holds a distinguished place in the page of a French traveller in Southern Africa, the veracity of whose writings have been called in question, curiosity was naturally excited to make some inquiries from them concerning this author. He was

well known to the family, and had been received into their house at the recommendations of the fiscal; but the whole of his transactions in this part of the country, wherein his own heroism is so fully set forth, they assert to be so many fabrications. The story of shooting the tiger, in which his great courage is contrasted with the cowardice of the peasantry, I read to them out of his book. They laughed very heartily, and assured me that although the story had some foundation in fact, the animal had been shot through the body by a stell roar or trap-gun, set by a Hottentot, and was expiring under a bush at the time they found it, when the valiant Frenchman discharged the contents of his musquet into the tiger and dispatched him. The first book which he published, of his Travels to the Eastward, contains much correct information, accurate description, and a number of pointed and just observations. The sale of the copy of this encouraged the making of a second, the materials of which, slight as they were, seem to have chiefly been furnished by the publication of an English traveller, whom he pretends to correct; and, from an account of an expedition to the northward, sent out by the Dutch government of the Cape in search of a tribe of people reported to wear linen clothing. The fact seems to be this: that he left Zwartland in July, travelled to the Orange river, and returned at the beginning of the following December, at which time he is conducting his readers to the northward, as far as the tropic. The inventive faculties of the Abbé Philippo, who is the real author of the work, supplied what he conceived to be wanting in the traveller's remarks, and in the two above-mentioned publications.

From the house of Slabert we crossed the country to Saldanha bay, which, as a spacious, secure, and