prefer nesting in the habitations of man. Three were caught in the
thatch, where they had taken their night’s station.
9th. The road continued very level, but the face of the country
began to be more thickly scattered over with eminences ; and
might be considered as a plain studded with a multitude of hills of
regular form and horizontal strata, and of various heights? from one
hundred to three hundred feet. They were clothed with abundance
of shrubby bushes, none being more than two feet in height and as
much in diameter. The most predominant shrub was a kind of
Lycium of about four or five feet high, of robust growth and very
thorny. * Mesembryanthemum campestre, now in bloom, every
where decorated the road ; and a kind o f /li’be.iixtrt'itid, whose flowers
smell like mignionette, was not unfrequent. The surface of the land
was perfectly destitute of grass; a kind of Fescue-grass being a rare
and solitary exception.
Neither men, nor animals of any description, were seen the
whole day. Our little party were the only moving objects ; amongst
these Speelman’s grotesque figure often made me smile. He had
lately dragged out of his budget, a military full-dress cocked hat,
which some of his Comrades in,Cape Town had given him. And,
not satisfied with the fashion of it, he had altered it to his own taste,
by letting the brim half down, so as to give it a wider and more
formidable appearance : sometimes, for variety’s sake, it was let quite
down like a parasol. With this strange apparatus on his head, his
short blue jacket, sheepskin breeches, naked legs, his gun on his
* Very like L . tetrandrum, but is prqbably the L . horridum of Thunberg:
Growing amongst a variety of low shrubs, I collected—
Hebenstreitia integrifolia ? lentots and Bushmen make their
Aptosimum depressum. C. G. 1354. mats.
Trichoneim spirale, C. G. 1356. ^ Medcola angusiifolia^ Willd. Sp. PI.
Planta exigua. Folia spiraliter ' Lappago
contorta. Flos purpureus. • Othonna
Heliophila pectinata, C. G.' 1362. Leysera
Alyssum glomeratum Relhania
Scirpus tegetalis, C. G. 1346. (Schcenus . Pteronia
inanis, Th. ?) of wliiph the H o t-. Hcmimeris.
shoulder and powder-horn by his side, he had little resemblance to
the costume of any nation on the globe, and would have raised a
smile in any but Hottentots, who seemed much to envy him the
possession of that charming hat. And Hannah, I doubt not, the
more she looked at it, the more she admired her husband.
We passed through an opening in one of the ridges of hills,
which bore the name of Poort egaal (The Equal Pass), on account,
most probably, of the road continuing through it, on the same level
with the land on either side: I stopped the waggons a few minutes
to take a sketch of this view.
After a journey of fourteen miles, we arrived at the Piet river
(Reed river), the place where it had been agreed to wait for the
missionaries. Captain Berends, we now found, had already left the
spot; we therefore concluded that he was waiting for us at the
Karree river, the last appointed rendezvous,
The Reed river, although at- present nothing more than a line
of ponds, is, in the rainy season, a considerable stream. This, the
Sack river ninety-three miles further, and the Brdkke river, are all the
rivers worth notice, that were met with in the road from the Roggeveld
mountains to the Gariep, a distance of 358 miles. And even these
cease to flow during more than six months in the year. They are
said to unite with the Sack river, and afterwards to find their way
into the Gariep ; but it is most probable that their waters never flow
so far, unless in years when there happen to fall an unusual quantity
of rain.
The range of the thermometer to-day was remarkable ; being, at
a quarter before nine in the forenoon, so low as 33°, and at three in
the afternoon, so high as 72°. (00-55, and 22°-2 Centig.)
The Hottentots chose their abode in the farm-house, and it was
fortunate that I had already taken the resolution of always sleeping
in the waggon ; for, between one and two o’clock in the night, when
I had not long put out the light, and was nearly asleep, I felt by the
motion of the waggon th a t. some one was endeavouring to get in.
Thinking it might possibly be one of my own people searching for
something, I called out, but receiving no answer, I drew a pistol from
under my pillow; yet finding that no attack was intended, but