friendly tribe, and belonging to a family or party of twelve, who had
come from a neighbouring kraal to pay us a visit. What they said
to me as I advanced towards them, I was unable to guess, being
alone, and understanding nothing of their language. I felt, however,
so much confidence in their good intentions, that I sat myself down
on one of the large stones, and made a sketch of the spot, in which
I inserted them exactly in the attitudes and situation in which they
were at the time; and was pleased at finding ready before my pencil
such picturesque appendages to the landscape. This scene is represented
in the fifth Plate.
While thus employed, the time slipped away unperceived: the
oxen had all been yoked to, and the waggons were already in motion,
before it was known that I was missing. One of the party came in
search of me, and we hastened to overtake the caravan.
The country becoming more hilly as we advanced, showed that
we had entered the mountainous belt of the Karreebergen. The
word Karree, in the Hottentot language, signifies dry, or arid, and
is, in this case, applied with peculiar propriety. Always winding
between the mountains, we had no very steep ascent or descent;
sometimes an enclosed plain, of considerable extent, intervened.
In this dry unpromising district, grows one of the most beautiful
little shrubs of the Bushman country. It was a Mahemia *, not
more than a foot in height, covered with large scarlet bell-shaped
flowers, elegantly turned downwards; the emblem of modesty united
* Mahemia oxalidiflora. B. Gat. Geog. 1586.' Fruticulus pedalis erectus ramosis-
simus. Folia nuda incisa et inciso-pinnatifida. Calyx, pedunculusque viscosi. Corolla
maxima.
I t much resembles M . grandiflora, which was not found till a year afterwards, and
in a very different part of the continent; but from this it may be easily distinguished by
its deeply cut, almost inciso-pinnate, leaves.
Excepting this, scarcely any thing remarkable was seen this day: the aridity of the
soil being so unfavorable to vegetation, that nothing more was added to my list than —c _v
Two Calendula A minute Pelargonium
A Chrysocdma And a Leysera.
Three Seneciones