CHAPTER X.
JOURNEY FROM SENSAVAN TO TH E KAMHANNI MOUNTAINS.
F r o m Sensavan the country was generally level and open, and
abounding in tall dry grass, of so great a height that the oxen were
half hid as they passed through it ; and our party had exactly the
appearance of riding through fields of ripe corn.*
This days-journey was, notwithstanding the abundance of grass,
the most rocky of any between the Gariep and Litakun, as large spaces
frequently occurred, in which the surface was a natural pavement of
pure rock, in the fissures of which here and there grew a few shrubs.
In some places this rock was of a brown color, and seemed outwardly
as if scoriated ; although it was certainly not volcanic or changed by
the action of fire. It was a primitive limestone, and seemed to be in
many parts coloured by some ferrugineous property; it was of the
same kind as that which has been noticed in the country between
Klaarwater and Spuigslang fountain. In other places this pavement
consisted exclusively of a coarse blueish-black cherty flint: and frequently
extensive spaces exhibited a bare level surface of the white
primitive limestone-rock, first observed about the former place.
The waggons suffered the most violent jolts; and we now felt the
great difference between riding over a country strewed with loose
blocks and stones, and one where the surface, though flat, is formed
of a fixed mass of rock. In the first, the stones, however large, give
way a little to the force of the wheels, and the jolts are thereby much
softened, if such an expression maybe used; but the obdurate immoveable
resistance of fixed rocks, and the peculiar violence of the jolting
they cause, are hardly to be conceived without having been actually
experienced. No artificial pavement can produce an effect equally
disagreeable; for in such there is, speaking comparatively, a certain
degree of elasticity, the effect of which is not imaginary, nor is it
imperceptible to those who have ridden over a natural pavement of
solid unyielding rock.
Although the waggons did not appear to have suffered any
damage by this day’s-journey, yet it is not possible that they could
have escaped without, in some respect, receiving injury ; and I now
could clearly perceive that a good and strong-built vehicle, is one of
the most important of the preparations for such an expedition.
Besides the strength of workmanship, the greatest attention is necessary
to be paid to the quality of the materials; that the wood be well
seasoned and of a sort which will not easily split. Much of the safety
of a waggon depends on the nature of the iron; this should be of the
tough and malleable kind, rather than the hard, which being generally
of the quality termed ‘ short,’ is very liable to break asunder.
At an early hour of the day, we arrived at a spring embosomed
in rocky mountains, and called by the Hottentots, Klip Fontein*
(Bock Fountain).
* In order to distinguish this from the Klip Fontein of the Gisgariepine, described in
the first volume at page 294., we were obliged to refer to it by the name of Kora, or,
Koraqua Klip Fontein ¡’ having already designated the other by that Fontein. of Bushman Klip