back: but it was ten o’clock before they reached home, as they had,
at the time we fired, advanced too far to hear the report.
As the men had not yet forgotten the trouble occasioned by the
cattle straying away, these were carefully made fast to the waggons
and bushes, and a kraal for the sheep, was formed with green boughs.
28th. In order to bring our cattle sooner to the water, we
resumed the journey early in the morning, directing our course
northward across the plain, to a range of mountains which forms
the boundary between Bichuania, if I may use the word, and
the country inhabited by the Bushmen. We were now to take our
leave of those hordes of wild men, as they are justly called, and to
quit their dubious tribes: — men who are moved by various motives
either to hostility or to friendship ; to the former, often by feelings of
revenge or retaliation, and too often by a spirit of plunder; to the latter,
often won by trifling acts of kindness, and by treatment founded on a
due and reasonable view of their untutored state and of the comfortless
existence of a nation without a head, without laws, without arts, and
without religion. Towards such men, vengeance and punishment,
however justly merited, should be mitigated by pity and forbearance,
such as we are taught by the mild and genuine spirit of Christianity.
CHAPTER XI.
JOURNEY IN TH E COUNTRY OF TH E BACH APINS, FROM THE K AMHANNI
MOUNTAINS TO TH E RIVER MAKKWARIN.
gix miles from Tarchonanthus Station, brought us to the entrance
of the pass through the Kamhanni Mountains. These I have taken
for the line of separation between the two races of the Hottentots
and Caffres; as it is, in fact, the middle of that neutral,
or rather, common, ground which -intervenes between one African
nation and another, and is partially inhabited by both. The range
appeared at this part of it, to stretch from the south-east to the
north-west; and to be formed by a great number of low grassy
mountains, a sight rarely seen in the Hottentot portion of the
Transgariepine. This range, a little farther onward, takes a northerly
direction, and rises into more lofty and rocky mountains: among them,
one which I have distinguished by the name of Kamhanni Peak, appeared
the highest and most remarkable.
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