exceedingly cramped his movements, and obliged him to bend forward
in a posture the most inconvenient.
Having satisfied my curiosity, I left the party and retired to rest,
it being my intention to proceed on the journey at an early hour m
the morning. There was much lightning and thunder during the
night; and, to render it more unpleasant, I had not long fallen asleep,
when I was awakened by a cold piercing wind blowing so keenly
through my blankets, that it felt as if there had been no covering
whatever upon me. Our fires being out, I was obliged to content
myself with wrapping my blankets, and watch-coat closer about
m e; but scarcely had I again laid my head on the saddle, when a
heavy shower of rain and hail poured down, and soon ran through
my bedding and completely flooded the ground. As it was not
possible at such a time to make a fire, and as the night was extremely
dark, I remained patiently in that situation till morning, still
hoping 18/Afo.r Aslse espo. on as daylight appeared, I rose from my m.i serab.le
bed, which I found literally lying in water; and, shaking off the hailstones
from the blanket, dragged it over a bush that it might dry a
little before it was packed up. Few of these hailstones were much
less than half an inch in diameter j and I found them, under the
bushes, where they had been drifted in large quantities by the wind,
frozen to<mther into solid masses. The thermometer therefore, if I
had had one with me, would have been found at least as low as the
freeziAnsg spoooinnt .a s fuel could be collected on the pla.i n, the men mad,e
a fire and cooked breakfast; but though Hottentots are always
bad cooks, these men had lately become worse; and my meat was
brought to me, more in the state of something picked up after a conflagration,
than of any thing intended to be eaten. Though never
boasting myself Epicuri de gi-ege porcam, my patience in these matters,
was now exhausted: I scolded my cook, and for the first time on the
ioumey, I made some attempt myself at cooking; and, although I
could not help smiling at my own inexpertness and at this laughable
specimen of culinary talents, I broiled my own steak, in order to
show him how, I conceived, it might be managed so as to be rendered
a little more eatable.
Ruiter, of whom I had been much inclined to think well, betrayed
at length some slight symptoms of roguishness, in a trifling affair
which was to him, too tempting an opportunity for cheating. I had
commissioned him to purchase a pair of dancing-rattles, and had
given him tobacco more than sufficient for that purpose: but he
soon returned to tell me that this quantity was not thought enough.
I therefore doubled it, and in a short time he brought me the rattles.
On the following day I observed him wearing a beautiful leopard-
skin kaross, and, on inquiry of the other Hottentots, discovered that
he had obtained the rattles for a very small portion of the tobacco 1
had given, and that with the remainder he had purchased the skin.
The captain of this kraal, having heard of our killing the two
rhinoceroses for Kaabi, requested me to stop a day longer, and hunt
for him also. But fearing to establish a custom which would hereafter
prove extremely inconvenient to us, as it might lead every kraal to
expect that we should do the same for them, I thought it most
prudent at once to refuse Old Crowhead; though at the same time I
promised him a share of whatever we might chance to kill on the
road, if he would allow some of his people to accompany us for the
purpose of carrying it back. On which he ordered an old man and
his son to attend us.
Both these people being excessively thin, and apparently reduced
to that state by want of food, they immediately received from my
Hottentots the names of Oud, and Klein, Magerman (Old, and
Young, Lean-man). It seemed to be an act of charity to take these poor
creatures with us, that we might feed them plentifully for a few days.
The Hottentots, and, perhaps, all the tribes of Southern Africa,
have a custom of thus giving names to strangers when they are of a
different nation from themselves. This arises chiefly from the difficulty
which they find, either in pronouncing, or in remembering, a
name to which their ear has never been accustomed, or the meaning of
which they do not understand. This is often done through inatten