the remote parts of the colony, is a ridiculous and abfurd law
refpefting marriage ; arid as it feems to have no foundation in
reafon, and little in policy, except indeed, like the marriage-
a£Is in other countries, it be intended as a check to population,
it ought to be repealed. By this law the parties are both
obliged to be prefent at the Cape, in order to anfwer certain
interrogatories, and pafs the forms of office there, the chief
intent of which is to fee that no improper marriages take
place; as if the commiffaries 'appointed to this office, at the
diftance o f five or fix hundred miles, ffiould be better acquainted
with the connexions! and other circumftances regarding
the parties, than the landroft, the clergyman, and the members
o f the council refiding upon the fpot. The expence of
the journey to the young couple is greater than they frequently
can well afford. For decency’s fake they mult fet out in two
waggons, though in the courfe of. a month’s journey, acrofs a
defert country, it is faid they generally make one ferve, and
that nine times out of ten the confummation o f the marriage
precedes the ceremony. This naturally produces another bad
confequence. The poor girl, after the familiarities of a long
journey, lies entirely at the mercy o f the man, who, having
fatisfied his curiofity or his paffion, fometimes deferts her at the
end. Though in our own country a trip to Scotland be fometimes
taken where obftacles at a nearer diftance could not
fafely be furmounted, yet it would be confidered as a very
ridiculous, as well as oppreffive law, that ffiould oblige the
parties intending to marry to go from the Land’s End to London
to effe£t’that purpofe. The inhabitants of Graaff Reynet
muft travel twice that diftance in order to be married.
Almoft
Almoft all the people of the Snowy mountains, who were
advanced in years, were fubjeit to gravelly complaints, occa-
fioned probably by the badnefs of the wafer, which at one fea-
fon of the year is a muddy mixture of fnow and earth, and at
the other ftrongly' impregnated with fait. And not to the
human fpecies alone are complaints of this nature here confined,
but almoft all animals, whether domefticated or in a ftate
of nature, are found to have more or lefs of ftones or maffes of
fand formed in the bladder or ftomach. Large oval ftones are
veryeommonly found in the ftomach of the fpringbok, and
numbers of a fmaller fize in the eggs of oftriches, as has before
been remarked.
On the twenty-fifth we proceeded about twenty miles to the
northward, over a flat furface of country, confifting chiefly, of
meadow-ground, well watered by numerous fprings and fmall
rills, but deftitute of'every appearance of a buffi or ffirub. On
every fide were grazing a multitude of wild animals, as gnoos,
and quachas, and hartebeefts, and fpringboks, in fiuch large
troops as in no part of the country had before been, obferved.
The place of our encampment was called Gordons Fonteyn, and
near it flood the laft Chriftian habitation, towards this quarter,
in the colony. Being fituated fo near to the Bosjefmans, no
fewer than four families were living together, as a better fecu-
rity to each other againft the attacks of thefe people.
Having underftood that beyond this place it would no
longer be fafe to proceed, without an armed force, the inhabitants
of the Sneuwberg and its feveral divifions had been fummoned