bullocks of Africa are accuftomed to brouze for want o f grafs :
not a blade of any kind had appeared fince we entered upon
the defert; and ihrubbery was very thinly fcattered over the
furface, except in the neighbourhood of the few fprings that
here and there occurred. ' At this place were the remains of a
hut and a folitary oak overhanging a fpring o f clear water.
Even thefe objects ferved, in fome degree, to enliven, and to
break, the uniformity of a barren defart. To the fouthward,
alfo, now began to appear the blue fummits of that barren
chain of mountains, mentioned in the preceding Chapter under
the name of Zoaarteberg. A butcher of the Cape palled our
encampment with about five hundred head of cattle and five
thoufand iheep that he had purchafed in the Sneuwberg, or
fnowy mountains. The iheep were in tolerable good condition
; but the cattle were miferably poor. As the greateft
part of the beeves that are killed at the Cape mud travel from
Graaff Reynet acrofs this defart, it cannot be a matter o f fur-
prife that the Cape beef fhould be univerfally complained
againft. The knife is generally put into them the moment
they arrive from a journey of forty or fifty days, in which,
befide the fatigue of travelling, they have been expofed to the
fcorching rays of the fun at one feafon of the year, and the
intenfe cold o f the nights in the other, without any kind of
fhade or flielter; without any kind of food but the fait, acrid,
and watery leaves of the different fucculent plants that almoft
exclufively grow on the Karroo ; fometimes whole days without
a drop o f water, and moft commonly fuch only as is
muddy and faline : fometimes their hoofs become fo tender by
travelling upon the hot fand and gravel, that they are obliged
to
to be left on the defert; and they generally arrive at the town
in fo maimed and miferable a condition, as to be very unfit for
what they are intended. Could the farmers near the Cape be
once prevailed upon to fow turnips, which may be produced
here equally good as in Europe, to plant potatoes, and cultivate
the artificial graffes, the quality of the beef and mutton might
be very materially improved. Thofe few inhabitants who ftall-
feed their cattle, have their tables fupplied with beef little, if at
all, inferior to what is fold in Leadenhall market; but the
adoption of fuch a fyftem would require more labor and
activity, and more attention, than the body and mind of a
Dutch farmer feem capable of fupplying : his avarice, though
great, is yet overcome by the habits of indolence in which he
has been educated.
On the fifteenth, from the exhaufted ftate of our oxen, three
of which we had been obliged to leave behind, we made only
a ihort ftage of ten or twelve miles to the riet fonteyn, or the
red fpring, which took its rife out of a high cone-lhaped hill,
with a flat top, and ran in a feeble ftream to the fouthward.
The banks were ikirted by a thicket of the doom boom, or
thorn-tree, a fpecies of mimofa, called erroneoufly by the two
Swedilh travellers, who have publiihed their refearches in
Southern Africa, the nilotica, or that which produces the
gum Arabic. The pods of this is very long, and moniliform
or divided like a firing of beads; whereas the karroo mimofa
has ihort fickle-fhaped pods. Armed from the fummit down
to the ground with enormous double thorns, pointing in every
dire&ion “ like quills upon the fretful porcupine,” it makes an
N impe