not, however, Bosjefmens, but three runaway flaves, and three
Hottentots, one of the latter of which was a girl about twelve
years of age. This party had lived for fome time upon the
defert entirely on animal food, which they had procured by
lurking near the ufual halting-places of butchers and farmers,
and driving off in the night-time a few iheep. Tired of fuch a
mode of life, they were very glad to efcape from it by entering
into the lift of our attendants.
On the feventeenth we proceeded about twenty-four miles
over a riling country, finely marked by hill and dale, but altogether
barren, except that here and there were ftraggling over
the furface a few fpecies of the mefembryanthemum, or fig
marygold, among which were large patches o f the curious and
elegant ice-plant. At night the thermometer was down to the
freezing point, and the following morning it had defcended to
30°. The Black Mountains, about fifteen miles to the fouth-
ward, had loft that part of their character to which perhaps
they owed their name, and were covered with deep fnow.
The nights had been fo intenfely cold and piercing, fince we
entered upon the defert, that our horfes, being accuftomed to
the liable, immediately grew fick and low-fpirited, and two of
them this day fell under the feverity of the weather. A third
had a very narrow efcape. We loft feveral of our oxen ; but
thefe died rather for want of food than from the coldnefs of
the nights.
On the eighteenth we croffed the Dwyka, or Rhinocéros
river, and encamped on its banks. The bed of the river was a
finefine
grained blue fand, and it generally exceeded a hundred
yards in width ; but the collected ftreamlets, creeping over its
furface, would fcarcely have furniihed a quantity of water
fufficient to turn a mill. The rivers that crofs the Karroo have
this difference, which diftinguiihes them from rivers in general,
that, notwithftanding all the tributary ftreamlets that may fall
into them, the greater the diftance from the fource the left
water they contain. As it feldom rains on the defert, they
have no fupply but from the fprings; and the water, in its
paffage from thefe, is continually lofing of its bulk both by ab-
forption and by evaporation. Though the furrounding country
was deftitute o f vegetation, a thick foreft of mimofas
covered the banks o f the Dwyka, and followed it through all
its windings. This plant grows indeed on every part of the
defert, on which it is the infeparable companion of all the
rivers and all the periodical ftreamlets. Should a traveller
happen to be in want of water, the appearance of the mimofa
is a fure guide to the place where it occafionally at leaft is to
be found.
On the evening o f the nineteenth we encamped upon the
banks of the Gbamka, or Lion’s river. The diftance from the
Dwyka is about twenty miles o f the moft beautiful-road I ever
beheld. There was neither ftone nor loofe fand, nor rut, to
break the equality of the furface, which was level as that of a
bowling-green, and confifted of a hard bed of clay bound together,
and colored brown, with -iron. Not a fwell of any fort
intervened to interrupt the line o f the horizon, which was as
perfedt as that viewed over the furface of the fea. Here, too,
0 as