December Perfe&ty muddy tafte, and a blue caft, leaving on each fide of the linen, through which we ftrained it, a deep and indelible ftain of mud. On this occafion I could not. help being itruck with the remark, that habit and the charac- teriftic turn of any nation, will generally get the better o f the plaineft dictates o f common fenfe. My friend Mr. Im - m e l s i a n pertinacioully followed the laudable Dutch cuftom o f thoroughly wiping the bafons or veffels with a clean towel, every time that water was fetched in them ; though at the fame time they were perfectly clean, or at the moft, perhaps, were ftained with the hundredth part of a grain of fugar, or elie o f coffee or tea-grounds, and he was juft going to drink dirt out of them, I may fay by the ounce. This evening a herd o f about two thoufand fpring- boks coming to drink out of the well, by the fide of which we had pitched our tents, made a halt at the diftanceS* of two hundred paces in order to take a view o f u s ; when I fired among them with a long gun, which was loaded with three fmall balls. And though one of thefe balls, as I afterwards found, hit a doe, and went quite through her, fo as to pierce her liver, diaphragm, and one lobe of her lungs, ihe yet ran iome hundreds of paces, before ihe began to totter, juft after which Ihe fell. She foon got up again, however, and lkipped to the diftance o f one hundred and fifty paces farther, till ihe was caught fail in a thicket, where we overtook her and killed her. With a larger ball, in all probability, the fpring-bok would not be found fo difficult to kill, efpecially i f it hit any of the greater blood-veffels. This A This animal, which is called by the eolonifts fpring-bok, De’c£” b'er a term in - the Dutch language fignifying the leaping or bounding goat, I have already made mention of in the Swe- diffi Tranfadtions for 1780. The defcription, however, o f io remarkable a creature, muft not be omitted in this place. This, i f not the handfomeft, is at leaft one of the hand- fomeft, gazels in the whole world; being, like the gazel kind in general, is diftinguifhed by its beautiful fiery eyes; fo that in' fome parts o f the eaft, it is reckoned, and not unjuftly, as the greateft compliment that can be made to a handfome woman, to tell her that ihe has eyes like a gazel. Fid. Profp. Alpin. Hiß. ALgypt. (I. 232.) M o s e s (in Numbers, Chap. XIV.) feems by his Difchon to have meant this animal, as the feventy interpreters tranflate this word by pygargus\ the fignification o f which {uropygium album, or white rump) beft agrees with this ipecies o f gazel. P l i n y (VIII. 53.) makes mention likewife of a py- gargus; fo does J u v e n a l (Sat. XI. ver. 138.) According to my tafte, this was the handfomeft gazel I had feen in Africa, as, in fadl, it was the moft common; which latter I conclude from the circumftance o f my having feen it in thefe places in much greater numbers, than all the other fpecies puf together. Hitherto, indeed, I had feen no more than one o f them in their wild ftate, viz. on the plain near Bofhiesr mans-rivier; but between the two Vifch-riviers, I have feen them fpread over the plains in herds of different magnitudes, as far as the' eye could reach; and putting together' what I have obferved in the courfe of a day’s journey on horfeback, their numbers amounted to feveral thoufand. Thofe that I ihot among to-day, were collected clofe toge- M 2 ther
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