372 A JOURNEY IN
colonists the Orange river. Numbers of Hottentots-came forward
to meet them; and on the opposite bank they could perceive
an extensive village, composed of decent looking huts. After
passing the long and dreary Karroo desert, it was an interesting
and g cheerful event to mix with a very considerable population,
apparently of a much superior class of beings,
though probably of the same race, to those few miserable
wretches .which had hitherto occasionally shewn themselves
in the course of the journey.
A river of such unusual magnitude in this quarter of the
globe was also a subject which afforded them no small degree
of pleasure. At this spot it was divided into two branches
by an island in the middle, each of which was not less than
six hundred yards in width. The water, by sounding, was
found to be deeper than the height of the bottom of the
waggons; it became necessary, therefore, to raise their contents,
by means o f billets of wood, in order to keep them
dry. The whole cavalcade got safely over the two streams,
except one waggon, the oxen of which, having by some accident
turned their heads down the stream, got into deeper
water, where they soon lost their legs; and the whole machine
being swept away with great violence, both oxen and
Waggon would inevitably have been lost, but for the active
exertions of the native Hottentots who, by cutting the yokes
and traces, freed the oxen and brought all except one safe
to the shore; and afterwards succeeded in dragging out the
waggon, which was overturned by the stream. “ The Dutch
“ boors," observes Mr. Truter, “ were as helpless as children,
“ and of no manner of ¡assistance whatever.”
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