verted, at length, the rude heap of stones, originating in necessity, into the sculptured marble, the useless flatterer of vanity.

Though the Poort may be considered as the entrance into Camdeboo, the first habitation is twelve miles beyond it, and the second ten miles beyond the first. No others appeared either to the right or to the left, and the surface of the country was just as barren and naked as any part of the Karroo. The third farm-house we passed was fifteen or sixteen miles beyond the second; and no other occurred between this and the Drosty, or the residence of the landrost, which was about ten miles farther. It was late in the evening of the thirtieth before we arrived at this village, at the entrance of which the landrost was received by a body of farmers on horseback, who welcomed him by a discharge of several platoons of musquetry.

CHAP. III.

Sketches on a Journey into the Country of the Kaffers.

IMMEDIATELY after our arrival at Graaff Reynet, the Provisional Landrost, in his list of grievances under which the district was then labouring, represented the deplorable state of some of its dependencies, from the incursions of the tribe of people known by the name of Kaffers. Certain chiefs of this nation, he said, with their families, and vassals, and cattle, were overrunning the country: some had even advanced as far as the borders of the district of Zwellendam; others had stationed themselves on the banks of the Sondag, or Sunday river, within fifty or sixty miles of the Drosdy; but that the great bulk of them were in that division of the district called the Zuure-veldt, or Sour Grass plains, which stretch along the sea-coast between the Sunday and the Great Fish rivers: that an inhabitant of Bruyntjes Hoogté, another division of the district, who, during the late disturbances and anarchy in the affairs of Graaff Reynet, had on all occasions used a dictatorial language and acted a busy part, had now sent him a letter, demanding that the command should be given to him of a detachment of the farmers against a party of Kaffers who had passed the borders of this division of the district with three or four thousand head of cattle: that he, the provisional landrost, had, from certain intelligence of the coming of the actual landrost, fortunately withheld his an

swer to the said letter; for, in the present state of affairs, he would not have dared to give a refusal: to all the measures of the leading party he had been compelled to assent: he had in fact been forced by the anarchists, by way of giving a kind of sanction to their proceedings, to take upon him the title of an office, the duties of which he was neither qualified, nor indeed suffered, to perform.

The first business, therefore, of the landrost, after his arrival at the Drosdy, was to stop the preparations of the farmers for making war against the Kaffers, by letting them know that it was his intention to pay a visit to the chiefs of that nation, and to prevail on them, if possible, to return quietly and peaceably into their own country beyond the settled limits of the Great Fish river. This, no doubt, was an unwelcome piece of intelligence to the writer of the letter, and to those of the intended expedition, who were to share with him the plunder of the Kaffers' cattle, which, in fact, and not any laudable motive for the peace and welfare of the district, was the mainspring that operated on the minds of those who had consented to take up arms against them. To the avaricious and covetous disposition of the colonists, and their licentious conduct, was owing a serious rupture with this nation in the year 1793, which terminated with the almost total expulsion of the former from some of the divisions of the district and though in the same year the treaty was renewed which fixed the Great Fish river to be the line of demarcation between the two nations, and the Kaffers retired within their proper limits, yet few of the colonists returned to their former possessions, particularly those in the Zuure Veldt; a circumstance, no doubt, that induced the former once more to transgress the fixed boundary. So

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long as they remained in small numbers in these forsaken parts, and during the confusion in the affairs of Graaff Reynet, little notice had been taken of their encroachments; but of late they had poured over in such multitudes, and had made such rapid advances towards the interior and inhabited parts of the district, levying at the same time contributions of oxen and sheep on those colonists whose habitations they approached in their passage through the country, that the affair was become seriously alarming.

As soon therefore as the landrost should have held a meeting of the inhabitants to administer to them the oath of allegiance to His Majesty, to read his commission, appoint the Hemraaden, or members of the Council, and settle some other necessary business at the Drosdy, it was resolved to inquire into the affair of the Kaffers upon the spot where they had posted themselves in the greatest numbers; and, should it be found necessary, to proceed from thence to the residence of their king; at the same time to pass through and examine as many parts of the country, under the jurisdiction of Graaff Reynet, as could be done without too great an expenditure of time; and particularly to visit the bay that was said to be formed where the Zwart-kops river falls into the sea.

In the meantime I had an opportunity of looking round me and taking a cursory view of that division of Graaff Reynet, properly so called. It occupies about ten miles on every side of the village. On the north and east it is terminated by the Snewberg or Snowy mountains, and on the south and west is inclosed by the division of Camdeboo. It contains only twenty-six families, twelve of whom inhabit the

village: the rest are scattered over a wild barren country almost destitute of tree or shrub, and very little better than the Karroo desert. The Sunday river, in its passage from the Snowy mountains, winds round the small plain on which the Drosdy is placed, and furnishes it with a copious supply of water, without which it would produce nothing. The whole extent of this plain is not more than two square miles, and it is surrounded by mountains two thousand feet in height, from whose steep sides project, like so many lines of masonry, a great number of sand-stone strata; so that the heat of summer, increased by the confined situation and the reflection of the sun's rays from the rocky sides of these mountains, is intensely great: whilst the cold of winter, from their great height, and the proximity of the Snowy mountains, from whence the northerly winds rush with great violence through the kloof that admits the Sunday river, is almost intolerable; not merely on account of the decreased temperature, but from the total impossibility of stirring abroad during the continuance of these winds, which in whirling eddies carry round the plain a constant cloud of red earth and sand.

The village of Graaff Reynet is in latitude 32° 11' south, longitude 26° east, and the distance from Cape Town about 500 miles. It consists of an assemblage of mud huts placed at some distance from each other, in two lines, forming a kind of street. At the upper end stands the house of the landrost, built also of mud, and a few miserable hovels that were intended as offices for the transaction of public business: most of these have tumbled in ; and the rest are in a ruinous condition and not habitable. The jail is composed of mud walls and roofed with thatch; and so little tenable, that an