of boiling water, without any admixture of milk or sugar, is offered to every visiter who may chance to arrive during the heat of the day. A small tin box containing sugar-candy is sometimes handed round with the "teawater," from which each person takes a little bit to keep in his mouth, and thus to sweeten, in frugal fashion, the beverage as he swallows it. During this refreshment, I carried on a tolerably fluent conversation in broken Dutch with my host and his huisvrouw; and gratified them not a little by communicating the most recent information I possessed of the state of European politics, respecting which old Coetzer was very inquisitive.

The domicile of my hospitable neighbours, in which we were thus seated, was not calculated to suggest any ideas of peculiar comfort to an Englishman. It was a house somewhat of the size and appearance of an old-fashioned Scotch barn. The walls were thick, and substantially built of strong adhesive clay; a material, which being well prepared or tempered, in the manner of mortar for brick-making, and raised in successive layers, soon acquires, in this dry climate, a great degree of hardness, and is considered scarcely inferior in durability to burnt brick. These walls, which were about nine feet high, and tolerably smooth and straight, had been plastered over within and without with a composition of sand and cow-dung, and this being afterwards well white-washed with a sort of pipe-clay, or with lime made of burnt shells, the whole had a very clean and light appearance.

The roof was neatly thatched with a species of hard rushes, which are considered much more durable and less apt to catch fire than straw. There was no ceiling under the roof; but the rafters over-head were hung with a motley assemblage of several sorts of implements and provisions, such as hunting apparatus, dried flesh of various kinds of game, large whips of rhinoceros and hippopotamus hide, (termed sjamboks,) leopard and lion-skins, ostrich eggs and feathers, dried fruit, strings of onions, rolls of tobacco, bamboos for whip-handles, calabashes, and a variety of other articles. A large pile of fine homemade soap graced the top of a partition wall.

The house was divided into three apartments; the one in which we were seated (called the voorhuis) opened immediately from the open air, and is the apartment in which the family always sit, eat, and receive visiters. A private room (slaap-kamer) was formed at either end of this hall, by cross partitions of the same height and construction as the outer walls. The floor, which, though only of clay, appeared uncommonly smooth and hard, I found, on inquiry, had been formed of ant-heaps, which, being pounded into dust, and then watered and well stamped, assume a consistency of great tenacity.

The house was lighted by four square windows in front, —one in each of the bed-rooms, and two in the voorhuis, -and also by the door, which appeared to be shut only during the night. The door consisted of reeds, rudely fastened on a wicker frame, and was fixed to the doorposts by thongs of bullocks' hide. The windows were without glass, and were closed at night, each with an untanned quagga skin. There was neither stove nor chimney in any part of the dwelling-house; but the operations of cooking were performed in a small circular hut of clay and reeds, which stood in front of it. The furniture of the sitting-room consisted of a couple of wooden-tables, and a few chairs, stools, and waggon-chests; an immense churn, into which all the milk saved from the sucking calves was daily poured, and churned every morning; a large iron-pot for boiling soap; two or three wooden pitchers, hooped with brass, and very brightly scoured; a cupboard, exhibiting the family service of wooden bowls and trenchers, pewter tureens, brandy flasks, with a goodly array in phials, of Dutch quack medicines. A tea vase, and brass tea kettle heated by a chaffing-dish,—which, with a set of Dutch tea-cups, and a large brass-clasped Dutch Bible, occupied a small table at which the mistress of the house presided, completed the inventory. The bedrooms, in which I more than once slept on future occasions, were furnished each with one or more large bedsteads, or stretchers, without posts or curtains, but provided with good feather-beds, spread on elastic frames, woven with thongs of bullocks' hide, like a cane-bottomed chair.

In a corner of the hall, part of the carcass of a sheep was suspended from a beam; and I was informed that two sheep, and sometimes more, were daily slaughtered for family consumption; the Hottentot herdsmen and their families, as well as the farmer's own household, being chiefly fed upon mutton, at least during the summer, when beef could not be properly cured. The carcasses were hung up in this place, it appeared, chiefly to prevent waste by being constantly under the eye of the mistress, who, in this country, instead of the ancient Saxon title of " giver of bread,” (hlæfdiga lavedy, whence our term lady,) might be appropriately called the "giver of flesh." Flesh, and not bread, is here the staff of life; and the frontier colonists think it no more odd to have a sheep hanging in the voorhuis, than a farmer's wife in England would do to have the large household loaf placed for ready distribution on her hall table. At this very period, in fact, a pound of wheaten bread in this quarter of the colony was three or four times the value of a pound of animal food.

In regard to dress, there was nothing very peculiar to remark. That of the females, though in some respects more slovenly, resembled a good deal the costume of the rustic classes in England thirty or forty years ago. The men wore long loose trousers of sheep or goat-skin, tanned by their servants, and made in the family. A check shirt, a jacket of coarse frieze or cotton, according to the weather, and a broad-brimmed white hat, completed the costume. Shoes and stockings appeared not to be considered essential articles of dress for either sex, and were, I found, seldom worn except when they went to church, or to merry-makings (vrolykheids.) A sort of sandals, however, is in common use, called veld-schoenen, (country shoes,) the fashion of which was, I believe, originally borrowed from the Hottentots. They are made of raw bullock's hide, with an upper-leather of dressed sheep or goat-skin, much after the same mode as the brogues of the ancient Scottish Highlanders.

Old Coetzer and his family, like the remote Dutch colonists generally, were extremely inquisitive, asking a great variety of questions, some of them on very trifling matters. Englishmen are apt to feel annoyed by this practice, but without any sufficient reason; for though it betokens a lack of refinement, it is not at all allied to rudeness or impertinence; it is simply the result of untutored curiosity in the manners of people living in a wild and thinly-inhabited country, to whom the sight of a stranger is a rare event, and by whom news of any description is welcomed with avidity. Instead, therefore, of haughtily or sullenly repelling their advances to mutual confidence, I readily answered all the questions, including those that respected my own age, the number, name, and ages of my family and relatives, the direction and extent of my present journey, and the like. In return, I plied them with similar and still more various interrogatories, to all of which they not only replied with the utmost openness, but seemed highly pleased with my frankness. In this manner I soon learned that my host had eight or ten brothers, all stout frontier graziers like himself, and all with numerous families. His own family consisted (if I rightly recollect) of six sons and as many daughters, several of whom were married and settled in the neighbourhood. Two of his sons, with their wives and families, were at present living at this place, in cottages adjoining to his house. The old dame informed me that she was herself by birth a Jourdan, and was descended from one of the French Huguenot families, who settled in the colony after the revocation of the Edict of Nantz. Her father, she said, could speak French; but she herself knew no language but Dutch. Her nanner and address, however, retained something of French urbanity and politeness, which contrasted agreeably with the Batavian bluntness of her husband.

Having exhausted the usual topics of country chat, I suggested a walk round the premises, and we sallied forth, accompanied by old Winzel and his son Arend. They led us first to the orchard, which was of considerable extent, and contained a variety of fruit trees, all in a thriving state. The peach trees, which were now in blossom, were most numerous; but there were also abundance of

apricot, almond, walnut, apple, pear and plum trees, and whole avenues of figs and pomegranates. The outward fence consisted of a tall hedge of quinces. There was also a fine lemon grove, and a few young orange trees.

All the other fruits are raised with ease; peach-trees often bearing fruit the third year after the seeds are put in the ground. From the want of care, however, or of skill in grafting, few of the fruits in this part of the colony are of superior sorts or of delicate flavour. The peaches especially are but indifferent; but, as they are chiefly grown for making brandy, or to be used in a dried state, excellence of flavour is but little regarded. Some mulberry trees, which had been planted in front of the house, were large and flourishing, and produced, I was informed, abundance of fruit. These were not the wild or white mulberry, raised in Europe for feeding silk worms; but the latter sort also thrive extremely well in most parts of the colony.

The kitchen garden was very deficient in neatness, but contained a variety of useful vegetables. Onions were raised in great abundance, and of a quality fully equal to those of Spain. Pumpkins, cucumbers, musk and water-melons, were cultivated in considerable quantities. The sweet potato was also grown here.

Adjoining to the garden and orchard was a small, but well kept vineyard, from which a large produce of very fine grapes is obtained; but these, as well as the peaches, are chiefly distilled into brandy.

The whole of the orchard, vineyard, and garden ground, together with about twenty acres of corn land adjoining, were irrigated by the waters of a small mountain-rill, which were collected and led down in front of the house by an artificial canal. This limited extent was the whole that could be cultivated on a farm comprising about six thousand acres. But this is quite sufficient for the wants of a large family; the real wealth of the farm, so far as respects marketable commodities, consisting in the flocks and herds, raised on its extensive pastures. This old Winzel himself hinted-as, shutting up a gap in the garden hedge with a branch of thorny mimosa, he led us out towards the kraals or cattle-folds, exclaiming, in a tone of jocund gratulation, while he pointed to a distant cloud of dust moving up the valley-' Maar daar koomt myn vee-de beste tuin!" (But there come my cattle the best garden!')

On approaching the cattle kraals, I was struck by the great height of the principal fold, which was elevated fifteen or twenty feet above the level of the adjoining plain; and my surprise was certainly not diminished when I found that the mound on the top of which the pen was constructed, consisted of a mass of hard solid dung, accumulated by the cattle of the farm being folded for a succession of years on the same spot. The sheepfolds, though not quite so elevated, and under the lee, as it were, of the bullock-kraal, were also fixed on the top of similar accumulations. The several folds (for those of the sheep and goats consisted of three divisions) were all fenced in with branches of the thorny mimosa, which formed a sort of rampart around the margin of the mounds of dung, and were carefully placed with their prickly sides outwards, on purpose to render the enclosures more secure from the nocturnal assaults of the hyænas, leopards, and jackals.

While we were conversing on these topics, the clouds of dust which I had observed approaching from three different quarters, came nearer, and I perceived that they were raised by two numerous flocks of sheep, and one large herd of cattle. First came the wethers, which are reared for the market, and are often driven by the butchers' servants even to Cape Town, seven hundred miles distant. These being placed in their proper fold, the flock of ewes, ewe-goats, and lambs, was next driven in, and carefully penned in another; those having young ones of tender age being kept separate. And, finally the cattle herd came rushing on pell-mell, and spontaneously assumed their station upon the summit of their guarded mound; the milch-cows only being separated, in order to be tied up to stakes within a small enclosure nearer the houses, where they were milked by the Hottentot herdsmen, after their calves, which were kept at home, had been permit

ted to suck for a certain period. Not one of those cows, I was told, would allow herself to be milked until her calf had first been put to her; if the calf dies, of course there is an end of her milk for that season. About thirty cows were milked; but the quantity obtained from them was scarcely so much as would be got from eight or ten good English cows.

The farmer and his wife, with all their sons, daughters, daughters-in-law, and grand-children, who were about the place, were assiduously occupied, while the herds and flocks were folding, in examining them as they passed in, and in walking through among them afterwards, to see that all was right. I was assured that, though they do not very frequently count them, they can discover at once if any individual ox is missing, or if any accident has happened among the flocks from beasts of prey or otherwise. This faculty, the result doubtless of peculiar habits of attention, is certainly very remarkable; for the herd of cattle at this place amounted altogether to nearly 700 head, and the sheep and goats to about 5,000. This is considered a very respectable, but by no means an extraordinary stock for a Tarka grazier.

Every individual of an African farmer's family, including even the child at the breast, has an interest in the welfare of the flocks and herds. It is their custom, as soon as a child is born, to set apart for it a certain number of the young live stock, which increase as the child grows up; and which, having a particular mark regularly affixed to them, form, when the owner arrives at adult age, a stock sufficient to be considered a respectable dowry for a prosperous farmer's daughter, or to enable a young man, though he may not possess a single dollar of cash, to begin the world respectably as a Vee Boer, or grazier.

After the folding of the cattle was over, my host showed us his corn-mill, which was of very small dimensions and simple construction. The water-wheel which was driven horizontally by the little canal of irrigation on its passage to the orchard, was only about five feet in diameter, and the millstones not more than two. A slender iron axle, of which the lower end was fixed in the horizontal water-wheel, passing through a small hole in the centre of the nether millstone, was mortised into the upper one, which by this means was put in motion. The corn was supplied by an orifice in the upper stone, and the flour conveyed by a little wooden spout into a leathern bag; and this was the whole machinery. I was informed it would grind about a bushel of wheat in eight hours.

On returning to the house, the feet of all the family, commencing with Winzel and his wife, were washed in succession by an old slave woman. Supper was then served up, consisting chiefly of mutton broiled and stewed, with excellent wheaten bread, butter milk, and some dishes of vegetables and dried fruits. Supper (avondstuk) is the principal meal throughout the interior of the colony; the only other regular meal being breakfast, which consists of nearly the same viands, and is taken about eight in the morning. Grace was said before and after meat by one of the young girls, daughters of our host.

My companion and I slept on feather-beds spread on mats for us in the voorhuis, which is the usual dormitory allotted for strangers in houses of this description, where there are seldom spare beds or bed-rooms. On subscquent occasions, when I happened to spend a night at this house with my wife on our way to Cradock, we had a bed allotted to us in the principal sleeping chamber, old Winzel and his wife occupying another bed in the same apartment.

Peace be above the roof-tree of old Winzel Coetzer! Though we should not like to be very long at one time the guest of the slaap-kamer ; and though we have not a doubt that his mode of existence would kill a cockney in a month, and finish a polite footman in three days, we can well conceive how many more generations may revolve over that stanch household, and find it equally rude and equally happy.

We have another interior of a more prepossessing kind, though the hospitable master of the house was still no more than an affluent grazier of the Sneeuwberg. Mr. Pringle halted here at one time on a journey from the town of GraafReinét. The pastoral farmers of the Sneeuwberg maintain the character of all Highlanders for a free hospitality :

The house of Schalk Burger, says Mr. Pringle, we found full of guests, there being not fewer than eight-andtwenty besides ourselves, all respectable-looking African farmers or travellers, mostly with their wives and children. How they were all accommodated I could not easily guess; but when I made some apology for increasing the number of their visiters, in consequence of the piercing cold wind which prevented our sleeping in our waggons, the bustling hostess assured me, with a smile, that they had abundance of accommodation, and bedding for many more guests. So far as bedding went, this was certainly the case; for on retiring to rest I was conducted to a slaap-kamer, containing three good curtained bedsteads, furnished with two, three, or four feather-beds each; but in one of these were already deposited my wife and her sister. Such, indeed, was not unusually the arrangement made for us when we slept (as we sometimes found it necessary to do) in the houses of the Dutch-African colonists during our journey. Even in the best houses in the remote districts, the sleeping apartments are few, and usually contain two or three beds each. In a country where there are no inns, and where universal hospitality prevails, the crowding of one or more entire families into the same bed-room cannot, perhaps, always be avoided, and, from having become customary, appears not even to be regarded as inconvenient. It is a custom which indicates both lack of refinement and great simplicity of manners. A century ago, a state of things not very widely dissimilar prevailed in the most respectable farm-houses of Scotland, and still prevails in the cottages of the peasantry.

We spent the following forenoon with this family, which furnished a pleasant specimen of the Sneeuwberg farmers, a class of men of whom Mr. Barrow, thirty years ago, gave so favourable a report. After breakfast, some more company arrived, whom I found to be neighbours and relatives come to spend the Sunday with our patriarchal host. We were soon after invited to attend their religious service in the hall, round which the whole company were silently seated; and I was glad to see, what I had never witnessed on the frontier, that the slaves and Hottentots belonging to the household were also freely admitted. After singing some hymns and reading some portions of scripture, our landlord addressed the company in an exhortation, apparently extempore, of about half an hour in length. It appeared to me very sensible and appropriate, and was listened to with every appearance of devout attention.

After this becoming service, all the company sat down to a plentiful and cheerful repast, consisting chiefly of stewed meats, according to the Dutch fashion, but very well cooked, and varied with baked fruits, pastry, pickles, and salads in abundance. The spoons and some of the other articles were of silver; the capacious tureens of well burnished pewter; the plates of China and English delf, with napkins, &c. There was country wine; but glasses were only placed for the men, who drank of it very moderately; the women not at all.

I left them in the afternoon; much pleased with the good humour and good sense that seemed to prevail among these rustic inhabitants of the mountains. There was nothing very Arcadian certainly about them; but their appearance was decent and comfortable, and their manners frank, hospitable, and courteous. Notwithstanding the heavy damage occasioned throughout the district by mildew in the crops, and recent violent rains, plenty was apparent everywhere. I afterwards learned, indeed, that our host was one of the wealthiest, and, at the same time, one of the worthiest men and best masters in the Sneeuwberg. His "substance" might almost have rivalled that

of Job and Jacob in their most prosperous days. He possessed eleven plaatzen, or farm-properties, pastured by 13,000 sheep, and from 2,000 to 3,000 cattle, besides horses, corn, &c. He had only one son; and notwith

standing his unbounded hospitality, had saved much money; and this, I was told, he generally lent out to his poorer neighbours without interest; it being a maxim with this liberal man, that it is "more profitable to assist one's friends than to hoard money by usury."

As an evidence of the simplicity of manners existing among this class of people, I may mention that notwithstanding the wealth of the family and their numerous coloured servants, Schalk Burger's only son drove himself our waggon with a team of oxen, with which his father had furnished me for the next stage, in order to keep my bullocks fresh for the arduous journey before

us.

The hospitality for which the Dutch-African colonists have always been famed, I found still prevailing unimpaired in the Sneeuwberg. Not only this family, to whom it would have been an insult to have offered remuneration of any sort, but every other I visited in that quarter, positively refused any compensation for lodging or provisions; while many of them made us presents of loaves of fine bread, dried fruits, comfits, &c., although we were perfect strangers to them, and all that they could know of us was such slight information as might be furnished by our fellow-travellers. 1

The sylvan shed or pastoral bothie which Mr. Pringle reared, and furnished for himself at Eildon, forms to imagination a delightful lodge in the wilderness; yet it was neither so ample as that of Winzel Coetzer, nor so well stored as the hospitable mansion of Schalk Burger. Its charm was the unbought grace imparted by taste and refinement. Before it was reared, the Scottish emigrants, who had suffered greatly from their first crops being destroyed by mildew or rust, had obtained a greatly enlarged location in the same valley; and grants had been given to other Scottish settlers close upon their boundaries. As land was the only sort of property they could acquire, it was reasonable to increase the grant to something nearer the quantity held by the Dutch boors. They ultimately obtained 20,000 acres. Before this they had become rather discontented, and not without cause. The New Year's day of 1821, was indeed far from being a Merry New Year in Glen-Lynden.

The whole of the wheat crops were destroyed by the rust or mildew. Then a severe drought, which had commenced in December, lasted more than three months; so that the pastures were parched up; the river ceased to flow, except near its sources; the irrigation of our gardens and orchards was interrupted, and many of the young trees and other plants destroyed. About the same time, the settlers received information that the party of five hundred Highlanders, who were expected out to occupy the country between us and the new Caffer frontier, had, in consequence of some untoward circumstances, entirely abandoned their intention of emigrating to the Cape; and, to crown our disappointments, the melancholy intelligence soon afterwards reached us, that the other Scottish party, which sailed from the Clyde on the 13th of October, 1820, had perished miserably near the equator, by their vessel (the Abeona transport) being destroyed by fire. Out of one hundred and forty of these unfortunate emigrants, only sixteen souls escaped; who, being picked up in their boats by a vessel homeward bound, had returned to Scotland. These concurrent disasters, crowding upon the settlers all at once, greatly disheartened most of the party; and I was urged by some of them to apply to the government to remove as to Albany, since, owing to the failure of the other Scottish parties, we would otherwise be left quite isolated among the rude

Dutch-African Boors, on this remote and exposed part of the frontier.

Mr. Pringle, their guide, philosopher, and friend, prevailed with them to make a further trial; and when the governor, some months later, made a tour of the province, and agreed either to remove them to a more congenial locality, or extend their grant, they chose the latter alternative, and stuck by their new lares in Glen-Lynden. The increase of land enabled them to receive, as kindly tenants, a number of people of colour, who are used by the whites at the Cape, much as in all the other British colonies. This leads us upon a curious view of the manners of the old settlers.

After the augmentation of our territory, says Mr. Pringle, I willingly availed myself of a convenient opportunity which offered, for increasing the native population upon it, and thereby adding at once to our means of security and our profitable occupation of the land. It happened that several of the Mulatto Hottentots, (Bastaards,) who had been stationed with us during the first six months, belonged to a small body of that class who had for many years resided at Zwagershoek, under the protection of an old German settler of the name of Stollz. A favourable report, it appears, had been carried to this man of the treatment the coloured caste had experienced at Glen-Lynden: for in August, 1821, old Stollz wrote me a letter, requesting me to receive hospitably (herbergzaamlyk) upon our grounds certain families of his Hottentot vassals; and some time afterwards he sent over a messenger to entreat me urgently to visit him without delay, as he was about to die, and was anxious to confer with me respecting the future disposal and protection of his coloured dependents. I rode over accordingly with Mr. G. Rennie to see the old man ; but when we reached Zwagershoek, we learned that Stollz had died two days before, and that we were only in time to attend his funeral. It took place next day, and was curious and characteristic enough. The scene of the funeral dinner reminded me of some of Sir Walter Scott's graphic sketches. The only real mourners were the coloured people, who were not admitted to the feast, and only permitted to follow the funeral at a humble distance. The landed property left by the deceased fell into the hands of covetous strangers; and the Mulattoes, who had occupied a large part of it as tenants and cottagers, were speedily dispossessed. The most of these people flocked over to GlenLynden, where we engaged some of them as herdsmen and farm servants, and placed those who had cattle as tenants upon our unoccupied lands, upon condition, generally, of their rendering certain services in the cultivation of the soil. By this means we greatly strengthened our own hands, while we had, at the same time, the satisfaction of protecting and benefiting those oppressed and despised people. A dozen families or more thus found a temporary settlement in our valley, some of whom, under the sheltering patronage of old Stollz, had accumulated considerable property. One old man, Klass Eckhard, (who had lost a hand and an eye, but to make amends had two wives,) possessed an ox-waggon, sixty head of cattle, twenty-five horses, and about one thousand sheep and goats. Nicholas Blok, who had been steward to Stollz, had a waggon, a plough, forty-eight cattle, eighteen horses, and about five hundred sheep and goats. Joseph Arendz had a waggon, fifty cattle, ten horses, and about three hundred sheep and goats.

Some others had cattle in smaller numbers. But two brothers, Christian and Karel Groepe, who had previously become tenants to my father, had a stock of sheep, cattle, and horses, more numerous than any of the rest, and equal to many of the poorer Boors. These Groepes were the sons of an old German settler, who had once been field-cornet of Zwagershoek, but who (now in extreme old age) was considered to have lost caste, from his associating with his own children by a Hottentot wo

man.

VOL. I.-NO. VII.

As every adult male among them possessed at least a musket and a horse, and they looked to me as their immediate protector, I now found myself in the novel situation of a petty "border chief," being able to muster upwards of thirty armed horsemen, (including our own party and the six Hottentot soldiers,) at an hour's notice. We, therefore, considered our location perfectly secure from any serious attack of the wild natives in the vicinity.

These Mulattoes were an acute, active, and enterprising race of men; but their unhappy condition as a degraded caste, and the irregular sort of life they had led, in some respects, under old Stollz, were not favourable to the formation of habits either of steady industry or strict morality. Stollz himself had exhibited the evil example of living in habitual concubinage; and, what was still more prejudicial, the sanctions of legal marriage were refused by the colonial church to their unions, except upon both parties exhibiting qualifications, which, in nineteen cases out of twenty, were quite unattainable in their existing circumstances. For instance the clergyman of the district had refused to marry Christian Groepe, one of the most respectable and well educated of these men, to the woman who had been his faithful partner for nearly a dozen years, and had born him eight children, merely because the poor woman, after several attempts, could not accurately repeat the church catechism! The fact is, there existed a strong prejudice among the white colonists against the full admission of the coloured class to ecclesiastical privileges, and the majority of the colonial clergy were so little alive to the apostolic duties of their sacred office as to lend their sanction, directly or indirectly, to these unchristian prejudices which were also countenanced by the colonial laws.

Even the district magistrate, Captain Harding, though a humane man, at first opposed these people being received as tenants.-But old Stollz and his vassals have led us far away from Mr. Pringle's charming residence at Eildon-Cleuch, and upon the Plora. It was three miles distant from any other habitation. Mrs. Rennie, one of their party, lived with her family on their own land, three miles up the stream of the Lynden; and Captain Cameron, an officer of the 72d, who had recently obtained a grant, three miles below. This was a pleasant visiting distance, and now a site was chosen.

I selected, says Mr. P., an open grassy meadow, with a steep mountain behind, and the small river in front, bordered by willow trees and groves of the thorny acacia. It was a beautiful and secluded spot; the encircling hills sprinkled over with trees and bushes, and the fertile meadow-ground clothed with rich pasture, and bounded by cliffs crowned with aloes and euphorbias.

As the hut I was about to erect was still only intended for a temporary residence, I adopted, with some variations, the mode practised by the coloured natives in constructing their slight habitations. Drawing a circle on the ground of about eighteen feet in diameter, I planted up. right round this circle about twenty tall willow poles; digging, with an old bayonet, holes in the ground, just large enough to receive their thicker ends. I then planted a stouter pole exactly in the centre, and, drawing together the tops of the others, I bound them firmly to this central tree with thongs of quagga's hide. With the same ligature pliant spars or saplings were bound round the circle of poles, at suitable intervals, from bottom to top; and thus the wicker frame or skeleton of a cabin was completed, in the shape of a bee-hive or sugar-loaf. It was then thatched with reeds, the ends of the first layer' being let about a couple of inches into the earth. Spaces were left for a door and a small window; but neither fire-place nor chimney formed any part of our plan. A convenient door, to open in two halves, was soon constructed of the boards of some packing cases; and a yard of thin cotton cloth, stretched upon a wooden frame, formed a suitable window. 2 K