IN SOUTH AFRICA. 259 
ting with their heads and kicking up their heels as they go. 
The young one that I saw seemed good-natured, though very 
bold, but the full-grown untamed animal is fierce and dan- 
gerous. 
The next day, turning towards the S.W., we proceeded 
along the green valley of the Kat River, between very high 
and steep hills, indeed almost mountains, which are partly 
covered with thick wood, and partly with a kind of open 
shrubbery of acacias. The hills, throughout this part of the 
country, have a general tendency to the flat-topped or table 
shape. We repeatedly crossed the river, which flows in a 
very tortuous channel, deeply sunk between steep banks, and 
overhung and almost concealed by a thick growth of weeping 
willows and other trees. Our day's journey, of about twenty- 
seven miles, ended at Fort Beaufort, where, as everywhere 
else in this frontier tour, I met with the greatest hospitality 
and kindness from the officers. This military post is situ- 
ated on a somewhat elevated platform or peninsula, almost 
encircled by the Kat River, which is rapid and muddy, but 
neither broad nor deep, and is confined between very high, 
almost precipitous, thickly-wooded banks. 
May 8th.—We spent the 8th at Fort Beaufort, from 
Whence two days’ journey, in a direction somewhat to the 
westward of S., brought us back to Graham’s Town. We 
passed the intermediate night at Tomlinson's Inn, on the banks 
of the Koonap, not far from its junction with the Great Fish 
River, and next day forded the latter stream near Fort 
Brown, where it is much less considerable than at Trom- 
Peters Drift. The country between the two rivers, and 
Southward to within five or six miles of the town, is ex- 
tremely rugged, and covered with thick bush. From Fort 
ufort to Graham's Town is a journey, not including stop- 
Pages, of fifteen hours in an ox-waggon, and may thence be 
estimated at about forty-five miles. 
We were escorted in this little tour by detachments of 
the Hottentot corps, or Cape Mounted Rifles, who are, or 
Vere at that time, the only cavalry in the colony, and seem 
v 2 
