30 BOTANICAL EXCURSIONS 
green colour, with a scarlet breast, was here perching on its 
flowers, climbing about them and thrusting his slender beak 
into every floret. 
The moist hollows between the hills, as well as the valley 
of the Kromme River, were nearly filled with the Palmiet 
rush,* a common plant throughout the country we had tra- 
versed, from the Hottentot Holland mountains eastward. It 
is eminently a social plant (to use Humboldt’s expression), 
growing very thick together, and forming large masses, un- 
mixed with any thing else. In its herbage and general ap- 
pearance it is quite unlike a rush, and has more the look of 
an Aloe, or of.the crown of a Pine-apple mounted upon a 
thick, black, spongy stem, which varies in height from less | 1 
than one foot to three or four, according to the depth of the 
water in which it grows. 
April 5.—Leaving Jagersbosch on the 5th, we travelled 
for some hours along the valley of the Kromme River, which 
well deserves its name (signifying crooked), for it winds so- 
much, that we had to cross it half a dozen times in the course 
ofthe day's journey; the last time the water was up to the 
floor of the waggon. Afterwards, quitting this river, we tra- 
versed a country more elevated, open, and eomparatively level, 
but intersected by two or three formidable ravines. A jour- 
ney of between seven and eight hours from Meeding’s 
brought us to Leeuwenbosch, a poor miserable house in a 
hideous country, where, a few months afterwards, I had the 
misfortune to be detained a whole day by rain. 
April 6.—A considerable number of Fingoes were hutted 
near this farm-house, and in the morning the Governor held 
a conference with them by means of an interpreter. These 
were the first people of Caffer race that I saw, being the 
remnants of several tribes which had inhabited the country 
near Port Natal, but had been exterminated or driven  — 
into exile by Chaka, the terrible chief of the Zooloos. Of 
those whom we met here some were under the middle size, 
* Juncus serratus, — 
