10 
the year 1782. July 23, 1812, was a day of great anxiety and 
trouble to the explorer. Among his attendants was a man 
named Cornelis, of Dutch and Hottentot parentage. Cornelis 
had been unsatisfactory and useless from the day of his en- 
gagement when he presented himself “in a state of complete 
intoxication”; and on this day in the midst of the Bachapin 
capital, Litakun, then visited for the first time by a European, 
he broke into open rebellion, and Burchell was compelled, 
buckling on his pistols and cutlass, personally to enforce 
obedience. The published account ends with the words :— 
“Thus ended one of the most turbulent days which I had 
experienced since the commencement of my journey.” 
(“ Travels,” vol. ii, London, 1824, p. 462.) The manuscript 
journal, however, concludes the day with the following personal 
details omitted from the second volume :—‘I continued in 
the waggon all the evening, and to divert my mind from the 
past, I spent the remaining time with my flute.” 
“Tt thus has unfortunately happened that I have been pre- 
vented joining my family in their remembrances of me on 
this day: and that my birthday should be marked as one of 
the most turbulent days I have passed since landing on Africa. 
From the little dependence I can place on my own people 
my situation now begins to grow critical, and calls for the 
most resolute but prudent measures.” 
Another record of great interest is found under the date 
May 29, 1812, when Burchell was at Klaarwater (Griquatown) 
making arrangements for his journey to Litakun. It is con- 
tained in these words:—‘ The Sphinx Atropos is called by 
Colonists the Bye-mot or Duyvel-bye, and is firmly believed to 
be poisonous.” 
This sentence appears to have been written later than the 
brief record of the day, the writing being in a darker ink and 
compressed into the narrow space between the entries for 
May 29 and 30. 
The observation by Mr. Roland Trimen, Hon. M.A., F.R.S., 
that the “ Death’s Head Moth” is an object of superstitious 
dread in South Africa is thus both confirmed and carried 
