Discovery la the African Continent. 197 



Mr. Assistant Surgeon Morgan, has just been published in the 

 Journal of the South African Literary and Scientific Institution. 

 These details, generally accessible and well known, render it 

 unnecessary for me to enter upon a subject which would soon 

 exceed the limits prescribed by this paper, and which I already 

 feel I have greatly transgressed. 



II. The next division is that of the Amatymb;f. or Tambookie 

 Tribe of Caffres, the supposed progenitors of the Amakosse, 

 from whom they are now most distinctly divided as a nation. 

 Their country is situated behind the latter named people. The 

 Zwarte Kei, rising in the Winterberg, and the Stormberg river, 

 80 named from the mountain inwhich it first bursts into existence, 

 separate them from the Colonists ; the grand northern range 

 of mountains from the Bechuanas of the Orange river, a some- 

 what undefined and undulating line along the subsidiary ridge 

 until it touches the Ombashee river, from the Amakosae, and 

 thence in a north-easterly course to one of the sources of the 

 Omtata river, from the neighbouring tribe the Amaponda. 



The extent of this territory comprises 6,000 miles, and can 

 (Only be contrasted, not compared with that of the Caffres 

 Proper; it is poorly watered, the streams which intersect it, 

 the heads of the Bashee, Omtata, and Kei rivers being merely a 

 succession of pools, except in the rainy season. It is com- 

 posed of extensive, elevated, dry, and unsheltered plains, a 

 real karoo or desert, parched by a burning sun in summer, 

 and chilled by excessive cold in the opposite season. Trees, 

 and those even of stinted growth, are only found along the 

 banks of the rivers, giving by their dark and regularly marked 

 lines to the spectator from any elevation, a map-like appear- 

 ance to the country, the intervening spaces being destitute of 

 any shrub of more than a few inches in height. The pasturage 

 js, however, luxuriant at certain seasons ; its growth after 

 rains appears almost miraculous, but droughts of months' and 

 sometimes of years' extent render a large portion of this 

 .country permanently uninhabitable, and thus perpetuating, as 

 it must have originated, the nomadic manners of the race, 

 which at present finds a wretched and precarious subsistence 

 on its inhospitable surface. 



The Natives partake of the character of the regions they 

 occupy. While the Cafi're Proper is a daring savage, warlike 

 by disposition, imposing in appearance, and independent in 

 character, the Tambookie or Amatymba is mild even to timidity, 

 more frail in person, and cowardly almost to imbecility in 

 danger; he is assailed by the Bushman from the north, by his 

 brother Caffre on the south, by tlie marauding and predatory 

 tribes from the east, and maintains an uncertain tenure of his 

 Dative territory ; he is kept constantly in a state of almost 



