62 Messrs. Coxvic and Greens Expedition 



ofSadooka; at this village, and at most of those they sub- 

 sequently passed, they were received with distrust and 

 hesitation, but when they provided the natives with food, the 

 produce of their guns, the poor creatures almost starving, 

 (living chiefly on grass seeds,) called them Gods, and said 

 hitherto they had only been visited for the purpose of rapine 

 and murder. For some days past the expedition had suffered 

 much from rain, and they now remarked a sensible alteration 

 in the climate, the days being excessively hot, and the nights 

 cold, raw, and damp. On the 15th they crossed a lower part 

 of the Ungovoomo, and encamped on a lake called Omvoobo, 

 or Sea Cow Pond, near the confluence of the Ungovoomo and 

 Pongola rivers; the ensuing day they travelled along the banks 

 of the latter stream, which was here flooded, and they slept at 

 a large lake which they denominated " Erin;" they then crossed 

 the Mapoota-river, near its junction with the Ponffola, and 

 took up their abode for the night on the shores of another lake 

 called by them " Killarney," of which they write in extreme 

 raptures; it is about four miles long, by 300 to GOO yards 

 wide; its waters are fresh, and trarslucent as glass; the 

 haunt of the aligator, hippopotamus, and an innumerable 

 diversity of fish ; it is garlanded around by splendid shrubs, 

 approached by a lawn of the most verdant grass, the elegant 

 springbuck (antilopc saliens vel dorsata), and a large number 

 of the same genus, sport around and drink of its placid 

 waters, but with all this loveliness, danger and death lurk in 

 this tempting and apparent paradise: the insidious crocodile, 

 the dangerous boa, the treacherous tiger, and a pestilential 

 atmosphere, mar and ruin one of the most splendid scenes 

 of earthly beauty. 



The Mapoota-river is called by the natives La Zoota, and is 

 increased by the Ungovoomo and Pongola streams ; the first 

 and last of which have their sources on the western side cf the 

 Bombo Mountains: the banks of the Mapoota are filled with 

 reeds, and marshy, and the whole country is nearly on a dead 

 level, (the natives state as far as Mosambique). Between the 

 ford they crossed of this, and the English river, a distance of 

 about 80 miles, the country seems to possess no particular 

 interest : a large portion of the route lay through an uninhabited 

 tract, desolated by Chaka, and now only occupied by elephants ; 

 and our undaunted travellers were continually impeded by salt 

 lakes of stagnant water, boggy ground, and forests of stunted 

 shrubs; the soil is remarkably light — indeed as sandy as that 

 of the sea-shore. They kept in the vicinity of the Mapoota-river 

 for four days; on the 22d made a little deviation to a kraal on 

 the coast, under a chief named Mavctte, where they had the 

 welcome sight of a vessePanchored in Dela Goa Bay; to this 



