Chap. V.] SOUTHERN AFRICA. 31 



Dassies-fontein. Here we were struck with the 

 sight of an old Kafir smoking dacca, or the narcotic 

 wild hemp, in which the natives greatly delight. 

 Seated at the door of a miserable hovel, a squalid 

 picture of poverty, the decrepit wretch was inhaling 

 the pernicious drug through water from a bullock's 

 horn. Volumes of smoke were forced into his 

 stomach by draughts of water, and the result was a 

 violent fit of coughing, attended by raving delirium. 

 We actually saw him throw off his slender apparel, 

 and rush forth into the plain like a wild beast or a 

 maniac from Bedlam. 



At noon on the 5lh the thermometer stood at 

 32°, the snow falling in quantities during the whole 

 of the day. We however travelled twenty-five 

 miles, and reached Vogel Valley, where, the follow- 

 ing morning, the whole of the brooks were frozen 

 over with ice a quarter of an inch thick, and the 

 manes of the horses, and the herbage around, were 

 decorated with icicles. The glass at 7 a.m. had 

 sunk to 18°, yet the cold to the feeling was neither 

 intense nor disagreeable. Here, for the first time, 

 we saw large troops of those eccentric animals the 

 Gnoos,* three of which we killed, having hemmed 

 a herd into a valley, and obliged them to riai the 

 gauntlet. 



Of all quadrupeds, the gnoo is probably the 

 most awkward and grotesque. Nature doubtless 

 formed him in one of her freaks, and it is scarcely 



* Catoblepas Gnoo. Delineation in Captain Harris's African 

 Views. Vide Appendix. 



