Chap. VI.] SOUTHERN AFRICA. 37 



CHAPTER VI. 



FROM THE BOUNDARY OF THE COLONY, ACROSS 

 THE GREAT ORANGE RIVER, TO KURUMAN. 



We had now fairly quitted civilization^ and were 

 entering upon a sterile inhospitable region, spar- 

 ingly inhabited by Bushmen — the remnant of Hot- 

 tentot hordes, and the wild aborigines of the country 

 — who, gradxially receding before the encroachments 

 of the European colonists, have long since sought 

 refuge in the pathless desert. Unblessed amongst 

 the nations of the earth, the hand of these wander- 

 ing outcasts is against every man, and every man's 

 hand is against them. Existing precariously from 

 day to day — heedless of futurity, and forgetful of 

 the past, — without either laws, arts, or religion — 

 only a faint glimmering ray of instinct guides their 

 benighted path. Depending for subsistence upon 

 the produce of the chase, or the spontaneous gifts of 

 nature, they share the wilderness with beasts of 

 prey, and are but one grade higher in the scale of 

 existence. 



From this point until we reached Kuruman, a 

 distance of two hundred miles, the number of our 

 oxen became daily diminished by the effects of a 

 drought which had prevailed, and which had so 

 completely removed every vestige of vegetation, that 



