Chap. XXVI.] S0UTIIP:RN AFRICA. 233 



been liberated by the sudden shock from the sacks 

 in wliich they were put up, might be seen emulating 

 each other in a race to arrive at the lower ground. 

 To a spectator unacquainted with the construction 

 of a Cape waggon, no one component part of which 

 is attached to another, this would have appeared an 

 irrecoverable and total wreck. In the course of two 

 hours, however, every thing was in its proper place 

 again, and the vehicle in motion, a trifling distortion 

 of the awning being the only trace left to remind us 

 of the catastrophe. It served as a lesson, never- 

 theless, to trim the waggons with greater care ; and 

 as we had now eaten some way into the stores, the 

 hunting trophies were removed from the awning, to 

 which they had hitherto been lashed, and stovi'ed 

 away in the hold as pig ballast. Yet even this pre- 

 caution did not exempt us from further misfortune — 

 the same ill-fated van was again overthrown in a 

 few days with most alarming detriment to its con- 

 tents — the portable sextant, amongst other things, 

 being flattened in one of the side pockets, whilst the 

 mercury of Fahrenheit's thermometer was scattered 

 to the four winds of heaven. 



The third day after crossing the mountains, we 

 encamped on the Machachochan river, near the 

 scene of the signal defeat of Barend Barend's Gri- 

 quas in 1831, an event to which I have before had 

 occasion to allude. A conical mountain, seen from 

 a considerable distance in every direction, points to 

 the spot ; and its base is a perfect Golgotha, thickly 

 strewed with the whitened bones of men and horses, 



