SOUTHERN AFRICA. 31 



CHAPTER VI. 



FROM THE BOUNDARY OF THE COLONY^ ACROSS THE 

 GREAT ORANGE RIVER, TO KURUMAN. 



We had noAV fairly quitted civilizatioiij and were entering- 

 upon a sterile inhospitable region, sparing-ly inhabited by 

 Bushmen — the remnant of Hottentot hordes, and the wild 

 aborigines of the country — who, g-radually receding* before 

 the encroachments of the European colonists, have long* since 

 soug-ht refug-e in the pathless desert. Unblessed among-st 

 the nations of the earth, the hand of these wandering* outcasts 

 is ag*ainst every man, and every man's hand is ag*ainst them. 

 Existing* precariously from day to day — heedless of futurity, 

 and forg'etful of the past — without either laws, arts, or 

 relig'ion — only a faint g'limmering* ray of instinct guides 

 their benig'hted path. Depending* for subsistence upon the 

 produce of the chase, or the spontaneous g'ifts of nature, 

 they share the wilderness with beasts of prey, and are but 

 one g*rade hig-her 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 effect of a droug*ht which had prevailed^ 

 and which had so completely removed every vestig'e of ve- 

 g'etation, that they were frequently compelled to pass two 

 days without tasting* food or water. Extensive — to the eye 

 boundless — plains of arid land, with neither eminence nor 

 hollow, were on all sides expanded to the view : of these 

 the prevailing colour was brownish ^^ellow, varieg*ated with 

 a few black and sickly shrubs. Scarcely an object met the 



