76 Account of the Fish River Bush, South Africa. 



away from its banks. On such occasions the sea at its 

 mouth is tinged and dirtied reddish for miles out and on 

 each side along the coast, and the floated debris is deposited 

 in banks along the contiguous beach. The rise of the river 

 often takes place suddenly in a volume of water, which pre- 

 sents an elevation above the level in front ; and persons dis- 

 appointed of a passage across some drift now flooded, may 

 by hard riding overtake the stream, and cross at adrift lower 

 down. These drifts or fords are the intervening shallow 

 places in the deep bed of the river, formed by banks or rocks 

 between the several pools into which the stream is divided, 

 when at a low standard, and are used by the farmers and 

 cattle to pass from one part of the country to another. 

 Passages across can be made at these spots, even when the 

 river is up to the saddle-flaps, as the bed of the river is there 

 known and safe. No roads lead to these drifts, which are 

 only known to frequenters of the country : in the path lead- 

 ing through the bush to the brink of the river, the bush is so 

 high that in many places one may ride under the branches, but 

 more frequently the rider must dismount and lead his horse 

 through. In wet seasons vleys or ponds of water may be 

 found here and there in the flatter parts of the valley, or on 

 the level ground on the summit of the eminences, but these 

 soon become dried up in the course of a long drought. Dur- 

 ing these dry seasons the game of the larger kind repair to 

 the banks of the river for water, and its margins are every- 

 where imprinted with the spoor of numbers of animals of 

 various descriptions, as bucks, wild pigs, koodoos, aardvarks, 

 &c. ; and here the sportsman may, by patiently waiting in 

 the evenings and mornings, have a chance of surprising and 

 shooting some of these game, taking his station among the 

 bushes on the opposite side of the river to where he observes 

 the recent footprints. It is a circumstance of astonishment 

 that such vast areas of land should support such quantities 

 of bush without any visible signs of running water anywhere, 

 which one would also imagine necessary for its numerous 

 animate inhabitants. Deep kloofs and shady ravines are in 

 numbers everywhere without this source of vegetation and 

 alleviation of thirst, and where one would expect a cool rill of 



