SCENERY. 281 



of December they commenced their descent of the 

 precipitous sides of the Umzimvoobo, or St. John's 

 River, a height of nearly two thousand feet, having 

 visited the descendants of Europeans wrecked at 

 various periods on the inhospitable coast of Caf- 

 fraria. 



" Having crossed this formidable barrier, which oc- 

 cupied four days, they entered a nearly depopulated 

 country, formerly belonging to the Amaponda nation, 

 but which had been visited by the spear and fire- 

 brand of the Zoulah conqueror Chaka. This tract, 

 especially near the sea, is represented as beautiful 

 beyond description. The meadows are carpeted with 

 the most luxuriant herbage, and watered every few 

 hundred yards by copious rivulets, whose banks are 

 level with the prairies through which they meander. 

 The rivers swarm with fish, and afford a retreat to 

 the mighty hippopotamus. Both hills and plains are 

 in some parts covered with woods of gigantic forest 

 trees, which attain the height of seventy to eighty 

 feet. The recesses of these forests abound with ele- 

 phants, and the vegetation, consisting of the sweet 

 cane, millet, and maize, is rich beyond all that these 

 travellers had noticed in the most favoured parts of 

 the colony. The coast itself is abundantly supplied 

 with oysters of two descriptions, and for nearly thirty 

 miles a space is mentioned as being literally white 

 with this delicious esculent. A very few miles to the 

 eastward was the scene of the wreck of the ' Gros- 



