284 THE ST. LUCIA RIVER. 



arduous and fatal enterprise on the 6th of March. 

 Near Nobambe are several pieces of ordnance, said 

 by the natives to have been left by the Dutch above 

 forty years ago, when they attempted a settlement. 

 The point where they were described to have re- 

 mained must be nearly thirty miles from the sea. 



fi The St. Lucia River, of which the Zimtlanga is a 

 principal, being the western, branch, has three other 

 branches, the Volosie Imtlopie, or White Volosie, 

 the Volosie Innansie, or Black Volosie, and the 

 Volosie, which is the most eastern source. These 

 having all united about thirty-five miles from the 

 sea, form the Omvolosie, or Great Volosie, designated 

 in the maps as the St. Lucia. The ford of the 

 Black Volosie, where our travellers crossed on the 

 7th of March, was one hundred yards wide, much 

 infested with alligators, the banks being marshy and 

 thickly lined with fig-trees full of good fruit, and 

 their trunks six feet in diameter. Like the Ficus 

 Indica, they possess the quality of throwing down 

 their branches and fixing them by roots into the earth. 

 Buffaloes and especially elephants were numerous. 

 Proceeding through a hilly country, they passed a 

 long defile in the Ingammanya, or Black Tiger 

 Mountains, and crossed the Morrie and Sordwana 

 Rivers on the 9th. Game increased in quantity, and 

 they here met with a new species of tiger, most 

 ferocious in its habits, and totally different from the 

 colonial kind. Gnus, elands, and koedoos were 



