1812. 
VERDANT PLAIN. — REMAINS OF A KAAMA. 
99 
profit by the opportunity : he fired, and a quakka fell. With the 
assistance of his companions, the carcass was skinned and got home 
in the evening, in time for us to make from it a meal, which was 
both breakfast and supper. 
\1tli. Before the sun had risen to its greatest height, we mounted 
our oxen and departed from Geranium Rocks, directing our course 
towards the south. We travelled, with pleasant weather, over two 
large plains, which derived a beautifully verdant hue from an extra- 
ordinary abundance of Cyperus mitatus^, which from its growth and 
appearance might easily be mistaken for grass : but it was remarkable 
that no true grass was observed in any part of these plains ; the surface 
being almost every where clothed with this plant, intermingled in 
various places with low bushes, such as are generally met with in 
lands partaking of the nature of Karro. This is the cyperus already 
described as producing the numerous little bulbs which constitute 
one of the principal articles of food used by the Bushmen. 
These plains were about five or six miles across, and divided 
from each other by a ridge of hills of moderate elevation. Here our 
dogs caught a common jackal, and a young gemsboh (ghemsbok) : 
the latter was not bigger than a domestic goat. One of the stragglers 
of our party fell in with the fresh remains of a Jcaama, or hartebeest, 
which we supposed to have been hunted down by the ' wild dogs,' as 
they are called, or the animal which I have in the former volume 
described under the name of Hycsna venatica. As they had devoured 
nothing more than the haunches and entrails, it was a prize worth 
halting for ; and besides a large quantity of meat which we thus 
gained, the skin is considered as one of the best and strongest for 
leather and small thongs. The business of flaying and loading up 
the meat, detained us more than an hour. 
At the termination of the plain we climbed a rocky ascent, 
which brought us up to an elevated mountainous country of a mile or 
two in extent, abounding in bushes and grass, and where the air felt 
cooler than in the plains. Here the geological nature of the moun- 
tains assumed a new feature : their strata were still horizontal, and, 
although the table form might in general be discovered, their out- 
o 2 
