210 
RETURN TO THE GARIEP. 
17—19 May, 
more striking and wonderful. It is a representation, not more cor- 
rect, than it would be, to tell the Bushmen, that the ladies of Europe 
play upon a musical instrument composed of the entrails of animals, 
extended between three pieces of wood. These necklaces of entrails, 
are washed and cleansed as properly and completely as the strings of 
a violin or a harp ; and it is only by the subsequent accumulation of 
grease and red-ochre, that they become, what zve call, dirty, but which 
Bushmen consider as highly improved. 
At midnight we again heard the lion. Although it is impossible 
to know whether it was, or was not, the same animal which had 
disturbed us on the preceding night, it is probable that, having been 
then disappointed, he had followed us in the hope still of getting 
hold of an ox. 
18^^. As the sheep, on a long day's-journey, were found unable to 
travel so fast as the oxen, they were sent forward early in the 
morning, with two Hottentots under the guidance of Speelman : and 
after a march of above four-and-twenty miles, we halted late in the 
evening, for the last time on the banks of our friendly river, at a spot 
considerably below the place at which we first became acquainted 
with it. This is therefore marked as the Lower Station. 
On our road we spoke with two Bushmen, who informed us that 
a white-man, or as they expressed it in their language, a 'Gowsa, had 
crossed the Gariep in his way to Klaarwater. This, till we obtained 
better information, excited the curiosity of all of us, to know who 
this person could be, or his object in coming into these countries : 
but the whole story was either a fabrication on the part of the 
Bushmen, or a misunderstanding on ours ; for no person of that de- 
scription had made his appearance in any part of these countries, 
since myself. 
i9th. This day's march brought us once more to the delightful 
woody banks of the beautiful Gariep. I hailed its airy acacia groves 
and drooping willows, and derived pleasure from fancying that 
they waved their branches to bid me welcome again to their cooling 
shade, and to greet me on my safe return. 
Throughout the whole country which we had traversed in our 
