354 
ON THE VIEW OF A FOREIGN LAND. 
13 July, 
only because I had resolved to conceal from the Bichuanas all 
knowledge of my having any intoxicating drink in the waggon, 
but because I had lately witnessed how necessary tobacco was to 
amuse, if I may so express it, the minds of my men, and imagined 
that the exhilarating power of the brandy would be on this day 
especially useful. 
There was among all my party, a certain degree of curiosity to 
see this long-talked-of town, in praise of which they had heard so 
much ; and this enlivened them, and perhaps, during its continuance, 
counteracted their timidity. I need not describe my own sensations 
at so interesting a point of my journey ; they may easily be conceived 
by those who have ever felt a desire to visit a foreign land that they 
may view and contemplate the human character in some new light ; 
and that, by tracing the gradations and shades of notions and ideas, 
through the various customs of different nations, and even to their 
first feeble source in uncivilized life, they may better understand 
themselves, and learn by the comparison, to form a juster estimate of 
that society which more immediately surrounds them, and to which 
they more properly belong. Those will feel as I felt ; and will find 
in their own heart, a ready apology for all those stratagems by which 
I endeavoured to draw my men into a consent to accompany me to 
nations still more remote, and still less known. 
Our course this day, was over the same level country which I 
have called the Gi^eat Plains of Litdhun, a denomination which does 
not express too much, as our journey through that part only which 
lay on this side of the town, was, according to my estimation, not less 
than forty-seven miles, extending in one unbroken expanse. They 
still preserved their sandy and grassy character, though occasionally 
varied with bushes 5 and were not without the pleasing relief of 
frequent clumps of acacias. The Ihne-stone rock, which, in some 
places, of a white and in others of a blackish color, had been here and 
there observable during nearly the whole distance, now began to 
disappear beneath the surface, and sandstone and granite rocks, a kind 
not before noticed in the Transgariepine, introduced a change in the 
