1812. 
A BACHAPIN SIMILE — NOKANNIIN.— SPORTSMEN. 
491 
their Chief were to order the whole of his people to assemble for a 
great war, I should behold so countless a multitude^ that my eyes 
would open wide with wonder. His men would stand, he said, so 
closely together that they would tread on each other, and the ground 
all about us would be crowded with them, like reeds on the bank of 
a river. Whether my interpreter's assertions were well-founded or 
not, I could not but admire the beautil'ul simile which he employed, 
and which so expressively conveyed the idea of a multitude. 
Mattivi complained greatly of the frequent losses of cattle, which 
his people continued to sustain from the north-eastern tribes, and 
spoke, with painful recollection, of the former attacks from the 
CafFres to the south, and who have been already noticed as having 
emigrated from KafFerland to the banks of the Gariep. But now? 
that he possessed a gun, he said, he considered himself able to de- 
fend himself from the latter, and should therefore remove back 
again to Nokanriiin, a place to the south-west of the Kamhanni moun- 
tains, where the chief town of the Bachapins formerly stood, and 
where he himself was born. 
S\st. He this morning accompanied two of my Hottentots who 
went out in search of game. His object was to learn their mode of 
hunting, and the manner of using the gun ; as he took his own with 
him. The men were unsuccessful, through scarcity of animals, and 
he, as might be expected, through want of skill ; although he fell in 
with a springbuck and fired at it. 
In the mean time Speelman and Philip were employed in ex- 
ploring the banks of the river, for birds. The former, who was the 
keener sportsman in this department, added to my ornithological 
collection more than any of my other Hottentots. Juli, however, 
was in this respect, very little inferior to him, either in the number, 
or in the value and rarity, of the objects which his zeal and industry 
procured for me. I ranked myself only as the third, and Philip as 
the fourth ; but the rest of my people were at a great distance behind, 
and most of them were unable to boast that they had contributed 
even a single bird. 
Here, for the first time, I met with, in its wild state, a handsome 
3 R 2 
