GAME FIRE-ARMS. — HUNTING. 
525 
ment, without a higher degree of civilization than that at which these 
people have hitherto arrived. 
The great and powerful cause which will long operate to check 
the extension of the cultivation of grain, is the abundance of wild 
animals to be met with in all parts of the country ; and until these 
shall be reduced in number or driven out of the land, it is hardly to be 
expected that the natives will turn to settled agricultural pursuits. 
The introduction of Jire-arms among them would ultimately operate 
to the promotion of tillage, notwithstanding that their first effects 
might occasion the neglect of it. By hunting, this people would 
at first obtain food in a manner so much more agreeable than 
by agriculture, that grain would probably become but a secondary 
resource ; but the evil would remedy itself, and the more eagerly 
they pursued the chase, and the more numerous were the guns and 
the hunters, the sooner would the game be destroyed or driven out 
of the country. 
This, although an experiment not to be recommended in these 
regions, has actually taken place in the Cape Colony, and the result 
clearly proved that which has just been stated. In a few years more, 
the game will probably be forced to quit their districts, and the colonists 
will, consequently, cease to think of hunting. There can be little doubt, 
that the wild animals have, on this account, been rendered more 
numerous beyond the boundary, whither multitudes have fled for 
refuge. And in the same manner, it is probable that the tribes 
beyond the Klaarwater Hottentots, have benefited in this respect by 
the fire-arms and continual huntings of these latter. 
The mountains in the immediate vicinity of Litakun are com- 
posed of a red sand-stone, or grit-stone ; varying in compactness, 
and sometimes of a friable nature. Small fragments which have long 
been exposed to the air, often exhibit some resemblance to a biscuit 
or loaf of bread ; the atmosphere producing on the ferrugineous 
particles contained in them, an effect which gives them outwardly 
the appearance and color of crust. 
A rock which may be called serpentine, of a greenish hue and 
