526 
MOUNTAINS. — PIPE-STONE. — TREES. 
prettily marked with black spots or streaks, is found here. It is cut by 
the natives and by the Hottentots, into tobacco-pipes, and approaches 
in its nature, to potstone, but is of greater hardness. The natives 
pretended to set a value upon it, and on my sending one of the 
Hottentots to get me some pieces, they demanded payment. This 
was the only spot in the whole of my travels, where we met with 
this kind of stone ; but it is found in Great Namaqua-land, where 
the variety, though of the same nature and colors, is more handsomely 
marked or variegated, and is much prized by the Dutch colonists, 
who also form the bowls of their pipes of it, and have therefore 
given it the name of pyp-klip (pipe-stone). The Bachapins call it 
Innchui-a-kdhdana which has exactly the same interpretation ; lunchui 
signifying a stone, rock, or rocky mountain, and Jcakdna a tobacco- 
pipe. 
The mountains about Litakun are of moderate height and of 
rounded or flattened forms ; and everywhere bare of wood, excepting 
a few low scattered bushes. Among the shrubs growing on that 
mountain which I ascended, the Vangueria was the largest ; the 
superstitious belief attached to it, having alone preserved it from the 
fate of all the rest, which had been cut up for fuel. 
The tr^ees which constituted the grove in which the town had 
originally been built, appeared to be all acacias, but of several species ; 
four of them confounded, by the Hottentots, under the name of 
camelthorn*, and of these, two were now met with for the first time. 
The hookthorn, the Cape acacia, and another of smaller growth, 
grew in some places ; but, at this season the vegetable productions of 
this spot were found to present but few new features. 
The climate of Litahun demands in this place no particular 
description, as it differs little from that of Klaarwater, excepting by a 
greater degree of warmth. The range of the thermometer, during the 
three months which I passed at this town and in the surrounding region 
* These were Acacia giraffis Acacia heteracantha, B ; Acacia LitaJcunensis, B ; and 
Acacia robusta, B. The other species were Acacia Capensis; Acacia detinens, B, and 
Acacia stolonifera, B. 
