SOUTHERN AFRICA. 39 
of pasturage. This day's halting place, called Mentjies hoek, af- 
forded a few rushes and abundance of succulent plants, among 
which the bullocks of Africa are accustomed to brou^e for 
want of better food ; not a blade of any kind of grass had ap- 
peared since we entered upon the desert ; and the shrubs 
Avere very thinly scattered over the surface, except in the 
neighbourhood of the few springs that here and there oc- 
curred. At this place there were also the remains of a hut 
and a solitary oak overhanging a spring of clear water. Even 
these objects served, in some degree, to enliven, and to break, 
the uniformity of a barren desert. To the southward, the 
blue summits of a chain of barren mountains, called the 
Zwarte Berg, or black mountains, began to shew themselves 
in the distant horizon. A butcher from the Cape passed our en- 
campment with about five hundred head of cattle and five thou- 
sand sheep that he had purchased in the Sneuwberg, or snowy 
mountains. The sheep were in tolerjible good condition ; 
but the cattle were miserably poor. As the greatest j)art of 
the beeves that are killed at the Cape must travel from GraafF 
Reynet across this desert, it cannot be a matter of surprise 
that the Cape beef should be universally complained against. 
The knife is generally put into them the moment they arrive 
from a journey of forty or fifty days, in which, beside the fa- 
tigue of travelling,, they have been exposed to the scorching 
rays of the sun at one season of the year, and the intense cold 
of the nights in the other, without any shade or shelter ^ 
without any kind of food but the salt, acrid, and watery 
leaves of the different succulent plants that almost exclusively 
grow on the Karroo ; sometimes whole da3^s without a drop of 
water, and most commonly such only as is muddy and saline ; 
