SOUTHERN AFRICA. 
61 
CHAP. II. 
Sketches made on a Journey into the Country of the Kaffers. 
Immediately after our arrival at Graaff Reynet, the Pro- 
visional Landrost, in his list of grievances under which the 
district was then laboring, represented the deplorable state of 
some of its dependencies from the incursions of the tribe of 
people known by the name of Kaffers. Certain chiefs of this 
nation, he said, with their families, and vassals, and cattle, 
were overrunning the whole country : some had even advanced 
as far as the borders of the district of Zwellendam ; others had 
stationed themselves on the banks of the Sondag, or Sunday 
river, within fifty or sixty miles of the Drosdy ; but that the 
great bulk of them were in that division of the district called 
the Zimre-veldt, or Sour Grass plains, which stretch along the 
sea-coast between the Sunday and the Great Fish rivers : that 
an inhabitant oi' Bruyntjes Hoogte, another division of the 
district, who, during the late disturbances that had prevailed 
in Graaff Reynet, had on all occasions acted a busy part, had 
now sent him a letter, demanding that a command should be 
given to him of a detachment of the farmers against a party of 
Kaffers who had passed the borders of this division of the 
district with three or four thousand head of cattle : that he, 
the provisional landrost, had, from certain intelligence of the 
coming of the actual landrost, fortunately withheld his answer 
