SOUTHERN AFRICA. 27 
mountains, knowing that the construction of its legs is better 
adapted to ascend their steep sides than to scour the plains. 
All the appearances of Hex-river valley declare it to have 
been at one time a lake, the head of which, having given way 
at the kloef, has suffered the water to force itself out upon the 
next lower terrace, leaving only a bog in the middle, to which 
the stoney bases of the mountains shelve on each side. Should 
the falls of Niagara once sweep away the barrier that occasions 
them, the lake Erie would then become a plain or valley, like 
that of the Hex-river, and many others that occur within the 
chain of mountains in Southern Africa. 
At the head of this little valley we were to take leave of 
every human habitation for at least sixteen days, which is the 
ordinary time required to cross over the Great Karroo, or arid 
desert, that lay between us and the distant district of Graaf 
Keynet. It therefore became necessary to supply ourselves 
here with a stock of provisions, as nothing whatsoever is to 
be had on the desert except ostrich eggs and antelopes. To 
those travellers Avho are furnished with a good waggon and a 
tent, the want of habitations is no great loss ; for few of them, 
behind the first range of mountains, have any sort of conve- 
nience, comfort, or decency. Among the planters of Africa 
it is true there are some who live in a decent manner, parti- 
cularly the cultivators of the grape. Many of these are de- 
scendants of the French families who, a little more than a cen- 
tury ago, found an asylum at the Cape of Good Hope from 
the religious persecutions that drove them from their own 
countr3'. But a true Dutch peasant, or boor as he styles 
