20 
TRAVELS IN 
two waggons, ventured through at the lord, and passed it 
with the loss only of two sheep that were worth at least four 
times the amount of the toll. The road beyond the ferry is 
excellent, being a level bed of hard clay ; but the country is 
very thinly inhabited. In advancing to the northward the 
surface has fewer inequalities, and becomes sandy. Nothing, 
however, like drifts or beds of sand, meets the eye ; but, on 
the contrary, it wanders over an uninterrupted forest of ver- 
dure arising from a variety of fruitescent plants, among which 
the tribes of proteas, of heaths, and two species of seriphiumy 
called here the rhinosceros-bush, predominate. In those 
places where the ground is least covered, the hillocks thrown 
up by the termites most abound. Here also, towards the 
close of the day, a multitude of small land tortoises, the tes- 
tiido piisilla and the geometrica of Linnaeus, were crawling 
slowly off the road towards the bushes, after having basked 
themselves in the open sunshine during the day. The howl- 
ing wolf and the yelping jackall began their hideous cries 
shortly after the setting of the sun, and seemed to follow us 
in the dark, keeping at no great distance from the waggons. 
It was near the middle of the night before we arrived at a so- 
litary habitation, situated in a wild, bleak, open country, 
and on the borders of a lake called the Vogel Valley or the 
Bird Lake. The word valley, in the colony, implies either a 
lake or a swamp : at this time the place in question was the 
latter; but it abounded with ducks, geese, and teal, and also 
with the great white pelican, the onocratiilus, and the rose- 
colored flamingo. The wings of the latter are converted into 
fans for flapping away the flies that, in incredible multitudes, 
swarm in the houses of the peasantry for want of a proper 
