SOUTHERN AFRICA. 71 
that is usually produced by this tribe of plants, it possesses 
that quality to a very considerable degree ; yet no sort of 
inconvenience is known to attend the use of it to the cattle. 
The peasantry collect it for another purpose. When warmed 
over the fire, and stirred round with a soft ochraceous stone, 
it takes the consistence of tar, and in that state is considered 
as an excellent grease for the axes of their waggon wheels. 
We passed, on the fourteenth, a narrow opening, called 
the Poort, through a long range of hills running east and 
west, and extending each way beyond the reach of the eye. 
The approach to the chasm was beautiful and magnificent 
in the highest degree. For the space of three or four miles, 
on the northern side, the road serpentized through a tall 
shrubbery diversified with some of the most elegant and showy 
plants of Southern Africa. Among these were now in the 
height of their blossoms a great variety of the crassula, a 
beautiful scarlet cotelydon, many species of the a/oc, some 
throwing out their clusters of flowers across the road, and 
others rising above the rest in spikes of blood-red blossoms 
not less than fifteen feet in height, African hriomj clasping 
every bush with its vine-like leaves, and a beautiful plant 
resembling the jessamine, whose clusters of white flowers 
scented the whole country. The road through the shrubbery 
was composed of a smooth, yellowish, sandy earth without 
a stone, and did not contain in any part the length of a 
hundred yards in a straight line. The Jxiet berg, or Reed 
mountain in the back ground, blushed to the very summit with 
a wood of tall smooth-stemmed aloes bearing long spikes of 
pink-colored flowers. 
