74 
TRAVELS IN 
On the evening of the seventeenth we encamped on the 
verdant bank of a beautiful lake in the midst of a wood of 
frutescent plants. It was of an oval form, about three miles 
in circumference. On the western side was a shelving bank 
of green turf, and round the other parts of the bason the 
ground, rising more abruptly, and to a greater height, was 
covered thickly with the same kind of arboreous and succu- 
lent plants as had been observed to grow most commonly in 
the thickets of the adjoining country. The water was per- 
fectly clear, but salt as brine. It was one of those salt-water 
lakes which abound in Southern Africa, where they are called 
zoiit pans by the colonists. The one in question, it seems, is 
the most famous in the colony, and is resorted to by the 
inhabitants from very distant parts of the country, for the 
purpose of procuring salt for their own consumption or 
for sale. It is situated on a plain of considerable elevation 
above the level of the sea. The greatest part of the bottom 
of the lake was covered with one continued body of salt like 
a sheet of ice, the crystals of which were so united that it 
formed a solid mass as hard as rock. The margin or shore of 
the bason was like the sandy beach of the sea coast, with 
sand-stone and quartz pebbles thinly scattered over it, some 
red, some purple, and others grey. Beyond the narrow belt 
of sand round the margin, the sheet of salt commenced with 
a thin porous crust, increasing in thickness and solidity as it 
advanced towards the middle of the lake. The salt that is 
taken out for use is generally broken up with pick-axes 
where it is about four or five inches thick, which is at no 
great distance from the margin of the lake. The thickness 
in the middle is not known, a quantity of water generally 
remaining in that part. The dry south-easterly winds of 
