SOUTHERN AFRICA. 129 
to be a small kind of cur. They had no horses. Dogs and 
cattle were the only animals they possessed. 
A rising eminence between the Bosjesman and Kareeka 
rivers, which at this place were not very distant, commanded 
a beautiful view of the surrounding countr}^, and a great ex- 
tent of sea-coast. From these elevated plains a sudden de- 
pression of the earth descends towards the sea-shore, and par- 
ticularly between the mouths of the two above-mentioned 
rivers. The ground has here been rent and torn into vast 
chasms, separated by high ridges of rude and massy rock. 
The glens were choaked up with thick, tall shrubbery, and 
the smaller kinds of the ti'ees of the country. These wild 
and dismal dens, of many miles in extent, were considered 
by Rensberg, the person before mentioned, as the nursery of 
elephants, where, he asserted, he had once seen in one troop 
between four and five hundred of these enormous brutes, 
scouring the plains, and making for the forests. 
Several of the persons with me pretended to have been eye- 
^vitnesses to the manner in which elephants performed the 
connubial rites ; and they invariably asserted that, agreeably 
to the old accredited story, the female went down on her 
knees to receive the male, which, however, is not the fact. 
The manner in which this huge animal contrived to propa- 
gate the species is a subject that has long engaged the closet- 
naturalists of Europe, and which has produced many strange 
opinions and hypotheses. Some imagined that, notwithstand- 
ing the grossness of the body, the feelings of this animal 
were so delicate, and others, that its sense of slavery was so 
