132 TRAVELS IN 
turning into their own country, lest the king should make war 
upon them ; and pressed us to intercede with him for them. 
The route from Hassagai-bosch river had been taken out of 
the common track in order to speak with the Kaffer chiefs, 
as well as to have a view of that part of the coast where the 
Bosjesman and the Kareeka rivers discharged themselves into 
the sea. Over the grassy plains of Zuure Veldt there is little 
difficulty in finding a road, where the deep glens, through 
which the branches of rivers usually run, can be avoided 
and we had met with no obstacle till our arrival at the Kowle^ 
which falls into the sea a little to the eastward of the Ka- 
reeka. In order to cross this river it was necessary to de- 
cend from the plain into a deep chasm about two miles in 
length ; not only down a steep precipice strewed over with 
fragments of rock, but in several places among thick clumps 
of brushwood, through which it was necessary to cut a road. 
A more difficult and dangerous place was certainly never at- 
tempted before by wheel-carriages. A single false step 
might have been attended with the total destruction both of 
waggons and cattle. In the space of two hours, however, 
w^e found ourselves in the bottom, where we passed along a 
narrow defile, hemmed in on either side, sometimes by woods 
of tall trees creeping up the steep faces of the mountains, 
and at others between two walls of naked rock. The diffi- 
culty of the descent had considerably exhausted the oxen ; 
but to rise the opposite hill, " hie labor, hoc opusfuit." In vain 
the animals strove; the Hottentot drivers shouted, and stamped, 
and flogged with their enormous whips, and the Dutchmen 
swore. The first waggon got about a hundred yards up the 
o 
