178 TRAVELS IN 
itself to be knocked down with sticks. Just the reverse wa& 
the conduct of a beautiful small hawk only nine inches long, 
of a chocolate brown, with a triangular black spot on each 
of the back feathers ; the exterior side of the wing feathers 
marked with semicircular ferruginous spots passing into white 
at the edges ; tail barred with alternate black and cinereous- 
blue stripes ; beak and nails of a livid color. A species of crow 
in vast numbers is generally found to attend the larger kind 
of birds of prey. It is uncommonly bold and ravenous, and all 
its habits are vulturine : the beak is stronger and more crooked 
than that of the raven, and the upper mandible is carinated. 
One sex has a white shield down the back only ; the other, 
both on the back and the breast. I cannot pretend to deter- 
mine whether it is either a variety of the raven, or an unde- 
scribed species. Of other kinds of birds, there seemed to b& 
few that are not commonly met with in most parts of the 
colony. Thrushes and turtle-doves were the most numerous. 
The former are known in the colony under the general name of 
sprew. A description of the different thrushes of Africa would 
alone nearly fill a volume, though not more than thirty species 
appear to have been noticed, of which the nitejis, reflecting 
every shade of azure, green, and purple, is the most elegant, 
as well as one of the best warblers. The only curious and 
rare bird that I obtained in the Kaffer country was the biice- 
ros AfiicamiSy or the African horn-bill. 
In one day's journey from the Beeka we arrived at the mouth 
of the Keiskamma, near which the river was about the width 
of the Thames at Woolwich, the water still, and apparently of 
great depth ; but the entrance of this as well as of the Tish 
