SOUTHERN AFRICA, 207 
purpose; the consequence of which is, that nine times out 
of ten the consunrimation of the marriage precedes the cere- 
mony. This naturally produces another bad effect. The 
poor girl, after the familiarities of a long journey, lies en- 
tirely at the mercy of the man, who, having satisfied his curi- 
osity or his passion, sometimes deserts her before their arrival 
at the altar ; and it has sometimes happened that the lady 
has repented of her choice, in the course of the journey, and 
driven home again in her own waggon. Though in our own 
country a trip to Scotland be sometimes taken where ob- 
stacles at a nearer distance could not safely be surmounted, 
yet it would be considered as a very ridiculous, as well as 
vexatious, law, that should oblige the parties intending to 
marry to proceed from the Land's End to London to carry 
their purpose into execution. The inhabitants of GraafF 
Reynet must travel twice that distance in order to be married.; 
Almost all the people of the Snowy mountains, who were 
advanced in years, were subject to gravelly complaints, occa- 
sioned probably by the badness of the water, which at one 
season of the year is a muddy mixture of snow and earth, and 
at the other strongly impregnated with salt. And not to the 
human species alone are complaints of this nature here con- 
fined, but almost all animals, whether domesticated or in a 
state of nature, are found to have more or less of stones or 
masses of sand formed in the bladder or stomach. Large oval 
stones are very commonly found in the stomach of the spring- 
bok, and numbers of a smaller size in the eggs of ostrichesj 
as I have already remarked. 
