TRAVELS IN 
Travelling slowly along, and with as little noise as possible, 
till about one o'clock, we halted the waggons, and our re- 
ligious boors, after taking the other hymn and a second glass of 
brandy, mounted horse and advanced towards the hill, where 
the rest of the reconnoitring party lay concealed, in order to 
observe the motions of the Bosjesmans. In a country where 
there is little variety of surface, where no beaten roads exist, 
xmd hill after hill occurs nearly alike, it would be no easy 
matter for a stranger to return upon the same track for a 
continuance of twenty or thirty miles which he had but once 
before gone over, and that in the night-time. A Dutch boor, 
though sufficiently expert at this sort of service, always de- 
pends more upon his Hottentot than himself. The hill, how- 
ever, that the reconnoitring party had chosen was so very 
remarkable that it could not easily be mistaken. It stood 
quite alone on the middle of a plain ; was visible for more 
than twenty miles from every point of the compass ; presented 
the form of a truncated cone from whatsoever situation it was 
seen ; and the third tier of sand-stone strata that capped its 
summit appeared as a mass of masonry, a fortification on an 
eminence that could not be less than a thousand feet high. 
As a distinction from those of inferior size we gave it the 
name of Tower-bergj because this mountain, 
" above the rest, 
" In shape and gesture proudly eminent, 
" Stood like a tow^r." 
About twa o'clock in the morning we joined the scouting 
party at the base of the Tower-Mountain. They and their 
horses had been exposed the whole of the preceding day to 
