292 TRAVELS IN 
We encamped on the seventeenth near the banks of the 
Ohfant's river, where several hot springs issued out of a bog, 
consisting of a brownish oxyd of iron, mixed with irregular 
shaped pieces of ponderous iron stone, many of which seemed 
once to have been in a state of fusion. The water was 
chalybeate, as appeared from the great quantity of orange 
colored sediment deposited in the channels through which 
it ran, and the fine steel blue skum with which the surfaces 
of the wells were covered. Of the four principal wells, all 
rising out of the same bog, the temperatures were 111% 
109°, 105°, and 95° of Fahrenheit's scale. They are much 
frequented by the neighbouring peasantry, and held by them 
to be efficacious in the cure of bruises, sprains, and rheu- 
matic complaints. 
How friendly soever the water of the wells might prove 
to the human constitution, it could not be more so than in 
appearance it was favorable to the growth of plants. Along 
the sides of the streamlets a zone-leafed geranium was ob- 
served climbing to the height of fifteen feet, and all the 
shrubs that grew in the vicinity of the water were more than 
usually luxuriant. 
The long drought had completely exhausted the Olifant s 
river of water, and the face of the country was nearly as 
barren and parched as the Karroo on the opposite side of the 
Black mountains, except indeed along each side of the bed 
of the river, where the mimosas, now loaded with golden 
blossoms, stiii retained their verdure, and where the Canna 
plant, or Salsola, was growing to the height of eight or ten 
8 
