SOUTHERN AFRICA. 313 
From the bath we proceeded to the westward, crossed a 
steep sandy hill, called tlie IIou lioeck, and, on the seven- 
teenth, descended the Hottentot's Holland's kloof, a difficult 
pass across the great north and south chain of mountains, but 
infinitely less so than either the Duyvil's hop, or the Kay- 
man's river. 
From the portal, or entrance of the kloof, is a grand view 
of the Cape peninsula, the sweeping shores of the two great 
bays, and the intermediate dreary isthmus appearing like a 
sea of sand, and enlivened only by a few neat farm houses, 
scattered over the fore-ground, at the feet of the great chain 
of mountains. The middle of the isthmus is inhabited only 
by a few poor people, who gain a subsistence by collecting 
the stems and roots of the slnaibs that grow in the sand, and 
sending them in small carts to the Cape, where they are sold 
for fuel. The distance from Hottentot's Holland's kloof to 
Cape Town is about thirty-six miles, or an easy day's journey, 
which we made on the eighteenth of January ; not sorry to 
have brought to an end a seven months' tour, in the course of 
which many personal inconveniences and difficulties had oc- 
curred, to be borne and surmounted only by a determinatioa 
to gratify curiosity at the expence of comfort. 
VOL. I, 
