SOUTHERN AFRICA. 333 
Early on the morning of the twenty-seventh, with fresh 
Seams of oxen, we proceeded co cross the desert. The wind 
still continued at south-east, and the weather was remarkably 
warm for the season of the year, the thermometer standing at 
59° at sun-rise, and at 80° in the middle of the day in the 
shade. The waggons raised a cloud of dust that was almost 
insupportable. Except one solitary ostrich, not a living crea- 
ture of any kind appeared the whole day. Having travelled 
near eight hours, our Hottentot guide pointed out a place un- 
der a small clump of naked hills, where water, he said, fre- 
quently lodged in the cavities of rocks. He called it the 
Lieim hujl, or Lions' den. After a long search, a little water 
was discovered in a cavernous rock, fresh and sweet ; and with 
this we replenished our vessels. Under one of the ridges of 
hills was a channel covered with small pebbly sand, which ap- 
peared in several places to have been scratched with hands 
in search of water ; and thousands of the impressions of the 
feet of various antelopes, quachas, and zebras, were marked 
on the sand,, but none of lions, of which the name of the place 
seemed to imply it to have been the resort. 
On the twenty-eighth we entered a narrow pass among the 
hills that lay behind the Lions' den, which hills are considered 
as the connnencement of the Namaaqua country. The sur- 
face continued to be broken into hill and dale, but both were 
destitute of plants, except indeed that along the stony sides 
of most of the hills were growing vast multitudes of a tree as 
unsightly as it was curious. It was a species of the aloe, 
called by botanists the Dkhotoma, from the division and sub- 
