SOUTHERN AFRICA. 337 
immense herds of sheep and cattle, and had several large sums 
of money placed out at interest. He was literally what the 
world has properly called a miser. Injustice, however, to the 
old man, he was one of the civillest creatures imaginable. On 
our return we were much indebted to him for the assistance of 
his cattle, which he very obligingly sent forward to fall in with 
our waggons on the midst of the Karroo desert. It is singu- 
lar enough, that a brother and a sister of this man, both old, 
and both unmarried, should each have their habitations in se- 
parate and distant corners of these mountains, and live, like 
him, entirely in the society of Hottentots ; they are nearly re- 
lated to one of the richest men in the Cape. 
On the twenty-ninth we crossed a chain of mountains to the 
west and, proceeding to the northward between it and another 
much higher, we came at night to the head of the defile, where 
it was found impracticable for the waggons to make any far- 
ther progress. We therefore encamped near a clear and co- 
pious spring of water, called the Fleuris fonteyn. The moun- 
tains, within the defiles of which we now were, are called in 
the Namaaqua language, the Khamies^ signifying the cluster 
or aggregate. That which headed the several passes, or where 
as a center they all terminate, is a very high peak, not less 
than four thousand feet above the plain, on the western side, 
where it sloped gently to the sea-shore. These mountains, in 
their nature and composition, differ from all others in the co- 
lony. Except the high point just mentioned, they are neither 
peaked, nor tabular, nor stratified, but are composed of 
large rounded masses of granite, a whole mountain sometimes 
consisting only of one naked rock. To two of this sort, from 
