410 TRAVELS IN 
That canine madness is not owing to heat of climate, as we 
are apt to suppose in England, may be inferred from its non- 
existence in Egypt, in the islands of the East and the West 
Indies, and other tropical situations, as well as at the Cape 
of Good Hope. 
From the banks of the Sunday River to head-quarters in 
Bruyntjes Hoogte, little occurred that was worthy of notice. 
The observation I formerly made, that men and other animals 
in Southern Africa appear to increase in their bulk, in proper-- 
tion to the elevation of the country of which they are inha- 
bitants, was forcibly exemplified in our journey from the 
Zuure Veldt to Bruyntjes Hoogte. On the plains of the former, 
stretching along the sea-coast, seldom subject to long drought, 
and well covered with grass^ the cattle are generally lean and 
of a diminutive size, and sheep can scarcely exist. On the 
heights of the latter, where half the surface of the ground is^ 
naked, and the grass found only here and there in tufts, they 
have the finest oxen, without exception, in the whole colony, 
and sheep equal to those of the snowy mountains. Nor are 
these heights less favourable to the growth of the human 
species. There is scarcely a family in which some part of it 
has not arrived to a very unusual size. But of all the mon- 
strous beings I ever beheld, in the shape of a human creature, 
was a woman of the name of Van Vooren. So vast was her 
bulk that, although in perfect health, free from rheumatic or 
other local complaints, and under forty years of age, she had 
not been able to w^alk for the last twelve years of her life ; nor, 
what was still more extraordinary, to raise herself to a sitting 
posture upon the bed without the help of a stick, tied by the 
