346 JOURNEY BEYOND THE GREAT RIVER. [1814. 
and the future world. They can sleep as soon, and as 
sound, when they have not a morsel to eat, as when 
their bags are full of food. They calculate no time, 
consequently have no care respecting old age, never 
connecting death with the length of time they may have 
lived : and even if they did so connect it, little uneasi- 
ness would follow, for, like the French philosophers 
in the mad days of Robespiere, they consider death as 
an eternal sleep. These philosophers had evidently 
reverted to the opinions of their forefathers, when in 
the savage state. I hope many of them saw their error 
before they felt it, when too late. 
In the evening we attended an examination of the 
people, from a Dutch catechism, which is customary 
once a week. 
31st. Having been employed ever since our arrival, in 
writing letters to the colony and to England, about sun- 
set some musket-shots were fired at a little distance 
which I concluded was announcing the arrival of some 
of our people and the Griquaas, who were left be- 
hind at the confluence of the Yellow and Malalareen 
rivers, to shoot sea cows ; but a messenger soon an- 
nounced that a camel-leopard had been shot, and 
they wished me to see it before it died : of course 
we hastened to the spot, but he had fallen down and 
expired before we arrived. The length of his fore legs 
measured nearly six feet, so that a high horse could 
have walked under his belly: from the hoof to the 
top of the head he measured fifteen feet. The person 
