A FARM HOUSE. 
N° 16. 
The farms in the extensive colony of the Cape t>f Good Hope are held on annual 
leases from the government, and are each three miles in diameter; but from a 
scarcity of water, the houses are sometimes twice and frequently three times that 
distance asunder. In so great a range of country, and at a considerable distance 
from any market, there is little inducement to cultivate more ground than is abso- 
lutely necessary to produce enough for family consumption. The chief occupation 
of the farmer is therefore to rear sheep and horned cattle. To guard and protect 
these, among the mountains, or on the vast plains, they engage a number of Hot- 
tentots, who in the evenings drive them home in flocks from different quarters, 
where they are pent up for the night in an enclosure of mud walls, but more fre- 
quently of the withered branches of the thorny mimosa. Such enclosures are called 
Kraals. The Farm Houses are, in general, built of rough stones, laid and plais- 
tered with clay, and whitened sometimes with lime if not too distant from the sea 
coast, and sometimes with pipe clay. Around the better sort, where the situation is 
favourable, are planted clumps of trees, and tolerably good gardens. Sometimes 
a bell is hung between two pillars, and very frequently, as an appendage to the 
house, is erected a large pole with a flat piece of wood at the top, the residence 
of a favourite monkey or baboon. 
HALT IN THE DESERT. 
N° 17. 
Those Boors who live at the distance of five or six hundred miles from Cape Town 
generally make one journey thither every year. On such occasions their covered 
waggons answer all the purposes of a house, and they carry with them the greater 
part of the family, goats, sheep, dogs, cocks and hens, monkies, or any other favourite 
animal. These waggons aTe drawn by oxen, whose usual pace is from two and a 
half to three miles an hour. To each waggon there is usually a Hottentot driver, 
and a Hottentot leader of the oxen, besides a number of these people to take care 
of the draught cattle when turned out to graze. A musket or two and ammunition 
are indispensably necessary, not only for their protection but also to procure game 
for their subsistence on the long journey. By the help of a few mats or sail cloths, 
they usually contrive to skreen themselves from the scorching rays of the sun. 
SPRING-BOK. 
N° 18. 
Among the great variety of Antelopes that range the extensive karroo plains of 
southern Africa, the Spring-Bok is by far the most common and the most numerous ; 
but it is never seen on the Cape side of the great chain of mountains. I cannot 
better describe it, than in the words of Mr. Barrow, in his Travels in southern 
Africa, vol. i. p. 104. " The Spring-Bok is a gregarious animal, never met with 
" but in large herds, some of which, according to the accounts of the peasantry, 
" will amount to the number of ten thousand. The Dutch have given a name to 
" this beautiful creature indicative of its gait. The strength and the elasticity of 
" the muscles are so great that, when closely pursued, he will spring at a single 
" leap from fifteen to five and twenty feet. Its usual pace is that of a constant 
" jumping or springing, with all the four legs stretched out and off the ground at 
" the same time; and at every spring the hair on the rump divides, or sheds, and 
" falling back on each side, displays a surface of snowy whiteness. No dog can 
" attempt to approach the old ones." The Spring-Bok is a migratory animal, and 
when they assemble together in immense herds, amounting sometimes to 40 or 
50,000, for the purpose of moving to a different tract of country, the whole sur- 
face, over which their passage extends, is bared of every shrub and blade of grass, 
in the same manner as when a swarm of locusts lays waste the country. 
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