372 A JOURNEY IN 
colonists the Ora^o-e river. Numbers of Hottentots camefonvard 
to meet them ; and on the opposite bank they could perceive 
an extensive village, composed of decent looking huts. After 
passing the long and dreary Karroo desert, it was an interest- 
ing and a cheerful event to mix with a very considerable po- 
pulation, apparently of a much superior class of beings, 
though probably of the same race, to those few miserable 
wretches which had hitheilo occasionally shewn themselv-es 
in the course of the journey. 
A river of such unusual magnitude in this quarter of the 
globe was also a subject which afforded them no small degree 
of pleasure. At this spot it was divided into two branches 
by an island in the middle, each of wdiich Avas not less than 
six hundred yards in Avidth. The water, by sounding, was 
found to be deeper than the height of the bottom of the 
waggons ; it became necessary, therefore, to raise their con- 
tents, by nieans of billets of wood, in order to keep them 
dry. The whole cavalcade got safely over the two streams,' 
except one waggon, the oxen of which, having by some acci- 
dent turned their heads down the stream, got into deeper 
water, where they soon lost their legs ; and the whole ma- 
chine being swept away with great violence, both oxen and 
waggon would inevitably have been lost, but for the active 
exertions of the native Hottentots wdio, by cutting the yokes 
and traces, freed the oxen and brought all except one safe 
to the shore ; and afterwards succeeded in dragging out the 
Avaogon, which Avas overturned by the stream. " The Dutch 
" boors," obserA'es Mr. Truter, " Avere as helpless as children, 
" and of no manner of assistance Avhatever." 
