430 A JOURNEY IN 
vey a just idea of its awful and terrific appearances. On this 
uniform surface of perpetual sterility, on which nor tree nor 
bush nor building nor any })rominent point rises above the 
dreary level to catch and conduct silently into the earth the 
electric fluid, the flashes of lightning dart from cloud to cloud 
in constaiU succession, filling the whole horizon with ablaze oP 
^ivid fire, wliilst the thunder, not deep but constant, hisses 
and rattles without intermission. At the Cape of Good Hope 
it is just the rev erse. There lightning is rarely seen and thun- 
der scarcely heard ; the lofty and nearl}'' perpendicular mass 
of rock, the Table mountain, carries oft" the electric shock 
silently and almost imperceptibly to those Avho dwell on the 
plain at the foot of its base. After this stormy and comfortless 
night passed on the naked earth, wet, hungry, and dejected, 
the two travellers fell in with a small horde of Bosjesmans 
feasting on locusts, which they broiled in a square hole made 
in the ground, heated with hot ashes of wood. They were 
not, hoAvever, sufficiently hungry to be induced to partake of 
the repast, and these poor creatures had nothing in the world 
besides to ofter them. They therefore proceeded on their 
march. The Hottentot who attended ihem had departed 
in the night, in order to find out the waggons. Having 
travelled the whole day, weary and fatigued and fainting 
with hunger, they at night again laid down on the bare clayey 
surface, without the least shelter, exposed to heavy and in- 
cessant rain. In the morning, being the third day in which 
they had not tasted food, the gnawing pains of hunger be- 
came so severe that the>^ bethought themselves of killing the 
beast of burden for their support. Their muskets, however, 
would not give fire, nor could they draw them on account of 
