240 
CURE FOR LEPROSY. [1820. 
there might be none at the next. Besides the 
risk of finding any for sale, it is necessary to 
undertake a journey of six hundred miles, and 
many poor Bushmen may thus perish for want, 
in consequence of the breaking of one plough- 
share. 
The week before our arrival, Berend shot, at 
the Yellow River, three cameleopards, each about 
sixteen or seventeen feet high, and one buffalo ; 
chiefly for the support of the Bushmen families, 
who are dependant on him. But all his kind- 
ness does not prevent their stealing an ox from 
him now and then. 
Two young men, the one at Kars', the other at 
Berend's place, were afflicted with leprosy ; and 
their fingers and toes were falling off. A boor, 
in the colony, assured Berend that he cured him- 
self of leprosy, by rubbing his body with the 
fat of the sea-cow. The lepers at the Mauritius 
are cured by being transported to the Island 
Diego Gaseia, and there employed in cocoa-nut- 
oil works ; it would, therefore, seem that oil is a 
specific in this horrid disease. 
There are several fountains of water on Berend's 
ground, which he leads upon his fields by drains 
dug with great labour. Here Africaner left us 
for Namaqualand. The separation was affecting. 
