156 
JOURNAL OF A 
continue our journey down the valley, between low, heathy emi- 
nences, for about an hour. The road then led up a steep, barren 
liill, from the summit of which one of the finest views VvC had yet 
seen, presented itself before us, with a well-wooded fore-ground of 
hill and dale, forming very picturesque scenery. The descent was 
rough, through deep sand, mixed with large stones, which rendered 
the jolting of the Avaggon insupportable to Sister Schmitt, who, 
preferred walking down the hill through the wood, though the 
pain in her head required rest. The Gowcomma flows through 
the valley, and the narrovv' road, rising through a thick wood, runs 
rather too close to its steep banks, to remove all apprehension of 
the waggon being precipitated into the stream. We forded this 
river at a place darkened by the shade of large trees, and in view 
of some black rocks, through Avhich the water forces its Avay, and 
arrived safe at the house of Mr. Terblanche, a farmer of decayed 
fortune. Ruins of a larger house, than that which he now inhabits, 
made us suspect, that the Caffres in the late war had desti'oyed it; 
but it seems to have been forsaken from other causes. lie was 
much pleased to see some company arrive to cheer him in his soli- 
tude, and treated us with bread and thick milk. Here we saw that 
beautiful bird called the green cuckoo, one of the few feathered in- 
habitants of these lonely woods, where the enlivening song of the 
nightingale and lark is never heard, but merely nov/ and then the 
monotonous whistle of some painted finch, or the melancholy coo- 
ing of a turtle-dove. 
Leaving this place, we passed along a low hill, resembling a huge 
bank or dyke, from whence, to the left, we had a view of a great 
nunfher of low green hills, in regular rows, not improperly com- 
pared by some of us to a succession of long Atlantic waves made 
stationarj'^, by being converted into land. By a turn of the road, we 
were unexpectedly treated with a view of the Indian ocean, the 
estuary of the Knysna, and Mr. Rex's faiiii at some distance be- 
yond it. A steep hill and marshy plain leads to the ford, which, 
