VISIT TO SOUTH AFRICA. 
269 
x)\it of sight. The huntsman follows its track, assured that the ani- 
mal is before him. Meanwhile, entering the underwood, it returns 
part of the way, under cover of the bushes, waiting in ambush for 
its unwary pursuer, who finds himself snddenly attacked in Hank, 
and sometimes loses his life in the conflict. 
10th. We crossed the place, where, on the 7th of March, we 
had suffered so much from the heat, as to make us call it, the 
Hot Outspann, got fresh oxen at Veldcornet Van Eckstein's, and 
reached the ford about two o'clock. The water was too deep to 
pass through it. The waggons, having been emptied of their 
loading, and empty casks placed within, to buoy them up, they 
were floated across. The oxen swam, and the travellers and 
baggage went over in a small boat. The weather favoured us, and 
we reached Mr. Van Helsland's hospitable mansion in the after- 
noon, without any harm to our goods by water or rain. His lady 
was gone to Capetown, but we spent a very agreeable evening in 
his company. 
11th. Rising early, we walked for some time about the premises. 
The mountains present themselves here in all their grandeur, and 
on the spot, from whence I had before made a sketch of them, I 
undertook a revision, and endeavoured to trace their outline, and 
the many kloofs in them, with the most scrupulous exactness. 
Mr. Van Helsland made me attentive to a singular plant, called 
Vlachdorn, or Flat-thorn. Its leaves lie horizontally, close to the 
ground, forming a kind of star. They are studded with small thorns 
or prickles. From the centre issues a naked stem, ordinarily about a 
foot in length, with a small flower. Its root, like the roots of many 
plants and bushes in this country, is disproportionately thick, and 
strikes deep into the ground, like a carrot. A decoction of it is 
considered an efficient remedy against the stranguary in cattle, a 
distemper, of which many die, at a season of the year, when a certain 
herb, ripening among the common grass, is supposed to be the 
cause of it. Brother Schmitt knew it, as used by the Hottentots 
in the cure of similar disorders in man, but Mr. Van Helsland told 
