VISIT TO SOUTH AFRICA. 309 
Standing in the thicket, while I was listening to my friend's ac- 
count of hi'j adventure, the sun was fast sinking towards the horizon ; 
lengtliened shades and evening gloom overspread the place ; ima- 
gination began its work: we thought we heard something stirring 
among the bushes, and retreating faster than we had entered, 
mounted our horses, and made the best of oar way down a rough 
road, towards the few Hottentot houses in the vale. 
About a month after the event here related had taken place, a 
Groenekloof Hottentot, passing through the same thicket, saw a 
large male tyger crouching beneath a bush, and hoped to be able 
to shoot it, but his gun missed fire. The tyger, however, lay still, 
keeping his eyes fixed upon the man, who was glad to retreat back- 
wards and make his escape. 
Having reached the little poplar wood in the vale, Brother Schmitt 
showed me the place where Brother Kohrhammer, on visiting this 
spot in 1807, by desire of the Earl of Caledon, delivered the first 
sermon to about an hundred heathen Hottentots, then inhabiting 
the Lauweskloof. He stood under a tree, and his congregation 
near a pool of water in the wood. 
Here we were accosted by an old woman, the most ugly and de- 
formed Hottentot female I had ever beheld. She told us, that a 
slave, by a charm, had destroyed her beauty, and caused her face 
to exhibit such bulbous excrescencies. Brother Schmitt, who knew 
her, replied, that she ought not to endeavour to set her conscience 
to rest with that idle and wicked tale, but rather repent of her pro- 
fligate life, by which, she had brought misery and ugliness upon 
herself She called God to witness, that the stories told and be- 
lieved, respecting her wicked life, were totally false, and used such 
language, that one might have supposed her to have been under 
Christian instruction, whereas she is a sworn enemy of the gospel, 
and never would even enter the chapel at Groenekloof. 
We next called upon old Captain Klapmus, who inhabits a 
miserable bondhoek, though he affects to behave with all the pride 
