SOUTHERN AFRICA. 
89 
to be left on the defert ; and they generally arrive at the town 
in fo maimed and miferable a condition, as to be very unfit for 
what they are intended. Could the farmers near the Cape be 
once prevailed upon to fow turnips, which may be produced 
here equally good as in Europe, to plant potatoes, and cultivate 
the artificial grafles, the quality of the beef and mutton might 
be very materially improved. Thofe few inhabitants who ftall- 
feed their cattle, have their tables fupplied with beef little, if at 
all, inferior to what is fold in Leadenhall market ; but the 
adoption of fuch a fyftem would require more labor and 
adlivity, and more attention, than the body and mind of a 
Dutch farmer feem capable of fupplying : his avarice, though 
great, is yet overcome by the habits of indolence in which he 
has been educated. 
On the fifteenth, from the exhaufted ftate of our oxen, three 
of which we had been obliged to leave behind, we made only 
a fliort ftage of ten or twelve miles to the riet fonteyn, or the 
red fpring, which took its rife out of a high cone-fhaped hill, 
with a flat top, and ran in a feeble ftream to the fouthward. 
The banks were fkirted by a thicket of the door?i boom^ or 
thorn-tree, a fpecies of mimofa^ called erroneoufly by the two 
Swedifh travellers, who have publifhed their refearches in 
Southern Africa, the nilotica^ or that which produces the 
gum Arabic. The pods of this is very long, and moniliforni 
or divided like a firing of beads; whereas the karroo mimofa 
has fhort fickle-fhaped pods. Armed from the fummit down 
to the ground with enormous double thorns, pointing in every 
direction " like quills upon the fretful porcupine," it makes an 
N impe- 
