i88 
TRAVELS IN 
jeds about two inches from the forehead. The mouth, and 
indeed the whole head, refembles that of the bovine tribe, from 
whence it has obtained in the Syjlema Natura the fpecific name 
of buballs. 
All the chafms with which the plains of this part of the 
country are interfered, and the banks of all the rivers, the 
fides of the knolls, and the range of hills that terminates this 
divifion to the northward, were covered with wood. This 
confifted generally of a tall luxuriant fhrubbery, out of v/hich 
fprang up in places, fometimes fmgly and frequently in clumps, 
large foreft trees : of thefe the geelhoiit was the moft lofty, and 
being here difentangled from the pendulous lichen that cramped 
its growth in the great forefts of Van Slaaden's river, (hewed 
kfelf as a beautiful tree. An euphorbia, throwing out a num- 
ber of naked arms from a ftraight trunk thirty or forty feet 
high, held a diftinguifhed place among the fhrubbery. But one 
of the largeft and moft fhewy trees, and at this time in the 
height of its bloom, was the Kaffer's bean-tree, the erythrlna 
corallodendriim^ fo called from the color and refemblance of its 
large clufters of papilionaceous flowers to branches of red coral. 
Numbers of beautiful birds, fuch as fmall paroquets, touracos, 
woodpeckers, and others, were fluttering about thefe trees for 
the fake of the juices yielded by the flowers. The coral-tree, 
like moft dazzling beauties, has its imperfedion : the leaves are 
deciduous, and the bloflbms, like thofe of the almond, have de- 
cayed before the young leaves have burft their buds. Not fo 
v^ith the Hottentot's bean : the clufters of fcarlet flowers inter- 
mingled with the fmall and elegant dark-green foliage, gave it a 
diftinguifhed 
