128 
TRAVELS IN 
blood, he could not (land without fupport. On examining his 
wound, we found the ball had entered juft below the (boulder 
blade, and pafled through the right breaft. With fome difficulty 
we contrived to ftop the hemorrhage, and to bind up the wound, 
after waQiing it well with milk and water. From the diftor- 
tions of countenance, and the large drops of fweat that ran 
over his body, it was very evident that he fuffered a violent de- 
gree of pain ; hut he neither vented a figh nor a groan, nor 
could be prevailed upon to open his lips, although fpoken to in 
his own language by a Hottentot interpreter. We caufed him 
to be carried into a clean ftraw hut, and milk in a curdled ftatc 
to be brought to him, but he refufed it. At an early hour in 
the morning I v/ent to the hut to inquire after the patient's 
health, but he was gone. The coffray^ or infidel, at the point 
pf death, thought it fafer to crawl into the woods, than to re- 
main in the hands of Chriftians, 
From Zwart Kop's River we proceeded to a plain that is con- 
tiguous to Algoa Bay, where, to our great aftonifliment, we 
found th^ whole of the boors and their families aflembled, who 
had been plundered by the Hottentots, with their cattle and 
waggons and the remains of their property, waiting our arrival j 
in order, as they faid, to claim protection againft the heathens. 
It was a painful fituation to be thus placed between two parties, 
each claiming protedion, and each vowing vengeance againft 
the other, without pofTeffing the means of keeping them 
afunder. My whole ftrength confifted in about a dozen dra- 
goons ; the Hottentots, great and fmall, amounted to upwards 
of five hundred \ and the boors, with their "families, to about 
one 
