SOUTHERN AFRICA. 403 
are a fubftltute for thread. When I wanted Ink, equal quan- 
tities of brown fugar and foot, moiftened with a Httle water, 
were brought to me, and foot was fubftituted for a wafer. 
To add to the uncleanlinefs of their huts, the folds or kraals 
in which their cattle remain at nights are immediately fronting 
the door, and, except in the Sneuwberg, where the total want 
of wood obliges them to burn dung cut out like peat, thefe 
kraals are never on any occaiion cleaned out : ihat in old 
eftablifhed places they form mounds from ten to twenty feet 
high. The lambing feafon commences before the rains fini{h ; 
and it fometimes happens that half a dozen or more of thefe 
little creatures, that have been lambed over night, are found 
fmothered in the wet dung. The fame thing happens to the 
young calves ; yet, fo indolent and helplefs is the boor, that 
rather than yt ke his team to his waggon and go to a little dif- 
tance for wood to buiU a flied, he fees his flock deftroyed from, 
day to day and from year to year, without applying the remedy 
which common fenfe fo clearly points out, and which re- 
quires neither much expence nor great exertions to accom- 
pliih. 
If the Arcadian fhepherds, who were certainly not fo rich, 
were as uncomfortable in their cottages as the Cape boors, their 
poets muft have been woefully led aftray by the mufe. But 
Pegafus was always fond of playing his gambols in the flowery- 
regions of fancy. Without a fidion, the people of the Cape 
confider Graaf Reynet as the Arcadia of the colonv, 
3 p 2 Few 
