70 TRAVELS IN 
pelican is fhot for the fake of the fine foft down which lies un- 
der his plumage. 
A few miles beyond this lake or fwamp brought us to the 
entrance of Roode Sand Kloef, or the red fandy pafs over the 
great chain of mountains. Here the ftrata of which they are 
compofed, though of the fame nature as the Table Mountain, 
were not horizontal, but dipped to the fouth-eaftward, making 
with the horizon an angle of about twenty degrees. The 
afcent of the Kloef is not fteep, but very rugged ; and a fmall 
river that meanders down it muft be crolfed feveral times. The 
plants, flieltered by the large fragments of rock that have rolled 
down the mountains, are uncommonly luxuriant. Of thefe 
the different fpecies of protea were the moft confpicuous ; that 
fpecies of ricinus called the palma Chrifti, which affords the 
caftor oil, was very plentiful ; and the two fpecies of the me- 
lianthus grew in every part of the Kloef. The calla Eth'iopica 
was everywhere abundant and in full flower. The baboons, 
from their concealed dens in the fides of the mountain, laughed, 
fcreamed, and uttered fuch horrible noifes, the whole time that 
the waggons were afcending the pafs, that to a ftranger, not 
knowing from whence they proceeded, they excited no fmall 
degree of furprife. 
From the upper part of the Kloef there is no defcent to the 
land of Waveren, or, as the divifion is now called, Roode Sand. 
The furface of this vale is four or five hundred feet higher than 
that which lies on the Cape fide of the range of mountains. 
It is bounded on the eaftern fide by a branch of the fame chain, 
much 
