SOUTHERN AFRICA. 103 
from their mouths. The acrid juices of the fucculent plants, 
and the four herbage of Africa, obhge the cattle to make ufe of 
various corred:ives j and in the choice of thefe they are not 
very nice. Old rags, pieces of leather, fkins with the hair on 
them, dried wood ; bones, and even fmall pebbles and fand, 
are greedily devoured by them. African horfes very com- 
monly eat their own dung j and numbers have been deftroyed 
in confequence of taking into the ftomach vaft quantities of 
flinty fand. 
From the Little Loory fotiteyn^ the place where we halted for 
the refrefhment of our cattle upon the ihrubbery that grew 
there, we advanced on the following day near thirty miles 
over a bed of folid clay, and late at night pitched our tent in 
the midft of a meadow covered completely with herbage knee- 
deep. A tranfition fo fudden from unbounded barrennefs, that 
on every fide had appeared on the preceding day, to a verdant 
meadow clothed by the moft luxuriant vegetation, felt more 
like enchantment than reality. The hungry cattle, impatient 
to fatisfy the cravings of nature, made no fmall havoc in libe- 
rating themfelves from the yokes and traces. The name of 
this fpot was Be Beer Valley : it was a plain of feveral miles in 
diameter, ftretching along the feet of the Black Mountains, and 
feemed to be the refervoir of a number of periodical rivers, 
whofe fources are in the mountains of Niewveldt^ of Winter- 
herg^ and Camdeboo. One of thefe running at this time with a 
confiderable current, was as fait as brine. To the tafte it ap- 
peared to be as ftrongly impregnated as the water of the 
Englilh Channel j that is to fay, it might contain about a 
>j thirtieth 
