i88 
TRAVELS IN 
jeOis 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 Natures the fpecific name 
of bubalis. 
All the chafras 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 v/ood. This 
confifted generally of a tall luxuriant fhrubbery, out of which 
fprang up in places, fometimes fmgly and frequently in clumps, 
large foreft trees : of thefe the geelhout 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 
rtfelf 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 diftingulfhed 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 erythrina 
corallodendrmn^ fo called from the color and refemblance ot 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 imperfection : the leaves are 
deciduous, and the blofl!bms, like thofe of the almond, have de- 
cayed before the young leaves have burft their buds. Not fo 
with the Hottentot's bean : the clufters of fcarlet flowers inter- 
mingled with the fmail and elegant dark-green foliage, gave it a 
diftinguifhed 
