3^4 
TRAVELS IN 
The beft method of fupplying water at the bay feems to 
be that of bringing it in leaden pipes from a copious elevated 
fpring, about fix -miles to the northward of Hootjes bay. 
This fpring at Witte Klip, or the white rock, appears to be 
quite fufficient for every purpofe, and the expence of con- 
veyance would be moderate, at leaft of little confideration, 
when compared with the magnitude of the object. 
It was a favorite fubjed; of converfation with the late Colonel 
Gordon, and fome other Dutch gentlemen, to turn the courfe 
of the Berg river into Saldanha bay, by which they would not 
only furnifh a plentiful fupply of water for a town, garrifon, 
and fliipping, but would, at the fame time, open a navigation 
into the interior of the country, particularly into Zwartland, 
the granary of the colony. Such a fcheme would, no doubt, 
be pradicable, though that part of it which regards the fupply 
of a fleet and town with frefli water would perhaps fail to 
anfwer the purpofe, for the following reafons : That part of th,e 
Berg river, where it would be the moft pradlicable to turn its 
courfe, is within a mile or two of the place to which the high, 
fpring tides flow, and about twenty miles from the prefent 
mouth of the river in St. Helena bay. The diftance from the 
fame place, along the line in which the new channel would be 
carried to Saldanha bay, is about five and twenty or perhaps 
thirty miles. Allowing for the circuitous courfe of the river in 
its prefent channel, and confidering the bays of Saldanha and 
St. Helena to have the fame difference of level with the place at 
which the river is propofed to be turned, the general current in 
the new would be the fame as that in the prefent channel, and 
this 
