330 TRAVELS IN 
quantities are sometimes taken as sea-stock, but so incon- 
siderable as hardly to deserve mentioning. 
Salt butter is a very material article both for the consump* 
tion of the town, the garrison, and the navy,, as also for ex- 
portation. The quality greatly depends on the degree of 
cleanliness that has been employed in the dairy, and more 
particularly on the pains that have been taken in v/orking the 
butter well, to free it from the milky particles, which, if suf- 
fered to remain, very soon communicate a strong rancid taste 
that is highly offensive. That which comes from the Snowy 
Mountains is accounted the best; but, to say the truth, very 
little deserves the appellation of good. Under the Dutch 
Government it was usually sold at from fourpence to sixpence 
a pound, but, of late years, it was seldom to be purchased 
under a shilling a pound. 
SOAP AND CANDLES. 
The first of these articles is manufactured by almost every 
farmer in the country, and, in some of the districts, furnishes 
a considerable part of their surplus revenue, which is appro- 
priated to the purchase of clothing and other necessaries at 
their annual visit to Cape Town. 'I'he unctuous part is 
chiefly derived from the fat of sheeps' tails, and the potash or 
barilla is the lixiviated ashes procured from a species of 
Salsola or salt wort that grows abundantly on those parts of 
the Karroo, or deserts, that are intersected by periodical 
streams of water. The plant is known in the colony by the 
Hottentot name oiCanna. With this alkaline lye and the fat 
1 
