18J1. 
VISIBLE AT A GREAT DISTANCE. 
101 
fractive power which the atmosphere possesses under a peculiar 
combination of circumstances. The intervening country, being free 
from high mountains, is favourable to great refraction. By mention- 
ing this curious circumstance, I hope to excite the attention of other 
travellers, who may pass that way, to ascertain whether or not, I have 
been mistaken in supposing the mountain which I saw from that 
spot, to have been Babylonsche Toren. 
Not many miles Irom the Baths, is a small spot, called Hemel-en- 
aarde (Heaven-and-earth), surrounded by high mountains, where there 
is an hospital {Ziekenhuis) for those afflicted with that dreadful and 
incurable malady the leprosy. This hospital is maintained at public 
expense; for defraying which, an express tax is levied on the colonists. 
Early hours are kept throughout this country, and dinner is 
really that which its Dutch name implies, a noontide meal [middag 
maal). This enabled us to take our departure from the Baths in 
good time, as we hoped, to reach the end of our day's journey before 
dark. We mounted our horses, and took the road to Genadendal 
(Grace vale), the chief establishment of the Moravian missionaries ; 
a place interesting in many respects, and which it was one of our 
principal objects to visit. 
We re-passed the bath river, and, doubling the western point 
of Zwarteberg, took a northerly track, inclining a little eastward. 
The earth was generally of a reddish color ; in some places, of an 
argillaceous, and, in others, of a sandy nature. The face of the 
country was open, and its surface varied with smooth hills, covered 
almost exclusively with a neat pale bushy shrub, of the height of 
three or four feet, called Rli'moster bosch (Rhinoceros bush) *, and 
said to have formerly been the food of the huge rhinoceros, till 
those animals fled before the colonists, as these gradually advanced 
over the country where the shrub grows. Of European plants, the 
* Stoebe rhinocerotis. The following Vignette represents a sprig in its natural size. 
The leaves are very minute, aud like scales, in the manner of the cypress ; the flowers are 
small, and, though very numerous, are neither showy nor ornamental, being of a simple 
herbaceous color. Several species of Stoebe, which in growth resemble this one, are all, 
without distinction, called by the colonists, Rhinosfer -bosch, and perhaps have, in former 
days, been equally the favourite food of the Rhinoceros. 
