180 
REPLACING THE BROKEN POLE. 
24—26 June, 
the mind ; and various objects easily escape notice, in this dubious 
light. We halted at an outspan-place, in the midst of Rhinoceros- 
bushes. A pack of jackals * continued howling and barking near us, 
for some time, in the hope of picking up a stray sheep. 
Our people now seemed all in the height of good humour ; and, 
cheered with the blaze of four different fires, they sat up till mid- 
night, talking and smoking, while the sound of my flute at intervals, 
seemed to increase their satisfaction, and gain all their attention. 
25th. I walked to the house of Piet Van der Merwe, a neighbour- 
ing farmer f, to enquire for a new pole for the Waggon, and fortun- 
ately obtained one. He told my fellow-traveller, that he had heard 
there was an Englishman on the road, who had general orders from 
government, authorizing him to demand such assistance as he might 
stand in need of, but he candidly confessed that had I made use of it 
on this occasion, I should not have been able to persuade him to do 
any thing, as he would in that case have pleaded a hurt in his hand, as 
an excuse for not lending us any help at the forge ; but that, as I 
had asked it as a favor, he willingly sold me the pole, and would 
freely give his assistance. 
After considerable delay, and some trouble, a new pole was at 
length fixed in. The old one, from its peculiar fracture, excited my 
attention : it was made of the wood called Hassagay-hout which 
possesses the valuable property of extreme toughness, as this accident 
clearly evinced. Although bent to an angle of about 150 degrees, it 
exhibited scarcely any transverse fracture, but appeared split into a 
great number of longitudinal splinters, which still held the two parts 
strongly together. The pole we had now put in, being of Yzer-hout % 
* Canis mesomelas. Linn. 
f By the side of a rivulet here, grows Capraiia lanceolata. Linn, a very neat •willow- 
leaved shrub, decorated with long yellowish flowers : It is peculiar to such situations. 
:|: So named by the colonists, on account of its being the wood of which the KafFers 
most commonly make the shafts of their hassagays or javelins. It is the Curtisia faginea. 
§ Olea undulata. 
