308 
MODDER-GAT POORT. 
13, U Sept. 
dragging the waggons through the muddy plain ; but, on quitting it, 
the land was hard and dry, and plentifully strewed with stones of 
common white quartz. Low shrubs abounded every where ; the 
soil itself was quite red, but covered with fine grass, green only at 
bottom, while their withered stalks remaining, showed them to be 
chiefly a kind of Foa. 
At the distance of about nine miles from the mud-plain, we 
came to the range of mountains : their formation was quite different 
from all that had been seen since entering the Roggeveld : their upper 
outline no longer presented summits with that uniformly horizontal 
surface which invariably distinguished those we had hitherto passed ; 
it more resembled that of the mountains near the Cape. In the 
pass, more particularly, their forms were grand and picturesque. As 
we wound through the defile, which was called Modder-gat Poort, and 
which occupied us three quarters of an hour, their height appeared to 
be from six to eight hundred feet ; they were composed of a blackish- 
brown rock, among which I noticed some that seemed, at the distance 
at which I viewed them, to have very much of a volcanic character.* 
After clearing the mountains, darkness soon overtook us, and, 
having missed the right tract, the whole caravan got into confusion 
and separated. I kept with two of the Hottentot waggons, whose 
drivers I believed to be the best acquainted with the country; but 
they led me through such close thickets of thorny bushes, and which 
seemed ready every minute to tear away the canvas from the tilts, 
and our clothes from off our backs, that I had given up all hopes of 
finding our way out of them till the morning. My guides, however, 
were resolved to persevere in spite of all the thorns, and, after 
encountering them for an hour, and getting terribly scratched, and 
* In this pass, nine new plants were added to my Catalqg-ue : — 
Galenia Justicia 
Lycium Barleria 
Aptosimum abidinum. C.G. 1615. Fru- Gnaplialium 
ticulus prostratus, dense tectus foliis Achyranthes hamosa. C. G. 1621-2, 
acerosis rigidis. 
