516 
QUICKNESS OF VEGETATION. 
15, 19 Jan. 
the colonial boundary. Here the idea of restraint began to usurp 
its place ; and at Cape Town they became completely annihilated. 
But if society smothered and extinguished them, I became, on the 
other hand, like one of society, adopting its mode of thinking, and 
enjoying its refinements, and its reasonable pleasures, as a compen- 
sation for those which I had lost. 
The picture here given of the remarkable effects of the freshness 
of the atmosphere on my feelings, is neither overdrawn nor over- 
coloured ; and though not easily accounted for, is not, therefore, the 
less exact and faithful. 
These reviving showers produce a change in the face of the coun- 
try, more like the sudden operation of magic, than of the gradual 
progress of vegetation. As if touched by a fairy wand, the dreary 
surface is transmuted to a verdant flower-garden, and innumerable 
little flowers, before invisible, spring up into existence, and hasten to 
cover the ground. In less than a fortnight the earth begins to 
reanimate, and the complexion of the country assumes so different 
an appearance, that it no longer could be imagined to be that same 
sterile region which, for so great a part of the year, presents to the 
eye of the traveller nought but desolate and unproductive plains. 
All now looks fair and smiling, and no longer can they be termed 
the arid deserts and frowning wastes of Africa. 
\9th. Speelman had informed me that our expectation of having 
Hendrik Abrams with us, had been counteracted by an order from 
the Klaarwater captain, appointing him to the duty of superintendant, 
or, as they call it, corporal, of one of the out-posts ; and that he had 
actually been sent in that capacity to investigate the truth of a report 
of the Koras at Wittewater, having in some quarrel killed a Bush- 
man. Whenever Hendrik came to Klaarwater, he was now afraid to 
be seen at my waggons, lest the captain should construe into an act of 
opposition to his orders, the idea of deserting his post to accom- 
pany us. 
I therefore represented the case to one of the missionaries, and 
requested him to send for the captain to his house. Here we had 
