CIIAP. VIII. 
APPROACH TO THE ORANGE RIVER, 
213 
forty in one day. He said they were very destructive, and 
that, though by strict watching they might he kept from the 
crops during the day, they could not be kept off by night, 
and sometimes devoured the whole of the grain, and every 
other green thing. 
Our conversation then turned upon colonial affairs, and 
afterwards on the war in Europe, the alliance between England 
and France, with the politics and literature of England. Our 
host told us his name was GfilHllan, and asked if I knew 
whether the author of the tfe Bards of the Bible ” was from 
Selkirk. On learning that I expected soon to return to 
England, he said he should like to visit the old country 
again, but supposed he never should. I wanted to look over 
his garden, but the time had passed so rapidly in this un¬ 
looked-for oasis, that we felt obliged to bid our friends a 
hasty farewell and depart. The place is called Wonder Hill, 
from a singular conical mountain rising near the house. 
Passing along, after our departure, over the same treeless 
region we reached, in the afternoon of the 24th of February, 
the frontier village of Colesberg. There we spent a pleasant 
Sabbath with M. Be Kok, and on Monday afternoon pursued 
our way towards the Orange River, twenty miles distant, 
where we arrived the same evening. 
On approaching the river, we found it impassable. A 
number of families, with their waggons, were waiting on both 
sides for the subsiding of the swollen waters. The man in 
charge of the ferry told us it had not been passed since 
Saturday, and that it was uncertain when the flood would 
subside. We walked to the side of the stream, but the 
violence and noise with which the turbid waters rolled along 
afforded little hope of a speedy passage to the opposite shore. 
The scene along the banks presented a curious spectacle. We 
seemed to be in the midst of a wide encampment. Gipsy 
fires gleamed in every direction along the borders of the 
