214 
VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. 
chap. viir. 
stream, throwing their strong but flickering light upon the 
groups of swarthy figures employed in cooking the evening 
meal, strongly contrasting with the white tents or canvas 
coverings of the different vehicles. Cattle in abundance lay 
chewing the cud, or sleeping around the waggons of their 
owners, and a number of children were playing on the broad 
sands between these and the edge of the water, mingling 
their shouts and laughter with the occasional barking of the 
dogs and the voices of the men. We added our fire to the 
number already burning; and, after drinking tea by moon¬ 
light, spread our beds in the waggon and lay down to rest. 
The next morning disclosed little if any diminution of the 
stream, which appeared to be about three hundred yards 
wide, though on our side it had subsided more than fifty 
yards from the line which at one time it had reached. 
Some of the mimosa trees, which generally grow ten or 
twelve feet high, were more than half covered; and trees of 
Salix Gariejoiana, the weeping willow peculiar to the banks of 
the Grariep or Orange Eiver, growing several yards nearer the 
centre of the stream, exhibited only their tops, their trunks 
and lower branches being still under water. Piles of drift¬ 
wood on the opposite side, as well as marks on the rocky 
banks to the eastward, showed that the water had recently 
been many feet higher than at present. One of the boers 
informed us that the flood had washed down two men, one 
of them a Caffre, with eight horses, two cows, and a gnu, all 
dead. We afterwards saw a dead spring-bok floating down 
the middle of the stream. 
Turning from the river, a new and singular scene presented 
itself. A level space, thinly overspread with mimosa bushes, 
extended about one hundred yards towards high, steep, and 
sometimes overhanging basaltic rocks. On the left, two 
caverns, the entrances of which were screened by a mat, or 
piece of cloth hung across a stick, constituted the dwelling- 
