This useful work, so essential to the prosperity of the town, was effected almost entirely by the labour of the convicted felons of the district, under the immediate superintendence of the Landdrost."

After passing Graaff-Reinet, he entered upon a dreary country, partially inhabited by the boors, but destitute of wood. On leaving the banks of the Sandy river, he did not for a great distance see a tree, nor "even a bush large enough to supply a walking stick." Timber for building is brought from a distance of forty miles. In consequence of this, and of the wild and wandering life that most of them lead, the dwellings of the boors are extremely small, and chiefly occupied as deposits of their valuable articles. Many, however, are destitute even of huts, and live entirely in wagons; yet, notwithstanding these privations, some of those men possess 10,000 sheep and goats, and 1200 or 1500 head of cattle. Similar scenes occurred in other places. But he found these people almost uniformly kind and hospitable, although their manners, as might be supposed, were in a high degree unpolished and rude.

One great evil in this country is the class of aboriginals, denominated Boschmen, or, as pronounced, and now generally written, Bushmen. There is no doubt that they are descendants of the unhappy Hottentots, who surrendered their country to the Dutch, and gradually retired, for refuge from their cruelties and oppressions, to the desert woods and plains around them, where they led miserable lives, exposed to the more ferocious species of animals, depending for a scanty subsistence on the flesh of the inferior kinds, or on articles of a less nutritive or palatable nature; continually encroached upon by the whites, and in their own defence compelled to maintain a deadly warfare with them. The superiority of fire-arms gave of course a great advantage to the latter; but the unhappy Bushmen in some degree countervailed this advantage by the use of poisoned weapons, the wounds inflicted by which generally proved mortal, and sometimes produced long incurable pain. Our author, at Rhinoster Fonteyn, (Rhinoceros fountain,) found a boor near eighty years of age, who had been wounded in this manner thirty years before, and still suffered occasionally excruciating misery. The Bushmen, compelled by necessity to commit depredations on the flocks of the boors, are regarded by the latter as confirmed enemies; and each endeavours to destroy the other, whenever an occasion presents itself. In a few instances, more amiable sentiments prevail, and our author, hearing at the last-mentioned place, that there was a kraal or horde of these people close by, paid them a visit.-

"A set of beings, in more miserable plight, I could scarcely have conceived: they were nearly destitute of any sort of clothing, crouching together under a few thorn bushes, which formed but a poor defence from the chill night blast; nevertheless they seemed in excellent spirits, and instantly commenced begging tobacco, which they are immoderately fond of, and will do almost any thing to

procure. They exhibited several feats to me, and gave me ocular proof of the accuracy of their aim, and the great distance to which they can shoot their slender but dangerous arrows.

"These poor creatures subsist chiefly upon certain wild bulbs which grow in the plains, and also upon locusts, white ants, and other insects. The bulbs and ants they dig up by means of a hard pointed stick, with a piece of stone fixed on its head to give it sufficient impetus. Living on friendly terms with the boors, and doing little services occasionally, they also come in for the offals of the cattle killed for food, and of wild game which their patrons sometimes shoot for them. This miserable fare, with a supply of tobacco, and a few sheep-skins, satisfies all the wants of these degraded beings."

Through a pathless wilderness, swarming with beasts of prey, rendered dangerous by the ambushes of the hostile Bushmen, and with a very scanty allowance of food, the consequence of his own improvidence; reposing several nights on the bare ground, protected from beasts of prey only by large fires kindled around, our author at last happily reached a village of the Griquaas. This is an extraordinary set of people, whose military prowess subsequently rendered them very conspicuous in the local history, and of whom we shall therefore give a short ac

count.

About fifty years ago, a number of the descendants of the Dutch colonists, the offspring of promiscuous intercourse with Hottentot women, retired from the Colony and seated themselves in the wild regions adjoining the Gariep river. For a time they were little more than a horde of wandering and naked savages, subsisting by plunder and by the chase, without knowledge or eivilization, abandoned to drunkenness and almost every species of vice. The white settlers and the Bushmen were equally the subjects of their hostility-and their further flight or total extirpation, were apparently the only means of redressing the evil of their existence. But too much praise cannot be bestowed on those singularly constituted minds, of which the Christian Religion furnishes the only specimens-men who, from mere philanthropy, relinquish all the enjoyments of civilized nature, and deserting their friends and their homes, disregarding all personal danger and fatigue, unite themselves with wretched outcasts, to endeavour their reformation. Two such men, Kramer and Anderson, (whose names ought not to be forgotten,) joined the Griquaas, or, as they were then termed, the Bastaard Hottentots, about twenty-five years ago; and for a time, until they were able to acquire the necessary influence over them, conformed to their vague and wandering modes of life-but within the space of five or six years, the missionaries wrought so great a change among them, as to fix them in a settlement at Klaar water, which subsequently received the appellation of Griquaa Town. At this settlement, their numbers amount to about 1000 souls. About 1000 more are situate at distant places, but connected with the same community. Their habits and manners are improved; they ace

urgent to obtain possession of a tract, lying between the Zak and Hartebeest Rivers. In defence of these aggressions, they maintained to me, that the Bushmen are a nation of robbers,-who, as they neither cultivate the soil, nor pasture cattle, are incapable of occupying their country advantageously; that they would live much more comfortably, by becoming the herdsmen and household servants of the Christians, than they do at present on their own precarious resources; and finally, that they are incapable of being civilized by any other means, as the failure of the Missionary establishment among them at the Zak River had evinced. At this institution, I was told, the most strenuous exertions had been employed by the missionary Kicherer, for many years, to engraft upon them habits of industry and foresight, but totally without avail; for he had been ultimately forced to abandon the enterprise, and the station was now in ruins. Equally unsuccessful, Nel and Vlok informed me, had been all their own efforts to improve the wild Bushmen. On one occasion, they said, they had given to the captain of a horde a number of sheep and goats, to be kept as a joint stock between the donors and his people; but on visiting the kraal, a short time afterwards, they found there was not one of the flock remaining, and that the Bushmen were as destitute as before.

"Whatever may have been the causes of the failure of Missionary attempts to civilize the Bushmen, I fear that the usual conduct of the farmers towards them, has been rather of a description to render them more barbarous and desperate, than to conciliate or civilize them. Latterly, indeed, several of the more judicious farmers had tried milder measures with them, and Nel informed me that a sort of treaty at present subsists between him and the captain of the principal horde in his vicinity. This chief waits upon Nel at every third full moon, and reports the proceedings of his clan; and if their conduct has been praiseworthy,-if they have lived humbly upon ants and bulbous roots, and refrained from stealing cattle, they receive certain allowances of sheep, tobacco, and trinkets, from the Veld-Commandant and the burghers under his control."

Surely the condition of these unhappy beings, whose fare of ants and bulbous (wild) roots, is only occasionally varied by the slender charities of the Dutch farmer, would be a proper object of the humanity and great resources of the British government, whose own settlers seem to be no longer pensioners on their bounty. In what manner an effectual melioration of their condition could be accomplished, it is impossible to indicate. Their mental imbecility must render it extremely difficult. The failure of a single missionary ought not, however, to prevent further endeavours; and our author himself, in a note, says that he has since been informed, that the statement, so far as relates to the cause of the missionary's removal, is not correct, and a subsequent note supports the idea that these poor beings are not wholly intractable.

At the last place inhabited by colonists, where an old German resides in a miserable reed hut, the traveller again left the haunts of civilized man, and found himself, "with a mingled feeling of awe and exultation, a traveller in the waste and solitary wilderness."

He here introduces some verses of a friend, published a few weeks before he commenced his journey, from which, as a specimen of Europæo South African poetry, we give our readers a

stanza:

"Afar in the Desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
Away-away from the dwellings of men,

By the wild deer's haunt, and the buffalo's glen;
By valleys remote, where the oribi plays;

Where the gnoo, the gazelle, and the hartebeest graze;
And the gemsbok and eland unhunted recline

By the skirts of grey forests o'ergrown with wild vine;
And the elephant browses at peace in his wood;
And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood;
And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will

In the Vley, where the wild-ass is drinking his fill."

Mr. Pringle, the author, seems to possess considerable graphic talents, though the structure of his verse is not very felicitousa part of the succeeding lines presents a dreary, and from Mr. Thompson's account, not an unfaithful picture of countries which.

he traversed:

"Away-away in the wilderness vast,

Where the white man's foot hath never pass'd,
And the quiver'd Koranna or Bechuan
Hath rarely cross'd with his roving clan :

A region of emptiness, howling and drear,

Which man hath abandon'd from famine and fear;
A region of drought, where no river glides,
Nor rippling brook with osier'd sides;
Nor reedy pool, nor mossy fountain,
Nor shady tree, nor cloud-capp'd mountain,
Are found-to refresh the aching eye:
But the barren earth, and the burning sky,
And the blank horizon round and round,
Without a living sight or sound,

Tell to the heart, in its pensive mood,

That this is-NATURE'S SOLITUDE!"

The truth of this description was soon verified to the poor traveller and his two attendants. A long, naked plain, without trees or water, was to be passed over; for several days the horses were without drink, and for nearly four days our author and his suffering companions were absolutely without food. No game, except in a particular place a few turtle-doves, for which he had no small shot, was seen: some wandering natives were occasionally met with, subsisting on ants and the gum of the mimora, which Mr. Thompson declares he could not swallow; and life itself was in danger of extinction, unless they killed and fed upon their horses-a desperate measure, which would have rendered their return impossible. At this critical moment, one of the "Bass boys" determined once more to try the chance of hunting; and to the inexpressible joy of his companions, returned, after a day's absence, loaded with part of the flesh of a zebra.

Mr. Thompson now reached the banks of the Gariep or Orange river, by a route never before explored by a European traveller. This great river flows from the interior to the ocean; its mouth is in about the 29th degree of latitude. The vicinity of its banks

presented different scenes from those in which our traveller had so long toiled; and in addition to wood and water, and herbage for the horses, he soon found himself among a peaceable and friendly tribe.

The Korannas are said to be a race of pure Hottentots, who have seated themselves on the banks of the Gariep, where they lead a pastoral and quiet life, without hostilities against any but the Bushmen, who even here are regarded as thieves, whom it is not only lawful but meritorious to hunt out and destroy.

On his return, he experienced, though for a shorter time, the same sufferings from the want of wood and water; and his attendants were on the point of abandoning him in the desert, unless he would accompany them on another route, when the fortunate appearance of two Griquaa hunters prevented their desperate scheme. By these men he was informed, that he was within twenty miles of a missionary settlement, to which he hastened as fast as the debilitated condition of his horses would permit. He was now among the Namaquas, a race too much resembling the Korannas to merit particular description; and from this place to Cape Town, which he reached after an absence of six weeks, no important adventure occurred.

In both these expeditions, through countries abounding with wild beasts, we are disappointed in hearing so seldom of those which always attract our curiosity. But Mr. Thompson seems not to have been himself a sportsman; and, with the single exception of Witteboy's most fortunate shot at the zebra, we have no account of a single hunting expedition. The lion, however, though not sought for, sometimes made his appearance, and terrified without injuring the party. More than once, he suffered them to pass by him without altering his posture; and on one occasion, while they were at dinner, continued couchant, at a small distance, regarding them in the most civil manner during the whole of their repast. The only instance in which there was an attempt at aggression, was a spring made by another lion at one of the horses, in which the assailant failed, and afterwards stalked slowly away. That a sullen departure after an abortive assault, is a leonine habit, is attested by other travellers; and were it not, we should be disposed to credit the relation on the authority of Mr. Thompson alone.

The following remarkable case was communicated to our traveller, and believed by him to be true:

"I was told here that a lion had just killed an ox, and been shot in the act. It is the habit of the lion, it seems, when he kills a large animal, to spring upon it, and, seizing the throat with his terrible fangs, to press the body down with his paws till his victim expires. The moment he seizes his prey, the lion closes his eyes, and never opens them again until life is extinct. The Hottentots are aware of this; and on the present occasion, one of the herdsmen ran to the spot with his gun, and fired at the lion within a few yards distance; but from the agi