of a wood. Some of the papiliones were very brilliant; and there were, no doubt, among them many species that could not be matched even in Mr. Drury's extensive and valuable cabinet of foreign insects. I regretted the want of time and convenience to make a collection of the insects of the country.

Having re-crossed the Great Fish river, on our return we directed our course across a plain towards Graaff Reynet. On this plain was found, some years ago, upon the surface of the ground, a mass of pure iron in a malleable state. Considered as a great curiosity, it was carried from place to place, and is now in Cape Town. The mass was entirely amorphous; exhibited no appearance of having ever been in a mine; no matrix of any kind was adhering to it; nor in the cavities of its surface were any pebbles or marks of crystallization. It was exceedingly tough, and the fracture more like that of lead than of iron. The weight of the mass might be about three hundred pounds. A specimen of this iron being carried into England, some time ago, by Col. Prehn, it was supposed that this metal was to be met with in its native state at the Cape of Good Hope. Mineralogists, however, are still in doubt whether iron, though the most abundant of all metals, has yet been discovered in a native state; and whether those masses that have been found in Siberia, in Senegal, and a few other places, were not the products of art, which, on some occasion, or by accident, had been buried in the ground. The mass in question exhibited evident marks of force having been used in order to flatten and to draw it out. It had probably been the thick part of a ship's anchor, carried from the coast to the place where it was found by the Kaffers, and attempted by them to be reduced into smaller pieces.

Travelling along the feet of the Rietberg before mentioned, on the northern side, we passed several fine clumps of forest-trees in the kloofs of the mountain, and among these obtained three new species. of timber foreign to the woods near Zwart Kop's bay. The face of the country was here particularly rugged; the hills were composed of sand-stone, resting on bases of blue slate. In the perpendicular side of one of these was oozing out a salt of various colours, similar to that described and found near the salt lake of Zwart Kop's river. The upper part of the face of this hill consisted of large, regular, rhomboidal tablets, whose projecting angles formed a kind of cornice to the face: these rested on a mass of purple slate, crumbling into dust. The white veins of quartz that appeared to have once been liquid, and to have flowed through the slate in curved seams, were now far advanced in their transitions. into clay; pieces of these veins were friable between the fingers; several prismatic quartz crystals were found in a corroded state, and evidently decomposing into the same earth. The changes of quartz into clay are perceptible in all the mountains of Southern Africa. It should seem that this is the last stage of all the earthly bodies. Future discoveries in chemistry may perhaps demonstrate that the earths, now considered as having different bases, were originally formed of one, and are reducible to the same ultimate principle; or that they are convertible substances. That exposure to, and combination with, the different airs that float in the atmosphere, or with water impregnated by different materials, they become subject to pass into the nature of each other.

Several detached pieces of hematite were found among the mass of slate. Indeed there is scarcely a mountain in Africa that does not produce iron

ores;

and ochres are every where found in the greatest abundance. The finest of these are met with in the state of impalpable powders inclosed in crustaceous coverings of a reddish colour, of the hardness and consistence of baked earthen-ware, sometimes in single nodules of an inch or two inches diameter, but more frequently in clusters of two, three, or four nodules, connected by necks which are also hollow. In these stones every shade of colour is said to have been found, except the greens; but the most common are those of a pale yellow and chocolate brown. The country people know them by the name of paint-stones, because the powders they contain, when mixed up with oil, make very good paint, without any sifting or further preparation.

On the upper part of the Bosjesman's river we received a visit from the chief of the Ghonaquas, followed by the last remains of this mixed tribe of Kaffer and Hottentot, consisting of about a dozen people. The prediction of Vaillant concerning this horde has turned out but too true. The name of Ghonaqua, like those of the numerous tribes of Hottentots now extinct, is just on the eve of oblivion. Driven out of their ancient possessions in the Zuure Veldt by the colonists, they yet found an asylum from the father of Gaika, in one of the most fertile districts of his kingdom, watered by the river Kaapna: here they were suffered to remain in quiet till the late disturbances among the Kaffers, occasioned by the refusal of Zambie to yield to his nephew the power of the government. Unwilling to act, or undecided which part to take, they became a common enemy; and those who remained in the country were plundered and massacred by both parties; whilst those who fled across the Great Fish river met with the same treatment from the Dutch farm

ers of Bruyntjes Hoogté. Some sought refuge in the plains of Zuure Veldt, and were there plundered by the emigrant Kaffers. The last remaining party, with their chief at their head, had concealed themselves among the thick cover of the Rietberg, where they had been surprised by a party of straggling Kaffers, who had put the greatest part of the horde to death, and carried off the whole of their cattle. It was the remaining few who were left in this helpless and deplorable state, that came to entreat we should lay before the Kaffer king their melancholy condition, requesting they might be restored to his protection. Unluckily for them they had made their application too late; and all that could now be done, was to furnish them with documents to that king, with a verbal message favourable to their wishes.

The chief Kaabas and the gay Narina, who have furnished so long and so eccentric an episode in the page of a French gentleman's travels among these people, were no longer recollected by them. The names even were totally unknown in their language.

Notwithstanding the friendly disposition of the Kaffer king towards the emigrant chiefs, we understood at this place they had positively refused to pass the Fish river, withheld, no doubt, by the gang of outlaws before mentioned, on the banks of the Karooka. To drive them over at that time with an armed force, to be sent from the Cape expressly for that purpose, was deemed an unadvisable measure; but fresh disturbances among the foolish people of Graaff Reynet having since rendered it indispensably necessary to throw troops into that district, and the Kaffers having been instigated by promises

and presents from the boors to enter into hostilities against the British troops, coercive measures were found to be unavoidable in order to drive these people out of the colony, and break the connection that subsisted between them and the peasantry. The. country is here so close and unfavourable for regular troops to act, that a small party, with an officer at their head, were cut off by surprise. Once a numerous body of Kaffers made an attack, in the day-time, upon the camp in Zuure Veldt, where they knew the ammunition to have been lodged. For the space of an hour and a half they stood the fire of musketry and two three-pound field-pieces, and endeavoured several times to storm with single hassagais in their hands, the wooden shafts being broken short off by the sockets. Several Dutch boors were among the party, firing musketry from behind the bushes. Being repulsed at length with great loss, the boors thought it best to throw themselves on mercy; the Kaffers disappeared; and the vagabond Buys, the chief of the outlaws and promoter of all the disturbances, fled into Kaffer-land, far beyond the dominions of Gaika.

In our way to the Drosdy we passed over the fertile division of Bruyntjes Hoogté, notorious for the turbulent spirit of its inhabitants, a set of adventurers, chiefly soldiers or sailors deserted or discharged from the Dutch army and the Company's shipping, who, having at this great distance from the seat of government found a country that with little or no labour would supply most of their wants, thought themselves independent of all authority, and attempted even to dictate to that of the Cape, which indeed was weak and timid enough to suffer their excesses to be committed with impunity.