These are separated one from another by glades
of grass land, broken here and there with clumps of timber trees; and in
some instances by curious isolated koppies, and even by single crags of
granite that start up into the air as though they were monuments carved
by man, and not tombstones set by nature over the grave of ages gone. On
the west this beautiful plain is bordered by the lonely mountain, from
the edge of which it rolls down toward the fever coast; but how far it
runs to the north I cannot say--eight days' journey, according to the
natives, when it is lost in an untravelled morass.
"On the hither side of the river the scenery is different. Along the
edge of its banks, where the land is flat, are green patches of swamp.
Then comes a wide belt of beautiful grass land covered thickly with
game, and sloping up very gently to the borders of the forest, which,
beginning at about a thousand feet above the level of the plain, clothes
the mountain-side almost to its crest. In this forest grow great trees,
most of them of the yellow-wood species. Some of these trees are so
lofty, that a bird in their top branches would be out of range of an
ordinary shot gun. Another peculiar thing about them is, that they are
for the most part covered with a dense growth of the Orchilla moss; and
from this moss the natives manufacture a most excellent deep purple dye,
with which they stain tanned hides and also cloth, when they happen
to get any of the latter.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25