in breadth, and flows with a very strong current. On the
other side, the road to Kiama lay through a flat country, thickly
wooded with fine trees, and inhabited by large antelopes. These
creatures are the most lively, graceful, and beautifully proportioned
of the brute creation. Wherever known, they have attracted the
attention and admiration of mankind from the earliest ages, and the
beauty of their dark and lustrous eyes affords a frequent theme to
the poetical imaginings of the eastern poets. The antelopes seen by
Lander are by the Dutch called springbok, and inhabit the great
plains of central Africa, and assemble in vast flocks during their
migratory movements. These migrations, which are said to take place
in their most numerous form only at the intervals of several years,
appear to come from the north-east, and in masses of many thousands,
devouring, like locusts, every green herb. The lion has been seen to
migrate, and walk in the midst of the compressed phalanx, with only
as much space between him and his victims as the fears of those
immediately round could procure by pressing outwards. The foremost of
these vast columns are fat, and the rear exceedingly lean, while the
direction continues one way; but with the change of the monsoon, when
they return towards the north, the rear become the leaders, fattening
in their turn, and leaving the others to starve, and to be devoured
by the numerous rapacious animals, who follow their march. At all
times, when impelled by fear, either of the hunter or beasts of prey
darting amongst the flocks, but principally when the herds are
assembled in countless multitudes, so that an alarm cannot spread
rapidly and open the means of flight, they are pressed against each
other, and their anxiety to escape compels them to bound up in the
air, showing at the same time the white spot on the croup, dilated by
the effort, and closing again in their descent, and producing that
beautiful effect from which they have obtained the name of the
springer or springbok.

Early on the 13th, the travellers were met by an escort from the
chief of Kiama, the capital of a district of the same name, and
containing thirty thousand inhabitants. Kiama, Wawa, Niki, and Boussa
are provinces composing the kingdom of Borgoo, all subject, in a
certain sense, to the sovereign of Boussa; but the different cities
plunder and make war on each other, without the slightest regard to
the supreme authority. The peop