On the east of Hogskin vlei is a large salt-pan or vlei, twelve miles in length from north to south and two broad. It is worked only by the Griquas living at Meer. This settlement was established in 1870. I was told by an old Bushman, that they took the bush children and made them work, and would not give them back. In 1871 Meer had become quite a tidy village, of about twenty-five houses, some of them built of red brick. The chief was Dirk Falander, who held a magistrate's court and tried prisoners; it is a little republic upon a small scale, not more than 100 all told, except the Bushmen slaves. There are close to the village two large ponds or pans; the banks on their sides are seventy feet in height. The country round is open grass veldt. Between Meer and Hogskin vlei is a large pan, surrounded by high sand-rocks, called Klein Meer, a very pretty and picturesque lake, two miles in length, with fine bushes and grass lining the banks; five months of the year it is dry. Sand-dunes are round it in every direction. There is a considerable traffic and trade carried on by the Griquas and the Cape Colony. Roads cross the Orange river at Koran drift, Kakaman's drift, and Orleans drift; the two latter meet at Kanardus, close to extensive lime-pits, where water is obtained, by the side of a dry river-bed, where there are some of the prettiest trees I have seen in Africa, spread over the veldt, park-like, and dense bush between lofty granite hills, which in consequence of water is the general outspanning place. I came here one evening after dark and nearly lost many of my trek oxen, in their eagerness to get at the water, which is twenty feet from the surface. They were supplied by sending my boys down with buckets, by that means filling a hole dug out for the oxen to drink. These pits are fifty miles north of Kakaman's drift, and twenty-five miles on is Swaat Modder, in the bed of the Hygap river, the road passing along its bed between sand-cliffs 150 feet in height. Between these two watering-places the Back river enters the Hygap; the sand in its bed is mostly composed of ruby sand, which I believe would make a fine red glass.