The river, broad, deep, and rapid, wound at the foot of a rocky precipitous cliff: a belt of wood followed its course, and the horizon terminated in the distant undulations of the turf-plain.
When in this neighbourhood, I several times heard of the Sierra de las Cuentas: a hill distant many miles to the northward.

The name signifies hill of beads.

I was assured that vast numbers of little round stones, of various colours, each with a small cylindrical hole, are found there.

Formerly the Indians used to collect them, for the purpose of making necklaces and bracelets--a taste, I may observe, which is common to all savage nations, as well as to the most polished.

I did not know what to understand from this story, but upon mentioning it at the Cape of Good Hope to Dr.Andrew Smith, he told me that he recollected finding on the south-eastern coast of Africa, about one hundred miles to the eastward of St.
John's river, some quartz crystals with their edges blunted from attrition, and mixed with gravel on the sea-beach.