Two Other English Gentlemen Crossed And Recrossed The Desert
About The Same Time, And Nearly In The Same Direction.
On returning,
one of them, Captain Shelley, while riding forward on horseback,
lost himself, and was obliged to find his way alone to Kuruman,
some hundreds of miles distant.
Reaching that station shirtless,
and as brown as a Griqua, he was taken for one by Mrs. Moffat,
and was received by her with a salutation in Dutch, that being the language
spoken by this people. His sufferings must have been far more severe
than any we endured. The result of the exertions of both Shelley and Macabe
is to prove that the general view of the Desert always given by the natives
has been substantially correct.
Occasionally, during the very dry seasons which succeed our winter
and precede our rains, a hot wind blows over the Desert from north to south.
It feels somewhat as if it came from an oven, and seldom
blows longer at a time than three days. It resembles in its effects
the harmattan of the north of Africa, and at the time the missionaries
first settled in the country, thirty-five years ago,
it came loaded with fine reddish-colored sand. Though no longer
accompanied by sand, it is so devoid of moisture as to cause
the wood of the best seasoned English boxes and furniture to shrink,
so that every wooden article not made in the country is warped.
The verls of ramrods made in England are loosened, and on returning to Europe
fasten again. This wind is in such an electric state
that a bunch of ostrich feathers held a few seconds against it
becomes as strongly charged as if attached to a powerful electrical machine,
and clasps the advancing hand with a sharp crackling sound.
When this hot wind is blowing, and even at other times, the peculiarly strong
electrical state of the atmosphere causes the movement of a native
in his kaross to produce therein a stream of small sparks.
The first time I noticed this appearance was while a chief
was traveling with me in my wagon. Seeing part of the fur of his mantle,
which was exposed to slight friction by the movement of the wagon,
assume quite a luminous appearance, I rubbed it smartly with the hand,
and found it readily gave out bright sparks, accompanied with distinct cracks.
"Don't you see this?" said I. "The white men did not show us this,"
he replied; "we had it long before white men came into the country,
we and our forefathers of old." Unfortunately, I never inquired the name
which they gave to this appearance, but I have no doubt there is one for it
in the language. Otto von Guerrike is said, by Baron Humboldt, to have been
the first that ever observed this effect in Europe, but the phenomenon
had been familiar to the Bechuanas for ages. Nothing came of that, however,
for they viewed the sight as if with the eyes of an ox.
The human mind has remained here as stagnant to the present day,
in reference to the physical operations of the universe,
as it once did in England.
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