Having Sent My Family Home To England, I Started In The Beginning Of June,
1852, On My Last Journey From Cape Town.
This journey extended
from the southern extremity of the continent to St. Paul de Loando,
the capital of Angola, on the west coast, and thence across
South Central Africa in an oblique direction to Kilimane (Quilimane)
in Eastern Africa.
I proceeded in the usual conveyance of the country,
the heavy, lumbering Cape wagon drawn by ten oxen, and was accompanied
by two Christian Bechuanas from Kuruman - than whom I never saw
better servants any where - by two Bakwain men, and two young girls,
who, having come as nurses with our children to the Cape,
were returning to their home at Kolobeng. Wagon-traveling in Africa
has been so often described that I need say no more than that
it is a prolonged system of picnicking, excellent for the health,
and agreeable to those who are not over-fastidious about trifles,
and who delight in being in the open air.
Our route to the north lay near the centre of the cone-shaped mass of land
which constitutes the promontory of the Cape. If we suppose this cone
to be divided into three zones or longitudinal bands, we find each presenting
distinct peculiarities of climate, physical appearance and population.
These are more marked beyond than within the colony. At some points
one district seems to be continued in and to merge into the other,
but the general dissimilarity warrants the division, as an aid to memory.
The eastern zone is often furnished with mountains, well wooded
with evergreen succulent trees, on which neither fire nor droughts can have
the smallest effect (`Strelitzia', `Zamia horrida', `Portulacaria afra',
`Schotia speciosa', `Euphorbias', and `Aloes arborescens');
and its seaboard gorges are clad with gigantic timber.
It is also comparatively well watered with streams and flowing rivers.
The annual supply of rain is considerable, and the inhabitants
(Caffres or Zulus) are tall, muscular, and well made;
they are shrewd, energetic, and brave; altogether they merit the character
given them by military authorities, of being "magnificent savages".
Their splendid physical development and form of skull show that,
but for the black skin and woolly hair, they would take rank
among the foremost Europeans.
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