They Resemble Closely Those Of The Asparagus.
This Increase Of Power To Withstand The Effects Of Climate
Might Prove Of Value In The More Arid Parts Of The Cape Colony,
Grapes Being Well Known To Be An Excellent Restorative In The Debility
Produced By Heat:
By ingrafting, or by some of those curious manipulations
which we read of in books on gardening, a variety
Might be secured
better adapted to the country than the foreign vines at present cultivated.
The Americans find that some of their native vines yield wines superior
to those made from the very best imported vines from France and Portugal.
What a boon a vine of the sort contemplated would have been
to a Rhenish missionary I met at a part in the west of the colony
called Ebenezer, whose children had never seen flowers, though old enough
to talk about them!
The slow pace at which we wound our way through the colony
made almost any subject interesting. The attention is attracted
to the names of different places, because they indicate
the former existence of buffaloes, elands, and elephants,
which are now to be found only hundreds of miles beyond.
A few blesbucks (`Antilope pygarga'), gnus, bluebucks (`A. cerulea'),
steinbucks, and the ostrich (`Struthio camelus'), continue, like the Bushmen,
to maintain a precarious existence when all the rest are gone.
The elephant, the most sagacious, flees the sound of fire-arms first;
the gnu and ostrich, the most wary and the most stupid, last.
The first emigrants found the Hottentots in possession of
prodigious herds of fine cattle, but no horses, asses, or camels.
The original cattle, which may still be seen in some parts of the frontier,
must have been brought south from the north-northeast, for from this point
the natives universally ascribe their original migration.
They brought cattle, sheep, goats, and dogs; why not the horse,
the delight of savage hordes?
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