The Presence Of These Matlametlo In The Desert In A Time Of Drought
Was Rather A Disappointment, For I Had
Been accustomed to suppose
that the note was always emitted by them when they were chin-deep in water.
Their
Music was always regarded in other spots as the most pleasant sound
that met the ear after crossing portions of the thirsty desert;
and I could fully appreciate the sympathy for these animals shown by Aesop,
himself an African, in his fable of the "Boys and the Frogs".
It is remarkable that attempts have not been made to any extent
to domesticate some of the noble and useful creatures of Africa in England.
The eland, which is the most magnificent of all antelopes,
would grace the parks of our nobility more than deer. This animal,
from the excellence of its flesh, would be appropriate to our own country;
and as there is also a splendid esculent frog nearly as large as a chicken,
it would no doubt tend to perpetuate the present alliance
if we made a gift of that to France.
The scavenger beetle is one of the most useful of all insects,
as it effectually answers the object indicated by the name.
Where they abound, as at Kuruman, the villages are sweet and clean,
for no sooner are animal excretions dropped than, attracted by the scent,
the scavengers are heard coming booming up the wind. They roll away
the droppings of cattle at once, in round pieces often as large
as billiard-balls; and when they reach a place proper by its softness
for the deposit of their eggs and the safety of their young,
they dig the soil out from beneath the ball till they have quite let it down
and covered it: they then lay their eggs within the mass.
While the larvae are growing, they devour the inside of the ball
before coming above ground to begin the world for themselves.
The beetles with their gigantic balls look like Atlas
with the world on his back; only they go backward, and, with their heads down,
push with the hind legs, as if a boy should roll a snow-ball with his legs
while standing on his head. As we recommend the eland to John Bull,
and the gigantic frog to France, we can confidently recommend this beetle
to the dirty Italian towns and our own Sanitary Commissioners.
In trying to benefit the tribes living under the Boers
of the Cashan Mountains, I twice performed a journey of about
three hundred miles to the eastward of Kolobeng. Sechele had become
so obnoxious to the Boers that, though anxious to accompany me in my journey,
he dared not trust himself among them. This did not arise from
the crime of cattle-stealing; for that crime, so common among the Caffres,
was never charged against his tribe, nor, indeed, against any Bechuana tribe.
It is, in fact, unknown in the country, except during actual warfare.
His independence and love of the English were his only faults.
In my last journey there, of about two hundred miles,
on parting at the River Marikwe he gave me two servants,
"to be," as he said, "his arms to serve me," and expressed regret that
he could not come himself.
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