The Peculiar Formation Of The Country May Explain Why There Is
Such A Difference In The Vegetation Between The 20th And 30th
Parallels Of Latitude In South Africa And The Same Latitudes
In Central Australia.
The want of vegetation is as true
of some parts too in the centre of South America as of
Australia;
and the cause of the difference holds out a probability
for the success of artesian wells in extensive tracts of Africa now unpeopled
solely on account of the want of surface water. We may be allowed
to speculate a little at least on the fact of much greater vegetation,
which, from whatever source it comes, presents for South Africa
prospects of future greatness which we can not hope for
in Central Australia. As the interior districts of the Cape Colony
are daily becoming of higher value, offering to honest industry
a fair remuneration for capital, and having a climate unequaled
in salubrity for consumptive patients, I should unhesitatingly
recommend any farmer at all afraid of that complaint in his family
to try this colony. With the means of education already possessed,
and the onward and upward movement of the Cape population,
he need entertain no apprehensions of his family sinking into barbarism.
The route we at this time followed ran along the middle,
or skirted the western zone before alluded to, until we reached
the latitude of Lake Ngami, where a totally different country begins.
While in the colony, we passed through districts inhabited by
the descendants of Dutch and French refugees who had fled
from religious persecution. Those living near the capital differ but little
from the middle classes in English counties, and are distinguished
by public spirit and general intelligence; while those situated
far from the centres of civilization are less informed,
but are a body of frugal, industrious, and hospitable peasantry.
A most efficient system of public instruction was established
in the time of Governor Sir George Napier, on a plan drawn up
in a great measure by that accomplished philosopher, Sir John Herschel.
The system had to contend with less sectarian rancor than elsewhere;
indeed, until quite recently, that spirit, except in a mild form, was unknown.
The population here described ought not to be confounded with some Boers
who fled from British rule on account of the emancipation of
their Hottentot slaves, and perhaps never would have been so
had not every now and then some Rip Van Winkle started forth at the Cape
to justify in the public prints the deeds of blood and slave-hunting
in the far interior. It is therefore not to be wondered at if the whole race
is confounded and held in low estimation by those who do not know
the real composition of the Cape community.
Population among the Boers increases rapidly; they marry soon,
are seldom sterile, and continue to have children late.
I once met a worthy matron whose husband thought it right to imitate
the conduct of Abraham while Sarah was barren; she evidently agreed
in the propriety of the measure, for she was pleased to hear the children
by a mother of what has been thought an inferior race address her
as their mother. Orphans are never allowed to remain long destitute;
and instances are frequent in which a tender-hearted farmer has adopted
a fatherless child, and when it came of age portioned it as his own.
Two centuries of the South African climate have not had much effect
upon the physical condition of the Boers. They are a shade darker,
or rather ruddier, than Europeans, and are never cadaverous-looking,
as descendants of Europeans are said to be elsewhere.
There is a tendency to the development of steatopyga,
so characteristic of Arabs and other African tribes; and it is probable
that the interior Boers in another century will become in color
what the learned imagine our progenitors, Adam and Eve, to have been.
The parts of the colony through which we passed were of sterile aspect;
and, as the present winter had been preceded by a severe drought,
many farmers had lost two thirds of their stock. The landscape
was uninviting; the hills, destitute of trees, were of a dark brown color,
and the scanty vegetation on the plains made me feel that they deserved
the name of Desert more than the Kalahari. When first taken possession of,
these parts are said to have been covered with a coating of grass,
but that has disappeared with the antelopes which fed upon it,
and a crop of mesembryanthemums and crassulas occupies its place.
It is curious to observe how, in nature, organizations the most dissimilar
are mutually dependent on each other for their perpetuation.
Here the original grasses were dependent for dissemination
on the grass-feeding animals, which scattered the seeds.
When, by the death of the antelopes, no fresh sowing was made,
the African droughts proved too much for this form of vegetation.
But even this contingency was foreseen by the Omniscient One;
for, as we may now observe in the Kalahari Desert, another family of plants,
the mesembryanthemums, stood ready to neutralize the aridity
which must otherwise have followed. This family of plants
possesses seed-vessels which remain firmly shut on their contents
while the soil is hot and dry, and thus preserve the vegetative power intact
during the highest heat of the torrid sun; but when rain falls,
the seed-vessel opens and sheds its contents just when there is
the greatest probability of their vegetating. In other plants
heat and drought cause the seed-vessels to burst and shed their charge.
One of this family is edible (`Mesembryanthemum edule'); another possesses
a tuberous root, which may be eaten raw; and all are furnished with thick,
fleshy leaves, having pores capable of imbibing and retaining moisture
from a very dry atmosphere and soil, so that, if a leaf is broken
during a period of the greatest drought, it shows abundant circulating sap.
The plants of this family are found much farther north,
but the great abundance of the grasses prevents them from making any show.
There, however, they stand ready to fill up any gap which may occur
in the present prevailing vegetation; and should the grasses disappear,
animal life would not necessarily be destroyed, because a reserve supply,
equivalent to a fresh act of creative power, has been provided.
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