When The Flesh Of Animals That Have Died Of This Disease Is Eaten,
It Causes A Malignant Carbuncle, Which, When It Appears Over
Any Important Organ, Proves Rapidly Fatal.
It is more especially dangerous
over the pit of the stomach.
The effects of the poison
have been experienced by missionaries who had eaten properly cooked food,
the flesh of sheep really but not visibly affected by the disease.
The virus in the flesh of the animal is destroyed neither by boiling
nor roasting. This fact, of which we have had innumerable examples,
shows the superiority of experiments on a large scale
to those of acute and able physiologists and chemists in the laboratory,
for a well known physician of Paris, after careful investigation,
considered that the virus in such cases was completely neutralized by boiling.
This disease attacks wild animals too. During our residence at Chonuan
great numbers of tolos, or koodoos, were attracted to the gardens
of the Bakwains, abandoned at the usual period of harvest because
there was no prospect of the corn (`Holcus sorghum') bearing that year.
The koodoo is remarkably fond of the green stalks of this kind of millet.
Free feeding produced that state of fatness favorable for
the development of this disease, and no fewer than twenty-five died
on the hill opposite our house. Great numbers of gnus and zebras perished
from the same cause, but the mortality produced no sensible diminution
in the numbers of the game, any more than the deaths of many of the Bakwains
who persisted, in spite of every remonstrance, in eating the dead meat,
caused any sensible decrease in the strength of the tribe.
The farms of the Boers consist generally of a small patch of cultivated land
in the midst of some miles of pasturage. They are thus less an agricultural
than a pastoral people. Each farm must have its fountain;
and where no such supply of water exists, the government lands
are unsalable. An acre in England is thus generally more valuable
than a square mile in Africa. But the country is prosperous,
and capable of great improvement. The industry of the Boers augurs well
for the future formation of dams and tanks, and for the greater fruitfulness
that would certainly follow.
As cattle and sheep farmers the colonists are very successful.
Larger and larger quantities of wool are produced annually,
and the value of colonial farms increases year by year.
But the system requires that with the increase of the population
there should be an extension of territory. Wide as the country is,
and thinly inhabited, the farmers feel it to be too limited,
and they are gradually spreading to the north. This movement proves
prejudicial to the country behind, for labor, which would be directed
to the improvement of the colony, is withdrawn and expended in a mode of life
little adapted to the exercise of industrial habits. That, however,
does not much concern the rest of mankind. Nor does it seem much of an evil
for men who cultivate the soil to claim a right to appropriate lands
for tillage which other men only hunt over, provided some compensation
for the loss of sustenance be awarded. The original idea of a title
seems to have been that "subduing" or cultivating gave that right.
But this rather Chartist principle must be received with limitations,
for its recognition in England would lead to the seizure of all
our broad ancestral acres by those who are willing to cultivate them.
And, in the case under consideration, the encroachments lead at once
to less land being put under the plow than is subjected to the native hoe,
for it is a fact that the Basutos and Zulus, or Caffres of Natal,
cultivate largely, and undersell our farmers wherever they have
a fair field and no favor.
Before we came to the Orange River we saw the last portion
of a migration of springbucks (`Gazella euchore', or tsepe).
They come from the great Kalahari Desert, and, when first seen after crossing
the colonial boundary, are said often to exceed forty thousand in number.
I can not give an estimate of their numbers, for they appear spread
over a vast expanse of country, and make a quivering motion as they feed,
and move, and toss their graceful horns. They feed chiefly on grass;
and as they come from the north about the time when the grass most abounds,
it can not be want of food that prompts the movement.
Nor is it want of water, for this antelope is one of the most abstemious
in that respect. Their nature prompts them to seek as their favorite haunts
level plains with short grass, where they may be able to watch
the approach of an enemy. The Bakalahari take advantage of this feeling,
and burn off large patches of grass, not only to attract the game
by the new crop when it comes up, but also to form bare spots
for the springbuck to range over.
It is not the springbuck alone that manifests this feeling. When oxen are
taken into a country of high grass, they are much more ready to be startled;
their sense of danger is increased by the increased power of concealment
afforded to an enemy by such cover, and they will often start off in terror
at the ill-defined outlines of each other. The springbuck,
possessing this feeling in an intense degree, and being eminently gregarious,
becomes uneasy as the grass of the Kalahari becomes tall.
The vegetation being more sparse in the more arid south,
naturally induces the different herds to turn in that direction.
As they advance and increase in numbers, the pasturage becomes more scarce;
it is still more so the further they go, until they are at last obliged,
in order to obtain the means of subsistence, to cross the Orange River,
and become the pest of the sheep-farmer in a country which contains
scarcely any of their favorite grassy food.
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