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.
The next division, that which embraces the centre of the continent,
can scarcely be called hilly, for what hills there are are very low.
It consists for the most part of extensive, slightly undulating plains.
There are no lofty mountains, but few springs, and still fewer
flowing streams. Rain is far from abundant, and droughts
may be expected every few years. Without artificial irrigation
no European grain can be raised, and the inhabitants (Bechuanas),
though evidently of the same stock, originally, with those already mentioned,
and closely resembling them in being an agricultural as well as
a pastoral people, are a comparatively timid race, and inferior to the Caffres
in physical development.
The western division is still more level than the middle one, being rugged
only near the coast. It includes the great plain called the Kalahari Desert,
which is remarkable for little water and very considerable vegetation.
The reason, probably, why so little rain falls on this extensive plain
is that the prevailing winds of most of the interior country are easterly,
with a little southing. The moisture taken up by the atmosphere
from the Indian Ocean is deposited on the eastern hilly slope;
and when the moving mass of air reaches its greatest elevation, it is then
on the verge of the great valley, or, as in the case of the Kalahari,
the great heated inland plains; there, meeting with the rarefied air
of that hot, dry surface, the ascending heat gives it greater capacity
for retaining all its remaining humidity, and few showers can be given
to the middle and western lands in consequence of the increased
hygrometric power.
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