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. If they light on a field of wheat
in their way, an army of locusts could not make a cleaner sweep of the whole
than they will do. It is questionable whether they ever return,
as they have never been seen as a returning body.
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