The Same Thing Is Rendered Evident
By The Many Engravings Which Have Been Published Of Various
Parts Of The Interior.
When the Beagle was at Cape
Town, I made an excursion of some days' length into the
country, which at least was sufficient to render that which
I had read more fully intelligible.
Dr. Andrew Smith, who, at the head of his adventurous
party, has lately succeeded in passing the Tropic of Capricorn,
informs me that, taking into consideration the whole
of the southern part of Africa, there can be no doubt of its
being a sterile country. On the southern and south-eastern
coasts there are some fine forests, but with these exceptions,
the traveller may pass for days together through open plains,
covered by a poor and scanty vegetation. It is difficult to
convey any accurate idea of degrees of comparative fertility;
but it may be safely said that the amount of vegetation
supported at any one time [5] by Great Britain, exceeds,
perhaps even tenfold, the quantity on an equal area, in the
interior parts of Southern Africa. The fact that bullock-
waggons can travel in any direction, excepting near the
coast, without more than occasionally half an hour's delay
in cutting down bushes, gives, perhaps, a more definite notion
of the scantiness of the vegetation. Now, if we look to the
animals inhabiting these wide plains, we shall find their
numbers extraordinarily great, and their bulk immense. We
must enumerate the elephant, three species of rhinoceros,
and probably, according to Dr. Smith, two others, the hippopotamus,
the giraffe, the bos caffer - as large as a full-grown
bull, and the elan - but little less, two zebras, and the
quaccha, two gnus, and several antelopes even larger than these
latter animals.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 131 of 776
Words from 34722 to 35015
of 208183
