348 Mr. H. Seebolim on the Birds of Natal i^c. 



rocky and bare ; the valleys are full of a rank tropical 

 vegetation, of which the cactus and a palm-like aloe are the 

 most conspicuous trees ; and when fenced ground is reached 

 the enclosure is often found to contain a herd of ostriches 

 instead of cattle. The landscape can only be described as 

 '^all that there is of most un-English.^' Inland from Cape 

 Town the scenery is diiferent. The cold current from the 

 south removes nearly all trace of tropical vegetation, vine- 

 yards soon give place to corn-fields, and you pass through 

 almost the only wheat district in the colony. North of these 

 limits lies the Karroo. From Cradock in the east, up to 

 Kimberley in the north, and then down to Worcester in the 

 west, the railway passes through a country, compared with 

 which a Siberian tundra is a paradise. I have never seen 

 anything so hopelessly dreary as the Karroo. Every square 

 yard is indelibly stamped with the two-fold signs of deluge and 

 drought. The country is walled in by naked hills, generally 

 table-topped, from which every trace of vegetation and soil 

 has been washed away by deluges of rain, leaving only a heap 

 of disintegrating stones, tied together by layers of hard rock. 

 The undulating valleys are bare mud or earth, thinly 

 sprinkled over with dwarf herbs and bushes, seamed here and 

 there with dry watercourses, and torn up in the valleys with 

 deep torrent beds which tell of floods carrying everything 

 before them. But sometimes months and months pass by 

 without a drop of rain, and what vegetation has been spared 

 by the torrents of rain is destroyed by the scorching rays of 

 a burning African sun. And yet this country produces a 

 great deal of wool and mohair, though farming has been 

 reduced to the conditions of a gambling transaction. There 

 are certain semi-saline plants or little bushes growing 

 upon the Karroo, which sheep and goats eat greedily, upon 

 which they fatten rapidly, and multiply prodigiously, and 

 which appear to be a panacea to all the ills that sheep are 

 heir to. The consequence is, that when there is plenty of 

 rain the farmers become rapidly rich, to be reduced to the 

 verge of ruin if a long period of drought sets in. In times 

 of prosperity the farmer has little or no inducement to do 



