THE TRAIL OF THE BOER 157 



desert lake, the other to the Zambezi and the 

 Indian Ocean. 



This eastern portion of the southern plateau 

 is a land of great distances, hot and little in- 

 habited, but it once was filled with game. Most 

 of the great animals still roam its empty spaces, 

 and in the marshes of the rivers and the fly belts 

 of the forests yet find refuge from extermination 

 by that great enemy of all wild things, the Boer 

 hunter with his wagon. 



To the south this plateau slopes to the lower 

 reaches of the Cunene, to form the northern 

 escarpment of this river, which in its encircling 

 course bounds the western section of this southern 

 plateau to the east and south. 



In this high plateau are green glades and 

 forests, mountain streams and waterfalls. Town- 

 ships and villages have come, like Lubango, Huilla, 

 and Chibia, with their two or three thousand white 

 people, and villages of natives ; while here and 

 there are solitary farms of Boers, rough home- 

 steads with just a few acres of mealie corn to give 

 the owner bread, as the meadow land provides 

 with grass the oxen of his long wagon span. For 

 the Boer lives by hunting still ; he has killed most 

 of the animals on these beautiful highland slopes 

 and valleys, and now drives his long wagon team 

 to the Cunene, Cubango, or Cuando Rivers, where 

 lie can still shoot to his heart's content, until the 

 wagon creaks under the load of skins of what had 

 once been beautiful wild things. 



Sometimes he goes down to hunt the seaward 

 desert plains where, instead of 1 lie green of glade 



