152 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



there are ' oppositions ' everywhere, and at all events the seekers 

 were the majority. The troublesome neighbours, now we are 

 masters, call upon us to rectify the frontier line, which had been 

 greatly encroached upon by the Boers. We refuse, or delay, 

 to set matters right. Boers' troublesome neighbours become 

 ours. The Zulus are conquered with some difficulty, and the 

 Boers, relieved from their anxieties, demand and obtain the 

 withdrawal of the suzerainty. This is not my opinion alone. 

 The Zulus were our fast friends till we refused to undo the 

 wrongs they had suffered at the hands of the Dutchmen the 

 whole story, including the subsequent withdrawal of our troops, 

 is a page that one would like to tear out of our annals. 



The character of the country in its different stages is well 

 given in the illustrations. There are no striking features ; no 

 mountains, no large river, except the Zambesi, and only one 

 rather uninteresting lake, 'Ngami ; no great forests, no tropical 

 vegetation ; the rains are scanty, the soil dry, the plains large. 

 What you see one day you may see for a week. In most 

 countries you would have to describe nature in her many 

 phases, but in South Africa one might take a paint-brush and 

 give a broad, general idea of the land, with four or five streaks 

 of colour the widely extending, ascending, nearly treeless 

 flats from Kuruman to the Molopo River ; the broken, fairly 

 clothed region of the Bakatla ; and the open park-like scenery 

 between them and the rocky homes of the Bakaa and Ba-Mung- 

 wato. Throughout this area the prevailing trees are mimosas ; 

 the flowers are of the same genera and orders, undisturbed by 

 man sheets of different kinds are often spread out side by side* 

 parterre fashion, in separate beds, not mingling even at the 

 edges. They have fought the battle out amongst themselves, and 

 it has ended in the survival of the fittest, aliens less suited to the 

 particular border being crowded out by the stronger natives. 



From the Ba-Mungwato, however, as you dive into the 

 Kalahari desert by the Bushmen sucking-holes of 'Serotli, 

 thirty yards of sand suffice to change the growth and families 

 of trees and flowers. On the side we struck the hollow, they 



