-*> The Voices of the Wilderness 



of all the voices of nature uniting in one vast impressive 

 chorus. This has made such an impression upon me 

 that I shall try, so far as my limited powers permit, to 

 describe it to the reader. This musical language of the 

 wilderness is in itself powerful, rich and impressive, but 

 all this in a still greater degree for him who, observing 

 things with the eyes of a seer, knows many of the voices 

 that resound in it will not be heard much longer. 

 Although for long, long ages, through hundreds of 

 thousands of years, this tumult of sound has been heard, 

 these voices, or many of them, will soon be silent victims 

 of civilisation ! They are going, and with them many of 

 the euphonious names of places with which the natives 

 have distinguished every spot, but which the Europeans, 

 as they penetrate into the country, feel themselves obliged 

 to change. 



It may seem that I myself am not quite guiltless 

 of such misdeeds. It is true that I named an 

 island, that resort of the wild buffaloes in the Pangani 

 River, '* Heck Island," in honour of Professor Ludwig 

 Heck. But the island had till then no name whatever. 

 One feels sad, on glancing over the map of Africa, 

 to note the degradation of so many old traditional 

 names, which is in no way justified, and is a sign of 

 the hasty and violent introduction of civilised life. '* The 

 Boers are not people who think much about natural 

 history," says a writer somewhere. And in fact, through 

 their agency, the euphonious names of the various wild 

 species of South Africa are now to a great extent already 

 obsolete. They hastily gave vulgar-sounding names of 



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