104 EFFECTS OF FORESTS ON MOISTURE. 



numerous as almost to justify the declaration that, in times past, 

 wherever civilised man has gone, what he found a wilderness he has 

 left a desert, dried up and desolate, through the reckless destruction 

 of the forests and the bush. 



In treating of the hydrology of South Africa, of the former hydro- 

 graphic condition of the Cape of Good Hope, and of the causes of its 

 present aridity, I have given copious details in regard to the destruc- 

 tion of herbage and trees which has been going on in South Africa 

 from the time when it was first visited by Europeans to the present 

 (pp. 167-170), with details of the condition to which forests have been 

 reduced by reckless felling of timber trees (pp. 171-175), with details 

 of the extensive destruction of forests by fire (pp. 175-194), and with 

 details of the consequence of the destruction of herbage and trees on 

 the desiccation or diminution of the water supply in the basin of the 

 Orange River, given by Mr J. Fox Wilson in a paper read before the 

 Royal Geographical Society, with remarks on the same by Dr Living- 

 itone. Sir Roderick Murchison, Dr Kirk, Mr Galton, Colonel Balfour, 

 and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe (pp. 197-207), and corresponding 

 testimony by Dr Rubige, and others, at the Cape of Good Hope. 



Of the extreme aridity of South Africa, beyond the colonized 

 portion of it, I have given illustrations in accounts given by Dr 

 Livingstone of his experience at Kolobeng, in accounts given of the 

 great sutferings of Mr Helmore and his family in travelling in the 

 interior, under which the whole of them succumbed and perished, 

 and in accounts given by Mr M'Kenzie of his experience in travelling 

 to Shooseng (pp. 216-223), and in accounts given by Dr MoflFat of 

 his experience in a journey to Griqua Town (pp. 253-256) ; and of 

 the aridity of soil and climate within the colony I have given corre- 

 sponding illustrations in the same volume (p. 8 and p. 227). 



In bringing forward these facts thus detailed I made obvious my 

 belief that though only the sequence of desiccation to the destruction 

 of forests and herbage and grass could be proved, they were connected 

 as cause and effect. Such was also the opinion of, I believe, all 

 whose testimony I thus adduced. To establish this point was the 

 object of the paper prepared for the Geographical Society by Mr Fox 

 Wilson ; and thus has Dr Moffat borne testimony to the fact : he 

 relates that on his settlement at Latakoo, " The natives were wont 

 to tell of the floods of ancient times, the incessant showers which 

 clothed the very rocks with verdure, and the giant trees and forests 

 which once studded the brows of the Hamhana hills and neighbour- 

 ing plains. They boasted of the Kuruman and other rivers, with 



