Chap. V. ANIMALS OF THE DESERT. 101 



find that some of their native vines yield wines superior to . those 

 made from the very best imported vines from France and Por- 

 tugal. What a boon a vine of the sort contemplated would have 

 been to a Rhenish missionary I met at a part in the west of the 

 colony called Ebenezer, whose children had never seen flowers, 

 though old enough to talk about them ! 



The slow pace at which we wound our way through the colony 

 made almost any subject interesting. The attention is attracted 

 to the names of different places, because they indicate the former 

 existence of buffaloes, elands, and elephants, which are now to be 

 found only hundreds of miles beyond. A few blesbucks (Antilope 

 pygarga), gnus, bluebucks {A. cerulea), steinbucks, and the ostrich 

 {Struthio camelus), continue, like the Bushmen, to maintain a pre- 

 carious existence when all the rest are gone. The elephant, the 

 most sagacious, flees the sound of firearms first ; the gnu and os- 

 trich, the most wary and the most stupid, last. The first emigrants 

 found the Hottentots in possession of prodigious herds of fine 

 cattle, but no horses, asses, or camels. The original cattle, which 

 may still be seen in some parts of the frontier, must have been 

 brought south from the north-north-east, for from this point the 

 natives universally ascribe their original migration. They brought 

 cattle, sheep, goats, and dogs : why not the horse, the delight of 

 savage hordes ? Horses thrive well in the Cape colony when im- 

 ported. Naturalists point out certain mountain ranges as limiting 

 the habitat of certain classes of animals ; but there is no Cordillera 

 in Africa to answer that purpose, there being no visible barrier 

 between the north-eastern Arabs and the Hottentot tribes to pre- 

 vent the different hordes, as they felt their way southwards, from 

 indulging their taste for the possession of tins noble animal. 



I am here led to notice an invisible barrier, more insurmount- 

 able than mountain ranges, but which is not opposed to the 

 southern progress of cattle, goats, and sheep. The tsetse would 

 prove a barrier only until its well-defined habitat was known, but the 

 disease passing under the term of horse-sickness {peripneumonia) 

 exists in such virulence over nearly seven degrees of latitude, that 

 no precaution would be sufficient to save these animals. The 

 horse is so liable to this disease, that only by great care in stabling 

 can he be kept anywhere between 20° and 27° S. during the time 

 between December and April. The winter, beginning in the 



