UVINGSTONE AND THE BOERS. 87 



held in low estimation by those who do not know the real 

 composition of the Cape community. 



Population among the Boers increases rapidly ; they 

 marry soon, are seldom sterile, and continue to have 

 children late. I once met a worthy matron, whose 

 husband thought it right to imitate the conduct of Abra- 

 ham, while Sarah was barren ; she evidently agreed in the 

 propriety of the measure, for she was pleased to hear the 

 children by a mother of what has been thought an inferior 

 race address her as their mother. Orphans are never 

 allowed to remain long destitute ; and instances are 

 frequent in which a tender-hearted farmer has adopted 

 a fatherless child, and when it came of age has portioned 

 it as his own. 



Two centuries of the South African climate have not 

 had much effect upon the physical condition of the Boers. 

 They are a shade darker, or rather ruddier, than Euro- 

 peans, and are never cadaverous-looking, as descendants 

 of Europeans are said to be elsewhere. There is a tendency 

 to the development of steatopyga, so characteristic of 

 Arabs and other African tribes ; and it is probable that 

 the interior Boers in another century will become in colour 

 what the learned imagine our progenitors Adam and Eve 

 to have been. 



The parts of the colony through which we passed were 

 of sterile aspect ; and as the present winter had been 

 preceded by a severe drought, many farmers had lost 

 two- thirds of their stock. The landscape was uninviting j 

 the hills, destitute of trees, were of a dark-brown colour, 

 and the scanty vegetation on the plains made me feel 

 that they deserved the name of Desert more than the 

 Kalahari. When first taken possession of, these parts 

 are said to have been covered with a coating of grass, 

 but that has disappeared with the antelopes which fed 

 upon it, and a crop of mesembryanthemums and crassulas 

 occupies its place. It is curious to observe how, in nature, 

 organizations the most dissimilar are mutually dependent 

 on each other for their perpetuation. Here the original 

 grasses were dependent for dissemination on the grass- 

 feeding animals, which scattered the seeds. When, by 

 the death of the antelopes, no fresh sowing was made, 

 the African droughts proved too much for this form of 

 vegetation. But even this contingency was foreseen by 

 the Omniscient One ; for, as we may now observe in the 



