504 



THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



rim, it may in general be described as a series of broad plains intercepted by rugged 

 mountains of no great bight. These plains during the wet season abound with juicy 

 herbage, which disappears, fairly burned off, in the dry season, leaving the ground 

 parched and dusty. Sometimes there are immense tracts overgrown with low, thorny 

 bushes, standing so closely together that the traveler must chop his way through them 

 step by step. The most common of these bushes is called by the colonists the " wait- 

 a-bit," for its short hook-like thorns present a standing invitation to the passer to wait 

 a bit at every foot of his advance. Andersson mentions once coming upon a consider- 

 able forest of thornless trees. "I do not think," he says, *' that I was ever so sur- 

 prised in my life. I hesitated to trust my senses. Even the dull faces of my native 

 attendants seemed for a few seconds to relax from their usual heavy, unintelligent 

 cast, and to express joy at the novel scene." The brief wet season, when the rain 

 falls in torrents, is succeeded by months of absolute drought, when water is found only 

 at long intervals in solitary fountains and stagnant pools. The books of travelers in 

 this region present a continual record of sufferings endured by man and beast from 

 lack of water. 



But uninviting as this region otherwise is, it is the paradise of the sportsman. In 

 other regions of the globe he is limited to a few species of the larger game. On our 

 western prairies he is confined to bison; in India he must satisfy himself with tigers 

 and wild hogs; in Ceylon he may bag tuskless elephants and buffalos; in Siberia he 

 has only bears and wolves. But Southern Africa is a vast zoological garden. Giraffes 

 raise their long necks above the stunted acacia trees, stooping to crop their topmost 

 twigs. Gigantic boars, and their still bigger cousins the unwieldy hippopotami and 

 rhinoceroses, abound. Leopards and hyenas find abundant prey in numerous species 

 of antelopes, and in turn afford rich sport to the hunter. Lions are everywhere, from 

 the sneaking brute who crawls stealthily upon his ignoble prey, to the ferocious " man- 

 eater," in whom the taste of human flesh has awakened a new faculty which induces 

 him to despise all meaner food, and to leap boldly into the camp of the hunter in 

 search of a human victim. Elephants wander about singly, or in pairs and groups, or 

 troop in vast herds to the lonely pools where they can quench their thirst. "They 

 walk about as thick as cattle," said a native to Andersson, who had occasion to verify 

 the statement; and Barth once counted two hundred elephants in a single herd on the 

 banks of Lake Tschad. Besides these, there are ostriches, zebras, quaggas, and an 

 almost innumerable variety of the deer tribe, such as oryxes, koodoos, inyalas, gnus, 

 elands, springbocks, gemsbocks, hartebeests, leches, pallahs, and others whose very 

 names have as yet found no place in books of natural history. 



Such a superfluity of animal life presupposes no inconsiderable amount of vegetation 

 even in these arid regions; for all animals directly or indirectly subsist upon vegetable 

 food. The lion devours the deer; but he could find no deer to devour unless the 

 deer could find grass and leaves to eat. Nature has also gifted these animals with an 

 instinct which leads them to wander far and wide for food, and to divine where it is 

 likely to be found. In so wide a pasture-ground all parts will not be parched at 

 once; and beasts of prey follow in the tracks of their victims. Moreover, there are 

 species of plants peculiar to these regions which go far to modify the apparent sterility, 

 and store up food and even water beneath what appears to be dry sand. Such a plant 

 is the leroshua, whose low stalk is hardly larger than a crow's quill ; but it sends its 



