70 
WELWITSCHIA MIRABILIS, 
[Nature and Art, August 1, 1888. 
either for future use or for sale to Europeans, who 
find amusement in cracking and eating them as 
after-dinner nuts. A cake is made of the pulp by 
evaporating the mixture. It will keep; is rich, well- 
tasted, and looks something like coarse sugar. As 
Andersson remarked very truly, “Without the nara 
this barren land would be almost uninhabitable ; 
with rare exceptions it grows only in the bed of the 
Kuisip, within a few miles of the sea. All animals, 
from the field-mouse to the ox, the feline and canine 
races, birds, especially ostriches, devour it. Even 
the white Egyptian vulture feeds on it — the only 
instance, save one, in which this kind of bird is 
known to partake of vegetable food.” 
The first day’s journey from the bay is generally 
very short. The cattle are sent to refresh them- 
selves as they can ; and on the next, the waggons 
“ climb out ” to the elevated Nariep desert. This 
is a barren plain of loose sand, quartz, and other 
pebbles. It lias rocky ridges, destitute of grass or 
verdure, where the few leafless shrubs, breaking- 
like rotten seaweed, have insides — like the apples 
of Sodom — full of nought but ashes ; and where, 
if anything green should meet the eye, it is more 
likely to prove a trace of metallic tint upon a rock, 
than a vegetable. 
We halted late in the evening to make coffee, 
the ruddy firelight gleaming on the white waggon- 
tents and on the oxen as they stood patiently in 
their yokes awaiting the finish of our short refresh- 
ment, and seeming to know as well as we that it 
was useless to outspan them on such a desert plain. 
We crossed the Dupas river, a little stream, which 
like the Kuisip had not run with water for ten 
years, and outspanned before daybreak, with some 
low hills of weathered granite on the north, in- 
dicating the commencement of the ravine, inclosed 
by barren pyramids, cones, and precipices of 
fantastic shape and arid hue, by which we were to 
descend more than five hundred feet to the valley 
of the Swakop. 
The yellowish grey of the generality of the rock 
was relieved by darker tints, banded by light pink 
veins of quartz, crossed by lodes of black iron- 
stone, or speckled by black micaceous substances, 
splitting easily into thin glittering laminae. The 
whole surface seemed to be undergoing complete 
disintegration, and in places it was almost dangerous 
to step on what seemed a solid block of granite, 
lest it should crumble under foot. In this manner 
caves, holes in the rock, arches, and blocks of 
fantastic shape, some like gigantic human features, 
or other grotesque resemblances are fonped — and 
names more graphic than poetical are applied to 
many of them. 
The deep ravine of the Swakop, cleft thus in the 
solid rock, has been partially filled with sand 
brought down by the periodical torrents, and this 
has become a level bed of, it may be, five hundred 
yards in breadth, and of almost unknown depth. 
The brief flushes of the rainy season, deep enough 
to make the crossings dangerous, and sometimes 
impassable for waggons, soon pass away ; but mean- 
time this bed of porous sand has been saturated 
with water, which remains permanently screened 
from evaporation, or from pollution by wild or 
domestic animals, and may be reached when 
required by digging, or in some places by merely 
scratching in the sand ; while in others, as at 
Hykamkop, it appeal’s upon the surface, and after 
flowing a short distance again finds the sand in 
sufficient volume to entirely absorb it. 
Here, about seven years previous to my visit, a 
tree called the wild tobacco had been introduced, 
and spreading rapidly with its cool green leaves 
and yellow tubular flowers, became quite a feature 
in the landscape ; while the tamarisk, the mimosa, 
the kameel doom, and in favourable places the 
ana, a gigantic thorn-tree, much used for building- 
purposes, grew upon the low secondary bank that 
had formed along the base of the hills. 
Mr. and Mrs. Eggart, of the Rhenish Mission, 
who were respectively turning out the goats and 
preparing early coffee, gave us a hearty welcome to 
their little house, which was built of reeds, rather 
as a cooling screen from the sun’s rays than a pro- 
tection from any possible rain. A poor fellow was 
lying ill of fever and bowel complaint in another 
hut, and I was glad to be able to promise him a 
little quinine, to which one of my friends kindly 
added a small quantity of spirit. Mr. Dixon 
presented me with two buffalo heads, now in the 
Museum at King’s Lynn, and led me to the 
waggons by a more direct, but less picturesque 
ravine, partially filled with sand, forming a broad, 
flat bed, and in this my attention was drawn to a 
singular plant of immense size. Whether it were 
new to science I could not tell ; a vagrant artist 
can neither afford nor carry the necessary books of 
reference. I saw that it was new to me, and 
determined to secure the best sketch and specimen 
I could before I rejoined the waggons. 
The two leaves, nine or ten feet in length, and of a 
pale green colour, except Avhere somewhat withered 
at the ends, were split by the wind and drought 
into ribbons. Some of these were fourteen inches 
or more in breadth, lying curled in every direction 
upon the sand, and conveying at first sight the 
idea that there were four, instead of two original 
leaves. These issued from the circumference of 
a woody mass, with a rough bark or cork-like 
surface, rising a foot or so above the ground, and 
bearing round its edges, just within the insertion 
of the leaves, an assemblage of small stems about 
six inches long dividing into smaller branches, 
each of which bore from three to five cones, three 
inches in length, and | inch thick, of an elongated 
oval form and crimson colour, tinted with green in 
the less developed specimens, and marked with 
scales like those of a fir-cone. Numbers of insects 
— a kind of field bug— fully an inch in length, and 
prettily marked with red and yellow,' sheltered them- 
selves beneath the leaves, but in the lapse of years 
my specinlens of these have gone adrift, and though 
I could from memory sketch them sufficiently well 
for artistic purposes, I could hardly preteud to 
scientific accuracy in the delineation. 
My drawing was made on the 9th of May, 1861, 
