Chap. V. 
ANIMALS OF THE DESEET. 
101 
find tliat some of tlieir 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 (AL. steinbucks, and the ostrich 
{StrutJiio eamelm), continue, like the Bushmen, to maintain a pre¬ 
carious existence when aU 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 dehght 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 this 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 
