90 
BAHIA BLANCA 
CHAP. 
informs me that, taking into consideration the whole of the 
southern part of Africa, there can be no doubt of its being a 
sterile country. On the southern and south-eastern coasts there 
are some fine forests, but with these exceptions, the traveller 
may pass for days together through open plains, covered by a 
poor and scanty vegetation. It is difficult to convey any 
accurate idea of degrees of comparative fertility ; but it may be 
safely said that the amount of vegetation supported at any one 
time 1 by Great Britain, exceeds, perhaps even tenfold, the 
quantity on an equal area in the interior parts of Southern 
Africa. The fact that bullock-waggons can travel in any 
direction, excepting near the coast, without more than occasion¬ 
ally half an hour’s delay in cutting down bushes, gives, perhaps, a 
more definite notion of the scantiness of the vegetation. Now, 
if we look to the animals inhabiting these wide plains, we shall 
find their numbers extraordinarily great, and their bulk immense. 
We must enumerate the elephant, three species of rhinoceros, and 
probably, according to Dr. Smith, two others, the hippopotamus, 
the giraffe, the bos caffer—as large as a full-grown bull, and the 
elan—but little less, two zebras, and the quaccha, two gnus, and 
several antelopes even larger than these latter animals. It may 
be supposed that although the species are numerous, the indivi¬ 
duals of each kind are few. By the kindness of Dr. Smith, I 
am enabled to show that the case is very different. He informs 
me, that in lat. 24°, in one day’s march with the bullock - 
waggons, he saw, without wandering to any great distance on 
either side, between one hundred and one hundred and fifty 
rhinoceroses, which belonged to three species : the same day he 
saw several herds of giraffes, amounting together to nearly a 
hundred ; and that, although no elephant was observed, yet 
they are found in this district. At the distance of a little more 
than one hour’s march from their place of encampment on the 
previous night, his party actually killed at one spot eight 
hippopotamuses, and saw many more. In this same river there 
were likewise crocodiles. Of course it was a case quite 
extraordinary, to see so many great animals crowded together, 
but it evidently proves that they must exist in great numbers. Dr. 
Smith describes the country passed through that day, as “ being 
1 I mean by this to exclude the total amount which may have been successively 
produced and consumed during a given period. 
