CHAPTER II. 
THE QUAGGA. 
“Who hath sent out the wild Ass free? or who hath loosed the bands of the wild Ass ? 
Whose house I haye made the wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings. 
fle scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the crying of the driver. 
The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after every green thing.”’"—Job xxxix, 5—8, 
ADEQUATELY to portray upon paper the magnitude of the measureless landscape which meets the eye of the traveller in many 
parts of Southern Africa, is beyond the limits of possibility, but some idea of the naked and remarkable scenery of the less sterile plains 
may be gleaned from the view annexed. A region—to the perception as vast and trackless as the ocean, and, like it, presenting an undis- 
turbed horizon—is spread out for hundreds of miles into one level and treeless expanse of serene and sumny plain. In vain we there seek 
for the bewitching variety of hill or dale, forest or glade, which constitutes the chief charm of landscape; the eye wanders on, without 
the smallest check, over interminable flats, which are utterly wearisome from their extent and monotony,— 
“All, all is plain, 
Plain as the strand, sea lnv’d, that stretches far 
Beneath you rocky shore.” 
Yet nature has endeavoured, in some measure, to atone for other deficiencies, by decking them out in her gaudiest colours, and in some 
of the most eccentric and attractive forms that exist in the vegetable world. Endless meads, clad in a vernal and variegated robe of gay, 
but scentless flowers, in whose presence the very desert would seem to smile, exhibit the motley variety of a Turkey carpet. With the 
vernal Spring, the branchmg chandelier plant, the purple amarylilis, the golden crocus, and a thousand other splendid bulbs, push forth 
their blossoms and green leaves, amid trailing geraniums; and, combined with various species of the fleshy cactus, and an endless variety 
of the sueculent green-house plant, styled the Hottentot fig, which there grow wild in profusion, literally impart to the waste the sem- 
blanee of a flower-garden. Daisies, butteroups, tulips, pinks, and marigolds,—white, yellow, purple, and crimson, spread themselves out 
into beds and borders of many acres it extent : 
“So wondrous wild, the whole might seem 
The scenery of a airy dream.” 
Now may be descried some reed-encircled fountain, around which hosts of Quaggas and other wild animals have congregated to slake 
their thirst—fetid and stagnant ponds, covered with flowering water lilies, and surrounded by a broad belt of flags and rushes, which 
conceal a chain of treacherous pit-falls dug by those brown dwarfs, the wily Bushmen, for the purpose of entrapping the unwary game, 
Next, a string of frosted salt-pans present themselves to the view,—white and hoar,—with divers antelopes licking up the saline efflores- . 
cence, in which they delight ; and sometimes, though rarely, may be seen an isolated tumulus, riding, like a ship at her cable, in a floating 
sea of deceitful mirage, which causes the gay glittering coats of the Quagga to sparkle like mica. Above, through a sky of pure and 
delicious blue, “spread out like a molten looking-glass,” and rarely visited by a cloud, shines the sun, with matchless refulzence; and 
during his meridian blaze over this level expanse, in many parts, so strongly impregnated with salt, the delusion of the treacherous vapour 
is no where more perfect. Looming as though “the parched ground had become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water,” optical 
lakes, which are stretched around on every side like a white table-cloth, impart to the wanderers fevered with thirst, the torments of 
Tantalus— 
“Still the same burning sun, no cloud in heaven, 
The hot air quivers, and the sultry mist 
Floats o’er the desert with a show 
Of distant waters, mocking their distress,’ 
Entitled only to scanty showers during the summer months, imsufficient of themselves “to satisfy the desolate and waste ground,” 
although they may “cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth,” the face of nature, thus beautifully arrayed in herbage and 
flowers, would appear to be kept fresh and verdant by nightly dews and humid mists, rather than by the partial and nigeard showers by 
which it is occasionally visited; yet neither is the debilitating fervor of an Indian sun experienced in these regions, nor—the country 
being characterized by extreme aridity,—is any baneful effect experienced from these nocturnal fogs, by the wayfarer who, ensconced in 
his leathern mantle, may be compelled to stretch his weary limbs upon the bare ground, with the starry firmament for his canopy, 
stone for his pillow. 
anda 
Although thinly populated by skulking broods of Bushmen, aud by the starving remnants of nomadic pastoral tribes, which have 
been broken up by war and violence, this is a land in which no man permanently abides—neither is 
the soil accounted any man’s pro- 
perty, being abandoned as water and fuel fail. 
Nearly all the rivers by whieh it is traversed are periodical, and the scanty pools that 
exist, being exhausted at certain seasons, the miserable wretches whose existence depends upon the wild animals, migrate with them 
to distant parts, keeping within the verge of expiring verdure. At length, however, the monotony of this extraordinary wilderness is 
broken in upon by the Wittebergen, part of a broad basaltic belt stretching 
parallel to the eastern coast, and dividing Caffraria from 
Bechuana land. This wild chaos of rocks and cliffs— 
of barren ridges and towering peaks worn by time into castellated fortresses, and 
