ancient history of the world. The prejudice has probably been derived
from India, and the Indian islands, where troops of elephants, noble
forests, and impenetrable jungles, are associated together in every
one's mind. If, however, we refer to any work of travels through the
southern parts of Africa, we shall find allusions in almost every page
either to the desert character of the country, or to the numbers of
large animals inhabiting it. The same thing is rendered evident by the
many engravings which have been published of various parts of the
interior. When the Beagle was at Cape Town, I made an excursion of
some days' length into the country, which at least was sufficient to
render that which I had read more fully intelligible.
Dr. Andrew Smith, who, at the head of his adventurous party, has lately
succeeded in passing the Tropic of Capricorn, 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 [5] 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 occasionally 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 individuals
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
degs., 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
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