Start in June, 1852, on the last and longest Journey from Cape Town-- Companions--Wagon-traveling--Physical Divisions of Africa--The Eastern, Central, and Western Zones--The Kalahari Desert--Its Vegetation--Increasing Value of the Interior for Colonization-- Our Route--Dutch Boers--Their Habits--Sterile Appearance of the District--Failure of Grass--Succeeded by other Plants-- Vines--Animals--The Boers as Farmers--Migration of Springbucks-- Wariness of Animals--The Orange River--Territory of the Griquas and Bechuanas--The Griquas--The Chief Waterboer--His wise and energetic Government--His Fidelity--Ill-considered Measures of the Colonial Government in regard to Supplies of Gunpowder--Success of the Missionaries among the Griquas and Bechuanas--Manifest Improvement of the native Character--Dress of the Natives--A full-dress Costume--A Native's Description of the Natives--Articles of Commerce in the Country of the Bechuanas--Their Unwillingness to learn, and Readiness to criticise.
Having sent my family home to England, I started in the beginning of June, 1852, on my last journey from Cape Town. This journey extended from the southern extremity of the continent to St. Paul de Loando, the capital of Angola, on the west coast, and thence across South Central Africa in an oblique direction to Kilimane (Quilimane) in Eastern Africa. I proceeded in the usual conveyance of the country, the heavy, lumbering Cape wagon drawn by ten oxen, and was accompanied by two Christian Bechuanas from Kuruman--than whom I never saw better servants any where--by two Bakwain men, and two young girls, who, having come as nurses with our children to the Cape, were returning to their home at Kolobeng. Wagon-traveling in Africa has been so often described that I need say no more than that it is a prolonged system of picnicking, excellent for the health, and agreeable to those who are not over-fastidious about trifles, and who delight in being in the open air.
Our route to the north lay near the centre of the cone-shaped mass of land which constitutes the promontory of the Cape. If we suppose this cone to be divided into three zones or longitudinal bands, we find each presenting distinct peculiarities of climate, physical appearance and population. These are more marked beyond than within the colony. At some points one district seems to be continued in and to merge into the other, but the general dissimilarity warrants the division, as an aid to memory. The eastern zone is often furnished with mountains, well wooded with evergreen succulent trees, on which neither fire nor droughts can have the smallest effect ('Strelitzia', 'Zamia horrida', 'Portulacaria afra', 'Schotia speciosa', 'Euphorbias', and 'Aloes arborescens'); and its seaboard gorges are clad with gigantic timber. It is also comparatively well watered with streams and flowing rivers. The annual supply of rain is considerable, and the inhabitants (Caffres or Zulus) are tall, muscular, and well made; they are shrewd, energetic, and brave; altogether they merit the character given them by military authorities, of being "magnificent savages". Their splendid physical development and form of skull show that, but for the black skin and woolly hair, they would take rank among the foremost Europeans.
The next division, that which embraces the centre of the continent, can scarcely be called hilly, for what hills there are are very low. It consists for the most part of extensive, slightly undulating plains. There are no lofty mountains, but few springs, and still fewer flowing streams. Rain is far from abundant, and droughts may be expected every few years. Without artificial irrigation no European grain can be raised, and the inhabitants (Bechuanas), though evidently of the same stock, originally, with those already mentioned, and closely resembling them in being an agricultural as well as a pastoral people, are a comparatively timid race, and inferior to the Caffres in physical development.
The western division is still more level than the middle one, being rugged only near the coast. It includes the great plain called the Kalahari Desert, which is remarkable for little water and very considerable vegetation.
The reason, probably, why so little rain falls on this extensive plain is that the prevailing winds of most of the interior country are easterly, with a little southing. The moisture taken up by the atmosphere from the Indian Ocean is deposited on the eastern hilly slope; and when the moving mass of air reaches its greatest elevation, it is then on the verge of the great valley, or, as in the case of the Kalahari, the great heated inland plains; there, meeting with the rarefied air of that hot, dry surface, the ascending heat gives it greater capacity for retaining all its remaining humidity, and few showers can be given to the middle and western lands in consequence of the increased hygrometric power.