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 by Great Britain, exceeds, perhaps even
tenfold, the quantity on an equal area in the interior parts of
Southern Africa. (5/5. I mean by this to exclude the total amount
which may have been successively produced and consumed during a
given period.) 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.
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