Reasons why Droughts are prevalent in South Africa--Vegetation admirably suited to the Character of the Country--Number of Tuberous Roots--The Caffre Water-Melon--The Mesembryanthemums--The Animal Life of the Kalahari--The Bushmen, a Nomadic Race of Hunters-- Their Skill in Hunting--Their Food--Acuteness of their Sight and Hearing--Their Intelligence and Perseverance--Their Weapons and Marauding Expeditions--Their Voracity--Their Love of Liberty-- The Bakalahari--Their Love for Agriculture--Their Ingenuity in procuring Water--Trade in Skins--Their timidity.
A geographical position, not unlike that which condemns the plains along the western foot of the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes to perpetual aridity, renders also the greater part of tropical and sub-tropical Southern Africa subject to severe droughts, and in general to great scarcity of rain. For the emanations of the Indian Ocean, which the easterly winds carry towards that continent, and which, if equally distributed over the whole surface, would render it capable of bearing the richest productions of the torrid zone, are mostly deposited on the eastern slopes of the mountain-chains, which, under various denominations, traverse eastern South Africa from north to south; and when the moving mass of air, having crossed their highest elevations, reaches the great heated inland plains, the ascending warmth of that hot dry surface gives it greater power of retaining its remaining moisture, and few showers can be given to the central and western lands. Thus, while the sea-board gorges of the eastern zone are clad with gigantic forests, and an annual supply of rain there keeps a large number of streams perpetually flowing, Damara Land, the Namaqua country, and the Kalahari, are almost constantly deprived of moving water.
From these general remarks it might be imagined that regions so scantily supplied with one of the prime necessaries of life could be nothing but a dead and naked waste; yet, strange to say, even the great Kalahari, extending from the Orange river in the south, lat. 29°, to Lake Ngami in the north, lat. 21°, and from about 24° E. long. to near the west coast, has been called a desert simply because it contains no flowing streams and very little water in wells; as, far from being destitute of vegetable or animal life, it is covered with grass and a great variety of creeping plants, interspersed with large patches of bushes and even trees. In general, the soil is a light-coloured, soft sand; but the beds of the ancient rivers contain much alluvial soil, and, as that is baked hard by the burning sun, rain-water stands in pools in some of them for several months in the year.