Читать книгу Thoughts on South Africa онлайн

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It is through these grass plains that the Vaal and the Orange Rivers run; the last the most typical of South African rivers. In nothing perhaps is the difference between Europe and South Africa more emphasized than in their rivers. The South African in Europe hardly knows whether to admire or to scorn the smooth, gentle-flowing streams between their green banks. The South African river alternates between being a stupendous body of water, tearing with irresistible force to the sea between its high banks, or being merely a vast empty bed of dry sand with gigantic walls, the floor lined by boulders and débris, or with a silver line of water creeping through it, and a few large pools gathered here and there. Rising at an immense height above the sea in the central table-lands, fed by no melting snows, dependent entirely on the thunderstorms or the heavy rains of the wet seasons, the South African river rises with a rapidity and sweeps onward with a force that is almost inconceivable. A mighty body of red or dark-brown water, it rushes with a greasy, treacherous movement between its banks, the water being higher in the centre of the stream than at the sides and breaking here and there into bubbles and foam; on its dark surface it bears uprooted trees, drowned bodies of animals or men, the stupendous rapidity of its movement being only noticeable when you mark how a floating object now at your feet is out of sight round the bend of the river in a few seconds. Perhaps no object in inanimate nature conveys the same impression of conscious cruelty, and fierce, untamed strength, as a full African river.