Читать книгу Thoughts on South Africa онлайн

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To understand the view taken in South Africa of the opening up of these lands, it is necessary to turn back from the present day to the Europe of the sixteenth century, when the hearts and eyes of men were turned to the new world, and each man who crossed the seas carried with him the hearts and thoughts of the thousands who remained. There is no explanation to be given of these sudden movements of entire peoples in a given direction. Their scientific causes are as subtle as those which govern the migrations of the lemmings. Some lead and the rest follow.

If we leave these territories we shall find to the south-east a territory known as the Kalahari Desert; a vast tract where little rain falls and springs are rare, and there are no running streams; but it is less accurately called a desert than many parts of South Africa that are never so called. There are trees and low shrubs in many places; such antelopes as can exist without much water are found, and a few wandering natives, who know by long experience where water may be had, by sucking through the sand. In forty years there will probably be a railway across it; now it is practically uninhabited.