“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation, that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth."

But to return from this long digression: we continued our ride together, and towards evening reached the residence of Mr. Tesselaar, one of the Veld Cornets of the Caledon district, a most kind and hospitable man, where we remained until the following morning, when we departed for Cape Town, which we reached on the evening of the same day.

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PART THE FOURTH.

CHAPTER I.

General Descriptions of African Zoology-New Species of Animals, together with various Specimens of Natural History, collected in Southern Africa.

To form a just estimate of the peculiar characters which distinguish the natural productions of any particular country, it is necessary to take into account the leading features of its physical geography, to attend to the magnitude and direction of its principal rivers and mountain chains, and to study the effects which these circumstances necessarily produce upon the general temperature and climatology due to the latitude of the place. In the case of Africa this is perhaps more necessary than in that of any other continent; for though placed for the most part within the tropics, and therefore inheriting, as it were, from nature an almost perfect uniformity of climate throughout its whole extent, the alternations of mountain and plain, of open karroo and forest, of rich arable and barren desert, are so common and so extensive, that the productions of all other quarters of the world may be said to find a congenial climate in some part of Africa. The whole northeastern portion of the continent, as is well known,

is occupied by the chain of the Atlas mountains and their various ramifications, which rise in some instances above the snow line, and give origin to various rivers and streams which pour themselves into the Mediterranean or Atlantic, and fertilize the rich plains of Barbary and Morocco. On the eastern part of the continent again, the lofty chains of Samen and Taranta, and the Kong or Mountains of the Moon, penetrate far into the interior, and form a succession of elevated terraces and table lands throughout Abyssinia and the surrounding countries; whilst the extreme south is occupied by the Nieuwveld, Sneeuwberg, and other mountains extending beyond Tembia and Delagoa of less importance, but which nevertheless do not fail to produce very essential modifications upon the climate and temperature of the country. All these parts of Africa, as they enjoy the climate, so likewise do they possess the productions of the temperate zone, mixed, it is true, with the more usual inhabitants of the tropics, but still preserving a decidedly temperate character. Thus we find the bear, the stag, the moufflon and the wild boar, as common in Northern Africa, as in any part of Europe; and although the lion and the panther are likewise inhabitants of the same localities, yet it must not be forgotten that these formidable animals, at least the lion, were as common in Macedon and Boeotia in the time of the ancient Greeks, as they are in any part of Africa at the present day.

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF AFRICA.

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The next grand feature in the physical geography of Africa, which it is necessary to notice as affecting. the character of its natural productions, is the great extent of desert which occupies various large portions of this continent, and which is for the most part without elevations and destitute of water. The deserts of Africa, however, differ very considerably in their particular characters, though they agree in the great outline of their features. The Sahara, or Great Desert for instance, which occupies the entire face of the country between the Atlas mountains on the north, and the rich and fertile valleys of the Senegal, Gambia, and Niger, on the south, consists entirely of low rocky hills, and boundless extents of moving sands, parched and pulverized by the intense heat of a tropical sun, with here and there an oasis, or wadey, as they are called by the Arabs, where a patch of verdure and a few date trees surround an occasional spring. In such a country, it may be easily supposed, living inhabitants are not to be found; and indeed, unless it be a few jerboas or other similar animals in the neighbourhood of the wadeys, or an occasional flock of gazelles or ostriches on the outskirts of the desert, the Sahara may be said to be altogether destitute of inhabitants. But the case is widely different with respect to the deserts of South Africa. The characters of these deserts are altogether different from that of the Sahara; though like it consisting of a sandy soil, yet the staple is firmly

united by the fibres and roots of various plants, which draw a certain portion of nourishment at all times even from the parched soil of the karroos, and which in the rainy season cover the whole country with rich and spontaneous verdure. The karroos of Southern and Central Africa are thus similar in their principal characters to the steppes of Northern Asia, excepting that their intertropical position, and the consequent changes of dry and rainy seasons, give the Central African deserts a variety which the Asiatic do not possess. It also adapts them much better to the support of animal life, particularly for the support of such graminivorous animals as possess speed of foot to enable them to traverse great distances in a short space of time, in search of the often widely-dispersed situations in which their congenial food is to be found. Accordingly, no country abounds with such innumerable flocks of antelopes, gazelles, &c., or with such numberless varieties and species of these animals as the karroos of Southern and Central Africa. Out of nearly seventy species which naturalists have enumerated as belonging to the antelope genus, no fewer than fifty are proper to Africa, and of these upwards of twenty-five have been found within the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, or in the countries immediately bordering upon it towards the east and north. This is certainly one of the most singular circumstances in African Zoology, or indeed in the geographical distri